Eggs (12 page)

37

They talked.

They talked because it was night, and because weird people walk the tracks at night, and because there was nothing else to do, and because they could barely see each other, and because maybe the bushes were not enough.

The sound of their voices was a palisade against the dark.

At last Primrose told David why they were going to the city: “To see the waving man.”

He was stunned. “The one on TV? That waves at cars?”

“Yeah.”

“Why?”

“Don’t laugh.”

“I won’t.”

“Two reasons.”

“Yeah?”

“Number one, I want to see if it’s fake.”

“You think it’s a trick?”

“Not a trick exactly. Well, maybe. I don’t know. That’s the problem, I don’t know. I want to find out for sure. See it for myself.”

“What’s number two?”

“Don’t laugh.”

“I
said.
”

“I’m gonna ask him why he does it.”

“Really?”

“Yeah.
If
it’s real, I’m gonna ask him.”

“What do you think he’ll say?”

“How do I know? That’s why I’m asking.”

David said, “I have a question too.”

“Yeah? What?”

“I was thinking about it for a long time.”

“Are you going to tell me?”

“Do you have to be in a car for him to wave to you?”

Primrose did not know.

She said, “How long did you know about the picture?”

He said, “I don’t know. A pretty long time.”

“How did you find out?”

“At the flea market one day. Somebody was selling lots of them. They gave me one for free, but no frame. I showed it to my grandmother. She told me.”

“Your grandmother, huh?”

“Yeah.”

“Did she laugh? Say I was stupid?”

“I didn’t tell her it was about you.”

“And you didn’t tell me.”

“No.”

“You didn’t think I knew it wasn’t really my father.”

“No.”

“But you didn’t tell me.”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t know.”

“When
were
you going to tell me?”

“I don’t know.”

“But then you got mad at me.”

“Yeah.”

“And so you were going to tell me.”

“I was just kidding.”

“It was a just a threat, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Would you never have told me?”

“I don’t know.”

“As long as you lived?”

“I don’t know.”

“Prob’ly not, huh?”

“Prob’ly.”

David could not see her face, but he knew she was crying. He wondered why.

“Primrose?”

“Huh?”

“I know another secret.”

“About me?”

“No. Me.”

“You gonna tell me, or do I have to beg?”

“I won’t ever see the sun rise unless I’m with my mom.”

“Because you were going to see it with her, but then she fell and hit her head and died the day before. April twenty-ninth. Carolyn Sue Limpert. Slippery floor. Minnesota.”

“You know all that?”

“You only told me a million times. Me and Fridge.”

“I wish Refrigerator John was here.”

“We’re okay.”

Their words held hands in the night.

“Primrose?”

“Huh?”

“I have another secret, that you
really
don’t know about.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. You want to hear it?”

“No.”

Silence.

She laughed. “Just kidding.”

“I’m afraid to tell it.”

“It’s about your mother.”

He gasped. “How did you know?”

“A totally wild guess.”

“It’s my most secretest secret there is.”

“You have till the count of three. One . . . two . . .”

“I believe that if I obey all the rules, my mother will come back.”

“Is that why you’re always picking up litter?”

“Yeah.”

“Why you never go in the Out at the supermarket?”

“Yeah.”

“You really believe it, huh?”

“Yeah. Why, you think it’s stupid?”

“Believe what you want. It’s a free country.”

David tore a weed from the cool earth. “What if it is stupid?”

“What’re you asking me for? What do I look like, a professor or something? I’m thirteen years old. I’m a kid.”

“Or what if I’m just not good enough? What if my mother’s waiting someplace, just
waiting
for me to be good enough so she can come back, but she can’t because I keep messing up.” He punched his leg with each word. “Messing up . . . messing up . . .”

He was crying.

Primrose said, “Hold out your hand.”

He felt her hand touch his, turn it palm up. Then he felt something smooth and round. “Malt ball?”

“The extra one. I saved it.”

“For me?”

“Eat it.”

He ate it.

“Hold out your hand.”

He did. Now it held a bottle.

“There’s just a sip left. You can’t eat a malt ball without drinking something afterward.” She snickered. “It’s a rule.”

He drank. She was right, it was just a sip, finished even as his mouth was reaching for more. But it was the most wonderful sip he had ever had.

And then, suddenly, he could see her.

She was looking up, pointing. “Moon’s out.”

