The Petty Details of So-And-So's Life (11 page)

“I'm happier now, especially on Saturdays,” she brightened, adding shyly, “thanks to you.”

“It's funny,” said Andrew, relieving her of embarrassment, “but so am I.”

Saturdays soon rolled into Sundays, and then began on Fridays, and Emma started taking up more room. Moving from the divan through various rooms, cautiously at first, but with an increasingly greater sense of courage. She wanted to take steps in the shoes of every person who lived in this house; there were so many of them that Emma could be distracted from being Emma for a good long time.

In Andrew's parents' room she became his father—a caricature of the distinguished archaeologist. Pipe-smoking, professorial, scatterbrained, and obsessed with detail. She would comment on the furniture: “I say, old chap. I do believe that is a Ming vase. Notice the detailing around the filibuster and the Cornish hen.”

Andrew easily fell into the game. “Why, Russell, that is a remarkable discovery. And to think I have lived my whole life with this treasure right under my nose and never been aware of it. How careless of me never to have noticed the mushrooms on the hedgerow. I do believe they are
psilocybin cubensis
,” he would muse, stroking his imaginary, yet ample beard.

In the kitchen Emma played Andrew's mother. “Mary,” she would gesture to her servant. “Do find me the egg beater so I might whip up a lovely Stilton soufflé for my charming family.”

“Here you are, madam. I just polished it this morning.” Andrew would curtsy, handing Emma a piece of fine silver.

“Be a dear, will you, and wash the fiddleheads.”

In Andrew's sister's room Emma became a very spoiled daughter. With all the pink in her room, Emma could not imagine her to be anything but. “Andrew, do get rid of him, will you?” she would say. “He's such a dreadful bore even though he does have pots of money. I can't bear to hear
him ask me to marry him and wave that horrendous crown jewel in front of my face one more time. And by the way,” she said, her expression brightening, “what's happened to that chum of yours from the academy?”

“Becks, you
are
difficult to please,” Andrew would chide. “I don't think I can afford to lose any more of my mates to you. You have your wicked way with them and then—off with their heads. You're like a praying mantis, devouring your lovers in turn.”

“Poor Andrew,” Emma would say. “At least I have love and admiration, which is more than I can say for you, dear brother.”

Andrew didn't respond to that and Emma feared that she had perhaps taken the game too far. She ran out of the room and into the next one. The guest bedroom. Of course, this was the room of ghosts. There has to be one, doesn't there? The Dead Baby Brother's room—the still-birthed, or murdered, or simply self-suffocated little boy whose presence would forever linger and haunt. The parents, who had decorated the boy's room while he lay in utero, still, twenty years later, could not bear to use the room for any other purpose than to hold a space in which the Dead Baby Brother's name could never be mentioned.

“Andrew?” the Dead Baby Brother would call out.

“Tiny Pip?” Andrew would ask cautiously. “Can it really be you?”

“It is I. Your Dead Baby Brother.”

“Oh, how I have longed for you my whole life, Tiny Pip. Spoken to you as if you were alive. It is as if a part of me has always been missing. Thank God, at last, you have spoken. Now I too may die in peace.”

“Rush not toward my light, brother. Live long and prosper. Be fruitful, fanciful, and multiply. Fare thee well, dear brother,” he said waving, fading, fading, fading from sight, leaving Andrew open-mouthed and saddened. Emma had obviously hit a nerve. There were secrets somewhere in this house.

“And you?” Andrew asked her later in his bed. “Where are you?”

“Me?” Emma stared at the ceiling. “Where am I? Here am I,” she said, arching her back and raising her face to his. “The Caterpillar Princess,” she whispered. “At home among the cabbages.”

When Andrew's family came home that summer, Emma quickly got the sense that they wouldn't appreciate her caricatures of them. They were all terribly, terribly serious, and she was altogether intimidated. Annelisa wasn't quite the domestic and culinary character Emma had imagined, but rather, an acerbic and aggressive woman with clear and determined aspirations for herself and her children. Russell was not a doddery professor, but a slightly lecherous, although relatively benign, and obviously unhappy middle-aged man. And Rebecca was far from a spoiled debutante: she was a recovering anorexic prone to violent mood swings.

Andrew was no longer as playful. He was serious and scholarly in their presence. Emma could still feel him solid beside her though, even if he didn't laugh much any more.

There were dinners, usually cooked by Russell, during which they all engaged in intense debates about political issues. Emma would mostly sit mute, feeling completely inadequate. She tried to look attentive, but she often failed to understand what made them so excited. She couldn't help flinching when Annelisa tore, as she habitually did, into Russell in opposition to his views.

Andrew's family overwhelmed Emma: she mistook the ideas, the opinions, the words, the information passing loudly over a single meal for anger. She heard her father—
Pretentious bloody gits. Noses up their
arses
—but at the same time she heard Andrew. “It's just conversation,” he reassured her. “You know, discussion.”

Perhaps Emma just wasn't used to conversation. There certainly wasn't anything like it in her house. Before Oliver left, the soundscape had been dominated by Elaine and Oliver snapping at each other, and Oliver ranting on to himself. After he left, it was even less human: just “hush hush,” “ring ring,” and “clink clink.” The language of home had become one of silence: shadows orbiting around planet Elaine.

