Free The 10 P.M. Question by Kate de Goldi Page B

expiring with curiosity about it all, though miraculously she’d restrained herself so far and said nothing. Any day now she’d blow a valve — Frankie just knew it. She’d start in with some casual, smart,
throw
away
remark and Frankie would want to kill her with his cricket bat.
    “Is it like having three grandmothers, then?” said Sydney. She stood still, not throwing the ball, squinting at him.
    “S’pose,” said Frankie. “Sort of.” He pictured the Aunties briefly. “Nah, not really. My real grandmother wasn’t a bit like them.”
    Uncle George’s mom had been small and white haired and gentle, a storybook grandma. She’d lived a very quiet life in a small brick house, just Gran and her old tomcat, Patrick. Frankie had never understood how someone like Gran had produced someone like Uncle George, who always seemed too big and hectic and loud for a tidy brick house with neat squares of lawn and orderly flower beds.
    Gran was dead now. Her ashes were in a blue ginger jar on the table in Uncle George’s home office. Uncle George was supposed to be taking them down south to scatter them from a cliff, on behalf of his elderly sisters and brothers, but, of course, he never quite got around to it. Too busy down the salt mines, he said. (Louie said if he waited just a bit longer, he’d be able to take his brothers’ and sisters’ ashes, too. Louie didn’t like that side of the family. He firmly believed Uncle George was a foundling, left on the doorstep by a wayward woman.)
    Occasionally, Frankie went into Uncle George’s office and stared at the blue ginger jar, trying to get his head around this version of Gran: a pile of sandy particles, waiting with characteristic patience it seemed,
stored
in the office, like manila folders and paper clips. Uncle George’s dad, who’d died before Frankie was born, was buried at the Northgate Cemetery, which was a little more regular. Granddad Parsons had a fake-marble headstone with a photo inset of him in Eighth Army battle dress. Frankie had stared at that photo a few times, too, trying — and failing — to feel
related
to it. It was all very puzzling.
    He couldn’t imagine the Aunties dead — buried or cremated. It seemed impossible. They were too vivid, too decidedly solid and
in
the world, like decorated historic buildings or geological formations. They were like the Bridge of Remembrance hung with bunting, or the Southern Alps, snow-covered and brilliant on a sunny winter morning.
    “I stayed with them a lot when I was young,” he told Sydney. “It was mad. Mad as
mad
.”
    “Tell me,” demanded Sydney. She leaned her back against the side of the B&GG building and slid to a sitting position on the footpath. Frankie followed suit.
    “Well,” he said, recalling it all with the usual mix of feelings — a prevailing hilarity and excitement shot through with worry, like an exhilarating speedboat ride, seasickness hovering.
    “Mostly I went to school, but sometimes they said not to bother — it was when I was in primary school. They only half believe in school. They think you can learn math from card games, and gardening teaches you botany, and having pets and insects teaches you zoology, and going to church teaches you singing, and driving all over town teaches you geography, that sort of thing. They’re really not like other people.”
    “Like my mother,” said Sydney. “She says she’s a living example of the unnecessity of school. But she can’t add.”
    “Plus, I don’t think
unnecessity
’s a word,” said Frankie.
    “See?” said Sydney. “What did you do when you didn’t go to school?”
    “Just did what they did. They have
very
full days,” said Frankie. “I know their routines by heart. For instance, they never get up before nine a.m., except on Tuesday mornings, when they do tai chi at War Memorial Park with other old ladies.”
    “Tai chi?”
    “It’s good for arthritis,” said Frankie. He was sure he had an unnatural