	RodMer Short Story Package RR Something Important
by Merike Lugus	for on-line reading now in your browser

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Here is Short Story Package RR, a short story by Merike Lugus.

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SOMETHING IMPORTANT

Approximately 5,800 words

Surely it was her brother Alex who had chosen the snarling lion's head knocker in the middle of the red door. It's far too brassy for his wife's more subtle aesthetics. Nina's confidence plummets. Approaching Alex's world has always had that effect on her, but she takes the beast by the nose and raps her version of alleluia. She reaches for Ben's hand and holds it tight.

Elena opens the door to greet them. Warm aromas from the house come rolling after her. Saffron bread in the oven, freshly ground coffee, roses. Nina catches a glimpse of the table set in the side room, a lace table-cloth studded with lapis and gold-rimmed plates. Elena is an interior decorator and their house is filled with stuff that Nina can't afford. That would be o.k. if it weren't for Mother who likes to point out the Lalique vases and Sterling silverware, nudging Nina with her elbow, coaxing her into the worship of money and good taste. Look. Learn.

Behind Elena's gracious words of welcome is a sadness. Her gray eyes focus on Nina ever so briefly before they pull away. Nina's been so busy with the reconstruction of her life that she had almost forgotten the awkwardness between her and Elena. She would like to take her by the shoulders and say, everything is o.k., but she knows she lacks the energy to create trust between them. Besides, Elena is older and Elena has walled herself off behind a social schedule that does not allow for idle time.

In any case, everything is not o.k., never has been, though Nina does not know why. A few steps down the hall has taken them to the spot where space opens up. To the right, the kitchen; straight ahead, the living room and door to the patio.

To the left, the grand piano stands lustrous and mute in the darkened corner. Alex's piano. It's so large that one might say it is a corner of the house. Nina's spirit dips like a divining rod. Here! The river of grief flows through here! Because Ben is beside her, she sees the piano for what it is, a huge musical instrument, not a monster that must not be touched or looked at or mentioned or alluded to. Nina can't remember why or when this law was passed, but she has always known and obeyed.

Ben has seen the piano too and Nina is alarmed by the force that is pulling him towards it. She drags him away, far away, or something terrible will happen. In the corner of the kitchen she sees Mother's back bent over a steaming pot, her elbows out as if to balance her round torso over her slender legs. It's hopeless. She's not ready to deal with Mother just yet. If Mother knew what she was up to, she would laugh that odd laugh that is more mocking than merry. You always have an agenda, Nina. Relax, go with the flow!

What had she been thinking, this morning, as she had examined herself in the mirror? It had taken years--oh God, what's it been? ten, twelve?--to put herself together again. And now at long last, this fledgling phoenix-- this tender courage under the protective wings of new love; a new career, a bit of cleavage, though modest, really, by current standards. The only bleached blonde in a family of straight-haired brunettes. Blonde ever since she read Beaudelaire's Flowers of Evil at age fifteen, when it first occurred to her to pit artistic against natural. Self-invention was a neat idea back then, not the shaky discipline it has become. Nature with its cruel whimsy could stay in zoos and jungles as far as she was concerned. As she grew older she'd intended to be braver, break out with capes and turbans and burgundy talons. Perhaps a sharp tongue.

But she never got beyond the bleached hair because--well, because she wanted to be taken seriously. As the youngest in a family that had come through bad luck and dire poverty, Nina felt she was already stretching the limits of élan. The ten to fifteen years between her and Alex, Katrine and Lottie might as well have been a lifetime--everything important had happened before she was born. She missed out on the most intense period in her family's life and feels much like a comma at the end of a shriek. Nina needs to be an exclamation mark, but cannot make herself heard. It's a difficult balance: outside the family there are friends who tell her to lighten up, making her wonder if she takes herself too seriously. But inside the family she feels she smiles too much, too often and for no good reason. She can't help it. The smile was clamped on her face as if her body had been appropriated by a desperate spirit: you, you be the happy face.

