Lark and Termite (6 page)

I show him one. “It’s fine,” I tell him, “a tiny bit burnt, not so you’d taste.”
You’d taste,
Termite says,
you’d taste.

“Don’t you worry,” I tell him.

Nonie

The Social Services people marched right into my living room, their hearts all righteous. He was three or four. Evaluation, they said, services. Maybe an operation so he can get out of that chair. That’s an idea, I said. Then he can scuttle himself out to the street to get hit, or down to the rail yard to fall and cut himself up, or eat that poison they set out for the dog packs. Is that what I need to worry about? They going to give me somebody to watch him every minute? No. They going to take him down to the rail yard to see those trains he spends the day listening for? They going to keep him from walking straight into one? They going to keep those sandlot kids from chucking rocks at him if they find him out by himself? They going to explain to him why those kids are so mean, why they’d treat him worse than an animal? No. The doctors in Cleveland said no promises. That part I believed. An exploratory, they said, see the extent of the damage. Then they did tests, advised against “further trauma,” told me to take him home. Minimally hydrocephalic, they said, and visually impaired. No telling what he would ever know or understand. And his spine hadn’t closed right; he would never walk. The social worker was sorry. She said we could sign up for ADC support, though it wasn’t much, or find an institution to take him if I couldn’t manage. Aid to Dependent Children—what aid? There he sat in his chair the whole time she was talking, his pillows bigger than he was, straining to hold his head up. Eyes hard to the side, looking and looking like he does.

Lark will start in about how he doesn’t like the special school, he doesn’t like the bus, he wants to be here. Maybe you’d like me to quit my job, I tell her, so I can watch over him every minute.

Then so we’re not out in the street over the mortgage and your school fees, maybe you’d like to take my place at Charlie’s. Just go ahead and quit Barker’s two years before you get your diploma, quit and bring in the money we’ve got to have. You for sure could do it as well as me with these ugly feet of mine, and we’d be in fine shape then. I try to tell her: Who takes care of him when I’m gone if you’ve got nothing but Charlie’s?

She’s got no way to better anything but get that diploma and a good secretarial job, same as I told her from years ago. That boy doesn’t know where he is, but he sure would wonder if he was down in the rail yard getting beat with a stick, same as they beat those stray dogs they find out away from the pack. He’s been happy enough in that chair ever since I put him there and he’s not got any pain in those legs. I’m thankful the doctors let him alone. What would he think in a hospital with them doing things and making him hurt, when he’s hardly been out of this house except to the river or up and down Main Street in the wagon? Who says he wants to walk around? Who says he’s missing something? What’s so great about walking around on this earth, I wish someone would tell me. Social Services going to fix that, make it someplace a boy like him can walk around?

Charlie can tell when I get to thinking about it. He’s got his back to me, cleaning the grill, but he looks over at me. “You feeling all right, Noreen?”

The air seems hard to breathe, even in the restaurant. The heat presses right up against the big window, and the air conditioner over the door is gasping. “They might be right about that storm coming tomorrow,” I tell him. “My joints are paining me.”

“Supposed to drop by forty degrees, cool off and blow hard. Rain in sheets, two, three days, starting this evening. They say half the town will flood. If they’re wrong, all that chili I made today will take up a lot of freezer space. Once the rain starts, we’ll have the city rescue workers in here, and the state people if they call them in. Noreen, you want to leave early?”

“Think I will. The river is high. The alley will flood if it’s a major storm. It’s not like I haven’t been through it before.”

“It’s what comes of living over there in the flood plain,” Charlie comments. “Want me to drive you?”

“You’re the only one here. I’ll walk. I feel like a walk, unless Elise feels like a drive. Elise, you on break?”

She nods. “I am, and I’m not going back to that store for a full hour. That idiot girl of mine was late coming in and she owes me.”

Charlie’s in favor. “Fine. Why not bring everyone back here for dinner? I’ll wait table, treat you like prize customers.”

“Not tonight. I’ll take some chili, and what’s left of the buttermilk chicken. Despite your faults, Charlie, you’re not a bad cook. Must be what keeps me around. I’ve got to be going.”

