‘Violet.’
Weirdo. Violet dreadlocks.
Captain Sully: ‘Did you dye your rabbit, too?’
Gravitation: ‘Fuck off.’
Captain Sully: ‘I have rabbits, too. Hundreds.’
Gravitation: ‘You live at a petting zoo?’
Captain Sully: ‘Ha ha. No, I live on a dead-end street next to an airport runway. There are lots of rabbits near the runway. And hares.’
Gravitation: ‘Cool.’
Captain Sully: ‘There are lots of birds and foxes and stuff near the runway, too. My father calls it a wildlife area. I have two geese.’
Gravitation: ‘Geese are great!’
She’s pulling my chain. Nobody thinks geese are great.
Gravitation: ‘What are their names?’
The geese had no names, but that might sound like he didn’t care enough about them. He scanned his room in search of suitable names. On his bookshelf he spotted the rows of comic books that had belonged to his father.
Captain Sully: ‘Asterix and Obelix. And your rabbit?’
Gravitation: ‘Just plain rabbit.’
Captain Sully: ‘How old is he?’
Gravitation: ‘Five. And you?’
Captain Sully: ‘About four.’
Gravitation: ‘No. You!’
She has to be older than fourteen.
Captain Sully: ‘Sixteen. And you?’
Gravitation: ‘Almost seventeen.’
She’s almost three years older than me! That means I pretty much don’t even exist for her!
Gravitation: ‘I’m moving out as soon as I can. I hate my parents.’
Shit, I have to be at Dolly’s in ten minutes.
Captain Sully: ‘I’ve got to go to work.’
Gravitation: ‘Where?’
Babysitting wasn’t cool, Gieles decided, so he thought of the part-time job Tony had in his father’s shop. His father was a butcher.
Captain Sully: ‘In a butcher shop.’
Gravitation: ‘I’m a vegetarian.’
-
3
Dolly lived with her three little sons at the bend in the runway. The house was wedged in between two abandoned houses that looked just as dilapidated as hers. Empty houses were cancerous growths, Dolly said, that should be cut out immediately. But that didn’t happen. There she was, stuck in the most nauseating place in the universe. On rainy days, when the polder was dull and grey and the only thing that shone was the asphalt, she repeated her theory over and over again like a mantra.
Gieles didn’t know whether she was right or wrong. But over a year ago her husband had died of a heart attack. One morning she found him dead in their bed. It was a mystery, said the doctor, but not according to Dolly. She was convinced that it had to do with the airport and the empty houses. The noise of the airplanes ate away at him the way fungus hollows out a tree. She could feel the cancer demons beaming their rays right through the walls. Since then, Dolly cursed the house, the neighbourhood and her life, but she never managed to get away. A FOR SALE sign had been hanging in the front yard since her husband’s death. Not a single person had come to look.
Dolly opened the door. She already had her jacket on and her face was carefully made up. She smiled. ‘Hello,’ he said, and put his backpack with the laptop under the hat rack. Gieles was eager to get back online.
Gieles thought Dolly was sexy, but sometimes she was scary, too. She could light into her children like a crazy lady. His father and mother never yelled or hit. Gieles had gotten a smack on the head, but just once. That was after the incident with the paint bomb and the Cityhopper. His father pulled him out from under the bed, where he had been hiding. He was covered with blue paint. That was the one time his father had hit him.
Dolly could get a certain expression on her face that made you want to look the other way. She never did it with him, but she did with his mother sometimes. If his mother was at a birthday party, for example, and she started talking about African children with chopped off limbs and smashed skulls, Dolly’s eyes would narrow. He realised that her expression had something to do with disapproval.
He walked into the living room and was met by Skiq and Onno, Dolly’s two oldest children, who jumped all over him, whooping loudly. Dolly went to the dining room table, where there was a suitcase containing bottles of vitamins. Two evenings a week she sold the vitamins at living room gatherings. During the day she worked in her own beauty parlour. Gieles wondered if she took the pills herself. She always looked so tired.
‘Jonas is already asleep,’ Dolly told him as she shut the lid and pulled the suitcase off the table.
‘I’ll carry it,’ said Gieles. He shook Skiq off his back and dragged himself up to her. (Onno had wrapped his arms around Gieles’s leg and was trailing along behind him.)
‘Cut it out, Onno,’ she snarled. Then she went outside, high heels clicking. Gieles put the suitcase on the back seat of the worn-out old Nissan. The inside of the car smelled of her perfume.
‘You’re an angel,’ she told him.
She had called him that before. ‘I don’t understand why your mother leaves such an angel alone,’ she had said.
Dolly stroked his static hair and laughed. ‘Try a wooden comb. That helps. There’s one in the bathroom—or in my bedroom. On the window sill, I think.’
She gave a quick wave to the boys, who were standing at the window. A plant fell from the window sill and both of them saw it. It was the ficus.
‘Goddamn it,’ cursed Dolly.
‘I’ll clean it up,’ he said.
She got in her car and opened the window. ‘Don’t forget their medicine!’
Inside the boys were fighting over the ficus. The pot lay on the floor in three pieces. The soil was all dried up, and everywhere there were brown leaves covered with a layer of dust. Dolly hardly did any cleaning since the death of her husband. Not very smart, Gieles thought. She’d never find a buyer that way. On the other hand, he didn’t like the idea of Dolly and the children leaving.
Gieles put the plant in the dish pan and turned on the water, which was soaked up by the ball of soil around the roots. On the counter was a ten euro note for babysitting.
‘I need glue,’ said Gieles. ‘If you guys stop screaming, you can help.’
They both ran to the hall closet and came back with their
