Gypsy Davey (11 page)

“It must be that magical dress,” Pete said, stepping up behind Davey. Lois reached over Davey's shoulder and took
her drink. With his newly free hand, Pete clapped his son on the neck. “Your mother looked like a thunderbird in that dress, kid. Put both my eyeballs out, no kidding.” Pete squeezed the muscles in Davey's neck, which were so stiff it felt as if he had a wooden coat hanger running under the skin, down his spine and out to his shoulders.

“Jesus, Davey, this is a wedding. Ain't ya havin' any fun?”

Davey wormed out of his father's grip, pulled away from his mother, who was sipping and let him go. “Ya. I'm doin' okay.”

“Here,” Sneaky Pete said, extending his manhattan glass. “Have a splash, why don'tcha. You're all knotted up.”

Lois laughed, slapping Pete playfully on the arm. Davey looked only at the glass. It looked warm and friendly, reddish amber, with a cherry in it. He took a sip. Without asking, he took another one. The warmth that flowed down his throat, then spread like a sunburst in his belly, felt nothing but nice. He even liked the taste.

“Is this mine?” Davey said, nodding at the glass in his hand.

“From me to you,” Pete said with a broad toothy smile.

“You watch yourself now, Davey,” Lois said, as close as she could manage to motherly. Then she and Pete twirled off.

Davey drank the whole drink right down. The neck muscles loosened, the stomach fluttered again, so sweet a
feeling in a place he usually didn't feel. He loaded his camera and hunted down the waitress.

He found her coming out of the ladies' room. She smiled for him one more time, so generous with her dandelion face. Then she walked up to him.

“Don't you think you have enough of those now?”

Davey shivered with the sound of her voice. A little voice, much younger than she must have been. A voice that didn't sound so wrong next to his own young voice.

“WWWWill you dance with me?” Davey said, feeling the coat hanger being yanked up in his shoulders again.

The waitress tilted her head sideways, the break-my-heart tilt that means love, or pity, or confusion. Please don't do that, he thought, putting a hand on his jumping belly to quiet it.

“You're very sweet,” she said, and stroked his cheek. “I have to get back to work now.”

He watched her walk away, her powder-blue skirt swishing with the motion of a fish tail in the water. He closed his eyes, closed them tight enough and long enough to give himself a headache, unless it was the manhattan. He wanted another one, even if it did hurt his head. He didn't open his eyes until another waitress, not
his
waitress, bumped him and said an excuse me that sounded a lot like get the hell out of the way boy. He climbed up on a speaker set up at the back
of the hall, pulled the camera up to his face and kept it there. Joanne and Gus had changed into their going-away outfits and were saying good-bye to all the guests as they gathered in a huge circle around them.

Davey snapped away, picture after picture, from much too far away for any of the pictures to show anything but little nobody people.

Lois was breathless, standing in
the doorway. “Davey, got any film left? Take our picture some more. Take it, will ya?” She threw her arm around Sneaky Pete again. Davey shot, again.

The two of them mugged like raggedy teenagers squeezed into a three-for-a-buck black-and-white-photo booth, pressing their cheeks together as they both stared out at Davey and said cheese. Kissing. Lois pushing some hair off of Pete's sun-wrinkled forehead. Pete pretending to bounce her perm-sprung head like a basketball.

“Isn't it dreamy,” Lois said, falling back on the sofa after Davey had
finally
shot the last of the film. “I mean dreamy. Y'know, dream
like
. Like the biggest dream ever.”

“Ya, it's kinda dreamy,” Davey said, counting up his little
canisters of film, piling the twelve of them into a pyramid on the coffee table. Pete fooled with the stereo in the corner.

“Joanne is safely married to that nice man with a good job, it was such a beautiful time, and now . . .”

“Now . . . here you go,” Sneaky Pete said, slipping into the spot next to her on the couch and slipping a glass of wine into her hand. Pete had put a scratchy record on the turntable. Even though he gave her a CD player for one of her birthdays, she never used it. She said she liked to hear the scratches on the albums, that the scratches made her feel like she was alive when the music played, that she somehow existed. Otherwise the music would make her disappear.