Charlie reaches over, touches the face of the watch he gave me. It’s a strong, delicate watch, just the width of his big forefinger. He moves the band on my wrist, pressing and caressing at once. He took me to a jeweler to have it fitted just right, so it moves but doesn’t slide. “Right, it’s Sunday. You’ll be expecting Nick the gardener, coming by to fix things up. Mows on Sundays, doesn’t he? He takes an interest, does Nick.” Charlie shoots a glance at Elise, trolling for an ally, but Elise looks determinedly out the plate-glass window onto Main Street.

“Nick? I don’t know what I would have done all these years without Nick, you being as occupied as you are. He’s like my brother.”

“I didn’t say he takes an interest in you.”

“Oh. You think he takes an interest in Lark? Well, Nick’s not blind, but he’s not stupid either. That’s just you, Charlie, standing guard.” Then I ask Elise, “How can I help being fond of him?”

She shrugs, like it’s a real question.

Charlie keeps on. “I’ve said it before. They all take an interest in Lark. The Tucci boys, and Nick is one of them, have run through a portion of the available girls and women in Winfield.

Call it standing guard if you like. They’re family and not family, and they’re practically on top of you, all these years. That’s shaky territory, with those boys the ages they are.”

“It’s all shaky territory. Show me territory anywhere around here that’s not shaky.”

At the counter, Elise clears her throat and nods toward the plate-glass window. Sure enough, here comes Gladdy, in her summer hat. She has the look of a sparrow wearing a plate on its head, bobbing along in a quick step. “Here we are,” I tell Charlie. “I rest my case.”

The door opens and the ring of the bell puts me in mind of Termite. One more sound that can’t tell what it means.

“Afternoon, Gladdy,” Elise says. “Hot enough out there for you?”

She waits a moment, to get her breath. Once in a while I surprise myself and understand why Charlie puts up with her, why we all put up with one another. But Gladdy, as always, can be relied on to scuttle sentiment.

“It’s just fine,” she says. “I prefer the heat. Open windows and a cross draft are all anyone needs. Not that expensive air-conditioning that is so loud and gives a person bronchitis.”

Elise lights a cigarette. “You have bronchitis?”

Gladdy ignores her, but waves a hand in front of her face as though to shoo flies. She stands back and regards Charlie. “I noticed it again, Charlie. I can see the glass in that big plate window move when I walk past on the street. I keep telling you it needs tightening. One of these days it’s going to crack straight across.”

He smiles at her. “It’s not the glass, Mother. It’s you, moving the world.”

“Very funny. But we don’t have hundreds of dollars to replace that glass. Maybe a thousand dollars.”

“She’s right,” I tell Charlie, standing under the wheeze of the air conditioner. “We don’t have a thousand dollars.”

“And there are reasons why,” Gladdy shoots back.

Then I’m out the door and the heat is like a wave, even this late in the afternoon. I look back through the window and see Elise putting out her cigarette, getting up to follow me. Gladdy is trailing Charlie back into the kitchen, chirping away.

By the time I get to Elise’s blue Ford, she’s beside me, unlocking the passenger door, and we’re cranking down the windows, hauling both heavy doors open.

“Wait,” Elise says.

She’s of the opinion cars have to be aired out in the heat, that various chemicals in the upholstery and floor mats and cushioned ceiling can harm a person when the air in a car is closed and hot. We stand here, leaning on the doors. Maybe Elise is right. I can feel hot air boiling out of the car like invisible foam.

“Well,” I tell her, “at least we entertain you.”

“That you do.” She raises her penciled brows at me. “Gladdy was just saying how her leather watchband has been good enough for her all these years. Funny how there’s never a need to worry about being hard on Charlie. Gladdy will always do it for you.”

“True love,” I say, “you can’t beat it. You and I, now, we have to settle for life in general being hard on us.”

“We can’t complain,” Elise says, and smiles. “You got the time, Noreen?”