"You're like a good book," Mother tells her. She keeps Mother entertained, up to date on her passions, successes and failures in life. She wants her to admire her struggle, to understand who she is. Above all, to see that there is meaningful life in the present tense.

"Lottie is a book I've already read and Katrine can put you to sleep--and then of course there's Elena--that one is a mystery. Tell me, is she happy? With that son of mine? He used to be such a funny boy--lots of laughs!" Inevitably the conversation returns to another time, when people were more splendid, lives were more keenly lived and the issues of the day more passionately argued.

On this spring day, Mother's seventy-fifth birthday, the family has come together for the first time since burying Father two years earlier. The weather is gloriously brisk and sunny. Yes, Nina has come with an agenda. Family gatherings have become predictable, as if everyone had long ago been assigned a script and a place to stand. Obediently they go to it, armed with glasses of wine or whiskey. It's time to loosen up. Nina is tired of her mask, the happy face. Today she will be herself, a woman with complexities and contradictions. Come what may, she will not fit herself into the old pattern.

At the end of the room is the congregation of family, uncles, two cousins who happen to be twins, and a few old friends, like stone figures silhouetted against the patio door framed by a wisteria vine. A flash déjà vu. The hopelessness of dolls, dressing them, undressing them, learning at age six the limitations of her power--she did not know how to bring the dolls to life. Invention, re-invention--it takes divine moxie. Nina takes a deep breath.

Mother rushes out from the steamy kitchen and, ignoring Nina, extends her hand to welcome Ben, the brand new morsel at this family gathering. He's soon to be Nina's third attempt at marriage. Mother adjusts her glasses, pulls back as if to get him in better focus. She smiles, baring her sturdy teeth. The better to eat you with. But not here, not now. Ben leans down and disarms her with a kiss on each cheek. Mother lifts her shoulders, quivers like a bird shimmying in a puddle of rainwater. Then, abruptly, she directs her chin at Nina, some straight-shooting, for-your-own-good sort of remark flitting about, waiting to take shape.

Don't! Nina glowers silently. Mother's chin pulls back. One squeeze from Ben's hand and Nina feels reassured. Mother likes him, she can tell, but she also knows that the good things are never said. Mother pokes into her life like a child playing with an ant hill. How far can she go before they come storming out in all directions? Imagine, three husbands! How come her, Nina, when some women have none? What is so special about her? Nina's temper rises. Fellatio on demand! she's tempted to shout. What other reason could there possibly be?

Mother fixes her with the look that infuriates her. It means to say: Ben is nice, but you can't escape being what you are. And who she is is someone who has squandered two perfectly good men. They didn't drink and they didn't beat her. Nina may have squirmed under Mother's gaze, but that discomfort had been nothing compared to the problems in marriage number one and marriage number two.

Now there is number three. She and Ben suit each other perfectly, their rough edges broken off by former lovers. Mother, of course, will refuse to see this. Oh, Mother! At such times Nina feels her platinum hair undermines the depth of her past grief. The head of Jane Mansfield--reportedly severed in some gruesome car crash--shoots across the sky of her interior world, her bleached hair like a trail of stardust, a sluttish smile fixed on her face for all eternity.

The congregation of statues is coming down the hall and stops half way between the kitchen and the living-room. Here is the watershed. After the greetings, the warriors will separate from the fire-tenders. Politics will separate from recipes. Argument from consensus. This division does not go well with Nina's revised sense of self and her plan to reveal her true self. Sure enough, Mother takes her by the arm and pulls her towards the kitchen. Nina sighs and allows herself to be dragged, but just. Elena gets herself a pot holder and wooden spoon and gets busy, lifting up lids, stirring, peeking in the oven, opening the refrigerator door. Mother attacks the pots and pans that have accumulated in the sink and begins to scrub. Lottie, Nina's oldest sister, gives her a quick hug and kiss on the cheek as she grabs a towel. Two aunties standing near the fridge offer to help from time to time but mostly step out of the way as the others move swiftly about them.

