Chương 70: The Third of October

He got in at five twenty on the Wednesday and stopped at the top of the stairs, in the bit of hallway between the door and the kitchen where the coats are. Nobody was ever in that bit. That was why he did it there. He got quiet, which took him the best part of a minute, the way it always had. The faucet that was running upstairs stopped, and the water that had been coming out of it hung where it was, in a thin bright line with nothing moving in it. Then he walked around his own home in his boots and read it.

Peg's flat shoes were by the door and her boots were gone. Late shift, then. In at about nine. The oven was on with nothing in it. He made a note to turn it off in a minute, and then he did not. There was a school letter about a trip standing up out of the bread box, where anything Peg had decided not to think about until Sunday ended up. The calendar on the kitchen wall had June's writing on it in three colors, and Friday had MOCK on it, boxed twice.

Her books were all over the table, spread from the edge to the middle, with the good pen lying on top of the pile. Under the top one, open, face up, was the green exercise book. He stood over it in a stopped kitchen with his coat still on and read the whole page. There was no reason not to read a page. He had been doing it since the first week of January and nothing had ever come of it. The page was headed 3 OCT and it had four lines under it.

He read all four, and let the world in, and went and hung his coat on the second hook, and said hello up the stairs like anybody. None of it took anything out of him. That is the part nobody would believe. He knew four things about his own family that he had not known at five twenty. It had cost him about two minutes of his own time and no effort at all, but by half past he was not thinking about where he had gotten them from. Peg came in at nine ten and was not in a good mood.

"Whose plate is that."

"Mine. I was going to do it."

"You were going to do it." She had her coat on the back of the chair and her shoes off already.

"Three hours of gas to warm up an empty oven."

"Peg, I'll pay the-""Don't." She said it hard.

"I'm not saying it because of the money." She got the kettle going and stood with her back to Abe and June.

"Sorry," she said, to the window.

"It's not either of you. There's a woman in the office who has decided the potatoes are my fault."

"Are the potatoes your fault?"

"The potatoes are absolutely my fault," said Peg, "and I would do it again." Then she took her tea into the living room and put the television on. June looked at Abe and made a small face that meant later, and the whole evening turned a corner he had not seen coming. The green exercise book had been on that table since the weekend. It had a green cover and about a third of it was used. Most of it was dates and one-line entries in June's small handwriting.

Some of the lines had a number in a circle next to them, and Abe had never asked what the numbers were for. He had not thought about the page once between five twenty and half past nine. That is the thing he was going to be sick about later. She waited until half past nine, when the television was loud.

"Can I ask you something about the night it happened?"

"The Weave?"

"The Weave." She had her pencil in her hand and she was not writing anything with it.

"I'm doing a thing. I want to get the order right."

"Go on." A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

"When I came in and sat on the end of your bed. How long was I in there before midnight?" He knew the answer. He had known it since five twenty.

"Eleven minutes," Abe said. June put the pencil down on the table. She did it quietly and flat and she did not look up. Abe understood what he had done at the exact moment the pencil touched the wood, which was too late to be any use to him at all.

"Two minutes," June said.

"June."

"I came in at eleven fifty-eight. You were sitting against the wall in the dark with the light off, and you had been since ten to." She was still not looking at him.

"I got two minutes."

"June."

"Then it was midnight, and your face did what it did." Her voice did not go anywhere at all.

"I have thought about your face every day since."

"Two minutes."

"I read your phone over your shoulder and it said 11: 59, and I had been sitting there a minute by then."

"I know it was two minutes. I do know that, June, I have always known that."

"You said eleven."

"I said eleven because-" He stopped. He knew how the sentence ended. June lifted the top book off the notebook and pushed the notebook across the table so that he could see the page the right way up. He had read it four hours ago off the open page on that table, with his coat still on, and he had not once thought about what it was. 3 OCT Fri. His birthday. Eighteen. came in at 11: 49, sat 11 min. Grade F. He read it twice and then he laughed, and I was not ready for that.

Said it was fine four times before one o'clock. (4) The second line was the wrong one. The other three were not wrong at all, and one of them had a number in a circle beside it. Abe sat and looked at his own worst night, three months gone, written out from memory in a sixteen-year-old's handwriting.

