How the Light Gets In by M. J. Hyland Read Free Book Online Page A

open to let in the sounds of Saturday evening. James had a shower before sitting down to eat and his wet hair drips onto his place mat. Bridget takes two phone calls during the pumpkin soup and Margaret tells her not to get up while dinner is on the table.
    Bridget sighs. ‘It’s no big deal, Mom.’
    Henry removes the soup bowls and brings in the main course, a chicken casserole.
    The pepper grinder is passed around the table and Henry coats his casserole in fine black powder.
    I was once in a restaurant with my mum and dad. One of Dad’s greyhounds had finally won a race and we were celebrating. A few tables away a waiter used a pepper grinder. My dad looked up suddenly from his steak and half stood to look out of the window. He was grinning.
    ‘I think there’s a horse and cart out there,’ he said.
    ‘Well go and have a look,’ said my mum. I closed my eyes for a moment and listened to the sound of the pepper grinder and I got my dad’s joke. The pepper grinder sounded a bit like hooves on cobblestones. I laughed and pointed out the big window behind me.
    ‘Look,’ I said, ‘it’s going around the corner.’
    My dad squinted and looked. ‘I can’t see anything.’
    I laughed. ‘That’s because they were going very fast. A big hansom cab with four high wheels.’
    I liked my dad just then.
        
    When we’ve finished eating, Margaret gives twenty dollars each to me and Bridget and James (in that order).
    ‘It’s your responsibility to make sure it lasts the week. Once it’s finished, don’t ask for another penny more.’
    There is a conscious effort to include me in all that the family does: the good, the bad and the tedious. I wonder whether the Organisation has issued a handbook: Your Guide to Being an Effective Host-Family or How to Make Your Host-Daughter (or Host-Son) Feel at Home . I wonder if I would find such a book in Henry or Margaret’s bedside drawer. I’ll look later, when I’m alone in the house.
    After dessert, I go with James to the lounge-room. I lie across one of the leather couches and James lies across the other. He is wearing basketball shorts and a singlet. For a moment we are silent. Suddenly he sits up and moves his body towards mine as though he has a secret to tell. I sit up too, but then he falls down again: a change of plan. He takes a pen from the coffee table and pretends to write something important in the margins of the TV guide; frowning, feigning worry, wanting me to look at him.
    ‘You’re left-handed,’ I say.
    ‘Congratulations,’ he says, without looking up. ‘I’m a southpaw.’
    ‘Isn’t that a boxer?’
    ‘ Duh . It just means a left-handed person.’
    He looks even harder at me now, his light-blue eyesnarrowing on me, like a lizard suffering from too much sun trying to see what’s trapped under its claw.
    ‘I didn’t know that,’ I say, blushing.
    I stare at his arms, his legs, his cheekbones. He knows that I’m watching and does everything he can to pretend he doesn’t know. He changes the channel to a cop show. A team of FBI agents pounce on a bunch of drug runners in an alleyway. They are wearing yellow sweaters with FBI written boldly in red across the front.
    ‘The FBI look just like a football team,’ I say.
    ‘No they don’t,’ he says without looking at me. ‘They look nothing like a football team.’
    I wonder how long it will be before I will be alone in this house. It’d be like being alone in a five-star hotel. I could sleep in each of the beds, snoop in the cupboards, sit in the spa in Margaret and Henry’s ensuite, drink some alcohol, eat the whole box of chocolate liqueurs I saw in the piano room, smoke a cigar while on the phone and pull out the photo albums. I could roam around freely for a few days.
    Perhaps something tragic could happen to the Hardings and the house would become mine.
    It’s almost dark outside and we haven’t turned the lamps on. The room is blue. On the TV, two skinny, tattooed removalists