Too many cooks, Nina thinks, quietly pours herself a glass of wine and slinks back to the centre from where she can see both the women at work and the men in contention. She contemplates the mass of flesh jiggling under Mother's arms. Whose underwear is mother wearing, she wonders. Over the years, she and her two sisters have competed in trying to educate Mother. Silk, nylon lace, cotton crotch, the finest money can buy--but nothing pleases her and in the end she wears the same old woolen camisole and bloomers, the kind that saw her through disasters.

Alex is in the centre of the men's politics. He is holding a chunky glass of whiskey in his good hand. The withered one is bent at the wrist and curls over his heart. Nina stares at Alex's hand. Pale and hairless, it's still young and innocent.

Nina was only six years old when Alex married Elena. Alex had been at the beginning of his life as a concert pianist. Nina remembers there was warmth in their home as he was courting Elena. She remembers Alex in a tuxedo, his fingers rippling across the keyboard, his body yearning like a tree in high winds, later bowing graciously, shyly receiving flowers. After he moved out with Elena, every time he came to visit Mother he brought a box of Belgian chocolates--and Mother let herself be fattened. Nina remembers music, laughter and good food. After the guests were gone, the box of chocolates remained, the lower tier intact, while on top were the crumpled little papers and the odd fruit cream pieces which were nobody's favourites. Nina had weaseled a few of the best--marzipan and nougat--from the lower tier and smuggled them to bed with her.

Then something terrible happened. There had been a knife, a terrible slip. Mother had been at the heart of the mysterious tragedy, weeping, lamenting the cruelty of fate, her incompetence as a mother. Lottie and Katrine, the older sisters, whispered their secrets, clammed up whenever Nina appeared. Weeks after the accident, one night her brother had appeared at the foot of her bed, had collapsed and wept. Perhaps he had thought he was alone in the darkness. Nina had propped herself up in her bed to listen. What is it? she had whispered, too young to comprehend how young her brother was and how the course of his life had been altered. The injured hand lay in his lap, lumpish and alien. Years later Nina was secretly proud her brother had chosen her to bear witness to his tears. They didn't have much to say to each other, but to Nina Alex was a prince, his kingdom a fabulous place. To her knowledge, he never cried again. He opened a small carpet shop. A fancy mall grew around his shop and eventually he and Elena moved into a grand home in the grand part of the city. Nina dreamt that she carved a beautiful, sensitive hand and presented it to her brother.

The piano is polished and tuned regularly, but for thirty years it has not been played. Nobody has ever stated that it's forbidden, exactly. Just as nobody has ever explained the nature of the accident, exactly. Mother cannot explain, exactly, how the knife slipped, but her self-flagellation had been so fierce that one might have thought that she was the wounded one. Friends and family had been moved to protect her from herself--even when speculations about motives had been wild among friends who claimed to understand how matters stood between mother and son. Someone had even whispered the words Freudian slip. Ever since, Alex has been caught wretchedly between his love for Mother and his need to curse her. He is still trapped in an infinite loop of having to prove his forgiveness.

Nina spots Katrine sitting on a pile of pillows staring out the window in the small solarium adjacent to where the men hold court. Katrine is like a zombie, reeling from the abrupt ending of her marriage. Another squandered man, Mother had muttered. But he had other women, Nina had tried to explain. Well, and if he did, he was a man, wasn't he? Nina remembers the years of numbness following her first divorce. She knows the blind spots, the resistance to learning anything from other people's experience. The obscenity in comparing or ranking grief. Mostly she remembers the numbness, staring without seeing.

Bandaging Katrine is a valid alternative to kitchen duty. Nina makes her getaway over to Katrine and pulls her up by the hand, drags her over to say hello to Ben who hasn't yet made a move to join the warriors. Katrine looks around her anxiously.

