The White Bicycle Page 11

  "To begin to draw is the first step," says Adelaide, picking up a piece of charcoal.

  Suddenly, Francine is in the doorway.

  "Oh, now Mother, que fais-tu ici ? J'ai des amuses-gueule pour toi et ta petite invitée, en bas dans le living-room."

  "We're having a drawing lesson," Adelaide says, handing me the charcoal. "You try it."

  I sit down on the stool and sketch in some of the shadows, thinking how the clouds would really look. These clouds don't bother me because they are only changing when I make them change by adding parts with the charcoal.

  "Yes," says Adelaide. "Very good."

  Francine makes a little noise and then I hear her high heels on the stairs. I wonder why she wears high heels in the house.

  "Nature is like a dictionary for artists," says Adelaide. "Not only in art but in life. Nature is a good teacher. It teaches us patience. To wait. Everything has to grow in heart and mind."

  "I do not like waiting," I say.

  "Waiting has its purpose," answers Adelaide. I do not understand some of this conversation.

  She goes over and turns on a record player and soon there is music.

  "Franz Liszt. A good choice for clouds, don't you think? I always draw or paint to music."

  "Oh, you draw and paint to music," I repeat.

  "My last exhibition was Mozart," she says. "I chose the music and illustrated passages, in watercolor. I always work with music. Classical. It opens the mind and it opens the heart."

  I draw for a while and when I turn around, Adelaide is sitting on the couch with her eyes shut.

  "Are you tired?" I ask.

  She waves her arms. "Keep working. I am just listening to the Liszt." She pulls a patchwork quilt onto herself from the back of the couch.

  Heels again on the stairs and Francine comes in.

  "Je peux vous montrer le jardin," she says. "The … garden? And then—Mother should have dinner soon."

  "Stop interrupting my lesson," says Adelaide. "Go and find something else to do. Feed the fish, Francine."

  "Francine wants to be the boss of you," I say. It's a pleasant idea in which a daughter bosses a mother. I think about this for a while.

  "I am not driving you to Cassis and that's final," I say.

  "But I have been invited!" my mother says and her voice is already in the red zone.

  "Never mind. You can give that woman a phone call to ask about her mother, but we are not going there," I say.

  "Why not?" says my mother.

  I shake my head but I can't think of anything to say.

  "Why not?" my mother says again, and knowing my mother, she will keep saying this until she gets an answer; that's how stubborn she is.

  I take a quick look out the window and then I shade a few more of the clouds. Being the boss of my mother would take some practice, but I think I could get used to it.

  "I know someone who hears only jazz. I could never work with jazz," says Adelaide.

  I sketch a little longer.

  "Art is liberty," she says.

  When I turn around, her eyes are shut, and after a moment I hear a snuffling sound. Adelaide is sleeping with her mouth open. The patchwork quilt is pulled right up under her chin.

  Adelaide's Garden

  After supper, Adelaide pushes her plate away and asks if I'd like to see the garden.

  "Mais, maman, tu n'as presque rien mangé!" says Francine.

  "Okay," I say.

  We go outside and it is like being in a painting with colors carefully planned and planted all around us. The flowerbeds are layered with pinks and purples and the trees are carefully placed to move a bystander's gaze from one grove to another.

  "Those rose petals are edible," I say, remembering something my friend Paul told me last summer.

  "Yes. When I was a child we used to bake them sprinkled with sugar. Those were the days when you didn't waste anything," says Adelaide. "My mother made pies from crackers when there weren't any apples. You could hardly taste the difference."

  I nod because sometimes you can answer that way.

  "Did you ever ride a bicycle?" I ask.

  "Yes, I did. It was my brother's bicycle. There was a sports day in town one Saturday and my father wouldn't drive me there. I wanted to do the high jump and he said jumping wasn't for girls. My mother packed me a lunch and I borrowed my brother's bike and rode the five miles to town. I had my period that day and wore a rag pinned to a garter belt, and I had cramps, but I entered the high jump. I ran at the stick and jumped by bending first one knee to the side and then the other because that's all I knew how to do. Other kids were doing fancy jumps, rolls and such, but I didn't know how. 'Look at that funny one jump,' a kid said when I was jumping. A man came up to me after the event and said if I learned a modern technique I could add six inches to my jump. I didn't know what he was talking about. I came in second, though. Even with my funny jump, I came in second. Then I biked home."

