The Artificial Anatomy of Parks Read online

  “Such as?”

  Such as strange visitors in the night.

  “Coughing means the nerves leading to your lungs are irritated,” I said. “It can be a symptom of pneumonia.”

  “The tests are fine. You shouldn’t worry so much.”

  “I can’t help it.”

  “I know,” she said. Her voice changed. “You’re as hard as nails, my girl, but you’ve got a soft centre.”

  “I’m not a very good nail, then.”

  “You’re a perfect granddaughter and that’s what counts.” She wheezed slightly as she said it. “My head’s splitting in two. Hruh. Just hope they’ve invented the cure for everything by the time you’re old.”

  “Mr Hicks says they already have but the drug companies are holding us to ransom.”

  “Well, if Mr Hicks says so. Who is this Mr Hicks anyway?”

  “He’s my art teacher. He’s really nice.”

  “Your uncle fractured his leg twice when he was on the hockey team,” she said, from nowhere.

  “I didn’t know Uncle Jack played hockey.”

  “Oh yes, he was very good at sports. He was the school’s fastest long-distance runner.”

  “Weird,” I said.

  “You’re your own person,” my grandmother said, as if she could hear my thoughts. “You’re not like Jack, if that’s what’s worrying you.”

  “Yeah.” Although who knows what he’s like since you guys never talk about him.

  “I have to go, Tallulah. Be careful now.”

  “Love you.”

  “I love you too.”

  Eventually, 1995 turned into 1996. Russian soldiers and rebel fighters engaged in Chechnya, the O.J. Simpson civil trial started, Dolly the sheep was born, and Braveheart won best picture at the Oscars. I stayed on the netball team, I hung out with Edith, I went to my sessions with Mr Hicks. As much as I hated to admit it, I found myself developing a grudging respect for my father’s academic ability. But after a few weeks of Mr Hicks’ help, I started to get into the routine of schoolwork. Some of our studying must have even got through, because my grades got better, even if I wasn’t going to win any awards. I wasn’t reading my father’s textbook as often, but biology was still easily my best subject apart from art. In others I trudged through weeks of individual assignments that turned into months of class projects; at least in art I was really enjoying myself. I made sketch after sketch of any subject I could find on the school grounds and sent them to my grandmother – a magpie, a discarded prefect’s badge, the empty swimming pool early in the morning. When I stayed at hers over the holidays I saw she’d framed all of them and hung them in her bedroom and on the staircase.

  “Hruh,” she said, one summer, “I thought school was to educate and refine you, not turn you into a farmhand.

  “Says the woman who grew up on a farm.”

  But it was true. I was toning up from all the netball – my muscles had hardened and the skin covering them had bronzed nicely from being outdoors. My fingers were constantly stained and flaking with paint and I smoked like a chimney.

  My grandmother muttered something about femininity as a lost art and beat me soundly at Monopoly.

  Sometimes my father joined me at my grandmother’s. He sat in his chair in the living-room, reading medical journals while I spread my homework out on the coffee table. Ever since I’d taken his textbook, I’d wondered whether I should say something. There were questions I wanted to ask him about his work, and how easy he thought it would be to get into the medical world. Not necessarily to be a doctor – my grades weren’t good enough for that – but maybe I could be a nurse. Maybe we’d finally be able to break through and have a proper conversation, I thought, or maybe he’d be angry with me for ‘borrowing’ something of his. Instinctively, I held back each time there was an opportunity to speak about it.

  Otherwise I spent my vacation time alone with my grandmother. The rest of the family seemed to have retreated a little too – if Uncle Jack had been the mysterious cyclist, he hadn’t shown up for a while, and he wasn’t calling my father either, as far as I could tell. I hadn’t seen Michael, Georgia or James for ages, although I heard that Michael had aced his A-Levels and had a place at Cambridge to read Italian and French. Aunt Gillian had reported this to my grandmother on one of her rare visits. My grandmother had banned her for a while because she said there was no point paying for home help if Aunt Gillian was going to redo everything herself, and unfortunately she preferred the home help.