Out it was, a little lopsided, like a deflated volleyball, unmoving among the smoky drift of clouds.

She reached into her backpack and came out with the
Veronica
comic. She wagged it in his face. “Quick,” she said, “read to me.”

“It’s dark,” he said.

“Use the moonlight. You can do it. C’mon, before it goes back in. Wait —” She pulled off her sneakers and socks. She flattened the socks and lay them neatly one atop the other on the ground. She lay herself down then, on her back with her head pillowed on the socks. “Okay, go.”

David opened the comic book. “I can’t. It’s too dark.”

“That’s what you get for not eating your carrots. Turn around, so the moon’s behind you.”

David did so. She was right. The moon, like a lamp over his shoulder, gave light enough to see the words.

“Wait!” Primrose pulled David’s legs out in front of him, flat to the ground, then swung herself around so that her head rested in his lap. “Okay, now, go,
go.
”

David began to read.

Primrose interrupted. “Read the ads too.”

David snapped, “O-
kay.
Now shut up.”

He read on. He read a story about Veronica’s birthday and the plan she came up with to make Archie buy her the present she wanted most. He didn’t understand all the words, but that was all right because all he had to do was pronounce them, and he was good at that. He was especially good at sound effects, such as “Krrr-rash!” and “Oof!” His favorite character turned out to be neither Veronica nor Archie, but Ms. Beazly, the wild-haired lunchroom lady. She was so crotchety to everybody, even the principal, she made David laugh.

When he finished the birthday story, he lifted the comic and looked down at Primrose. Her eyes were closed. There was a faint smile on her face, the same face he had brushed leaves from in the park. Her hands were folded over her chest, like his mother’s in the funeral parlor. He didn’t like that. He lifted one of her hands as gently as possible and moved it. And noticed something else too — ugly bruises on the moonwashed surface of her arm — where he had punched her. He whispered, “Primrose.” She did not move.

He read some more. He was partway through the next story, about Veronica’s job at an ice-cream shop, when the light went out. A cloud had covered the moon.

“David?”

Her voice was groggy, her eyes still closed.

“Huh?”

“What happened?”

“The moon went in. I thought you were asleep.”

“I was. You stopped.”

“It’s out again. Go back to sleep.”

She moved her head from his lap and lay on her side on the ground. The moon was not out again, but that was no matter. David knew now what to do. He raised the comic book. He began: “So, Veronica was supposed to make a banana split, but she couldn’t find any bananas, so . . .” Word by word he made up the story, turning the pages noisily as if he were reading. He made sure to have Ms. Beazly visit the ice-cream shop.

When he finished that story he made up another, about Veronica enlisting in the army and meeting Beetle Bailey.

Then he told the story of Mike Mulligan and his steam shovel named Mary Anne. He remembered every word as his mother had read it to him night after night.

He told the story of
Goldilocks and the Three Bears.
And then he retold it as
Beetle Bailey and the Three Bears.
And then as
Mike Mulligan and the Three Bears.
And then as
Ms. Beazly and the Three Stooges.
That one gave him lots of
oofs
and
krrr-rashes.

He had never known he had so many stories in him. Whenever the moonlight came back — a minute here, a minute there — he used it to look at her. She was as asleep as a person ever was. She was catching up on a lifetime without bedtime stories, and David was determined to give her a thousand nights’ worth.

The Little Engine That Could.

Jack and the Beanstalk.

The Little Beanstalk That Could.

A Steam Shovel Named Primrose.

And then, his own eyes drooping, he told his final story. It was called
David and His Mother
. It was about a boy who lost his mother. All because somebody made a dumb mistake and didn’t follow a rule. And so the boy decides to follow a thousand rules of his own. Maybe a million. And sooner or later that broken rule will be mended and his mother will come back. Then he meets this girl with ropey hair, a teenager, and she breaks every rule she runs into and moves out of her own house to get away from her mother — and it’s just all backwards, this story, because the kid who wants a mother doesn’t have one and the one who has one moves out. He wants to scream at the girl, “You don’t know how lucky you are!” but instead he goes to see her mother, who is a fortune-teller, and she tricks the boy into thinking she can bring his mother back but she can’t because she’s a crackpot. But she loves her daughter, David can tell, loves her the way David’s mother loved him, and sometimes David feels that same love he used to, except now it’s coming from other places, other people, and it’s a good thing the love is coming because he’s beginning to think there aren’t enough rules in the universe to bring his mother back.

