Fat Man and Little Boy (16 page)

“Almost four then,” says Rosie. “Congratulations, Masumi, you've nearly found peace.”

“Have I, then?”

“If we all knew four foreign languages there no longer would be wars. You've got two and a half.”

He smiles again, this time with a dark hint of irony Rosie isn't in on. She thinks how rude it is to make faces like that—faces that make people feel too acutely their own ignorance. His eyes are sharp and bright. He stands before her with his hands folded behind his back like a proud schoolboy. She can't begin to guess his age. It's hard for her with Japanese. Japanese are hard for her.

John is teetering nervously on his heels.

“Will you be willing to teach us some of your language while you are here?” asks Rosie.

“Which one?” says Masumi.

“All of them! But especially Japanese.”

“It would be an honor to help you find your peace, Mrs. Cummings. Will I meet Mr. Cummings as well?”

John says, “He's dead.”

They spend two hours together, their seats huddled in a small triangle, Masumi instructing them in the basics of Japanese pronunciation. He uses strange words as examples: murder, devil, ghost, destruction, wrath, victim, loneliness, tears. They must be important words in Japan, words frequently used in day-to-day conversation. John is unusually quiet. He doesn't make one joke. Masumi leaves without explanation. John soon follows.

Afterward Rosie falls asleep again in the library. When she wakes, Mrs. Dryden is still out cold. The newlyweds have left. Matthew is back from school—he rides his bike past her as she leaves the library. Then it's dinner. John cooked. Everyone eats together; the ideal time to practice languages. She wants to practice languages with them. They want to speak the words they already know. It's typical. Matthew looks sullen. She asks him, in French, how school is treating him. He stares at her blankly; he doesn't understand. Not so good, then. She will harangue his uncle later. The boy needs to practice his language. He doesn't speak enough.

Three more years of this. Two if she can find a proper cook.

COMPETITION AMONG SAVAGES

Claire comes to school early. She comes to see the boys fight for her.

Peter sits at the back of the class every year. He always has and she suspects he always will. Strategically speaking, his harelip would be less noticeable were he to sit in the front row where only the teacher and the student to his right could see it. But Peter hasn't thought it through, or maybe he thought it through very thoroughly and realized he would still
feel
he was on display up at the front. So he sits in the back, and while he may get more stares in this way he can at least know he's done nothing to invite them. Claire would hate to look the way he does. She's always been pretty, just as her mother was always pretty, and they have discussed—in hushed, secret tones, when nobody could possibly hear their prideful confessions—the horror and the tragedy of life as an Ugly Person. “Everyone is beautiful inside,” said her mother, “but most people don't take the time or the trouble to find out. I would hate to be the sort of person you had to know to love.” No one ever needed to know Claire's mother to love her.

Matthew sits beside Peter and every morning he brings him a treat. Sometimes a cookie, sometimes a pastry, sometimes a chocolate from the factory. He also looks at Peter often, pointedly, as if to say, “I don't mind your disfigurement at all.” By way of these two strategies he's forced Peter to treat him as a friend. The harelipped boy does not have the luxury of casually refusing kindness, no matter how contrived. His cheeks burn at every gift and he glares when little Matthew gazes, but there's nothing he can do about it. They are rapidly becoming best chums by the sheer force of Matthew's will. He passes notes in class—poorly scrawled, half-literate French, as Peter has shown her later. He has come to the harelipped boy's defense in one fight already, though he was neither needed nor wanted. He's drawn them together, on the same page, at arm's length, but smiling. The harelip did not translate to the stick figure. You could tell he was Peter because he was a little taller.

It's a strange way to woo a girl if that's what Matthew means by it. He has yet to speak to her except through the effects of his actions on Peter. Holding eye contact with Claire as he links his arm with the other boy's, glancing to see if she's glancing while Peter eats his treat. Smiling like a proud pup when he thinks he's done good. There is always the pause as he removes the latest pastry or cookie from his bag—Peter now watching, expectant—where he seems to consider giving it to
her
instead. She wouldn't accept it. She couldn't.

She might, if he guessed her favorite flavor.

Peter wipes his mouth, having finished a slice of chocolate cake. He licks his bottom lip. “Do you always have to watch me eat it?” he says. “It makes me feel all faggoty.”

Matthew smiles, says, “I'm sorry.” This is roughly one fifth of his French vocabulary. He collects the chocolate-smeared wax paper from Peter's desk, folds it into quarters, drops it into a paper bag, puts this paper bag inside his own bag. He unloads his school books, stacking them one by one on the desk. They look undisturbed—unused, even. Like many of the students here, Matthew has a job that keeps him busy after school, but Claire can't imagine what would keep him from trying even a smidgen. He should
learn the language
, at least.