She smiled and clinked glasses with Pete, took a sip. “Oh, Jim Reeeeves,” Lois cooed at the singer Pete selected. She swayed to the soft crooning as she spoke. “Just when I thought the house was going to be empty . . .”

Empty
, Davey thought.

“. . . Suddenly, poof, one gone, another returned. What do you think of that, Davey? I must be living right or something, to have such luck.”

Davey had no idea what he thought of that. He looked at Pete, who pulled Lois in tighter. Lois lay with her head in Pete's lap. “We'll see how it goes,” Pete said evenly to Davey. Pete could always play Lois like a rag doll, but he knew he had to deliver the straight goods to Davey. “That's all I can tell ya, Davey, okay?”

“Okay,” Davey said, finally, finally, finally, at nearly midnight of a long, supposedly joyous day, finally smiling. He wasn't like his mother. A tiny spit of real hope made Davey a lot happier than all the sweet singsong in the world.

As Davey headed off to bed, Pete was working Lois up again, singing along with record. Davey looked back over his shoulder to see his father gently stroking his mother's ear as she lay there purring. Pete looked like a content, real guy, kind of like a husband, or a father. Not like a guy who stuck his thumbs in somebody's eyes. And not sneaky. He loved what he was doing to Lois as much as she loved having it done.

He sang.

“And make believe you love me

one more time . . .”

Davey heard many noises he didn't want to hear during the night. The rain on the window was not one of them—it was actually soothing and distracting from the moans and giggles and sudden thrashes coming from the other side of the wall in Lois's room. He made up his mind to move one door down, into Joanne's room, tomorrow. But the noise sounded pleasant, at least. Sounded as if his mother were happy, even if it was in a vague, fragile, sticky sickening kind of a way he didn't quite appreciate. So that was all right with
Davey. If Lois was happy, and if Joanne was happy, Davey could be happy about it. He covered his head with his pillow and blankets and tried to sleep.

It was early when he got up, and he hadn't slept much, but he couldn't stay in bed anymore. He went into the living room and flipped on the TV. He watched the old clay character shows that were always on Sunday mornings,
Gumby
and
Davey
and
Goliath
. He watched Catholic Mass in Spanish. He watched a knee replacement operation straight through on the medical channel without flinching. By seven o'clock it got boring, even for him, so he got busy moving. He trucked all his clothes down the hall, putting them in the closet and dresser drawers in Jo's room. He tacked his
E.T
. poster to the wall. He brought down all his bedding and made his new bed.

Still there was nothing happening in the house, so Davey made himself some frozen waffles and watched some more TV. He turned off the stereo, which had been on all night and was hot when he touched the top of it. He picked up the wineglasses and coats that had been dropped, washed a few dishes, then stood in the middle of the kitchen with his hands on his hips.

Silence. While it had most definitely never bothered him before, it was chewing at him this morning. But that was no reason to go waking them up. So, despite the rain that was still falling steadily, he went for a bike ride.

He thought he would ride out to the quarry, where he was
sure
to have the place to himself now. He could give a yell across, test out how it carried in the rain, and ride home again. That would be a decent stretch of pumping and would eat up enough time for his parents—he used the word, in his head, and it jarred him—to wake up. But not halfway there the rain bore down on him, he felt a slim stripe of mud being slung up on his back by the tire tread, his light clothes were soaked through, and the big drops were hitting his matted head so that he felt bald.

