Yellowcake (12 page)

You had a baby
this
time
. They’d both looked at Marcus drawing a stegosaurus for his homework at the kitchen table, and looked away again.
You had a baby
both
times. Does that make a difference to them?

She’d turned away to the sink, started hissing water onto vegetables to make dinner.
They didn’t take me, did they?
she’d said in an only-to-Dad voice. There’d been a hint, in her voice, of wishing, of thinking she’d missed out on something. Marcus’s head had popped up and his gaze had quivered like arrows stuck in both of them.

Dad had winked at him, but there’d been no smile in his face to go with it.
Not all the way, no,
he’d said quietly, to the side of Mum’s bent head.

I need you to do something for me, Marcus.

He and Mum had settled themselves in Eastlands food hall with thickshakes. He’d felt so carefree, just before. It wasn’t as if he didn’t worry; it was just that the worrying part of his life flowed on separately from the rest, like the Blue Nile river-water moving alongside the White. He didn’t want them to meet and mix up with each other.

Dad won’t listen
, Mum went on
. He won’t do it. He doesn’t want to be ready because he doesn’t want it to happen. And maybe it won’t.

He tried to read from her face what
she
wanted. She looked around at the other tables, and he examined them too, the people putting chips into themselves, the food shops sleek and bright, some of the family-owned ones messier with signs and hanging pans and plastic fruit or flowers by their cash registers. He saw that a person who had been lifted off the ground by happiness could be unimpressed with the food hall. For Marcus it was a place of wonders—all he could think about here was how long he could stay, how much he’d be allowed to eat, how much of that could be treats and how much would have to be healthy food.

But somebody needs to know how to do these things, if it does,
Mum said. He watched her from behind his thickshake, knowing what she was doing, knowing that the shake was a giant white bribe.
Just in case,
Mum said.
I’m not saying it’s going to happen tomorrow or anything.

His hands folded themselves in his lap. It was a lot she was asking of him. Dad wouldn’t be happy.

The way I think of it ...
She pushed her shake aside and leaned at him, so friendly and comfortable he knew he was going to do what she asked.
The way my luck goes, I’ll get you all prepared and nothing’ll happen. But if I don’t, if I just let things go on as normal, I’ll be taken—all the way up, all the way away—and you and Dad’ll be left useless. You won’t be able to feed yourselves. He’ll panic about money. The house’ll be filthy.

He met her eyes, her serious smiling.
Couldn’t you just say no?
he said.

Her smile went, and the face behind it was written all over with guilt. He was sorry, straight away.

You were there,
she said softly.
You felt some of it, didn’t you?

He nodded, giving in, watching his hands in his lap. One was a tight fist, and the other was wrapped around it—kindly, warningly, or perhaps just to cover the sight of it.

She slid her shake back in front of her and sucked on the straw. She glanced around the food hall, letting the rest of the world back in.
And anyway, they’re life skills. It’s not as if you’ll never use them, even if I stay.

So now Marcus could cook. Marcus could vacuum and dust and wipe down benchtops, and keep the bathroom clean. Marcus knew how to look after Lenny, what to watch out for, what to make sure she ate, now and in the future, how to get through the illnesses she had to have in order to build her immune system.
She’s only small
, Mum had said.
Things can happen very quickly with her, so you need to keep an eye on her, and act fast if it’s something dangerous.
He knew all about the little phone and the numbers Mum had put in it. He knew how the money worked, how Dad should move it around when his wage came in, when the bills arrived.

Mum had taught Marcus all this secretly. Dad would have been upset to find out about it.
He’ll learn it soon enough if I do ever go,
Mum had said, that day at Eastlands.
He won’t expect you to do it all. But he won’t learn it from me, so you’ll have to pass it on for us, Marky.
Her cheeks had caved in as she pulled on the thickshake, it was so thick.
And at the beginning. You might have to do it all for a little while at the beginning. If it ever happens. It might never happen.

Marcus had been interested to learn how life worked, and pleased to be able to do grown-ups things. He’d been proud to know more than other kids at school did, and to keep that knowledge quiet. It was only now, flying through the night towards town, with Dad holding onto his panic in the front seat and Lenny unaware under his hand, that Marcus felt how sad it was, that he realised he’d been working with Mum towards this moment. Had he made it possible for her to leave by being such a good boy, by carefully soaking up her instructions, by practising and getting better at things? If he’d been a hopeless cook, or a sloppy cleaner, or an idiot with numbers the way some of the kids at school were, or if he’d just been moody, or if like Dad he’d dug in his heels and refused to believe it was ever going to happen, would she have been unable to go? Should he have made her stay and do the roasts and bills and vacuuming, and the sending of Christmas cards? Should he have folded his arms and stuck out his lip and said
No, I won’t learn
?

But always the little video clip played in his memory, of the rose and lavender wreath coming good in his hands, getting prettier and prettier, while from his floating mum poured down upon Marcus, like the beginnings of a rainshower, like a light sprinkling of gold dust, blessings, wellbeing, peace and perfect happiness. How could he not want his mum to feel those things? How could he deny them to anyone, let alone her?

