Feed My Dear Dogs. Emma Richler

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СКАЧАТЬ and he took it to heart in the end, I guess, and even in his heyday of making a stab at things, when he painted a portrait of Charlotte, Emily and Anne with himself among them, he scratched his own face right out of the painting, which is a sad thing, one of the saddest.

      Consumption. I add this word to my Questions Notebook. Consumption does not sound like a doomy disease, it sounds like what a person does to a peanut butter sandwich. I write it in near Gravity, making sure to leave enough space for notes and answers. My notebook is filling up fast. It measures 15×10½cm and the pages are sewn to the binding, not stapled. The cover has a painting of an olden times boxer with no gloves on and my dad gave it to me.

      ‘That’s Daniel Mendoza,’ he said in a proud voice meaning there is more to come, more information regarding Mr Mendoza. ‘He was Jewish, a Jewish boxer.’

      I knew it. I take a look at Daniel who is putting up his dukes though there is no one else in the painting to box and I feel proud also. Maybe Daniel is practising. He is ready, always ready and he knows all the rules for boxing. He is a gentleman boxer. And maybe Jude is wrong, I can be a sports writer too, it’s not only a man job.

      Gravity. What did Ben say? Pull, there is pull in gravity and a field where the pulling happens. Gravity is not just about not falling but about forces also, forces in a gravitational field, that’s it, and I think there is one between Jude and me, one I aim to fight because Jude is not in the mood for Jem today, I can tell by the smoky bacon crisps joke he played on me, a pushing-away joke, not a Jem-and-Jude-together joke, which is much nicer, close to a friendly cuff on the arm whereas the pushing kind makes my ears ring. Everything is messed up in our house and Jude is edgy, he does not want to be with me. Travel is important.

      I move on past Jude and Ben’s room quick sticks. Jude is in there reading and thinking, going way past me in terms of world knowledge. I don’t care. I move on downstairs and across the kitchen, staring down at the red tiled floor and frowning like I have some great purpose in mind but mainly I do not want to see Lisa, I am not in the mood for Lisa, though I cannot help tossing some info her way before making it out the back door. Lisa is laying fish fingers in rows on a grill and cutting up broccoli for our supper, without separating the treetop part of the broccoli from the stem part. Harriet does not eat treetops and she is going to get depressed. Treetops are for birds, she says. She eats a broccoli top and all she can think about is a mouthful of dear birds and Lisa ought to know that by now. I glance swiftly at Gus who is in his pen, which resembles the sea lion cage at the zoo, a pen with no roof due to tameness of sea lions, and he is playing with his rubber hammer, tapping thoughtfully at the frame of his cage like he is doing repairs or something.

      ‘Mummy was UPSTAIRS,’ I tell Lisa. ‘She is in her room getting ready!’ I say, barging out the back door, not even looking at her as I speak, knowing she knew all along where Mum was and was too bloody to say so, bloody. I am on to Lisa and I am fed up with that pocket business.

      I tuck my crisps in the bushes in case of robbers/animals/accidental crushing by passing feet, and I climb up into our tree, Jude’s and mine, the tree with twisty limbs and no fruit to bruise that is a great commando lookout, planted not far from the back door and right at the edge of the big garden for full strategic viewing in many directions all at once. A soldier will always find a lookout post, it’s the first thing he does, the very first. I can see everything from up here.

      Jude and I read up here, lying back on the branches as if they were sofas in the living room. I prefer it with Jude, like crossing the road or riding a bike, I do it with him and I don’t think about crashing or calamity. I get the wobblies up here and there is Jude to grab my elbow, calm and firm, and I’m OK, no falling. Alone, it’s weird. Climbing the tree, I have to concentrate hard on each step, put your foot there, Jem, now there, hey, is that how we usually do it? Hold tight, do I always hold this tight? Suddenly I am all conscious of handholds and footholds, same as when I wear my summer hat with the strangly elastic and go all conscious of swallowing. And I even forgot to bring reading material. I’ll just have to do some more thinking. Fuck-hell. I’m tired out today.