  "Congratulations for coming in second," I say.

  "When I got home, my father was setting out the pails to milk the cows. 'She's not milking the cows,' my mother said. 'Look at her face. She's just done in.' My mother sent me up to bed and my father didn't argue."

  "That was nice your brother lent you his bicycle," I say. "I am borrowing a bicycle here. It is a white one and sometimes I ride but sometimes, when the trail gets hard, I have to carry it."

  "I carry my age," says Adelaide, and I don't know what she is talking about. Then she says, "Most people carry something." She thinks for a moment. "Did we meet at Art School?"

  "No," I say. "We met at the beach."

  "Oh, yes," she says. "There was all that litter on the sand.

  People today waste far too much. All these birthday gifts. When I was a girl, my father made me an elephant out of potatoes. He glued potatoes together and that was my Christmas present. And I treasured it. After it went rotten we put it on top of the frozen garden and then I had the space back on my dresser."

  I nod again. A Pale Clouded Yellow butterfly lands on the front of Adelaide's butterfly nightgown.

  Then Francine comes outside and the butterfly lifts away from Adelaide and disappears into the hollyhocks.

  "It's almost Mama's bedtime," she calls. "Time to go—time for you to go home, Taylor."

  Before I leave the house, Adelaide presses a card into my hand. When I'm on the bus, I read it. It is a doctor's appointment card, but she has scratched out the appointment details and written in the white space: Come and visit next Friday.

  I think this means that Adelaide is my friend. Even though we are not the same age, we can be friends. My mother was wrong.

  When I get home, it is very dark and I walk along the lane to our villa, listening to the crescendo of the barking dogs. As I go up the hill to the house, I see bats swooping in the yard light, and to my right the outline of the cherry trees. I am glad I am working in France this summer or I would never have seen these things.

  There is somebody under one of the cherry trees and for a minute I feel afraid and stop walking.

  "It's just us, Taylor," says a voice.

  "Who is out there?" I ask.

  "Me and Julian," says the voice, and now I recognize it as Luke Phoenix's.

  "What are you doing under the cherry tree?" I ask.

  I hear whispering voices and then two figures come toward me and, until they get close, I am not sure that one of them is Luke Phoenix, and I am afraid again. But soon I see him for who he is. And I see Julian. At first I do not know if Julian is a boy or a girl, but then he talks and I can hear that he is a boy. I like his voice—it's deep and because he speaks slowly I can understand what he is saying, even though he has a strong French accent.

  " 'ello, Taylor. Luke 'as told me about you."

  "What has he said?" I ask.

  "Good things," says Luke Phoenix. "Let's go inside and get something to eat."

  We go inside and there is a big mess in the kitchen. My mother did not fin
ish doing the dishes and then people have dirtied more.

  "I'm babysitting tonight," says Luke Phoenix. "Martin's in bed asleep, and Julian and I were outside looking at the bats."

  "Do you like bats?" I ask Julian.

  "Oui, les chauves-souris," he says. "I am studying bats at the university. Or rather, I should say I'm at the university studying bats."

  Luke Phoenix laughs and I don't know why.

  "How were the aperitifs?" asks Luke Phoenix.

  "They were only a kind of lemonade," I say. "But then we had dinner and it was stew. And birthday cake."

  "Do you want any of these leftovers?" Luke Phoenix asks us. I shake my head, because that means no, but Julian holds out his hands and soon we are sitting in the living room, watching him eat the rest of a bowl of cold pasta.

  "Are you sure you don't want that heated up?" asks Luke Phoenix, and Julian just laughs.

  "In my family we eat a lot of leftovers because there are only three of us, my mother, my father, and me. I am so used to leftovers that I do not need food to be warm," he says.