  Occasionally, I’d hear Starr’s name in passing at school, or see her across the canteen. Apparently she’d signed up to the drama group, and was busy breaking the hearts of all the theatrical boys. I envied her easy manner with them. I still hadn’t had a real conversation with a boy, unless you counted Stuart – who sat next to me in maths and once left an obscene note in my pencil case – and I didn’t. My relationship with Mr Hicks was the closest one I had with a Y chromosome. I thought about it at night, when the lights were out, and wondered if maybe I did have a crush on him. My skin always felt clammy when we were in his office, especially my palms. I lived in fear that he would touch my hands for some reason and discover how disgusting they were, but, at least at first, he wouldn’t even leave his side of the desk. He was friendly and entertaining; he acted like I was a little sister, rather than a student, but definitely not like we were equals. In the beginning, he made notes while I was talking; later on he sat making a steeple with his fingers. I started off shy, looking at the floor when I had to describe something I couldn’t understand in lessons; after a while, I felt relaxed enough to sprawl in my chair, or rest my elbows on the desk in front of me. He liked using props to demonstrate the answers to maths questions. He made me laugh. He always offered me tea or squash and he always listened carefully to me, and never made me feel like I was being petty or stupid. After the first session, he never pushed me to talk about my parents. A couple of times I mentioned my mother, how she was a pianist, like me, and the stories she used to make up for me when I was younger, how she’d written a few of them out, and illustrated them with pencil drawings of me and my sidekicks in our adventures. Mr Hicks said she sounded like a real artist, and he’d like to see the books if I could find them. I didn’t tell him my father had hidden all her stuff away. My father’s weird behaviour and indifference didn’t seem to matter when I was with Mr Hicks.

  After two years, I was turning up a few minutes early to each session, and lingering for a few minutes after the bell for afternoon classes had gone. I really looked forward to Fridays.

  I throw down Vogue and pick up Cosmopolitan. Sarah Michelle Geller is wearing a red, lacy dress for the ‘Hot Issue’. Toby used to have a crush on her, I remember. Buffy had just started when I left school, and he watched it religiously. I throw that down too.

  Aunt Vivienne comes back in. “I didn’t see any nurses,” she says, “but I did meet a charming young man who asked after my younger sister.” She sits down. “I assume he meant you, Tallulah, and not Gillian. He didn’t seem to need glasses.”

  “Where exactly did you meet this young man?” Aunt Gillian asks, icily. “In the ladies’ toilets?”

  “At the café,” Aunt Vivienne says. “He said he remembered us sitting together the other day.”

  “Hmmph,” Aunt Gillian says.

  “I told him you were engaged,” Aunt Vivienne says. “Cheekbones like yours should not be thrown away on spotty adolescents.”

  I stay quiet. It must be because I’d just thought of him, but for a moment I was sure she meant Toby, and my heart is still hammering.

  It was the start of my GCSE year when some boys from the Upper Sixth came over to mine and Edith’s table in the canteen. Edith was trying to persuade me to come into town with her when she stopped halfway through a sentence; one of the boys who’d been walking past had peeled off from the others and was standing next to us. I turned around and caught his eye.

  “I’m Toby,” Toby Gates said to me.


  “Hi,” I said.

  “You play on the netball team, right?” he said.

  “Uh-huh.” Toby Gates had nice eyebrows, I noticed. And good skin.

  “I’ve seen you – you’re pretty good.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Can we sit with you guys?”

  “It’s a free country.”

  The other two came over reluctantly. I recognised them from when they’d come to watch Melinda play netball – she had long blonde hair and big boobs and they got this funny look on their faces every time she ran.

  “This is John and Francis,” Toby said.

  I could feel Edith shaking beside me. “This is Edith,” I said.

  “Cool to meet you, Edith,” Toby said. The other boys muttered something under their breath.

  “We’ve already met,” Edith said, turning pink. “In the library. You asked me for a pen.”

  “Well, cool to see you again.” Toby turned to me. “When’s your next match?”

  “Next week.”

  “We’re coming along to watch.”

  “Okay.”

  “What you eating?”

