The Late Child (25 page)

“I don't remember but it's me all right,” Eddie said. “Iggy's still asleep and so is Sheba.”

“Iggy and Sheba—could they be parrots?” Laurie asked. “I remember you and your mom had a parrot once.”

“We did, but he pooped too much and we gave him to the zoo,” Eddie said. “Iggy's a dog and Sheba's a person like me and my mom, only she's black.”

Laurie laughed. Harmony had her ear close to the phone—she heard the laugh. Laurie had a low voice and a pleasant laugh.

“This is the nicest thing that's happened to me in a week,” Laurie said. “To tell the truth I'd been hoping you'd call someday, Eddie. I've been wanting to talk to somebody in your sister's family.”

“Were you my sister's friend?” Eddie asked.

There was a silence, and then a kind of gulp from Laurie. She was trying to control herself.

“Yes, I was, Eddie,” she said. “I was her friend.”

“What is your name?” he asked.

“Laurie,” Laurie said.

“Would you like to be my friend?” Eddie asked. “I only have Sheba for a friend here and she's asleep. Last night everyone was tired and three men with turbans brought us to the motel.”

“Is it a nice motel?” Laurie inquired.

“Well, there's supposed to be doughnuts in the office but I haven't been there yet,” Eddie said.

“The cable has a lot of channels,” he added. “There's a vet who tells you what to do if your dog only wants to walk on three legs.”

“I love that channel,” Laurie said. “Only I think they could use a nicer vet. The one they're using now is a little stiff.”

“Would you like to speak to my mom?” Eddie asked.

“Eddie, I'd
really
like to speak to your mom,” Laurie said.

“After you speak to her would you like to go to the Statute of Liberty with us?” Eddie asked. “We're going today. Sheba's going too.”

“You are the nicest boy,” Laurie said. “I think I better speak to your mother before I decide but if it's all right with her I would like to go to the Statue of Liberty with you.”

“Okay, here's my mom,” Eddie said.

Harmony felt a little shaky, taking the phone. She liked listening to Eddie talk to Laurie—actually she liked listening to Eddie talk to anybody. Eddie had even had interesting conversations with Jimmy Bangor, something Harmony had never really managed, herself.

Having to talk to Laurie herself was different. Harmony wanted to, but she wasn't sure her voice would work correctly. After all, Laurie was with Pepper when she died. It might become such a sad conversation that her voice would stop working or something.

“Hi,” she said—though it was only one syllable, her voice quavered.

“I know how you feel,” Laurie said. “I'm glad you're here. Where are you?”

“I think it's in New Jersey,” Harmony said. “It's called the No-Tel Motel.”

“The No-Tel Motel?” Laurie said. “Are you sure that's safe?”

“I'm not sure of anything,” Harmony said. “Can we meet you? That's why we came.”

“I need to meet you so badly. … I guess I was afraid you wouldn't want to,” Laurie said. Then she did the little gulping sound again.

“Honey, why?” Harmony said. “Why would you be afraid?”

“Because I'm gay,” Laurie said. “I was afraid you might think I had something to do with Pepper getting AIDS.”

“Laurie, I know you loved her—my best friend is gay,” Harmony said. She remembered Gary, running across the street and almost getting hit by the taxicab, as they were leaving Las Vegas.

“People have attitudes—I couldn't be sure,” Laurie said. “Should I call you Harmony or should I call you Mom?” Laurie asked.

Harmony choked up. It had never occurred to her that anyone besides Eddie would ever call her Mom again. Even Pepper, when she was alive, had only once or twice called her Mom.

“What's Laurie saying?” Eddie asked. He hated to be left out of phone conversations, or any conversations, for that matter.

“I'll talk now, give me the phone,” he said, when Harmony didn't immediately respond.

“Laurie, call me whatever feels best—I think Eddie wants to talk to you again,” Harmony said. She shoved the phone at Eddie and buried her face in the pillow. Just then there was a knock at the door. Harmony ignored it. Eddie pointed at the door and Sheba, yawning, got up to answer it. When she did Neddie and Pat walked in, both in their bathrobes.

“What happened to your hair, child?” Neddie asked—
without the hair and the lipstick Sheba did indeed look like a child.