"I guess I'm not being very sociable," she says.

"It's hard," says Nina. "It took me ten years to get my shit together." She puts her arms around her and pulls her close, her body absorbing Katrine's small shudders, which do not quite develop into sobs. Her fingers knead her spine, feeling its vulnerable knobs, but she is thinking of Katrine's flippant advice to get over it, when it had been her marriage that had come apart.

"It's hard," says Katrine. "It's not as though I wanted anything special. All I wanted was the most ordinary thing: a happy family, a real nest."

"That's not ordinary," says Nina. "Anyway, uncertainty is the rule."

"I thought love would be effortless," Katrine sniffs, her chin on Nina's shoulder. "I thought I could close my eyes, slip into the stream of a blissful marriage, feeling the curve of water take me along. And when I opened my eyes there I would be in a beautiful house with spectacular children and a man who loved me."

"I thought that's what you did."

Katrine lets out a small bitter laugh, her breath warm on Nina's neck. "It worked out all except for the husband and the house. Maybe I should have kept my eyes closed longer."

"Maybe you should have kept them open."

Ben looks at them sympathetically. Within earshot, Alex and the group of men have started discussing what's good for their country, a subject that Ben and Nina often talk about.

Mother beckons Katrine from the kitchen. "Ignore her," says Nina, glaring at Katrine, daring her to stay put. If the three of them can stand there holding a conversation, they are the stronghold against the bifurcation. But Katrine's face softens as Mother prances outrageously with the kitchen towel as if it were the seventh veil.

"Oh well," says Katrine, and Nina understands.

Briefly she wonders why she herself resists the comforting kitchen warmth. Life could be so easy. She and Ben catch the drift of Alex's lengthy monologue. Eventually Alex catches Ben's eye and Ben moves towards the circle of men, Nina keeping close behind.

Nina listens as Alex expounds. In mid-sentence Alex looks straight at her and frowns. The way his eyes are slightly unfocused tells her that he's had a head start on the whisky. She glances at Ben and sees that he has decided not to get involved. It's because of the whiskey. Usually Ben loves a good debate, but he's always had the good sense to hold back from people who are drunk.

Alex is a hard man, a judging man. Most people fall short by his standards.

He is accustomed to holding an audience. He has a strong voice, a quick mind and is easily bored. It's safer to listen than to risk offending him. The twin cousins nod their heads in unison as the three other men swirl the ice in their tall glasses. The national railway system does not deserve to be bailed out if it can't support itself as a business. Nina's always had trouble with Darwin, but she's staring at men who have come through rough times and take pride in their survival. Between the six of them there have been five businesses that have failed. Only one that eventually succeeded: Alex's. In the past, it's at this very point when Nina had retreated and gone back to the kitchen. Rather than risking voicing her opinions to Alex and the men, she had muttered them to her sisters.

But on this day, Nina is having an out-of-body experience. "Sometimes there are other considerations," are the words she hears. There is nothing to support her feet and her head is filled with feathers.

Alex raises his head without looking at her. His mouth closes firmly. Nina goes on to defend the railways--they hold the country together. How many national symbols do we have? And then there is the threat of another oil crisis, and so on and so on. Her voice, her whole body is trembling. Doggedly she persists.

Alex is looking down into his drink. When she finishes, silence crashes around her.

"And what would you know about business?" Alex says coldly.

Nina had once caught drift that Alex was suicidal. She got this from Mother who was the net that caught the flotsam and jetsam in her children's lives. Elena and Alex were taciturn about their marriage. Nina thought of it as a pool in a dark cave -- deep and cool and unruffled. The bit about suicidal thoughts astonished her. But it gave new meaning to the private space around him that Nina thought she sometimes intruded on. And to the way Elena's mouth was firmly set, never volunteering to be the first to speak.

