Chapter Text
Every evening, as the sky turned black, and regardless of whether the moon and stars appeared or didn't, the apartment in which Diane and her parents lived would swell with the sound of her parents arguing.
Every evening, when her mother said something which roused Papa, or Papa said something to her mother which her mother didn't like, Diane would slide her book, face-down and open, underneath her pillow, then slip on her socks, open the door in that slow, inching way which prevented it from creaking, and from there she would creep out into the hallway, to the darkened bathroom a few doors down.
In the shadows of its entrance she'd stand, her head turned so that her ear was angled toward the hall.
Standing there, she would take in the sound of her parents' clashing words.
If anyone came to check whether or not she was eavesdropping, she would quickly flick on the light-switch, shut the door, and pretend that she was using the bathroom. But no one ever came to check.
Sometimes, her parents argued about money. Once or twice, about Papa's job. But on most nights, her parents argued about her mother's social life. These arguments were always initiated by Papa.
"Yes, he saw you on Liddell Street," said Papa, now. He never raised his voice. He spoke always like a businessman. But his clipped sentences belied his calm tone—when he was furious, he was terse. "Yesterday. One o'clock."
"He must have been mistaken." In comparison to Papa, her mother sounded tired. She had been sounding more and more tired lately. Sounding tired was, Diane thought, an interesting way to hide your guilt. It was difficult to feign innocence, but an exhausted voice could easily drown out any guilty tone.
Her mother had no reason to be tired. It wasn't as though her mother had a job, or took classes. It wasn't as though her mother did very much during the day, aside from keep the apartment clean, mend Papa's clothes, fill out the crossword in the paper, prepare breakfast, lunch, and dinner. "I wasn't anywhere near Liddell Street yesterday," said her mother with a sigh.
"You weren't, were you?" Silence. "Then where were you?"
"Yesterday?"
"At one o'clock yesterday."
"I was here, Keelan."
"Is that so."
"I didn't have anywhere else to be. Keelan, come now, enough of this."
"You didn't nip out to meet Esme, or Dulcie, or Cait?" Diane could almost see the quotation marks around each name. Esme and Dulcie and Cait were real people, and they were friends of her mother, and Papa had met them—but more than once Papa had expressed his suspicions that Diane's mother was not meeting with them as often as she said she was.
"Keelan, no."
"Or maybe you stepped out for a spot of window shopping, and ran into an old friend." Quotation marks, again. Diane pressed her lips together. "And just 'got to talking', and 'couldn't say no when he offered to take you out for afternoon tea'."
"Keelan, I didn't leave the house once yesterday."
"Yesterday would be the perfect day not to leave the house, wouldn't it? Yes, what with Diane here to keep you company. I bet you two had a rollicking day together. Shall I call her in and ask her all about it?"
Her mother's sigh was audible even from the bathroom. "Diane was at school all day yesterday. I had the place to myself. You know that."
"Yes, that I do. So, my dear, no one can vouch for your story, can they?" Before her mother could reply, Papa added, "And yet, someone can attest to your being on Liddell Street yesterday afternoon."
"I wasn't on Liddell Street, Keelan. I haven't been there for months." Her mother sounded so tired. Diane might almost have believed her mother's lies, if Papa hadn't already made the truth clear.
"You hadn't been there for months, but yesterday, there you were."
"I wasn't. Your colleague must have been mistaken."
"Yes, he thought the same thing. Which is why he took photos. Which is why he showed them to me."
There was a pause. "Keelan, I really wasn't there. I don't know who your friend saw, but it wasn't me."
The floor creaked. Either of them must have got to their feet.
"You're a terrible liar, my dear."
"But I—"
Diane squeezed her hands into fists. Papa had photographs, and still her mother refused to admit it? Diane's throat tightened. She almost wanted to run into the living room and demand that her mother tell the truth.
But she kept her teeth clenched and her lips shut, and, in this rigid state of hers, continued to listen.
Except that there was now nothing to listen to.
Diane strained her ears and, one hand on the tiled wall, leaned forward, closer to the door. She could only hear the unpitched humming of silence, now. Her mouth, closed as it was, was filling with saliva to the point where she had no choice but to swallow, and so did, with as much discretion as she could manage.
She parted her lips and sipped air in and out after that.
Never before had the house been this quiet.
Even in the early hours of the morning, when her parents were asleep, even then, there were sounds to hear. Papa's snoring, her mother's mid-dream mumbling, the creaking of the bed that came when either of them rolled over, Papa's footsteps on the occasions when he got up to early and went into the kitchen for something to drink...
An itchy spot appeared on Diane's back, and she curled up her socked toes as she kept herself from scratching it.
With nothing to hear, and hardly anything but the layered silhouettes of the doorframe and the hallway to see, it was difficult to follow the passing of time. On account of not wanting to be distracted if and when her parents continued arguing, Diane wasn't counting seconds.
It was an indeterminable while that passed before Diane heard footsteps on the floorboards.
Light, rough footsteps. Papa's.
Except it did not seem as though he was walking anywhere in particular—the sound didn't move through the rooms, rather it continued to come from the same part of the house: the living room. Diane thought Papa might be pacing this way and that, as he was wont to doing, especially when in the midst of an argument with her mother.
