By the end of my first year of high school, it was apparent we were in serious trouble. There was so much air in her clothes by then; she’d be better less and less. There were times, it seemed, that were normal, or something we kind of mimicked. Pretend-normal, or normal-pretend, I’m not sure how we did it.
Maybe it was just that we all had lives, we had to get by, and that included Penelope; us boys kept being kids. We kept it all together: There was the haircut, there was Beethoven.
There was for all of us something personal.
You know your mother’s dying when she takes you out individually.
We skip the moments like stones.
* * *
—
The others were all still in primary school (Rory, his last year), and expected still to piano, even when she was in the hospital. In later years, Henry swore she’d stayed alive just to torture them with practice, or even just to ask about it, no matter which bed she lay in—the faded sheets of home, or the other ones, the bitter ones, so perfect, bleached and white.
The problem was (and Penelope finally resigned herself to it) that she had to face the reality: They were so much better at fighting.
Their piano playing was shithouse.
As for all the questioning, it was pretty much reduced to ritual.
Mostly in the hospital, she’d ask if they’d practiced, and they lied and said they had. Often they showed up and their lips were cut and their knuckles split, and Penny was damp and jaundiced-looking, but also rightly suspicious. “What on earth is going on?”
“Nothing, Mum. Really.”
“Are you practicing?”
“Practicing what?”
“You know.”
“Of course.” Henry did the talking. He motioned to his bruises. “What do you think all this is?” That smile, it swerved already.
“What do you mean?”
“Beethoven,” he said. “You know how tough that guy is.”
Her nose bled when she grinned.
* * *
—
Still, when she made it back home, she had them sit there again to prove themselves, while she frayed in the chair beside them.
“You never practiced,” she said to Rory, with half-amused disdain.
He looked down and admitted it. “You’re absolutely right.”
Once, Clay stopped, midsong.
He was butchering it anyway.
He, too, had a light shadow of navy blue below his eye, after a fight—roped in with Henry.
“Why’d you stop?” But quickly then, she softened. “A story?”
“No, not that.” He gulped and looked at the keys. “I thought—maybe you could play.”
And she did.
Minuet in G.
Perfect.
Note for note.
It had been a long time, but he kneeled and laid his head there.
Her thighs were paper-thin.
* * *
—
In that period there’d been one last memorable fight, on the way back home from school. Rory, Henry and Clay. Four other guys against them. Tommy was off to the side. A woman sprayed them with her garden hose; a good one, a good nozzle. Good pressure. “Go on!” she shouted. “Git out of it.”
“Git out of it,” repeated Henry, and he got another blast. “Hey! What the hell was that for?”
She was in a nightgown and worn-out flip-flops, at three-thirty in the afternoon. “Being smart,” and again she blasted him. “And that one’s for the blasphemy.”
“That’s a good hose you got there.”
“Thanks—now piss off.”
Clay helped him up.
Rory was out ahead, feeling at his jawline, and at home there was a note. She was back in. The dreaded white sheets. At the bottom was a smiley face, with long hair either side of it. Beneath, it said:
OKAY! YOU CAN QUIT THE PIANO!
BUT YOU’LL REGRET IT, YOU LITTLE BASTARDS!
In a way it was kind of poetry, but not in the nicest sense.
She’d taught us Mozart and Beethoven.
We’d steadily improved her swearing.
* * *
—
Soon after, she made a decision:
She would do something once with each of us. Maybe it was to give us one memory that was ours, and ours alone, but I hope she did it for herself.
In my case, it was a movie.
There was an old cinema further in the city.
They called it the Halfway Twin.
Every Wednesday night there was an older film shown there, usually from another country. On the night we went, it was Swedish. It was called My Life as a Dog.
We sat with a dozen people.
I finished the popcorn before it started.
Penny struggled hard with a Choc-Top.
I fell in love with the tomboy girl named Saga in that movie, and struggled with the pace of the subtitles.
At the end, in the dark, we stayed.
To this day, I stay for the credits.
“And?” Penelope said. “What did you make of it?”
“It was great,” I said, because it was.
“Did you fall in love with Saga?” The ice cream was dead in its plastic.
My mouth fell silent, my face felt red.
My mother was a kind of miracle, of long but breakable hair.
She took my hand and whispered.
“That’s good, I loved her, too.”
* * *
—
For Rory it was a football game, high up in the stands.
For Henry it was out to a garage sale, where he bargained and talked them down: “A buck for that lousy yo-yo? Look at the state of my mum.”
“Henry,” she mocked him, “come on. That’s low, even for you.”
“Shit, Penny, you’re no fun,” but there was laughter, cahoots, between them. And he got it for thirty-five cents.
If I had to choose, though, I’d say it was what she did for Tommy that had the most influence on things, apart from her time with Clay. See, for Tommy, she took him to the museum; and his favorite was the hall named Wild Planet.
For hours, they walked the corridors:
An assembly line of animals.
A journey of fur and taxidermy.
There were too many to list as a favorite, but the dingo and lions ranked highly, and the weird and wonderful thylacine. In bed that night, he kept talking; he gave us facts on Tasmanian tigers. He said thylacine over and over. He said they looked more like a dog.
“A dog!” he almost shouted.
Our room was dark and quiet.
He fell asleep midsentence—and the love for those animals would lead to them; to Rosy and Hector, Telemachus, Agamemnon, and of course, to the great but mulish one. It could only all end with Achilles.
* * *
—
As for Clay, she took him many places and nowhere.
The rest of us all went out.
Michael took us to the beach.
Once we were gone, Penelope invited him; she said, “Hey, Clay, make me some tea and come out front.” But it was more a kind of warm-up.
When he got there, she was already on the porch floor, her back against the wall, and the sun was out all over her. There were pigeons on the power lines. The city was open-ended; they could hear its distant singing.
When she drank, she swallowed a reservoir, but it helped her tell the stories, and Clay had listened hard. When she asked him how old he was, he’d answered he was nine. She said, “I guess that’s old enough—to at least start knowing there’s more—” and from there, she did what she always did, she went on with paper houses, and at the end she reminded him this: “One day I’m going to tell you, Clay, a few things no one knows, but only if you want to hear them….”
In short, the almost-everythings.
How privileged he really was.
She swept her hand through his boyish hair, and the sun was now much lower. Her tea had fallen over, and the boy had solemnly nodded.
* * *
—
By evening we were all back home, beach and sandy tired, and Penny and Clay were asleep. They looked knotted together on the couch.
A few days later, he’d almost approached her, about when the last stories might come, but was disciplined enough not to ask. Maybe in some way he knew—they would come at the near-to-the-end.
No, instead, there was our regular overrunness, as weeks were made into months, and again she was leaving for treatments.
Those singular moments were gone now.
We were used to uncomfortable news.