Nina had wanted to talk to him about his depression, but as with most information, this was a piece she was not supposed to be privy to. Nevertheless she had managed a hypothetical argument in which she proposed that suicide was selfish and unimaginative. For one thing, there are the children to consider. For another, there's always an alternative. Anything is better than suicide. If one can't bear one's circumstances, there's always an alternative.

Alex had laughed at her. "You," he said, "you can be happy digging ditches."

Digging ditches? Hell yes. Nina took it as a compliment, but tried to think of something more suitable for Alex. Even then the smile had appeared on her face, undermining the tenuous authority of the baby of the family.

"If all else fails, there's always life on an island somewhere which is more interesting than being dead. Your children could write you letters. You could be an inspiration."

"Life is not about happiness," he had said.

Nina feels Ben's fingers playing lightly on her shoulder. They suggest that saving the railways isn't the most important issue of the day. The fingers lift and she feels Ben drift away from her side. But she doesn't follow. Something has been aroused in her: a beast that has lain dormant for years. She has no peripheral vision. At lightning speed her words shoot through a narrow tunnel directly at Alex.

"Other people have brains, you know! Believe it or not, I can read newspapers; I can even think, and what's more, I have opinions, and I have a right to express them." She elaborates on the theme of national symbols and the need for efficient public transportation. She has never felt so eloquent, so sure of herself.

The room is cold and silent. A circle of eyes surround her. Alex's face has turned purple. His mouth is moving and Nina braces herself as someone about to be swept away. But at that moment someone else speaks out. Nina turns in the direction of the voice.

"Um, well, I think Nina has a point. I mean, we've got a big country here and problems with pollution. I mean, we've got some decisions to make that go beyond business stuff." Mark, one of the cousins is cautiously entering the ring. Alex looks as if he's just received a punch to his jaw as he stares at Mark. Nina's fists unclench and she could just throw her arms around this middle-aged man whom she scarcely knows. Over the years all she has learned about him is that he likes to build boats and that he always brings his own beer. Consequently Nina has learned a bit about fibreglass and a lot about micro-brewery, but nothing about Mark's opinions on any other matter.

"Yeah," says Luke, Mark's brother, who is nodding his head vigorously exactly as he had when Alex had been holding forth. Alex raises his chin defensively, sweeps the back of his lower teeth with his tongue. Nina's heart is pounding, but the cousins look relaxed as if they couldn't care less what Alex will say next.

From the far side of the room comes a sound, clear and bright. It takes a moment for everyone to comprehend where it's coming from and then all heads turn in the direction of the music. Ben is sitting quietly at the piano and is picking out a simple tune, a song that Nina remembers singing in grade school.

If you should go to Venice, you would find a lovely town...

Nina's hands fly to her face. She had forgotten to warn Ben about the piano. But of what? That the pleasure of music had been forbidden for thirty years? That the spell of gloom must not be broken? That here is no forgiveness in this house? Partly what she loved in Ben was his gift for making music, yet she had never told anyone in the family of Ben's piano playing.

She'd had a dream once. She was pregnant again. But something was wrong. Her belly was not hard and firm like a melon. It was soft and pliable, more like a collapsed balloon behind which the baby wriggled, its limbs, toes and fingers clearly outlined. She guided Ben's hand to feel the grip of the unborn child. They smiled at its tenacity. It's little face pressed into the membrane wall, revealing the unhappy curve of its mouth, the tiny outlines of its sealed eyes. It raged to be set free.

Ben is playing almost like a child, with one finger. Nina feels breathless--if he should break out--if he should expose the truth of her soul--

The streets are flowing rivers where the boats go up and down

Notes become chords. Chords melt into each other. Music fills up the room. The river is flowing now. Ben's shoulders are into it, pulling up, then releasing the passion in his body. Ten fingers stream up and down the keyboard releasing flourish after flourish of sweet sound.