Only... Papa tended to continue speaking when he paced, yet presently not a word of speech could be heard.
Her mother, at the same time, continued to not make a sound.
Diane blinked.
The dark hallway beyond the doorframe seemed to tilt, and Diane began to feel that she had never been as far away from her mother as she was now.
It was calming.
Papa's footsteps began to move, then, out of the living room and into the hallway.
Frantically, Diane switched on the bathroom light, shut and locked the door, noisily made her way to the toilet, and sat down on top of its lidded seat. Hunching forward, she wrapped her arms around her stomach and crossed one leg over the other.
A switch clicked somewhere in the hallway, and Papa's footsteps now appeared as black slits underneath the door. The door thudded in its frame as Papa knocked on it.
"I'm in here," said Diane to the door.
"Diane, your mother and I are just going to head out for a while." Where, Diane wondered, were they going? And why? They had never done this before. "Make sure you go to bed soon, all right?"
Diane swallowed. "Certainly," she said, and watched as the black slits stepped out of sight.
When the front door slammed shut and locked automatically, Diane stood up and washed her hands. Then she opened the bathroom door, switching out the light as she went into the hallway.
She was about to return to her room and continue reading, but, deciding suddenly that she wanted to drink something first, she instead turned the other way. The grandfather clock ticked by her as she walked toward the kitchen, the hands on its Roman face reading nine-forty.
The living room, as she passed it, bore no signs of the argument that it had contained earlier. The end of the sofa, where her mother usually sat, was slouched in slightly, the cushion there looking beaten.
There were two empty teacups on saucers on the coffee table before the sofa. One had a teaspoon tucked under its arm. On any other night, Diane would have collected the cups and washed them and dried them and put them away—but tonight she wanted her parents to return home and think she'd gone straight to bed after they'd left.
Diane looked away from the empty teacups and glided on her socked feet into the kitchen. Filling the kettle with cold water from the tap, she set it to boil. Then she slipped back into her room and took her own teacup out from underneath her bed. She carried it into the kitchen, rinsed away the remnants of her last cup of tea, then wiped away the remaining droplets of water.
By the time the kettle was shuddering and whistling, she had dropped a black teabag into her clean-again cup. Switching off the burner, she poured the boiling kettle water right up to the rim of her teacup, then poured the remaining water into the sink. She let her tea steep as she returned the kitchen to its former state; she did not take out the teabag until she had returned her room.
The front door opened hours after she'd drained the contents of her cup.
At the sound, she dog-eared the page of her book, stashed it away, and reached for her lamp, turning it out.
As she let her eyes adjust to the sudden absence of light, she heard light, rough footsteps. Footsteps approaching. Then she heard, and saw, a knock. Her bedroom door thudded.
Then she heard Papa's voice, saying her name in between knocks, asking if he could come in. He did not ask her if she was awake. He must have seen the light before she'd turned it out.
She sucked in a breath and said, "All right," and hoped she wouldn't get into too much trouble for being awake so late.
Papa's hand entered the room before he did, reaching into the room as it pushed open the door by its handle. "Can you turn the light on, please?" he asked.
Diane switched the lamp back on. Papa entered, and sat down on the side of her bed, prompting her to sit up and face him.
"Were you reading?" he asked her.
"Yes." No use in lying; he already knew.
He nodded, once, slowly. "Which book?"
Diane felt around under the covers for her book, found it, and showed it to him. He read the title without taking it from her hands.
"I see."
She stared at the book in her hands. "It's a great book. I find it so hard to put down."
"Diane."
She looked up. "Yes, Papa?"
"Your mother has left us. We aren't going to see her again."
Diane's mouth opened, but at first, she didn't say anything. She blinked a few times, and then ventured, "What do you mean?" One of her hands had started to toy with and pull at one of the sequins on her bedspread.
"She left and she won't come back. From now on, it'll just be you and me."
Diane stared at the sequin. "Where did she go?"
"No idea." Papa raised his eyebrows. "But wherever she's gone, she's not coming back."
"Why?" The question came out on its own.
"She's a traitor. She was cheating on me."
"Was she." The thread holding the sequin broke off with a snap. Diane hastily dropped the sequin and shoved her hand back underneath the bedspread.
"I thought you ought to know," said Papa. And with that, he leaned over to pat Diane on the head, even though she was much too old for that now. "Sleep in tomorrow, all right? Don't worry about school. You can take the day off. I'll do the same. We'll spend the day together, you and me."
Diane's eyes widened. "In that case..." she began, not confidently, "may I stay up reading a little while longer?"
Papa rose to his feet, put his hand in his pocket. "Stay up as long as you like," he said, heading toward the door. As he reached it, he paused, turned to Diane, and added, "I'm not going to make you trade books for sleep the way your mother did."
Diane was arrested at once by the urge to smile at him, but managed to keep herself from acting upon it. "Papa..."
"What is it?"
"Will we be all right without her?"
It seemed that Papa, conversely, had no qualms about smiling. "Yes. Your mother had stopped benefiting either of us after you'd been weaned. We're going to be fine without her, Diane, if not much happier."