“Hey,” says Peter, glancing at Claire. “You know what we should do?”

“What?” says Matthew, in English. It's not clear if he's responding or merely asking what Peter means.
What
is sometimes his way of begging to hear it all again in English, a request the other students could sometimes honor but rarely choose to.

“We should arm-wrestle,” says Peter. “Then we could finally know who is stronger.”

They already know who's stronger. They've known it from the beginning, when Peter knocked Matthew off his bike. They've known it in the weeks since school began, for instance when Peter hoisted a bigger rock over his head in the rock-hoisting contest, and they knew it when Peter lifted Matthew and carried him on his back, and they knew it when Peter won their friendly boxing match by bloodying Matthew's friendly little nose, which took on a slight, permanent slant in the healing, its tip hooked just a little upward. Still, Peter scoots his desk up next to Matthew's, swivels so they're almost facing, and pulls Matthew's desk the rest of the way, their desks kissing. Claire pictures the boys themselves kissing and the thought is not disagreeable. Peter offers his hand, curled to half fist, elbow resting on his desk. Matthew looks to Claire for help. She'd rather see them fight.

Matthew takes Peter's hand. They each grip the opposite edges of their desks with their free hands, the sort of rule-breaking that suggests seriousness in much starker terms than mere passionless rule-following. Their pencil necks are already tensing in preparation, veins standing out like tripwires. Peter counts down from three. They push. They make grunts of frustration. Little Matthew is immediately at a disadvantage, pushed down several inches, but he holds it steady there a moment, cheeks going all red. Children filter into the room, some minding the competition in the back, others sensibly ignoring the rivalry, which will find another iteration tomorrow, and another the next day.

Claire opens her grammar and pretends to consult it. Insofar as Matthew has a chance in these contests, it's because he doesn't understand the goal is victory with dignity—without the skin inflaming, without the pores drooling, without depraved breathing, without losing one's cool. How he strained to lift that rock. How he flailed when Peter boxed him, at one point actually shoving a finger—by accident, she hoped—two knuckles deep in the other boy's nose, coming back with snot and blood. Now Matthew twists at the wrist, pulls the desk to stay steady, plants his feet wide. Does everything short of stand up and jump. Claire twists her hair around her finger and lets the coil hang.

Peter pushes Matthew's hand another increment. The strain is only visible in his neck. He doesn't huff or puff. He doesn't sweat. Doesn't crimson. Doesn't need to. He looks like he's waiting for something.

Matthew's hand is pressed lower, his arm nearly touching the desk, the hand itself hovering several inches past the little square of plywood. He groans, pulls his head in the opposite direction, drips, shuffles his feet, leaning with his whole body. All the other children have sat down in their seats. Most have pretended to forget the arm-wrestling entirely, perhaps because they are embarrassed for the combatants. Claire is deeply embarrassed. This is for her. Her gut's electric. The harelipped boy seems to leer. He always seems to leer. It may be real now, though—the corner of his mouth genuinely raised, the glinting teeth set hard.

Matthew's desk begins to rattle. The seat's hooves lift from the ground and clatter back, three always touching, but four never. Peter hisses from apparent pain. Matthew growls. He loses. His arm falls to the desk, his hand wrenched back at a ninety-degree angle from the wrist, something like elbow macaroni. He coughs like he's been socked in the gut. A strand of spit hangs from his lip.

“Good match,” says Peter. He peels Matthew's good hand from the desk's edge and shakes it once, then scoots his own back into place. Just in time: the teacher has entered. He writes on the chalkboard. The children are to copy what he writes. Peter writes it all down. Matthew, still smarting, massages his wrist and looks at Claire as if it were her fault, as he always does when the contests are over. His face is twisted by resentment. His bottom lip envelops its better, revealing the stupid narrow knot of muscle in his chin, tugging the skin of his neck upward and partly onto his face, where it puffs and swells. He is like a wounded frog.

Claire turns away.

Claire means to leave school alone. She feels a little woozy, slightly off. Peter and Matthew follow her out. They walk on either side of her, elbow-lengths away. Either could, speaking purely in terms of distance and practicality, touch her skin, take her hand, hold her elbow, stroke the nape of her neck. Some days she might want them to, or at least one of them. Today she would like neither. It might have been their fight that made her feel so ill. Something left their warring bodies and entered hers. She might throw up.

“Your skin got really hot while we were arm-wrestling,” says Peter.

“What?” says Matthew, in English.

“Your skin,” says Peter. “It was incredibly hot. Are you okay?” He shows his palm. It's still a little red—irritated by the heat, apparently, or even burnt. It might be the beginnings of a rash.