  Julian has thick dark eyebrows. I believe his nose would be called aquiline. He is wearing a white shirt with buttons down the front, and jeans. I think he looks hot in those jeans but I don't tell him that. I am sorry to hear that he is an only child.

  After Julian finishes eating we play a game of cards. Then I decide to go to bed because of my personal care job in the morning.

  I lie in bed and try to sleep but I can't. First I think about Julian being spoiled because he is an only child. Then I pick up an English-French translation book that I found on the bookshelf and read for a while. After that I go down to the kitchen and start to do the dishes. It is better to do them now than leave them until the morning.

  There is a large wolf spider on the shelf behind the teapot. I carefully catch it in the tea strainer and put it on the ledge outside the open kitchen window. When the spider starts crawling along the ledge, I close the window. Since we have no screens it is best not to take a chance in case it wants back inside.

  Luke Phoenix and Julian are in Luke Phoenix's bedroom, and after a few minutes they come out into the living room again and I can hear them talking. I know that they don't see me in the kitchen because they keep talking between themselves as if I am not here. Luke Phoenix's voice is sort of medium and Julian's voice is deep. I listen to them while I am running the water for the dishes.

  "They asked her to babysit for the summer so she'd want to come to France with Penny," says Luke Phoenix. "It wasn't really fair and I said they should tell her the truth, but that's what happened. And now Dad and Penny are gone all the time, and I'm stuck here babysitting in the afternoons and evenings, which I wouldn't have been doing according to the original plan. The original plan was that I would cover the mornings when Dad was working and then he would take care of the rest."

  "So you can't come to the wedding?" Julian asks.

  "Probably not. I'll see. Maybe," says Luke Phoenix.

  Julian says something in French and Luke Phoenix laughs; and then they go out onto the patio and I can't hear them anymore.

  What did Luke Phoenix mean when he said that part about babysitting for the summer? Was that about me? Babysitting so I'd want to come to France with my mother?

  Even though I am not asleep, I start feeling as if I am in a dream or a nightmare. How could I have come to France if I wasn't working for Alan Phoenix? Even if I had wanted to come, I would not have had the money. What did Luke Phoenix mean when he said that part about telling me the truth? This is like a nightmare, except I know that I will not wake up from it. It is stuck to me forever, this feeling of betrayal.

  Finding out About the Lie

  The water in the sink overflows and I have a mess to clean up, but my brain is short-circuiting with anger and I can't remember how to turn off the taps. The water runs and runs until there is water on the floor and everywhere and soap suds are sliding down the cupboard doors. I hear a car drive up to the house but I don't move. My mother and Alan Phoenix come into the kitchen. I am still standing at the counter, my jean dress soaked on the front, my feet in a slippery puddle that is getting larger all the time. I have sent anger from my core into the soles of my feet and now they are too heavy for walking. "Taylor, for God's sake, turn off the water!" my mother yells, running over to the sink.

  "This is not a real job, is it?" I say, after she has turned off the taps. "This is not a real job and I am just here on a trick, and so I can't put it on my resumé, can I?"

  My voice is in the red zone and climbing higher, and Alan Phoenix puts his hand on my arm and I fling myself away, slipping on the wet tiles. "Can I? This isn't something for my resumé—this is just something you made up so the both of you could spend the summer in France and I would want to come along!"

  "Taylor, it isn't like that!" says my mother, calling after me because I am now in the living room and heading for the stairs. I feel like I am walking through mud except I am not.

  "It isn't like that!" repeats my mother. "Come back and we'll talk about it! Your Grandma left us all this money and she would have been so happy to know we were traveling …"

  I slam my door and I do not care that it is hard on the hinges. I can hear voices downstairs and my mother's voice is in the red zone.

  "What did you say to her?" she yells.

  "Nothing! I didn't tell her anything, but somebody should have. Giving her this job wasn't fair and you know it!" says Luke Phoenix. "Everybody around here operates on lies and deception—nobody tells anyone how things really are!"

  "Wait just a minute," says Alan Phoenix, and then I can't hear what they are saying. I open my door so that I can hear better, and then I hear Martin Phoenix's Tango voice: "What's the trouble? I'm trying to sleep."

