Free Angel of Brooklyn by Janette Jenkins Page B

Native American Wildlife
, and
How to Mount
, by J. A. Flindermann, which he always brought to the table, flicking between ‘Arsenic as a Preserve’ and ‘Skinning Small Mammals’.
    These meals were now haphazard affairs. Joanna, though not much of a cook, had usually managed to assemble something that passed as wholesome – a broth, vegetables in abundance (courtesy of Cormac), a piece of grilled meat or fish, and all at set times. These times rarely altered, and even the erratic Mr Lyle seemed to have an inbuilt alarm, perhaps his very own cuckoo clock, that told him when his plate was on the table. Now that Joanna had gone, meals were cold, or lukewarm by default. They came from inside packets and cardboard boxes. Saltines, lumps of cheese in wax paper, jars of compote, German ham, occasionally a loaf. These things were ripped apart, and often never left the table, from where the family were able to graze.
    Mealtimes were now any time you felt a rumble, an ache, a feeling of emptiness, when cracker boxes would be reopened, the crackers spread with jelly, peanut butter, chicken paste, shrimp mousse, in fact anything that happened to be left over from Joanna’s last big foray to the grocers, the bill still tacked above the groaning kitchen sink.
    Then one day Beatrice saw it, all at once, like her eyes had been washed. Hacking at a square of pressed beef, she suddenly saw the clutter, the crumbs, the dust hanging in the air like a curtain, silverfish, grease, the grey smeary tint on the windows.
    ‘I can’t stand this any longer,’ she said, putting down her knife, suddenly feeling queasy.
    ‘What?’ Elijah looked up. He was flicking almonds into his mouth.
    ‘This filth. Can’t you see it? This whole house is filthy.’
    Elijah shrugged. He could see their father passing the kitchen window, carrying a barrel. He flicked another nut and it landed at the back of his tongue, making him choke it into his hand.
    ‘Just look at us,’ she said. ‘Aren’t you ashamed? I don’t know how you of all people can stand it.’
    ‘Me of all people?’
    ‘Isn’t cleanliness next to godliness?’
    ‘Well,’ he said, contemplating another almond, and then going for the beef, ‘I think we’re talking about purity of the soul here, rather than anything physical.’
    She swooped on the crumbs. ‘Are you going to help me?’ she asked, rubbing them into the sink, a sink that was already clogged with bowls and plates, globs of fat, shrunken cherries, a shrimp.
    ‘I don’t know, it’s a very big job.’
    ‘Think of it as a mission.’
    ‘By the time we finish, the house will be all messed up again. It will be a complete waste of time.’
    It took nine days and a pile of fresh rat droppings to persuade him. They pumped water into pails, and found some disinfectant. They scooped debris into sacks. Beatrice mopped the floors until her elbows numbed. Then she washed the windows. Upstairs, Elijah changed the blankets and the greasy crumpled sheets that had been nibbled by moths. Somehow, he felt good about it. He even cleaned the bathtub, the solid black rim, the plug caught up with those wet angelic feathers. It was a big job. Huge. It took them ten days. Then Beatrice asked her father for some housekeeping money.
    ‘Money? What on earth for?’ He was studying a catalogue from a firm in Minneapolis, specialising in realistic glass eyes and reproduction beaks.
    ‘Food?’
    He looked up, as if he didn’t know what the word meant, and then suddenly it dawned on him.
    ‘You can cook? A real cooked meal, all set out on a plate, and everything?’
    She didn’t know what to say. She’d imagined plate chicken pies from Hoffmann’s, and maybe fried potatoes and a tub of creamy coleslaw from the stand on Wilton Avenue.
    ‘Joanna always said I was too young to cook, what with all the sharp knives and the heat.’
    ‘Nonsense! When I was a boy our kitchen maid was nothing more than a slip of a girl. Anyway, you’re older