  “School dinner.”

  “Yeah, but – did you go for the vegetarian or the meat option?”

  “Oh. The meat, I guess.” I poked my dinner with a fork; it wasn’t giving me any clues.

  “Yeah, me too. I like meat.”

  “Um, me too.”

  “I like chicken,” Edith said.

  The boys at the other end rolled their eyes. The one called John mouthed something to the other. He had curly hair and a turned-up nose that made me want to punch it. I glared at him; his friend nudged him and he shut up.

  “Anyway,” I said. “We should go. See you at the match.”

  “See you,” Toby said.

  Edith lay face-down on the bed for an hour, with her head underneath her pillow.

  “Come on,” I said. “It wasn’t that bad.”

  “Toby Gates,” she said. “Toby Gates sat with us.”

  I flopped onto the bed. “He’s just a boy.”

  For some reason, the story of how my parents got together was in my head – how she was there with a friend, and how my father appeared out of nowhere.

  “He’s seventeen,” Edith said, sitting up. “Do you know what girls in our year would do for a seventeen-year-old boy?”

  “Take their clothes off?”

  “He’s an Adonis,” Edith said. She looked wild.

  “You’re such a geek,” I said. I rolled over and picked my Discman off the floor. I turned it on and started listening to David Bowie; I could see Edith’s lips moving and she looked annoyed. I stood up on the bed and started swaying to the music, pretending to sing into an imaginary microphone. Now she looked horrified and shrank away from me. I took the earphones out.

  “You can’t do that in front of the boys,” she said. “Everyone will think you’re nuts.”

  “What about this?” I asked. I did my best Michael Jackson ‘Thriller’ impersonation, which wasn’t very good.

  “I mean it,” Edith said. “If we sit with them again we have to act grown up.”

  “They sound fun,” I said, rolling my eyes.

  “Tal, please,” Edith begged. “I really like Toby.”

  “Okay, okay.”

  “Do you think he thought I was stupid?”

  “No.”

  “His friends did.”

  “His friends are idiots,” I said. “Who cares what they think?”

  “Toby probably does.”

  “Then he’s an idiot too.”

  “Most people care what others think about them,” Edith said. “It’s kind of weird that you don’t, you know.”

  I picked some dirt out from under my nail and tried to shrug that off.

  Toby stood with Edith at the next match, while his friends sat at the back and threw things at each other.

  Mr Hicks was there too. He waved when I looked over, and I nearly missed a ball. Otherwise, I had a good game. By the time the whistle blew, the goal attack I’d been marking was red-faced and out of breath.

  “Nicely played,” one of the older girls called after me as I jogged off the court.

  Mr Hicks walked over to meet me. I caught a whiff of his smell – sharp and sweet at the same time – and felt suddenly light-headed. “Good game, Tallulah,” he said. “You look like you’re getting into it now.”

  “I’m okay at it,” I said. I wondered, briefly, if I was better than Uncle Jack had been at hockey.

  “You’re better than okay,” Mr Hicks said, smiling at me. “I’m really proud of you, you know?”

  “Thanks,” I said, feeling like the world could end right then and I’d still have a big grin on my face.

  Mr Hicks left when Edith and Toby came over.

  “Why was Mr Hicks talking to you?” Toby asked.

  “He’s my art teacher.”

  “Tallulah has a crush on him,” Edith said, batting her eyelashes at Toby.

  “Don’t you think he’s too old for you?” Toby asked.

  “What are you, my dad?”

  Toby went red. “I’m just looking out for you.”

  “I can look out for myself,” I said. “And like I said, he’s just my art teacher.”

  “Fine,” Toby said.

  “Don’t be angry, Tal,” Edith said. “We thought you were really good out there today.”

  “Great,” I said. “Thanks so much for coming to watch.”

  Toby was shaking his head. I thought he was going to walk away from us, and I felt a weird prickle of disappointment, but he just looked me in the eye, “Are you always such a bitch?”

  I felt my mouth turning up into a smile, in spite of myself. “Yes.”

  “Good to know,” Toby said. He was grinning back.

