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Authors: Eleanor Catton
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aren’t compared to anybody, because you always do things first.”
“That’s balls,” Victoria says. “When’s the last time they compared you to me?”
The conversation is a comfort, because underneath it all they know that at least they occupy a place, the older and the younger,
a place they each fill as closely and completely as Isolde’s body fills the ancient cat-worn dip in the old armchair by the
wall. Underneath it all they know that it is more a thing of necessary equilibrium than any sort of failed facsimile. Each
sister claims not a mirror copy but a rough-edged ill-formed twisted half of their parents’ attention and command.
“What about that group of boys you used to hang out with?” is Victoria’s question now, and Isolde says, “Nah, I don’t know.
All the St. Sylvester boys are dicks, I reckon.”
“That’s what I thought,” Victoria says. “When I was your age.”
Wednesday
There is a strange mood in the rehearsal room as the jazz band assemble their instruments and unfold their music stands. It’s
the first time they’ve met for practice in three weeks, and privately everyone feels betrayed—not by Mr. Saladin, who was
always jovial and tousled and called them Princess or Madam,but by Victoria, who fooled them all by pretending to be one
of them.
The girls are silent as they collectively suffer the gross humiliation of being the last to know. They feel a dawning indignation
that all along Victoria must have watched them founder and said nothing, that all along she sat among them in silent smug
possession of her secret. Now they are compelled to remember with embarrassment their own harmless shy flirtations with Mr.
Saladin, every remembered happy-flutter feeling poisoned now by the knowledge that he was already hers and already stolen.
They remember their woodwind tutorial when he punched the air and said,
That’s
what I’m talking about and grinned his boyish grin, in the quad at lunchtime when he briefly joined their game of hacky-sack
and then ran off with the hacky when he started to lose, before jazz practice when he strolled over and started talking about
the Shakespeare Festival and the chamber music contest and the changes to the summer uniform—
“He said she looked good in her summer uniform, way back in the first term,” says first trombone as she empties her spit valve
on to the carpet. “I was standing right there, as well.”
It is a mark of the depth of their wounding that they are pretending they suspected it all along. Everything that they have
seen and been told about love so far has been an inside perspective, and they are not prepared for the crashing weight of
this exclusion. It dawns on them now how much they never saw and how little they were wanted, and with this dawning comes
a painful reimagining of the self as peripheral, uninvited, and utterly minor.
“He had this thing he did,” the percussionist is saying, “if they were lying in the dark together, if he was talking into
the dark and he wasn’t sure whether she was smiling. He would make his forefingers into little calipers and he would keep
reaching over to check the corners of her mouth. Sometimes he would lie on his side and he would keep his fingers there, just
lightly, as theytalked on and on into the dark. They used to laugh about it. It was a thing he did.”
Bridget is in the corner, lifting her sax out of its gray furred cavity and fitting the mouthpiece together absently. Last
week she bought a number of different reeds from different manufacturers to test, numbering each one with a tiny red numeral
to remind her which is which. She removes one from its plastic sheath and checks the tiny inked number before screwing it
tight. The reed is harder than she has been used to, and probably her tongue will bleed.
“My gypsy girl,” says second trumpet. “That’s what he called her. My gypsy girl.”
The bell rings. There is a vague
“That’s balls,” Victoria says. “When’s the last time they compared you to me?”
The conversation is a comfort, because underneath it all they know that at least they occupy a place, the older and the younger,
a place they each fill as closely and completely as Isolde’s body fills the ancient cat-worn dip in the old armchair by the
wall. Underneath it all they know that it is more a thing of necessary equilibrium than any sort of failed facsimile. Each
sister claims not a mirror copy but a rough-edged ill-formed twisted half of their parents’ attention and command.
“What about that group of boys you used to hang out with?” is Victoria’s question now, and Isolde says, “Nah, I don’t know.
All the St. Sylvester boys are dicks, I reckon.”
“That’s what I thought,” Victoria says. “When I was your age.”
Wednesday
There is a strange mood in the rehearsal room as the jazz band assemble their instruments and unfold their music stands. It’s
the first time they’ve met for practice in three weeks, and privately everyone feels betrayed—not by Mr. Saladin, who was
always jovial and tousled and called them Princess or Madam,but by Victoria, who fooled them all by pretending to be one
of them.
The girls are silent as they collectively suffer the gross humiliation of being the last to know. They feel a dawning indignation
that all along Victoria must have watched them founder and said nothing, that all along she sat among them in silent smug
possession of her secret. Now they are compelled to remember with embarrassment their own harmless shy flirtations with Mr.
Saladin, every remembered happy-flutter feeling poisoned now by the knowledge that he was already hers and already stolen.
They remember their woodwind tutorial when he punched the air and said,
That’s
what I’m talking about and grinned his boyish grin, in the quad at lunchtime when he briefly joined their game of hacky-sack
and then ran off with the hacky when he started to lose, before jazz practice when he strolled over and started talking about
the Shakespeare Festival and the chamber music contest and the changes to the summer uniform—
“He said she looked good in her summer uniform, way back in the first term,” says first trombone as she empties her spit valve
on to the carpet. “I was standing right there, as well.”
It is a mark of the depth of their wounding that they are pretending they suspected it all along. Everything that they have
seen and been told about love so far has been an inside perspective, and they are not prepared for the crashing weight of
this exclusion. It dawns on them now how much they never saw and how little they were wanted, and with this dawning comes
a painful reimagining of the self as peripheral, uninvited, and utterly minor.
“He had this thing he did,” the percussionist is saying, “if they were lying in the dark together, if he was talking into
the dark and he wasn’t sure whether she was smiling. He would make his forefingers into little calipers and he would keep
reaching over to check the corners of her mouth. Sometimes he would lie on his side and he would keep his fingers there, just
lightly, as theytalked on and on into the dark. They used to laugh about it. It was a thing he did.”
Bridget is in the corner, lifting her sax out of its gray furred cavity and fitting the mouthpiece together absently. Last
week she bought a number of different reeds from different manufacturers to test, numbering each one with a tiny red numeral
to remind her which is which. She removes one from its plastic sheath and checks the tiny inked number before screwing it
tight. The reed is harder than she has been used to, and probably her tongue will bleed.
“My gypsy girl,” says second trumpet. “That’s what he called her. My gypsy girl.”
The bell rings. There is a vague
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