brooded over most of the winter and is sick to death of now and does not want to discuss, thank you very much. He lopes on up Atwater past the great rock temple like a yellow-eyed wolf, into the heart of Westmount, to the park.
But the park is quiet. The Kiosk’s still locked up for the summer. Bummer. He shoots himself in the temple,
blam
, then takes Plan B, which is buy a screwdriver from Pascal’s, go to the house, crawl unseen beneath the bushes, force the little dungeon window open, and once inside, have the place to himself. His bohemian love-pad. He’ll lead his friends in by the back door, past the sign Dad has posted that reads,
ALL YE WHO ENTER HERE ABANDON DOPE
straight down the back stairs to party till they puke.
The window splinters from its casing with a loud crack. He kneels in the sweet humid earth and waits, his heart pounding loud in his ears. A strand of spider web clings to his lips. Rhododendron leaves reach under his shirt and clamp onto his damp back. He pulls the window back and slides head-first into the basement, bringing in with him a cascade of earth that fills his nose and mouth and scatters across the carpet.
The dungeon’s cool darkness smells of mildew, stale beer, and African-musk incense. The moisture has warped his recordjackets; mould is growing on the patches of carpet where friends puked the last time they’d parried there.
Upstairs, the fridge reverberates on. Then switches off automatically, leaving the house in stillness again. Robbie with a heavy head stands in the hallway at the foot of the stairs, cleaning earth out from his nostrils with his thumbs.
“Hello-o,” he calls up. “Is anybody ho-ome?”
The old house swallows up the words. Settles on its foundations. Robbie becomes aware of its electrical nervous system, of its groaning arterial piping, like the sound Dad makes heaving himself onto the couch after a hefty meal.
Felled by food
, he hears Miriam say.
In the living room, the television screen has accumulated dust. The rubber plants too. Three-month-old newspapers lie on the floor announcing political events that were of unbelievably small interest to him even then. He plinks on the piano, high notes only. Outdoors the cicadas send out their really weird buzz, like loudly amplified electric cables.
He stands before one of the windows to the west, the stain in the glass fiercely illuminated by the setting sun – after Rossetti, a noblewoman in a flounced alizarin dress and the caption,
Gather Ye Rosebuds
He walks into the kitchen, and suddenly the hallway telephone rings. He reaches instinctively for the receiver. Then thinks better of it.
On the kitchen counter by the fridge lie the leftovers of the family’s last hectic meal, a Pyrex dish filled with oily water, a skin of tiny bubbles clinging to its sides, and the outline of a baked eggplant in the bottom like a fossil from the Palaeozoic era. Above the stove a blackboard reads, in Mom’s handwriting,
insoluble aluminum phosphate
–indigestible to trees -
Robbie picks up a piece of chalk and writes,
S.P.E.C.T.R.E. was here
On another wall, the kindergarten classics: Robbie’s own prize-winning watercolour abstracts, wonky houses and blobby animals. Chunkily signed. The runny, muddy paint and warped paper with curling corners, stuck there with crinkly scotch tape. Plus Miriam’s world-famous portrait of a man fresh out of the shower, a circus attraction to be sure, with a cock to do a horse proud dangling there in red crayon. And marked at the bottom, DADDY BEFOR AND AFTR . And all around him diagrams indicating articles of clothing to be worn. SHERT. RED SOX. PANTIES .
Only girls wear panties
, Robbie hears Barnabus say.
Yeah, well, I wish we could take the stupid thing down now
, Miriam snaps in his ear.
I did it years ago and I’m thirteen now if you don’t mind. I find it really disgusting
.
The sun has set now, and plunged the house into throbbing darkness. He opens the fridge
But the park is quiet. The Kiosk’s still locked up for the summer. Bummer. He shoots himself in the temple,
blam
, then takes Plan B, which is buy a screwdriver from Pascal’s, go to the house, crawl unseen beneath the bushes, force the little dungeon window open, and once inside, have the place to himself. His bohemian love-pad. He’ll lead his friends in by the back door, past the sign Dad has posted that reads,
ALL YE WHO ENTER HERE ABANDON DOPE
straight down the back stairs to party till they puke.
The window splinters from its casing with a loud crack. He kneels in the sweet humid earth and waits, his heart pounding loud in his ears. A strand of spider web clings to his lips. Rhododendron leaves reach under his shirt and clamp onto his damp back. He pulls the window back and slides head-first into the basement, bringing in with him a cascade of earth that fills his nose and mouth and scatters across the carpet.
The dungeon’s cool darkness smells of mildew, stale beer, and African-musk incense. The moisture has warped his recordjackets; mould is growing on the patches of carpet where friends puked the last time they’d parried there.
Upstairs, the fridge reverberates on. Then switches off automatically, leaving the house in stillness again. Robbie with a heavy head stands in the hallway at the foot of the stairs, cleaning earth out from his nostrils with his thumbs.
“Hello-o,” he calls up. “Is anybody ho-ome?”
The old house swallows up the words. Settles on its foundations. Robbie becomes aware of its electrical nervous system, of its groaning arterial piping, like the sound Dad makes heaving himself onto the couch after a hefty meal.
Felled by food
, he hears Miriam say.
In the living room, the television screen has accumulated dust. The rubber plants too. Three-month-old newspapers lie on the floor announcing political events that were of unbelievably small interest to him even then. He plinks on the piano, high notes only. Outdoors the cicadas send out their really weird buzz, like loudly amplified electric cables.
He stands before one of the windows to the west, the stain in the glass fiercely illuminated by the setting sun – after Rossetti, a noblewoman in a flounced alizarin dress and the caption,
Gather Ye Rosebuds
He walks into the kitchen, and suddenly the hallway telephone rings. He reaches instinctively for the receiver. Then thinks better of it.
On the kitchen counter by the fridge lie the leftovers of the family’s last hectic meal, a Pyrex dish filled with oily water, a skin of tiny bubbles clinging to its sides, and the outline of a baked eggplant in the bottom like a fossil from the Palaeozoic era. Above the stove a blackboard reads, in Mom’s handwriting,
insoluble aluminum phosphate
–indigestible to trees -
Robbie picks up a piece of chalk and writes,
S.P.E.C.T.R.E. was here
On another wall, the kindergarten classics: Robbie’s own prize-winning watercolour abstracts, wonky houses and blobby animals. Chunkily signed. The runny, muddy paint and warped paper with curling corners, stuck there with crinkly scotch tape. Plus Miriam’s world-famous portrait of a man fresh out of the shower, a circus attraction to be sure, with a cock to do a horse proud dangling there in red crayon. And marked at the bottom, DADDY BEFOR AND AFTR . And all around him diagrams indicating articles of clothing to be worn. SHERT. RED SOX. PANTIES .
Only girls wear panties
, Robbie hears Barnabus say.
Yeah, well, I wish we could take the stupid thing down now
, Miriam snaps in his ear.
I did it years ago and I’m thirteen now if you don’t mind. I find it really disgusting
.
The sun has set now, and plunged the house into throbbing darkness. He opens the fridge
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