Katrine and Lottie appear from the kitchen, drawn out like deer to a salt lick. The cousins move closer. Nina is conflicted but moves with her heart, takes her place close to the piano where Ben can see her. Without looking up at her, he smiles. Nina looks around her and notices Mother creeping closer to the sound, a look in her face that Nina has never seen before. Her hand touches the great piano as she rounds the end of it, and she looks hurt, almost frightened. Through Mother's eyes Nina sees Ben as an insensitive intruder, but she doesn't care, and certainly won't apologize. Those who can see the keyboard follow Ben's fingers up and down the river. The others look dreamily ahead or close their eyes, heads swaying lightly. Nina furtively observes Mother who now, between the others, seems tiny and lost. She looks around the room as if searching for someone, then with a worried look on her face she slips away. Only then does it occur to Nina that Alex is nowhere in sight. An alarm goes off in her head.

It's a big house. The music follows Nina upstairs where she wanders from one bedroom to another, her high heels sharp on the wooden floors. There is a second flight of stairs at the back of the house and she stands at the top listening to the applause below her. A rush of enthusiastic voices follow, then silence, just before Ben starts up again. This time it's Moonlight Sonata. Nina smiles. Piece of cake. Ben likes to please. Slowly she descends the stairs, down to the main floor where the music is the loudest, then she opens the door to the basement. The stairway is lit by a bare bulb and below it is quite dark.

"Mother?" she asks.

There is no reply. She creeps down the stairs and looks about her. There had once been talk of finishing the basement, making an apartment there for Mother, but nothing had become of the idea. The place is large and empty but for a column of boxes stored at one end. The sound of the piano on the parquet floor above penetrates and vibrates throughout the stale air of the basement. The cement floor is gritty under her feet as she moves towards the boxes. Someone is behind them. What she hears is a human voice, though it sounds more like static after the music is over and the needle of a record-player is stuck in a groove. She stops a few feet from the corner of the column.

"Finish it. Finish it. Finish it..." Mother's voice is firm, steady.

Nina steps forward, no longer caring if she's seen. Mother is against the wall, pulled up to her full height, chest out, hands pressed against the concrete blocks behind her. Above her is a small window revealing the ground-level walkway to the side door. Light falls onto Alex who towers above her. His cheeks are wet, his mouth stretched into a grimace. He is holding something in his good hand. Nina can't make out what it is until the hammer clatters to the floor. Alex falls to his knees at Mother's feet and a thin insect sound squeezes out from him.

Laboriously, using Alex's shoulders for support, Mother lowers herself to her knees and the two lock in an awkward embrace. Her arms around his limp arms and body, she rocks him while the music above them plays out its melancholy theme and ends to muffled applause. Then all is silent. Mother looks up and sees Nina standing at the edge of the stack of boxes. They look at each other for a full minute before Mother closes her eyes. Nina understands this is a moment that is locked inside a bubble, outside of time or any other earthly reference point. There will be no explanations, no accusations, no apologies, no future allusions to what she has witnessed. She floats away and tiptoes up the stairs, resisting a strong urge to look back. Later she will recall Mother's face, her eyes like an old dog's, tired, heavy with unspecific memories.

She returns to the life above to stand near Ben, looking about her from one face to the next. Ben is in his element, improvising on a child's ditty, transforming Three Blind Mice into a full blown concerto. She watches Elena who is listening thoughtfully before turning back to the kitchen. There is a new look in her face, as if she is pleased, perhaps even elated. Two of the men follow her and offer to help as she puts the finishing touches of lemon slices or dill or parsley on the various dishes. Elena is eyeing them with good humour. The men look gangly, as if they have outgrown their suits. Elena says something that makes them laugh, and Nina watches as they follow her directions. Meanwhile, Lottie has removed her apron and is coaxing her uncle to dance to the music, but Ben's playing is too swift and unpredictable and the man has two left feet. They stumble about laughing as they shift from waltz to polka to fox trot. Katrine is sitting on a three-legged stool close to Ben, upright and motionless as if in a trance.