By the time he finished the story he was lying down beside her. A distant train whistle flew up the moon-silver river like a long last good-bye. He squirmed backward, fitting himself into the spoon of her body. He reached back for her arm and pulled it over and around himself. He closed his eyes, and then there was nothing but the sound of her breathing in his ear.

38

“David, wake up.”

Mom?

“Wake up!”

She was shaking him.

He opened one eye. “Huh?”

“C’mon, I want to show you something. Come
on.
” She pulled him to his feet. “It’s neat. You gotta see.” She dragged him by the hand, chattering. “I woke up really early. I wasn’t even tired. You were out like a light. I figured I’d go do some exploring. Watch your step here.”

All was gray, like before. The river was gray, still and flat and gray. He did not want to watch his step. He wanted to sleep. He stepped in water.

“See that,” she growled. “You never listen.” She stopped and sat him down and pulled off his sneaks and socks and rolled up his pant legs to his knees. “Leave your stuff here. We’ll get it on the way back. C’mon.”

He staggered on, hand-dragged, almost awake now. “Where are we going?” he whined.

“You’ll see. We’re almost there. Around this bend.”

The river turned left. As they came out of the turn David could once again see the pair of skyscrapers beyond the trees. But it was the river that caught his attention. It was even wider here and very straight. In fact, in the distance, he could see the river meet the sky, which was blushing at that point. Several bridges spanned the river, framing the rosy horizon. Closer to them something else crossed the water.

Primrose pointed. “There it is.”

“What is it?” David said. It was long and narrow and flat, barely higher than the water, the color of concrete. It looked like a sidewalk from one riverbank to the other.

“A dam,” she said. “C’mon.”

Across the river a lightbulb winked out.

David said, “What time is it?”

She grabbed her wrist. “What do I look like, a clock? Come
on.
” She was running, pulling him along, his bare feet slapping water. The blush in the sky was getting brighter by the second.

They stopped at the edge of the dam. She threw out her arms. “Neat, huh?” She looked pleased and proud enough to have discovered America.

“Usually, see, the water runs over it. But the river’s low.” She reached down and ran her hand over the pitted surface of the dam. “Dry as a bone.” She stepped onto it. “We can walk across!” She pulled David on.

The surface was rough and cool on his bare feet. The sky at the end of the river was no longer blushing, it was glowing from the fire below. He wrenched free. “No!” he yelled. “I can’t! You
know
I can’t! I
told
you!”

She looked at the horizon, looked at him. She snatched his wrist. “Listen, you little mouse nipple, I’m walking across this river and you’re coming with me. If you don’t want to look, fine, don’t look.”

She yanked him forward. There was no escaping her grip. He closed his eyes, squeezed them shut, and remembered walking down the dark hallway behind his mother the night the electricity went out. As on that night, fears he could not name blew chills upon him from a window left open to his soul. But there was no fear in his feet, for they trusted utterly the hand that led him.

In time she stopped.

Were they across?

“Primrose?” he said.

She jerked his hand. “Shh.”

He could tell that she had turned. She was facing downriver. They were still on the dam. When her voice finally came, it was hardly a whisper, hardly hers: “Oh wow . . . oh my God . . . oh man . . .”

Her hands cupped his shoulders, gently turned him. At once he felt it on his face: the warmth, the newborn day.

“Okay,” she said, her voice sweet as Mango Madness. “You don’t have to look. I won’t make you.”

Her hands fell away. He was alone. Untouched. A voice deep inside, a David-voice from long ago, cried out to the Other Side: “Mommy!” But he knew the time had come. He opened his eyes and followed the river to the crown of the rising sun. It was crisp and sharp and beautiful and smooth as a painted egg. And changing by the moment. Orange at first, then butterscotch, then yellow, a plump breakfast yellow of egg yolk; and then, as if poked with a fork, it suddenly broke, spilling, flooding the river and the city and the trees and the sky and every dark corner of the world.

He had been tricked again. But this time it was different, this time it was okay. He clung to her, sobbing, his tears damp on her shirt, nearly squeezing the breath out of her.

She folded him in her arms. “I’m not her, you know,” she whispered hoarsely. “I’m only me. Primrose.”

He nodded against her. “I know.”