“If you could just make a little more effort to contribute, you'd see they weren't so bad,” Andrew encouraged.

And so she ventured, beginning tentatively. When they talked about disarmament one night she dared to say, “I agree.” Annelisa cast her eyes over Emma and actually looked pleased. When they talked about the situation in Burma one night, Emma said again, “I agree.” When they talked about soil erosion, or toxic waste, or the way to achieve peace in the Middle East, she nodded, “I agree.”

“You seem to agree a lot,” Annelisa observed one night. “Is there anything, Emma, with which you don't agree?”

“Uh,” Emma stammered. She wasn't used to having all eyes upon her, inviting an opinion. “I think that television's probably not a good influence on children.”

“Well, that's a start,” Annelisa mused. “Any specific reasons why?”

“Violence.”

“Profound,” Annelisa muttered sarcastically.

“Annelisa,” Russell interjected in Emma's defence. “I think you're right, Emma,” he said, mustering support. “Although there is some debate as to whether watching violence actually breeds violence.”

“I think it must,” Emma said.

“Well, how do you solve it then? Ban depictions of violence on TV? Monitor everything your kids watch? Throw out the television?”

“I'd probably throw out the television.”

“But then kids would grow up without a set of common cultural references,” Russell continued.

“I hadn't thought about that.”

“Well, what do you think about it now?”

“I think I don't know what I think.”

“Indeed,” muttered Annelisa.

“She thinks I'm dumb,” Emma said to Andrew later that night. “She thinks I'm a complete moron.”

“She doesn't, Emma,” Andrew tried to reassure her. “You're not dumb. You're just not used to having discussions. What did you talk about at home? I mean, with your parents?”

What did we talk about? she wondered. We didn't. We got talked at, and when we were old enough, we talked back. But even that was rare. We listened for noises. We didn't know when things were going to blow up. We tiptoed. We choked.

“It's okay to ask questions, you know? I mean, if you don't know what someone's talking about, you can tell them. You can say, ‘Actually, I'm not familiar with that situation,' or, ‘What are the implications of that?' or, ‘I'm not sure whether I agree or not because I've never really considered it a realistic possibility,' or you can say, ‘It's something I've always wanted to know more about,' or, ‘What is the historical background to that particular issue?' or turn it on them, and ask, ‘What's your experience?' or, ‘Has this issue concerned you for long?' Or just throw out something that they'll respond to, like, ‘You seem quite passionate about this issue,' or, ‘That's very interesting,' or even change the
subject and say, ‘That reminds me of the time …' or, ‘What I think is even more interesting is …' ”

Emma just stared at Andrew. Where the fuck did he get all those words? All those questions? They seemed to come naturally to him, an endless stream of conversational openers and possibilities. “That's very interesting,” she said to him.

“Isn't it?” he grinned.

So Emma began asking questions, even though she didn't really know what she was asking questions about. It didn't quite work at first.

“I disagree. The Americans shouldn't even think about stepping into the middle of that mess,” Annelisa said, arguing with Russell.

“Have you always felt that way?” Emma asked, as she'd practised.

“Um. Sorry, Emma? What do you mean ‘always'? They only announced the possibility of their intervention this morning.”

Emma blushed.

“It's as simple as E=mc
²
,” Russell said.

“You seem to have quite a passionate view on the subject, Russell.” Emma felt she was gaining new ground.

“Well, not exactly passionate,” Russell coughed. “Pretty straightforward, really. I mean, it's obvious if you sit down and add up the figures.”

Stupid, Emma, she chastised herself. Andrew made it seem so easy.

“No, Annelisa. Hess was really a minor player by that point. Hitler just kept him in the public eye out of personal loyalty. Payback for the early days.”

“Oh,” Emma brightened. “He was the guy who wrote that book, right? You know, Andrew, you gave it to me.”

“You mean
Siddhartha?
Emma, that was Hermann Hesse. They're talking about Rudolf Hess, Hitler's deputy führer.”

“Right,” Emma nodded. What a humiliating exercise this was, still, although there were more misses than hits, she was encouraged by the fact that even when she missed, people actually replied. The question mark had returned to her and she discovered it had a purpose she'd never known. Questions had the power to take you places. With the return of the question mark Emma's world was becoming infinitely bigger.

And then Russell turned to her with a question. “What are you planning on studying at university, Emma?”

Emma gulped. No one in her own family had ever taken much interest in what she was going to do with her life, in fact, she'd never even really considered that life was anything more than all days past culminating in today. “In university?”

“Yes, you're not far off. You'll make the most of it if you go in with a clear idea of what you want to study. You can do a general liberal arts degree, but I don't think that's the way to go.”

“No, of course,” she agreed. She was making a huge mental leap, right over the question they didn't even ask—whether she even
wanted
to go to university. “I don't know if I know yet,” she finally replied.

“Any ideas?” Russell encouraged. She looked blank. “What excites you?” he continued. “What do you have big questions about?”

“Hmm. Well. Why dinosaurs disappeared. Whether they've discovered all the great tombs of ancient Egypt.”