“I do and I don’t,” I tell her. She’s not really asking. It’s a phrase she repeats in front of Gladdy, to remind her of a sore point. My watch belonged to Charlie’s grandmother, his father’s mother. She gave Charlie the watch when he was twelve, before she died—she adored him and had the sense never to like Gladdy. Gladdy can’t abide the fact Charlie gave me a Fitzgibbon heirloom. He found a jeweler in Bellington to refurbish it with a flexible platinum band and says it was worth every penny. The emerald-cut diamonds beside the rectangular face are small but perfect. Guardians of our numbers, he calls them. I won’t marry him until Gladdy dies, and I won’t have him moving in with us either. Charlie says we’re on my time, I’m in charge. He loves the watch and he loves me wearing it. The mother-of-pearl face glows in the dark just slightly, and he checks it, evenings in my bed, the nights Lark is at Barker Secretarial. He comes over and bathes Termite, puts him to bed, turns on the radio. Charlie keeps it tuned to a classical station, so Termite isn’t agitated by words. Termite likes music without words, and he falls asleep surrounded. Then Charlie and I have time. The good hour, Charlie calls it. He closes his big hand around the watch and my wrist, firm and warm, like he’s saved this for me, and he has. All these years. I’m standing here with Elise, and something quickens, flickers, at the memory of his hand in me. I’ve been married. It wasn’t like this. We still want each other, we’re practiced, it all works. Then he’s up and gone before Lark gets home. We’re not hiding anything, but it’s our privacy, and it’s how I want it.

Elise cuts me a glance. “I do believe I’m driving you straight to my place for a cold beer, Noreen. You seem to need one, and you won’t get it at home. Seems to me you could relax your policy. How long is it now since you divorced the second husband, that high-flying alcoholic? Seventeen years?”

“Billy Onslow’s drinking was almost the least of it,” I tell her, “but I don’t fault him. We were married seven months, but he stood in for me for a lot of years, watching over Lola.” I rest the bag of food on the sidewalk. Elise will need to light herself another cigarette.

She chuckles and shakes her head. “Poor Lola, gone so long and still the elephant in the room. She got what she wanted, in a way. Well out of it and still pulling the strings.”

“There aren’t any strings,” I tell Elise. “There’s just what happened.”

“There’s Lark,” Elise says, “and there’s Termite.”

She offers me a cigarette and I take it. We stand here smoking, adjusting to the heat.

• • •

C
harlie will say how strange it is I lit out of here so fast without him, only to move back years later, after all that happened, even closer to the tracks and the river and the skinny houses of Polish Town. Well, a house on a grass alley two streets from the rail yard was what I could afford, and lucky to have it. Gladdy thought it was where I belonged, of course. When I was nineteen and Charlie’s father died, she had a prime excuse for handing everything over to Charlie. The husband she’d driven to his grave was gone, and the son inherited all, including Gladdy. Your first responsibility is the business, she told him. Without your father, we could lose everything. You’ll regret knowing such a girl. Don’t make it a permanent mistake. Think of your religion, she kept saying. And you know, he did. He’s Catholic to his bones, while it’s all show with Gladdy. What if Noreen converted, he’d say, to watch his mother blanch. Charlie knew I wasn’t about to take up Catholicism, but he didn’t know I’d leave him.

I worked full-time at Murphy’s Five & Ten the two years after high school, promoted to floor supervisor, learning bookkeeping. I’d saved money and I was going to marry Charlie or else. We need to wait, he said. How long? I asked. Gladdy will live forever. He called me unfeeling—his father had dropped dead a month before—but I was hell-bent. It was Gladdy or me; he had to choose. She’s my mother, he kept saying, like that was sacred. Not to me. I’d pretty much raised myself and Lola. We’d done without mothering, and I thought it was time Charlie did. I knew a girl who had a cousin in Atlanta, so I packed two suitcases and rode out of town on the bus. Lola begged me not to go, and then she begged to come with me. I grew up here, I told her, you’ll have to do the same. And don’t even think of coming to find me until you’ve graduated high school.

I walked out on all of them. I rode buses three days and nights, washing my face in filthy restrooms, stepping over families asleep in the depots. It was 1936, hard times, but I felt free, almost grateful to Charlie. The cousin rented me a room and I got a job as a window dresser at Lowman’s Department Store in Atlanta, then as a waitress in the store restaurant, a big place always busy with shoppers and businessmen. I got to know an insurance executive who took lunch and dinner at my station nearly every day. His wife had died the year before, and his two little boys a decade earlier, the same week, of diphtheria. It’s not too late, I thought, I’ll marry him and give him children. We’ll live in his brick house with the floating staircase and have babies. But I couldn’t. Doctors told me I never would. All Charlie’s careful timing and confession and prayers had been needless: I laughed till I cried, and they were the last tears I shed over it, then to now. Barren, they called it in those days. Maybe so, but barren ground is strong, clear ground.