“It's on the floor, over there,” Eddie said, pointing at Sheba's wig.

“Eddie wanted it, so I gave it to him,” Sheba said, with a sleepy grin.

“I was showing my aunt where Sheba's wig went,” Eddie said, to Laurie. “I didn't mean not to talk to you.”

“Relax, Eddie,” Laurie said. “I don't have a job right now, so we can talk at our own pace.”

“That's good because if you had a job you couldn't go with us to see the Statue of Liberty,” Eddie said.

“Well, it's good from every point of view except the point of view of not starving to death,” Laurie said.

“Oh, are you from Somalia?” Eddie asked. He had paid close and concerned attention to the famine in Somalia, a problem no one else in Las Vegas wanted to think about.

“No, I'm from California,” Laurie said. “I just meant that if I don't get a new job pretty soon, I'm going to run out of money, and when I run out of money it's going to be hard to buy food.”

“Well,” Eddie said—it was his drawn-out, philosophical “well”—“I think you should come over here right now and we'll go to the office together and have chocolate doughnuts. They also have glazed doughnuts, the kind with goo in them.”

“Sounds like a winner to me,” Laurie said. “Did your mother go back to sleep?”

“She's just crying … it's because my sister deaded,” Eddie said. “It makes her sad.”

“It makes me sad too …” Laurie said, making the gulping sound again.

Eddie took the phone away from his ear and looked at his aunts.

“Everybody's sad today,” he said. “We all need doughnuts and then we need to find the turban men and go to the Statute of Liberty
soon
.”

“It's a good thing we got Bright,” Sheba said, looking at Eddie
and Harmony. Everybody could hear Laurie's sobbing, through the phone.

“Who were you talking to, Eddie?” Pat asked.

“Laurie,” Eddie said. “She's not from Somalia but she might starve if she doesn't get a new job.”

“Tell her to get her butt over here and we'll see that she don't starve,” Pat said.

Eddie covered the receiver. “I won't say ‘butt,'” he said. “It's where farts come from. Anyway, I already invited her and she's going to come when she stops being sad.”

“Bright, do you think I could take a shower?” Sheba asked. “Would anybody mind? I ain't had a good long shower in a week.”

“Honey, go take one,” Harmony said, rousing herself briefly.

“If this room is like our room you'll have to dry off on the washrag,” Neddie said. “They ain't lavish with towels up here in New Jersey.”

“Wait!” Eddie commanded, as Sheba was drifting off toward the bathroom. “What is your doughnut preference?”

“Glazed, see if you can snatch about three,” Sheba said.

Eddie picked up the phone and spoke to Laurie. “You should come very quickly, so we can go get the doughnuts,” he said.

“I would come immediately if I knew where to come,” Laurie said.

Pat managed to find the address on a piece of stationery in a drawer. She took the phone and read the address to Laurie.

“Wow,” Laurie said. “You really are in Jersey City. I'm having a hard time imagining how that could have happened.”

“Honey, it will be crystal-clear once you meet the family,” Pat said. “Not a single one of us has ever done anything right.”

Eddie looked shocked, to hear his aunt make such a remark.

“Well, my mom did something right, she had
me!
” he pointed out.

Both Pat and Laurie laughed.

“You got me there, cutie,” Pat said.

When Sheba emerged from her long shower she looked even younger. She put on Harmony's bathrobe and went with Eddie to the office to get doughnuts.

“How old do you think that child really is?” Neddie asked.

Harmony was thinking about the men in cars and the sex that happened across the street, in the parking lot in front of the pay phones. It seemed hard to believe that the girl walking down the hall with her five-year-old son had been getting in cars with those men for who knew how long.

“Was she doing what I think she was doing, when we drove up?” Pat asked.

“Pat, she's homeless,” Harmony said. She knew it wasn't exactly an answer to the question.

“If kids that age are whoring, then New Jersey's even raunchier than Oklahoma,” Neddie said.

“Laurie will be here soon,” Harmony said. “I just want her to get here.”

“I bet Eddie's breaking some ice down in the office,” Pat said. “That kid's got panache.”

