Another Life Altogether: A Novel - By Elaine Beale Page 0,8

your fucking fruitcake mother.”

“That’s enough, Jimmy,” Mrs. Thompson said. “Sit down and be quiet.” I could tell from her expression that she felt sorry for me. But I didn’t need anybody’s pity, and I already knew that there was nothing she could do to save me. I turned toward Julie Fraser. She and her friends were leaning across their desks, their heads pushed close together in a huddle. They were laughing, snorting as they held their hands over their mouths. I kept hoping that Julie would look at me, that she would push those girls away, smile at me, and show me that, despite my lies, despite my desperation, she’d finally seen that we were meant to be friends. But Julie didn’t even glimpse in my direction. She just sat at the center of all those giggling girls, laughing until her eyes became watery and her mascara began to run in gray, jagged rivulets down her cheeks.

NOW, INSTEAD OF reading letters during registration surrounded by mesmerized listeners, I found myself surrounded by chanting boys and sneering, sour-faced girls, my days filled with their ridiculing choruses. “Batty as her mother.” “Round the bloody bend.” “Mad as a hatter.” “Off her rocker.” “Absolutely frigging bonkers.” “Mental, she’s fucking mental.” “Loop the bloody loop, the entire fucking family.” I soon discovered that there were more euphemisms for madness than there were for sex. I also discovered that being the center of attention was not necessarily all it was cracked up to be.

Even Gillian Gilman and the other social rejects started keeping their distance. I ate my school dinner alone and did my best to avoid the playground, finding refuge in the caretaker’s cupboard, where I sat on the floor amid buckets and mops and oversized bottles of bleach. At the end of the day, I made an art of lingering in the classroom so that I could avoid seeing anyone else as they walked home.

But I didn’t stop writing the letters. Instead, I started writing my own letters back. Once I’d finished writing the letter from my mother for that day, I’d read it out loud to myself and then begin composing my reply. My own long missives never talked about home or school but, rather, about what I would do if I were a world traveler, the people I would talk to, the places I would visit. I told my mother how I, too, would like to journey to the coast of West Africa or visit the Taj Mahal or walk along the Great Wall of China. I told her that when I grew up I’d learn Spanish and travel in Latin America, that I’d climb the Andes to trek to Machu Picchu, and visit the Mayan ruins in Mexico. I might become an archaeologist or some kind of scientist, or perhaps I’d just become a professional traveler, plunging into dense, unexplored jungles or trekking across the Sahara just to see what it was like.

“OOH, IT’S SUCH A bloody shame, it really is,” Mrs. Brockett said, leaning over the brick wall that separated our two backyards, a bent cigarette dancing between her lips. I had watched her shuffle outside in her trodden-down slippers as soon as she’d seen my father walk out the door. She’d been waiting for this moment for days, lurking in her backyard at all hours, peering eagerly toward our house while she pegged up and took down so much washing that I was sure she must have laundered every item she owned.

“I mean, it’s hard for me to understand,” she continued. “Her with everything to look forward to. A reliable husband …” She pulled out her cigarette, exhaled from her nostrils, and flashed my father a squished-up, dentureless smile. “And such a lovely girl.” She beamed over at me, her cheeks sinking so far inward that her cheekbones jutted out like blades.

I was leaning against the doorjamb, watching my father struggle to push our bag of kitchen rubbish into the already overfilled dustbin. I returned Mrs. Brockett’s smile with a still, expressionless look.

“Lovely girl,” she repeated, taking a long drag on her cigarette and pushing the smoke out the corner of her mouth as she turned to my father again. “But I suppose women—well, they just don’t know when they’re well off, do they?” She sighed. Then she nodded, acknowledging my father’s continuing battle with the dustbin. “Looks like she left you in the lurch, eh?”

“I can do that, Dad,” I said, walking across the wrinkled concrete of