Theo Read Free Page A

hats, clothes, toys from places like Peru or Thailand, puppets, and sometimes weird stuff. An ashtray, a napkin from a restaurant, hotel shampoo, a piece of pizza, a record, a fistful of guitar picks, a drawing of her by somebody else – once with no clothes on – a feather, a flower. He figured that was when she was high. He knew what high was, knew what drunk was. It was a way people were, just like happy or sad. He also knew about bail, hearings, possession, depression, institutionalization.
    His mother never brought anything for Gus or Colin: she didn’tlike them, although she’d never said this to Theo. He just knew.
    Are you mad at Gus and Colin.
    No darling, why.
    You act like it all the time.
    No, my love, I like them. Gus is your grandfather and a man deserving of respect. A respectable and upright man, just as Colin is.
    His mother’s accent was different than his dad’s. He knew she’d been born in Hungary but she said she grew up all over Europe and so, she said, she sounded like everywhere and nowhere. She called herself a pirate, said she and his father were part of the pirate nation. Theo didn’t know what that meant, really.
    People at school made fun of Theo’s accent, which they said was faggy. Fag. Faggot. Which his dad said was a cigarette. Theo had lived in England, Jamaica, and America so far. And other people’s houses and hotels.
    God help me, I’m starting to sound American, his mother said.
    Is that bad.
    His mother had laughed out a cloud of cigarette smoke. For your sake, I tolerate the place, my love. But there are better places to be.
    Like where.
    She exhaled again. That is a good question. If you could go anywhere in the world, where would you go.
    He couldn’t really think of a place: what were the choices. He didn’t know. Every place seemed mostly the same so far.
    I’d like to go to the bottom of the ocean.
    She squinted at him, stubbing out the cigarette. That’s an interesting choice. Could I come too.
    He shrugged. Sure. Maybe Gus and Colin could come. And his dad maybe, in a big glass ball.
    Why do you want to go there.
    I wouldn’t have to go to school.
    He sort of knew what would happen if he said that, but he did anyway. She started crying. Oh baby. She pulled him into a hug, jangling with bracelets. She always wore a lot of things and he couldn’t separate her from the sounds she made when she moved.
    She had the smell. Sometimes he didn’t know, she might seem okay, whether she was okay or not, until he smelled the smell. Then he would know. Colin and Gus had the smell a lot, and many of the people who came to the house. There were different smells but they all meant pretty much the same thing.
    She cried a lot, and laughed a lot, and screamed, and punched and kicked, and danced, and staggered, and snored, and fell, and jumped – once from an upper hall landing and broke her ankle. He hadn’t seen that, only heard the sounds and cried. He wondered what had made her jump, and whether he had anything to do with it, or with the way she acted. He didn’t know, and he wasn’t sure who to ask.
     
    Now this morning Theo walks the long secondfloor hall, strewn with clothes and shoes, a bowling ball like Jupiter, swirly and pink, stopped against a door – he hasn’t seen that before. At the distant end of the hall, in front of the big curved windows that remind Theo of churches from movies, pokes the silhouette of a big stuffed bird that he knows is an emu. His mother usually stays on this wing, but not always in the same room, and Theo doesn’t like opening doors unless he knows who is in the room. So he walks, and listens. He hears something and turns: Alexhas dragged himself up the stairs and, panting, follows Theo. Theo stops to scratch Alex’s wiry head, bumpy with warts, but keeps listening. He hears ahead the sex noise. He knows what sex is, and he knows what it sounds like. He keeps walking down the hall, Alex tottering behind, to where the noise is.