"I wrote that on Sunday," June said.

"It's wrong on purpose. I made it eleven because everybody guesses ten. And then I left it open on the table for four days, because I kept thinking you'd say something about it. You never said anything. Tonight you told me eleven, off my own page, forty minutes after you walked in." Abe sat down opposite her, though nobody had asked him to, because his legs had gone.

"How long have you known."

"I've known since New Year's that you come in already knowing things." She said it steadily and her hands were shaking slightly and she let them.

"You knew about Kerry's dad before I did. You knew about the trip letter. It's in the bread box and nobody's opened it. On the first of January you asked me how the horses book was going and I hadn't said one word about it since November."

"That was."

"That was you being nice, yes, I know. That's what I told myself in January." She wiped her face with the back of her wrist, once, briskly, like a job.

"And then it kept happening, and every single time you were exactly right. Nobody's right every time, Abe. You haven't got a single one wrong since Christmas."

"I wasn't."

"I'm not upset that you forget." She said it fast, over the top of him, and it came out much harder than the rest.

"Do you understand that? I have known since October that you forget things and I decided about that in October and I do not need you to be sorry about it. It's not your fault. I did all that already."

"June."

"I'm upset because you learn me." June looked up for the first time.

"You come in and you read my kitchen and you learn what my week was and then you sit there and you have a conversation with me. Do you know what that is? That's the same thing you do to a room before you fight somebody in it." He did not have anything. He had a whole answer ready for the world about the still and the hours and why he did any of it. He had used bits of it on Marek, and on Riddell, and on Danforth at a gate. There was not one word anywhere in it for this.

"I didn't know I was doing it," he said, and it was true, and it was the worst thing he could have said.

"No," June said.

"I believe that. That is not better."

"June. Listen." He had to stop and start again.

"I can't hold on to the ordinary ones any more. The big things stay. Everything that happens on a Tuesday goes, and I can't stop it going, and I have tried."

"I know."

"You knew that a Tuesday goes. You didn't know I go around the apartment picking them back up off the walls." He put both hands flat on the table.

"I started in January because I came home one night and I could not remember whether you had a mock or an exam, and you had told me twice, and I could not stand it." June did not say anything for a while.

"That's not fair," she said.

"You can't tell me something sad in the middle of this."

"I'm not trying to."

"I know you're not." She wiped her face again.

"You still did it." Then she was quiet for a bit, and in the living room somebody on the television won something and the audience went off, and Peg turned it down without being asked.

"I'm not going to stop you," June said.

"You're going to keep doing it out there. I know what it's for and I've known what it's for since the eighth of October and I am the one who told you to keep going, so I'm not going to sit here and act like I'm not."

"You can ask me to stop."

"I know I can." She pulled the notebook back across the table toward herself and picked the pencil up.

"I'm not going to ask you to stop. I'm going to write one down." She turned to the back of the notebook, where there was a page with a list on it and nothing else on the page at all. Abe had never seen it. He had not seen it at five twenty either, because the book had been lying open near the front. A stopped world lets you read anything you can see. It will not let you turn a page. There were four things on the list already.

She wrote the fifth one in front of him and read it out loud while she wrote it, one word at a time, so that he could not say afterward that he had not heard it.

"Not," June said.

"In. This. House." Then she looked at him over the top of the book.

"You might break it without noticing," June said.

"I thought about that. If you do, you tell me." Then she put the pencil down on the open page and left it there, and went through to sit with Peg and watch the end of whatever it was. Peg came through for the cookie tin about five minutes later and found him still sitting there. She did not look at what was on the table. June's homework had lived on that table for four years.

"You haven't turned that oven off."

"Sorry."

"Don't be sorry, turn it off." She got the tin down off the shelf and put a hand on the back of his neck on her way past, briefly, without stopping.

"You're freezing. Are you eating properly out there? Because that woman is not going to check and I can't check from here."

"I'm eating."

"Good," said Peg, and carried the tin back to the living room. Abe sat at the kitchen table with the green book open in front of him and five rules on it, four of which he had never seen. He could have read all four of them without moving his hands. He sat there with the television going next door, and he did not. She had left it open again.