“I'm getting kind of lonesome for the farm,” Neddie said. “I wonder if we can meet Laurie, see the Statue of Liberty, and get headed home tonight?”

“No, we can't, I ain't even set foot on the Great White Way,” Pat said. “I want to shop at Macy's too, while I'm here.”

“I can only take so much city,” Neddie said. “I get lonesome for the plains. You can live on the Great White Way. I'm heading home to Tulsa pretty soon. I'd rather even be in the Tulsa airport than be in a motel in New Jersey that don't even have no towels.”

Just as she said it there was a knock on the door. Harmony immediately felt the shaky feeling she had felt earlier.

“Don't be nervous, I'm sure Laurie's nice,” Pat said.

“Mom, we have doughnuts, and we also have a surprise,” Eddie said, through the door.

Harmony opened the door and saw that the surprise was Laurie, a tall girl with short brown hair and big sad eyes.

“Laurie came and paid for the doughnuts,” Eddie said.

Sheba came in with a paper plate heaped with doughnuts, but Harmony just stood and looked at Laurie, who was wearing black jeans and a black blouse.

“Hi,” Laurie said. Then she and Harmony hugged.

“I can't believe you're in this motel,” Laurie said. She still had her arms around Harmony, who had the wish that life could just stop right there, while she was hugging the young woman who had been her daughter's friend. But of course life couldn't stop right there, she finally had to stop hugging Laurie and step back.

“Don't ask us how we ended up in this motel,” Pat said. “We just did.”

Harmony noticed Sheba looking sad. Maybe she thought that because a white girl had arrived she would be thrown out or something, though no one had said a word to make her feel that way. Nonetheless, the girl's face was sad. Probably she thought that being with Eddie and his family was a brief, nice dream that was about to end.

“Eddie, could you serve the doughnuts?” Harmony asked. “Give Sheba one first—she looks real hungry.”

“Ain't so much hungry as scared,” Sheba said. “Otis gonna be coming around looking for me pretty soon.” Then, to everyone's dismay, she began to cry. She stuck her head under the covers and cried.

“I wonder who this Otis is,” Pat said. “Maybe we should have hired the turban man as security after all.”

“I think Sheba may have low blood sugar,” Eddie said. “I should have fed her a doughnut sooner.”

“No, I think Sheba's just sad,” Neddie said. “I wake up feeling that way half the time myself. Them moods hit me and I just feel, What's the point? Why feed the chickens? Why slop the hogs? Why take the dog to the vet? Why milk the cow? Why rake up
the cowshit down in the lots? Why put gas in the pickup when there's no place I want to go? Why go to the feed store when I hate every animal on the place? Why talk to Dick when I ain't had a word to say to him in twenty years? Why talk to my kids?—they don't listen anyway. Why go to church?—the preacher's a lech. Why keep paying insurance on a house I don't want?”

She stopped and looked around. Everyone had fallen silent.

“Why even live?” she concluded.

There was a silence.

“I think Aunt Neddie's got low blood sugar too,” Eddie said, handing her a doughnut. “Be careful, this one's got goo in it.”

“Those doughnuts look pretty stale,” Laurie said. “I think they may be yesterday's doughnuts. Why don't we all go into Manhattan and have a nice breakfast at my place?—Sheba too.”

“But what about the Statue of Liberty?” Eddie asked. “The turban men are coming to take us soon.”

Just then there was a knock at the door.

Sheba flung the covers back and darted into the bathroom.

Laurie opened the door and there stood Omar, Abdul, and Salah, all of them considerably cleaner than they had been the night before. Their turbans were spotless.

“Taxi and bodyguards for trip to Statue of Liberty,” Omar announced.

“My God, they're back,” Pat said.

“Our swains,” Neddie said, dryly.

Harmony was kind of glad to see the three men. They didn't seem like such bad guys, to her. Omar had sweet breath, although he didn't have teeth.

“Talk about a melting pot, get all of us in here and we'll have one,” Pat said.

“You want pot, we can find, small fee,” Abdul said.

Meanwhile Laurie was whispering in Eddie's ear. Eddie looked annoyed.

“Do you have a boat?” he asked Omar. “Laurie says you have to have a boat to get to the Statue of Liberty.”