Because it was so late, Dad could pull up right outside Swathes. Police tape fluttered across the entrance, and Marcus felt sick at the sight.

‘You go and tell them, Dad. I’ll get Lenny out.’ He had a sudden need to busy himself with the mechanics of the capsule, with Lenny’s blanket and limbs, to support her sleeping head.

Dad came back as he was kicking the car door closed, Lenny in his arms. Dad took her up gently. ‘Fifth floor, they reckon. She’s in the Ladies’ loos. There’s a million people up there, they say: Security, and Police, and SES blokes. They’re in
lockdown
, they say, that floor. They’ve kept the staff there and everything. For your mum, eh.’ He widened his eyes at Marcus, nodded and turned to Swathes’ doors, which were all glass, and big silver handles down the sides, and shiny black stone all around, fine grained, with little glints in it. Marcus fetched the wreath out of the front seat, and followed him.

A policewoman lifted the tape for them to duck under; ‘Ricky here’s going to take you up,’ she said, waving forward a Swathes security guard.

Inside was quiet, alight; people in coveralls, radios spitting and crackling and blurting at their hips, loosely lined the way to the lifts. On the way up, Ricky stood with his feet apart, his hands clasped in front of him, and watched the numbers light up one after another. His aftershave was stronger, and sweeter, than the smell of the wreath in Marcus’s arms. At the fifth floor, he stepped out, and stood aside and waved them out of the lift.

There weren’t a
million
people there, but enough eyes turned to Marcus for him to wish he was carrying Lenny, to shield himself from all that attention.

‘Across the floor there, mate,’ Ricky said to Dad. ‘Through Books to that EXIT door, and then you turn left.’

They set out through the uniforms, through the watching. Some people looked curious, some looked nervous; all of them were sober and unamused, almost as if he and Dad and Lenny had done something wrong. Dad took his great long strides, and Marcus hurried to keep up. Halfway across, as they passed the escalators, he felt a soft buffeting in the air, and the light changed, was more muted and yet more lively. They had stepped within the range of Mum’s cloud, of the warmth that fell from her, of the blessings. And they were clear, suddenly, of the crowd; all the eyes were behind them now. The Books section was deserted, two shelves of bright-coloured covers leading them to the EXIT door.

With every step, Marcus needed greater willpower to keep walking, as the feeling grew warmer and brighter. It was
strong
, much stronger than that day in the kitchen, and the wonderfulness made it hard for Marcus to think his own thoughts, but with the snippet of his mind that was left to him he knew that he ought to be very worried, though he couldn’t worry really, not with all
that
shining at him.

They stepped through the doorway, out of the store proper and into its back halls, cream-lit, linoleum-floored, with doors off to STAIRS and STAFF ONLY and FIRE EXIT—THIS DOOR IS ALARMED. They turned and forged ahead against the resisting warmth, the resisting delight, of the air in the corridor. Witches hats, and more police tape, and a CLEANING IN PROGRESS sign, were clustered at the Ladies’ door untidily, as though people hadn’t had the time to place them properly.

Dad and Marcus stood at the door. Through everything, it was hard for them, as boys, to push open a door like that. The round-headed lady in her skirt stood on it like another kind of guard.

‘You okay, champ?’ Dad looked down at Marcus through the torrent, around the bundle that was Lenny, sleepily scrambling on his shoulder.

‘I’m good,’ Marcus said, in the flat voice he knew he was supposed to use. He laid his hand on Dad’s back, just above his belt, to let him know he was right behind him.

‘Let’s see, then, eh. What we’ve got.’ And Dad pushed open the Ladies’ door, and they went in.

The smell of bleach overpowered the aftershave on the wreath for a moment. Both smells were side-notes, though, to the out-rushing of nectar, of heat, of gold-green changefulness.

‘Mum?’ Marcus called out softly. What if it wasn’t her at all? What if it was not just some other mum, but some other creature completely?

They pushed upstream to the cubicle, stopped at the open door. It
was
Mum, and the relief of finding her filled Marcus as full as he ever needed to be, her good dress with the red swirls on it, her best handbag, her face so restful and pleased, so Mum. She had risen higher than last time; she was farther along in leaving. There was no reason to hope, except that the very air buzzed and poured with hope. It was like a crowd around them shouting for joy, though there were no sounds beyond Dad’s and Marcus’s own breaths, beyond Lenny’s grunts and whimpering as she woke, echoed back from the mirror-glass and the wall tiles and the hard floor. It was like looking at the sun, though Marcus’s eyes and brain told him that there was no extra light involved in this; he was seeing only his mum uprisen, lit by fluorescent light filtered through white plastic ceiling-squares, nothing out of the ordinary.

‘What do you think you’re doing, Al?’ Dad murmured.

‘Um-mah!’ said Lenny, turning from his shoulder.

It was difficult to get the words out, and when he did, it sounded as if Marcus lisped, in the inaudible rush of noise. ‘She’s brighter than she was last time,’ he said.

‘Yeah, you better get that neck-lace on her quick.’

‘I’ll have to stand on the loo.’ Marcus made to go around her, but there was not quite enough room for him to squeeze past the glory of her, on either side.