Davey turned off from his intended route. Where he turned into was the Greyhound station. He stopped and stared, as he always did. He looked at the people who came to drop friends and family at the station for a long trip maybe to college or the army or a new job in another city or just for a cheap vacation that started so early on a Sunday morning that there
were
no arrivals to look at, only departures. Almost everyone cried, he noticed, when they put somebody on a Greyhound bus very early on a Sunday morning. It made him sad, but he didn't want to cry and he didn't want to make them feel better, he wanted to
watch
. He saw other people who just put themselves on the bus and nobody cried about it 'cause nobody knew. He saw other people who sat on benches or floors or curbs and didn't look like they were getting on any buses going to any place. He saw an old old woman wearing a
hat that was shaped like a short flour canister with a spray of forget-me-nots sprouting out of the top. A tiny bent thing all pink—makeup, skirt, jacket, blouse, gloves—and breakable enough that she shouldn't be getting on any big nasty bus. But the driver boosted her up, her cloppy black shoes pausing so neatly together on each step, and she was off to Syracuse or Montpelier. He saw people waiting for buses, at the end or the middle of long waits, sleeping on luggage or pacing around, drinking coffee, reading schedules. One of the sidewalk people interrupted Davey in his watching, waving him over. “Kid, kid, kid, c'mere a minute. No no, don't look like that, I ain't gonna pull nothin', I just want to talk.” Davey wanted to be home more than before. He pedaled his hardest away from the station, the front wheel of the mountain bike lifting a foot off the ground.

It was the same silence as before when Davey returned, but now he was drenched to the marrow, so it was different. He was better, he was home, and home had become a better thing somehow since he got wet. He could wait. He toweled off, dropped onto the couch, and fell asleep still mostly soaked in front of the TV.

It was almost one in the afternoon when he woke up. And he found himself alone again. Finally, rested and strong and anxious to get on with it, with the whole new thing, he got up the nerve to go to the door and knock. He appreciated that
they had had a long, hard-drinking day, but this was enough.

There was no answer to the first knock. There was no answer to the second knock. He didn't wait for an answer to the third, just pushed the door open and knocked simultaneously.

Davey took two steps into the room and stopped. Lois was awake. Her nose was red, her eyes were red, her cheeks, the area between her top lip and her nose, all red, bright, and raw as if she'd been hanging over a boiling pot. Lois was staring blankly at Davey, through him. She hadn't turned as he walked in, she was already staring and had been for hours, and he just stepped into the spot. Lois was alone again.

Davey backed out of the room. He was joyed to find one of his favorite episodes of
Doctor Who
starting up on the sci-fi channel.

I'm on my bike now
but it hardly feels like it. Yesterday I was on my bike and I was right here at this spot at this time of day but at that time it
felt
like it. Not like now. The hotness was gone the regular cool was in my thoughts were coming I could sort them I could speak them even and I pedaled and when Lester talked I knew everything. I told him and he told me just like a couple of friends are supposed to tell and so they can understand.

I told my friend Lester about my baby Dennis and how I missed him how I wasn't there with him enough lately how I was gonna maybe have to spend less time with him my friend Lester so my baby Dennis could have me for him like the way he needs.

My friend Lester told me about how he understood perfectly because he had several sparklin' babies he called them
of his own scattered around the coast he would like to be spending more time with them too but there are demands on a man demands for providing for the rest and also that with the different babies in the different cities with the different mothers that maybe don't like each other all too much and that maybe don't even like himself Lester all too much these days reunionin' with 'em all can be a hairy deal that hurts more than helps anybody. I could understand that. When Lester told me.

He said he didn't like everything about what all he had to do to get by but there was prices you paid for things steal sometime here to make some money there take a little risk now to buy yourself a little relax later on in life. Gypsy boy I'll tell ya he said to me because he was the one who named me that Gypsy Davey in the first place Gypsy boy I'll tell ya he said I'm a decent man in an indecent business but still and never forget it a decent man that they cannot change not them on this side can change it and neither them on th'other. I do what I gotta do to get what I gotta get he said but I will be through with it all one day when I am still a young man. See I never young Gypsy when I was a young Gypsy like yourself I never liked not no nothin' 'bout myself not a thing and that's the truth. But I always figured figured and figured that if I only had me some money that all that would be different. Well now I got it. And it ain't no different.

So he said so I gotta get outta this here ugly thing I'm into and get after chasin' away that thing whatever it is, however I gotta chase it. Might be a God thing I gotta get into he said but I don't think so.