Maybe what Claire has is catching. She rubs her tummy.

“Are you feeling okay?” says Peter.

“What?” says Matthew.

“Not you.”

He gets that. Matthew hangs his head, kicks a rock hard enough to send it flying.

Claire says, “I'm fine. You two looked ridiculous, though. You're going to hurt each other someday.”

“I doubt it,” says Peter.

Matthew says, “Do you want to ride bikes? Claire can ride on my handlebars. We can take her home and that way she'll be safe.”

It's been days since Claire has heard him say this much to anyone. She imagines Matthew working through a French phrasebook for an evening, underlining useful conjugations, building the invitation in a separate notebook. Has he explored the possible avenues of this conversation thoroughly? What else might he be prepared to say on the subjects of bicycles, security, and Claire? Does he know the word for wheel yet?

“I don't want to do that,” says Claire. She waits for the what.

“We should go somewhere else then,” says Peter.

“I question the handlebars as a conveyance,” she says, wanting to go home but not with them. She waits for the what.

“You can ride my bike,” says Peter. “I'll run beside you.”

“I want to take her home so she'll be safe,” says Matthew, getting in front of the other two and turning to face them.

“Safe from what?” says Claire.

Peter nods. This is the way the boys agree. She needs to be safe.

“Fuck that. I don't want to be safe. Put me on your handlebars, Matthew, but don't take me home.”

Matthew says, “What?”

They go to Half Hill. Half Hill is a tall one, rising from the earth like a wave, flattening to a reasonable plateau, and then cresting harshly, falling inward, revealing its soil: the dirt, the rocks inside, and sometimes the worms. This open side is also partly mossed and grassed in horizontal gradations. Explanations for Half Hill vary considerably, being almost purely the subject of schoolyard speculation. No one their age can remember. Some kids say it was the Germans with one of their big guns—a rail gun, even. Others say it was a bomber—German or American. Some kids say there was going to be a building there, one in a weird style, integrated with the hill, and so the builders dynamited half the hill. It was going to be a haberdashery or something. No one agrees, and none of the stories are especially plausible. But there stands the hill nonetheless.

“The game is simple,” says Peter, pacing before Claire and Matthew like a commanding officer, the flat side of Half Hill his backdrop. “You ride your bike up the hill as fast as you can. Then you ride as fast as you can over the flat part. That's where you get most of the speed. Then you launch off the edge. You dismount the bike as you fall, and take the fall as well as you can.”

“What's the point?” asks Claire.

“You wanted something unsafe. This is it. Totally unsafe. We could all die.”

“You'll wreck your bikes,” says Claire.

Matthew says, “I will do it.”

“Matthew, your bike is the only way you can get to school,” says Claire. “We live close enough to walk. Peter, you love your bike. You don't want to hurt it, and Matthew can't afford to destroy his.”

“What?” says Matthew, fuming. “I'll do it!”

“It's a calculated risk,” says Peter. “Look, I'll go first and show you how.” He walks his bike to the foot of the hill and mounts it. “People do this all the time,” he insists. “It's no big deal.”

He pedals hard. Climbing the hill is obviously not the part where you pick up speed. It's the part where you prove that you can bike uphill. The speed comes at the plateau—he hits an impressive pace, and, at the verge of the precipice, stands upright on the pedals. Claire's stomach twists up inside itself like a towel being wrung. From their perspective, the bike rolls off into empty air, aligning with the clouds. Peter tilts sideways until he and the bike are parallel with the ground, at which point he retracts his legs, tucking them up in his gut. He lands with a thud and coughs for a minute. The coughs become laughter. His bike lies three feet away, angled by its pedal, front wheel swiveled and spinning, back wheel still.

“I did it!” he shouts. He stumbles to his feet and checks the bike. “It's fine. Now Matthew can try.”

“I'll do it,” says Matthew. Someone must have told him girls like boys who plan to do things. He doesn't move from his spot at the foot of the hill, and it doesn't look like he's going to.

“I'll go with you,” Claire says. “I'll ride on your handlebars.”

Matthew stares at her blankly. It must be everything he wanted. They'll be flying off a little cliff, though. Did Matthew want that? It may be he doesn't know what she said. She boosts herself up onto the handlebars. He nearly falls, but Peter runs over, catches them, and holds them upright.

He asks Claire if she really wants to do this and she nods without thinking. “I thought you would go separately. I thought you could both use his bike, because it's more sturdy than mine.”

She hates to see Peter crow when he's won. She hates to see Matthew sit and shake and crimson. This is also, in her life as their captive, a precious opportunity to be less than safe. That's enough in its own right.