The Ann Ireland Library. Ann Ireland
competition starts in four days, and she figures she’s as ready as she’ll ever be. The idea of it sends a thrill of anticipation through her body, so intense she can hardly stay upright. Twenty-five years of playing weddings and bar mitzvahs, reaching an age when most women accept “their limitations,” as her own mother puts it, and she is charging into the centre of the cyclone.
Goran told her, “Just play your best.”
“But is that good enough?”
Bemused, he looked at her and said, “Good enough for what? You make music, people listen. Why make it more complicated?”
First task is to collapse the fold-out bed where Philip parked his slim and limber self for the past four nights, get rid of all signs of the guest who will soon disappear into the steamy coastal villages of Thailand. He’ll return, chipper as always, sporting a grizzled beard and tanned hands, the creases of his palms a dental white: seventy-six years old and going strong.
It infuriates Lucy that Philip refuses to make up his own bed, which means putting the couch back to rights so it won’t stick halfway across the living-room floor. She’d asked him to do it several times, as had Mark, and they’d even demonstrated how. Uncle Philip professed great interest in the task, marvelled at the ingenuity of the sofa’s mechanism, and never tried it on his own, not once.
Lucy tosses his pillows and blankets onto a chair, then begins to yank off the sheets. She feels something trapped in there, tangled in the bedding. A brisk shake tosses up a manila envelope, and Lucy curses, thinking he’s left behind his passport and soon she’ll receive a panicked call from the airport and have to drive up there in morning rush hour to perform the rescue. So much for running through her program. So much for dipping into the series of right-hand rasqueado exercises, crucial for the first compulsory piece. She dangles the envelope over the exposed mattress and watches its contents slide out.
A series of black-and-white snapshots tumbles onto the bed, images of boys half-dressed or almost entirely without clothes. Boys — she holds the photographs by their edges — about the same age as the twins, approximately fifteen, with developed bodies, yet still lean and innocent-looking. Slick dark hair — undoubtedly Asian.
She carries the photos over to the window and tilts them toward the morning light. Are they professionally posed shots, something one might pick up in a shop, or — and here she feels her mouth pucker — are they Philip’s own handiwork, using his vintage Leica?
The top picture is at first ambiguous. A teenage boy stands by a market stall, wearing a decorated robe, one hand cradling a melon. His face is expressionless, although he appears to be gazing at something, or someone, to his left. It’s his face that draws Lucy’s attention, for he is extraordinarily beautiful, high cheekbones and large eyes possibly outlined by kohl. He holds himself upright, shoulders thrown back and chin tilted.
Oh.
Now she gets it.
The robe has swept open just a little, enough to let an erect penis peek out, sly yet knowing. Suddenly, that castaway glance and jutting chin assume new meaning. Uncle Philip’s whorled fingerprints are all over the emulsion, and now, so are hers. She thinks of Philip lying on the hide-a-bed while the rest of them sleep, staring at this picture and — well, yes.
She doesn’t drop the photograph. If anything, she holds on to it more tightly. The image looks posed and at the same time carelessly set up, with rudimentary lighting. The exposure is grainy, very fast film that pixilates the subject’s skin and robe. The photos are saturated with the same clove aftershave that lingers in her hallway — spritz of the marketplace. She thinks of Uncle Philip’s tapered nails and visualizes his earnest unblinking attention when someone speaks. He’d been, until he retired, chief inspector of restaurants and food-serving sites for Halifax and liked to say, “If you’ve dreamed it, it exists, and I’ve seen it.”
She always thought this referred to rodent hairs floating in the bouillabaisse.
Has he dreamed these boys, or is he on the way to meet them now, the Airbus ripping across continents of sky while his pale hands tap his trousered knees? He refuses to eat airplane food and packed his own bag of fruit and nuts, mindful of his bowels. He won’t bother watching the movie. He has his own theatre playing behind those clear blue eyes.
Lucy lets her dressing gown slide to the floor. Under it she wears an old T-shirt and a pair of Mark’s boxers. A man walking a dog on the sidewalk below glances up at her, and looks quickly away.
Then the phone rings. It’s Mr. Hyke, vice-principal at the twins’ high school.
“Am I speaking to Mrs. Dickie, Charles’s mother?”
“Lucy Shaker,” she corrects him, not for the first time, and feels her stomach lurch.
“I have Charles here in the office,” Mr. Hyke proclaims in his plummy voice. “Perhaps he’d like to tell you why.”
She reaches for her mug of cold coffee and sets the photos on the window ledge. Charlie comes on, his voice pitched so low she can hardly make out what he’s saying.
“What’s up, Charlie?” she asks.
“I seem to have forged this person’s signature.”
Silence.
“Keep going.”
“I seem to have forged this teacher’s signature on my skip sheet.”
There is muttering in the background, a correction being issued. Lucy is pretty sure she catches the word seem spoken with inflection.
“Mr. Hyke says I’m suspended. Just for a day.”
“Hang on. You forged whose signature?”
“Leftko. Mr. Leftko.”
She never remembers teachers’ names. “And he teaches …?”
“Math.”
Charlie bombed math. On his midterm report he’d received a single-digit mark.
“Then you better come home,” she says, choosing a tone of weary patience but actually feeling a wave of panic. When will she practise? For each day missed, a notch of technique slips from her fingers. “Put Mr. … the vice-principal back on.”
“Why?”
“Just do it, Charlie.”
A few seconds of transfer, background of PA announcing the track meet, city finals. Imagine, Lucy thinks, having sons who enter track meets.
“Hyke here.”
“Will this suspension go on Charlie’s academic record?”
“I don’t know who else’s.”
The rage nodule leaps up her brain stem and settles like a pulsing coin behind her eyes. “Has he apologized to the teacher?”
“In a manner of speaking.”
“Good,” she says firmly. Someone has taken charge of the matter.
She dresses quickly, pulling on jeans, a blouse, and a pair of Mark’s sneakers. Now she’ll have to hang around all day and monitor Charlie, making sure he doesn’t fool with his PlayStation or run off to the park for a toke. Not for the first time, she envies Mark as he issues a soft warning into the hushed museum room: “Please stand back from the painting.”
She can hunker down at the computer and do the books for her catering business. Not a chance of practising now, not with the mood she’s been zippered into. Who’s she kidding — pretending to be a serious musician in her forties puts her on a level with those women in floppy hats who set up easels by the riverbank.
Charlie will arrive in half an hour, dumping his pack in the front hall, ranting about the uselessness of school and how teenagers have no status in society. He will glare, daring her to contradict these obvious truths.
One of the boys in Uncle Philip’s pictures sprawls outdoors