The Habit of Art: Best Stories from the Indiana University Fiction Workshop

Scarlet

SCARLET [153] Scarlet MANDY SAYER Scarlet was eleven years old when her mother moved them to a flat in Kings Cross and began dealing. Scarlet was small for her age; her skin was so white and translucent that one could see a delicate map of blue veins on her arms and legs. She had long red hair, which her mother brushed each day and plaited into a rope down Scarlet’s back. One of her mother’s friends called her a thoughtful girl. She read books borrowed from the Kings Cross library; she buttered her bread precisely, smoothing a square around the crust first, then filling in the rest; her friends at school marveled at the way in which she had embroidered a perfect S on her red velvet jacket. After school, she often walked circles around the El Alamein Fountain, watching bare-legged women wearing too much make-up crawl into the backs of cars. There was a drunk who played an air guitar and sang songs she’d never heard before. Occasionally she’d catch him lowering his trousers and pissing into the shrubbery outside the Fountain Café. Sometimes she’d stroll into the Gazebo Hotel, ride the lift up to the eighth floor and swim in the heated pool. One day, when an attendant questioned her, she named a room number and told him her parents were in the bar. She was usually allowed to wander around the Cross on her MANDY SAYER [154] own, as long as she was home by dark. But lately she stayed in more often because she’d heard on the news that a man had raped a tourist in Kellet Lane. It was then reported that he’d cut off the woman’s ponytail and taken it with him. Another attack had occurred on William Street; the woman beat him off before he’d had a chance to molest her, but he managed to snip off her hair and get away with her ponytail before the police arrived. Scarlet’s maternal grandfather was only forty-five. Like Scarlet, he had a slight build and thick red hair. His cheekbones were high and his eyes a bright green. Scarlet called him My Beautiful Boy. When she visited Grant, he let her paint lipstick and rouge on his face and play with his false eyelashes. Sometimes they’d dress up in his glittering gowns and sing songs from The Wizard of Oz. It was Grant who’d given Scarlet the red jacket. He’d made it on his footpeddle Singer sewing machine from leftover material he’d used for a strapless evening dress. Grant and Scarlet’s mother didn’t speak to each other any more; they’d had a fight over money. Grant had scored from her mother a few months ago, on spec, and he’d never paid her for it. They’d had such a blue that when he moved from his terrace on Glebe Point Road the month before, he never bothered to ring and tell them his new address. “Promise me, you’ll never touch this stuff,” her mother often said as she weighed the white powder on electronic scales in the kitchen. Scarlet would make a face, shake her head, but the truth was she touched it often, when her mother was too ill. It wasn’t so different from following the recipe for the carrot cakes she sometimes baked: she’d watched her mother long enough to know how much to mix in the spoon, where to tie the tourniquet, how to jack back the plunger to between .20 and .30 mils. She didn’t mind doing it, as it always made her mother better. When the kid upstairs glanced at the detachable head left drying on the sink and asked what it was for, Scarlet blinked and calmly replied, “My mother’s a diabetic.” SCARLET [155] Scarlet was curled up on the couch reading one of the Famous Five adventure stories when Grant finally called again. She hadn’t heard from him in weeks. He said, “How’s my beautiful girl?” like always, but his voice was thin and shaky. She replied, as usual, “Not as beautiful as you.” It was their ritual, and she thought it might cheer him up. “Put Pat on, Letty,” he said. Scarlet glanced at her mother, who had nodded off in the beanbag over an hour ago...