      Ben is at Chris’s house, he went there straight after our trip to the shops, I don’t know if he will come home for dinner, meaning Lisa will seem about three times the size she usually is. Looming. When Ben is around on Mum and Dad nights out, I don’t notice Lisa so much, she is just regular-sized, even when hovering in the doorway of the study after supper while Ben and Jude and I watch some not-allowed telly programme, Lisa standing there on the sidelines whimpering, and hauling out a hanky from her pocket to pat her eyes, a hanky being the only thing that’s ever actually in her pocket, I guess. Lisa weeps no matter what we are watching, even if it’s a horror film or a film with larks, a comedy. Maybe there is no TV in Portugal and for her, all telly programmes are strange and sad.

      When Harriet and Gus are stashed safely in their beds, and I sit up close to Ben with Jude lying on the floor, it’s a good time and if Lisa shows up to lurk in the doorway, we say, Come on in, Lisa, come in, and she never does. I am busy, she says, I am just leaving, but she always stays a while, patting her eyes with a hanky while Ben and I dig each other in the ribs and get a pain from holding in hysterics. If Ben is not there, but at Chris’s house, it’s no fun and watching Lisa in the doorway makes me sad and kind of cross and I give up on telly, going for Tintin books instead, to read in bed by torchlight so as not to wake Harriet. I hold out hopes for not waking her, but she usually knows if I am reading and will do two things to annoy me. 1) Slowly rise up from under her sheets with one outstretched arm and pointy finger and very straight back and wide-open stary eyes after the manner of Egyptian mummies in a spook film she once saw, the only ten minutes of horror film she has ever seen. This slow rise and pointy-finger act can have a terrible effect on me and Harriet loves that. Here is the second annoying thing she does. Pop right up from pretend sleep and wave her little arms around yelling Boo! Even if I am expecting it, it gets me. If it doesn’t get me, I must act scared anyway or Harriet will feel a big failure in the horror department.

      Chris is Ben’s best friend and I am pretty sure I want to marry him although he doesn’t know that, I don’t think you can tell a person a thing like that when you are not in your prime, and especially not when you are a girl. It’s not a girl job. I am a bit worried because Chris will reach the marrying time way before me due to being a whole five years and one month older plus I am going to another country and I don’t know how to keep an eye on things from so far away. I will have to come back, that’s all, and show up at his house and maybe he’ll take a look at me and I won’t be just Ben’s little sister any more, and he’ll say I am pretty sure I want to marry you and I won’t have to say anything at all on my part. I’ll just nod sagely or something.

      I think it went this way between Mum and Dad when they first clapped eyes on each other. Not many words necessary to get things going, no weighing up of matters, no decision time. When you have a big feeling for someone, nothing can stop you, like in World War I, in the case of a soldier rushing out to save a wounded friend lying out there in no man’s land, and the soldier has only this one idea of rescue in mind, nothing can stop him, not fear, not other soldiers flying in the air around him, exploded by shells and whiz-bangs from Big Berthas (Krupp 420mm) and Slim Emmas (Skoda 305mm), from howitzers and mortars, from all the great guns blazing, nothing. When you have a singlemost desire and no time to lose, fear is like an engine not a stop light, switching on at all the right moments, for all pressing engagements in trying times, for grabbing a tool in the spider shed, for marching up to Chris’s front door one day in the future, and for Nelson, yes, Nelson in the Cape of Trafalgar, facing the enemy while not in the best of health, missing bodily parts usually thought vital for a leader of men, one hand, one eye, never mind, who needs two? He has a singlemost desire.

      Right now would be a good time for a boxing lesson but my dad is busy. He is probably all dressed and shaved, with maybe one little cut on his face like a war wound on an Action Man. A going-out-to-dinner wound. He will be standing around Mum right about now, drinking his drink and going, Ready, dear? СКАЧАТЬ