Nina's heart is pounding as she keeps an eye on the hallway that leads to the cellar door. And then a shadowy figure appears there and leans against the wall. Mother's chest is rapidly rising and falling. Impulsively Nina reaches towards her, but turns instead towards the patio door. Her feelings are too raw, too volatile to expose just yet. Besides, she's not sure that Mother would acknowledge what she thought she knew. The wisteria vine is thick against the trellis arching the doorway. The delicately forming leaves shiver in the breeze. Year after year Elena has complained that the darned thing never blooms. Someone had once explained to her that rough treatment and neglect was the best thing for wisteria blossoms.

It was the first time Nina had heard Elena laugh out loud. "In that case it should be blooming like crazy!"

Nina glides the door open, steps into the spring air, shutting the door behind her. She peers back through the glass, watches as Mother places herself behind Katrine and puts her hands on her shoulders. Katrine's head jerks back as if shocked by human touch, especially Mother's. From Nina's perspective, it looks as if Katrine's back is all that is preventing Mother from folding up.

The cousins emerge from the dining room looking like they're on a mission. They grab chairs from different corners of the room and carry them to the dining area.

"We need more chairs," Mark shouts as he opens the sliding doors.

"Yeah," says Luke, close behind him. "We'll have to use the ones out on the patio," He comes face to face with Nina and stops. Nina smiles tentatively and hands him one of the teak folding chairs.

Inside, Ben finishes his piece and there is another round of applause.

Standing by the dining room table, Elena claps her hands sharply to announce that the food is ready and everyone begins to move into the dining room. When she turns around to join the others, Nina almost bumps into Mother.

"A man like that! You better look after him good," Mother says, her voice low and gravelly. But her eyes are empty.

It's the kind of comment that instantly touches on a nerve, but this time Nina's anger evaporates. She feels a deep pity for Mother. When it came to knowing her daughters, she'd missed the boat.

"As a matter of fact," Nina says, "he thinks I'm the one who needs looking after." It's the closest she's ever come to reprimanding her, but there is no satisfaction in it for Mother has already wandered away and is staring into the dark corridor leading to the basement. Nina looks around from face to face as people fill up their plates and find chairs to sit on. Alex has still not emerged from the basement.

Nina leads her mother by the hand to an armchair, sits her down. Mother is docile and sits and waits while Nina fills a plate for her and places it in her lap.

"I'll go down," she says, touching her mother's trembling hand.

"O.K." Barely a whisper.

But nevertheless an acknowledgement, Nina thinks. Heady with this unexpected responsibility, she moves apprehensively towards the cellar door and closes it against the happy sounds of feasting.

First she sees the feet. They are at an odd angle, and not where she might have expected them to be. Not behind the cartons but in the corner where a simple toilet and a water basin have been installed. She hadn't noticed them before and only now is aware that the water is running from the tap in a quiet but steady stream. Some of it has spilled over, has formed a small pool under the outstretched hand of the body laid out on the floor. If she didn't know better, Nina would say that the black liquid had flowed from the hand and that there was no connection between it and the water from the tap. But such things were not possible in the world she lived in. Nevertheless her heart is reeling because she knows that something is terribly wrong.

"Alex!" she screams, but Alex doesn't move. His face is pale. She finds no pulse.

She doesn't remember how she got upstairs. Couldn't remember long afterwards who she had run into first. Was it Elena? Or Mark. Maybe it was Ben. But she remembers the circle forming around Mother, protectively leading her away. She does remember waiting for the ambulance, Ben by her side, her mind racing forwards and backwards. Would Ben be blamed? Would she, for bringing him? Of course, Mother would never be the same. Things would change, all right. There would be a realignment of wheels, so to speak, in this family. Or they would disconnect completely.

Mostly she remembers her breathlessness as she had flown up the basement stairs: for the first time in this family she had something important to announce.