  Edith was still waiting outside when I finished changing. “You do have a crush on Mr Hicks,” she said. “Why won’t you admit it?”

  “Shut up,” I told her.

  We walked back to our building in silence. I thought about how Edith always came to cheer me on at matches; I thought about how she never ate her treacle tart whenever it was on the dinner menu so I could have double because it was my favourite pudding, and got a heavy feeling in my stomach. “Sorry, Ed,” I said. “You don’t have to shut up.”

  She gave me a look out of the corner of her eye. “I tell you whenever I like a boy.”

  “Well, I don’t like one, so I can’t tell you about it.”

  She was quiet again for a while. “I don’t think Toby likes me,” she said, eventually.

  “Of course he does.”

  “I mean like, like.”

  “What’s so great about him anyway?”

  “He’s soooooooooo good-looking. Can’t you tell?”

  “He’s alright.”

  “He’s beautiful.”

  “Fine,” I said, sighing. “He’s beautiful.”

  My grandmother lost her voice for a week. When I spoke to her afterwards, she sounded deep and raspy.

  “It’s like talking to a robot,” I said.

  “Robots can’t talk,” she said.

  “They can in Star Wars.”

  “What’s that?”

  “A film, or a cultural movement, depending on who you talk to.”

  “Hruh,” she said. “It’s quiet here without you.”

  “No wild parties?”

  “Certainly not now,” my grandmother said.

  “Did you used to have parties there?”

  “A few.”

  “What were they like?”

  “Champagne, expensive clothes. Boring people. Vivienne invariably made a scene.”

  I grinned. “Have you always been this grumpy?”

  “No,” she said. “Not always.” She was silent for a moment, apart from her breathing.

  “How are you feeling?”

  “Oh, you know. My feet hurt. You young people. You don’t know how good you’ve got it.”r />
  “Homework’s not good.”

  “You wait until you get out there in the real world.”

  “Are you eating?”

  “Yes, yes.”

  “And drinking lots of fluids?”

  “You’re almost as bad as Gillian. Now tell me about school.”

  I told her about the netball championships, and the day the boiler had shut down. I told her about my science project – growing tomatoes in different environments – and how Mr Hicks had helped me get my first ever B in maths. I didn’t tell her about Toby.

  “It’s good to keep busy,” she said.

  “It’s school,” I told her. “They make you do things. How’s Dad?”

  “Same as always. They work him too hard at that hospital.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “It’s time for my medication.”

  “I’m calling again tomorrow. You have to tell me what happens in Murder, She Wrote. And take some hot water and honey for your throat.”

  “Yes, yes, stop pestering me,” she said, but she sounded pleased.

  A few evenings later, on my way back to my dorm after a late netball practise, I saw Toby and his friends walking ahead. I slowed down. I hadn’t told my grandmother about him because I didn’t know how to feel anymore. Edith talking about him constantly must have been rubbing off on me; recently I’d caught myself thinking about him during class.

  He went into the boys’ dorm without seeing me. That night he turned up in my dream. He was wearing his rugby kit and he was muddy and out of breath. He tried to hold my hand and brush my hair away from my face. I woke up feeling restless and couldn’t get back to sleep.

  Thirteen

  I cross and re-cross my legs.

  “How long have we been here?” Aunt Gillian asks.

  “A few hours,” I say.

  She fidgets.

  Outside, a doctor is talking to the parents of a teenager who has just been admitted. They look like they’re in shock – chalk-white, not really saying anything. I wonder if he’s telling them the prognosis isn’t good, and how often my father had to do that. Whether it ever got any easier. The father has his back to me, but suddenly he turns and I see his profile. For a moment my heart stops; it’s Mr Hicks, his black curly hair sticking to his head in damp swirls like he ran here. I’m rooted to my chair although I want to disappear. I can practically smell the cigarette smoke and turpentine on him, and when he opens his mouth, I stare at his teeth to see if they are Hollywood-white, like I remember them. Then I hear his voice. It’s not Mr Hicks. Not even close. The man searches for his wife’s hand and they hold on to each other like life-buoys.