  "Sorry we woke you," says Alan Phoenix. "It's nothing."

  "See!" shouts Luke Phoenix. "More lies!"

  "What's up with you?" says Alan Phoenix. "This isn't about you."

  "I have my own stuff going on," says Luke Phoenix. "I'm stuck here afternoons and evenings when you originally promised I'd just be with Martin for the mornings!"

  "What stuff? What's going on that you can't spend an evening or two with your brother?" says Alan Phoenix.

  "Never mind!" says Luke Phoenix.

  "She'd never have come all this way unless we promised her this job," says my mother, and now I'm running back down the stairs to where they are all standing in the living room.

  "Lies and deception! You have ruined my resumé!" I tell her. "You have given me a summer with an empty resumé, and now I will never get a full-time job, and I will be stuck with you until you die and I am living alone!"

  "Can't I have any fun?" my mother screams. "Can't I travel, just once, when the opportunity arises, without feeling guilty?"

  I grab a cushion from the couch and throw it at the wall.

  "Hold on, Taylor!" calls Alan Phoenix.

  "Too late!" I yell. "I already let go!"

  "Let's just all calm down and talk about this like normal people," says Alan Phoenix.

  "Shut up!" I tell him. "We are normal people." I take a deep breath so that my voice does not stay in the red zone. "I want to be treated like an adult because I am nineteen and that means I am an adult. I am never late for work except once last summer when I was running away, and I am very responsible. I want to be told the facts about how things are and make my own decisions. You are NOT the boss of me!" I say to my mother. She starts to speak and then stops and tears come out of her eyes.

  "I have to help you sometimes," she says finally. "I have to help you with things."

  "No," I say. "I have to help myself. I will not be like Stanley whose landlady did everything for him and fed him cornflakes even though he was afraid of them." They are quiet, looking at me.

  "Who is Stanley?" says Martin Phoenix from his bedroom.

  All the words about Stanley are in me waiting to come out. I know this is not the time for them,
but I do not know what other words it is time for. I think of other things I could say, but this is not the time for them either, so I choke back what I am thinking: Gerbils are rodents. They can also be described as small mammals. They are nocturnal, and although they make good pets, they do make noise in their cages at night. They drum with their feet against the metal floor. This is their best way of communicating.

  I look at Alan Phoenix and Luke Phoenix and my mother. They are standing in the living room and they are waiting for me to speak. Alan Phoenix has rubbed the back of his head so hard that all his hair is standing up on end. I take a deep breath. Then I take another. Then I feel lightheaded and stop breathing while I count to five.

  "I am responsible for myself!" I say finally, thinking of Jean-Paul Sartre's little gray book. "That is how I am free. I am sometimes an unconscious subject of the world. I am sometimes a conscious object of the world. But I am also acting upon the world. I am going to Cassis again next Friday to see Adelaide and no one can stop me. And I am not babysitting Martin Phoenix any more unless it is a real job and it is called 'personal care assistant'."

  Luke Phoenix throws himself onto the couch and puts a pillow over his head. Alan Phoenix and my mother stay standing.

  "It is a real job," says Alan Phoenix. "I'm—I'm sorry, Taylor, that you thought it was all a trick. Your mother and I did plan this so that you would want to come with us to France, but you have been a great babysitter—a great personal care assistant—and I hope, for Martin's sake, that you will continue."

  "Who is paying me?" I ask.

  My mother looks at Alan Phoenix.

  "I am," he says. "Once your mother pays her share of the rent on this place, I can afford it."

  "Rent?" my mother says. "Oh, yes. Yes, that's fine." Her forehead has that h of wrinkles in the middle of it.

  The two of them look at me and I want them to put their eye gaze in another direction.

  "Okay," I say. "I will not quit unless conditions worsen." I turn and go up the stairs, and then I stop.

  "Good night," I say, wanting to end on a positive note. I think maybe my friend Luke Phoenix will take the pillow from his face and quote a poem, but he does not. Silence wells behind me as I walk up the stairs. Then I hear the Tango.