How to Get Along with Women (16 page)

The policeman turned to my father. He kind of took a breath. He said that he didn't think he could see his way clear to filing a missing person report on Mama, because of her history. Because there's a pattern, see: she leaves, then she comes back. Well, shit, that wasn't news to me but you should have seen the snarl come up on my father's mouth.

He stood up and got right in that cop's face.

He said, My wife has been taken in the night. Then he used some very foul language that I won't repeat here, and he used it in a way that was slow and careful and with all his teeth showing.

I tried to make the policeman look at me, instead, so he could see how I was shrugging my shoulders. Normally we don't call the police when Mama leaves. Normally my father just goes to bed until she gets back.

This here's a happy life she's got here! my father said. Just lookit what she's got here!

Nana Louise laughed and laughed. I ripped off a few sheets of paper towel to cover up the spot where the dog was barfing.

Peteyboy had his finger way down in the peanut butter jar. He was having his breakfast.

I could see that the cop looked nervous.

Tell you what, man, he said. If she's not home in three days, you come down to the station and I'll file that report for you. I'll do what I can.

I walked him to the door.

Son, he said. Abe. You've got quite a job ahead of you here, but I can see that you are a quality youngster. I can see that you are up to it and more.

Yeah, I said. I've got a pretty big brain.

We shook hands again and then he got into his squad car and backed slowly down the driveway and I stood on the porch and waved. When he got to the road he stuck his head out the window and yelled, Betcha she'll be home in time for supper! and I kind of leaned my neck out and looked down the road because I could tell that was what he was expecting and it did make him happy. His mouth opened up nice and wide and I felt good sending him off like that, back to the station with a story to tell and no sad kids at the end of it.

Then I went back inside and told old Nana Louise to go home. I've got a sunny disposition—an optimistic nature, you might say—but watching her sit around and cry was liable to make the other boys, Peteyboy and my father, feel depressed. I told Peteyboy to get his clothes on or we'd be late for school. I fried up some eggs and put the bread on the table and told my father he'd better eat something and then get some sleep. The eggs got all brown and crispy on the bottom which isn't the way I like them, but I had a lot to do and a person can't just stand around watching eggs cook.

How the mornings usually go around here is like this: first me and Peteyboy get up and we wake up Mama. Sometimes she is sleeping in the bed with my father and sometimes she is sleeping on the couch in the living room. You think this is because they are fighting, but it's not. Sometimes one of them or the other has a hard time getting to sleep and then it's easier to toss and turn all by yourself and not in a room where someone else is already sleeping and you feel guilty about it. So wherever she is, we find her and Peteyboy jumps on her but I don't do that anymore because I'm pretty big for that sort of thing. I might sit down in the armchair next to where she's been sleeping and ask her how her night was, and then she'll yawn and roll over and ask me to pass along her robe.

The robe is a really pretty one, long and red and silky with these fancy pictures of birds on it and a tie around the waist. She bought it in Chinatown once when she was visiting New York, back a long time ago before even I was born and maybe before she knew my father. What my mother used to do back then was go to New York and she had enough friends there that she always had someone to stay with and she would live on bread and cheese and when she got sick of that she would live on honey-and-banana sandwiches because it was cheap and at least it wasn't cheese. And she would sit out all day in the park and look at all the sorts of people that came by and if any men tried to talk to her she would always answer in German or Dutch or Italian or something so that they would see she couldn't speak any English and then they'd leave her alone. Some days she would go to the art museums by herself and walk around real slow and try to stand in front of one painting for fifteen minutes before she'd let herself move on to the next one. Some days she'd bring a sketchbook and try to copy some of the paintings, and then some days she'd let herself speak English so that she could find someone to take her to dinner. At night she'd go back to wherever she was staying and she'd have one million stories to tell, or she'd show her book around so her friends could see what she'd been up to all day, and she'd sleep on the couch or on the floor and start all over again the next day.

Even in this little town, at the end of a day she's always got a story about someone she saw and what they said to her and what she said back, so I can imagine how good it was in New York.

So anyway, I pass her along the robe and she wraps herself all up in it and goes into the kitchen and rolls herself a cigarette, just one. She only does one at a time so that it's not so easy to smoke. Sometimes she lets me lick the paper for her, but sometimes she's in too much of a hurry for that. Then she has a cup of coffee and smokes her cigarette with the window open beside her and looks over any drawings that me and Peteyboy have done lately and she'll run her hand through your hair if she likes the kind of drawing you've done. When she cooks eggs or pancakes or anything, they're always soft with just a little crinkle along the very edge. After me and Peteyboy run and get cleaned up for school she slides into her long coat to cover up the robe, so she can walk us out to the bus stop, but she still wears her high heel slippers because she says it's okay to let those bitches talk.

Only on the mornings Mama's gone, it's me that has to make the eggs because I feel too sorry for my father to make him do any work. He just stands around in his green check pyjama pants and no shirt and when he goes into the bathroom you don't hear that tap-tap noise against the sink that means he's shaving. After we eat, I send him back to bed and make sure that Peteyboy gets cleaned up. Then I go into the bathroom last thing and run a comb through my hair and brush my teeth for real with toothpaste because Mama says only barbarians go around with fuzzy teeth.

Now this is where things get particular. When I went into the bathroom this day I saw something shiny lying next to the sink and it was my mother's gold wedding ring. She must have taken it off to wash her hair before she left, and then forgot to put it back on. Or else maybe she took it off to clean up some mess in the bathroom, some mess that Peteyboy left before he went to sleep. I knew she would want it just as soon as she came back, so I slipped it into the pocket of my jeans for safekeeping. The pocket I put it in was the fifth pocket, you know that really tiny one that sits inside the regular pocket on a pair of Levi's. That's where I put the ring.

If you're wondering did I tell my father or Peteyboy what I found, I did not. I don't know why I didn't. I liked the feel of it, tight and secure in that little pocket and I could reach my finger in and check to make sure it was all right. I could run my fingertip around and around it. It was so smooth. Then I brushed my hair and we went and got on our bikes and rode to school, because if we showed up at the school bus without Mama the other ladies would be asking us questions. It was pretty cold still for biking and my fingers ached when I had to unwind them from the handlebars and get them to do all kind of fancy tricks with the bike locks. But then we were at school, and not much to tell about that. One school is just the same as another, and I guess you've been to school, so you can just imagine.

At lunchtime I was playing a pretty furious game of handball against the side of the building with Tom Kilpatrick and Raji Jones when Geraldine Lafleur came up looking too pleased with herself and stood between us and the wall.

Tom said, Aw, come on, Gerry.

Geraldine is his cousin so he can't talk to her like she's just a regular girl. She's not Raji's cousin, though, and he told her she better move if she didn't want her head whipped off. He had the ball in his hand and he kept trying to fake her out but Geraldine has three brothers and isn't afraid of boys.

She said, You all know Madeleine, don't you? She said it very sweet and high and with a funny smile on. Madeleine Welsher is the new girl, just moved into school about a month before. Most of us have been in the same class since kindergarten. When you get someone fresh, it's big news. So you can see the kind of question it was. Add to that, she's not bad to look at, either. Her hair is really long and curly. It's really happy-looking hair. Her parents moved down from the city and let her wear all sorts of short skirts and thin-strap tops that let her bra show. So I know she wears one.

Well, said Geraldine. Well, Madeleine's father is sponsoring a talent competition for the spring fair. He's putting up the prize—a new bike or two hundred dollars, your choice. I thought I should let you boys know. In case you know anybody with some talent.

Raji let the ball go and it hit Geraldine in the shoulder. The spring fair is a thing that happens at school in April. The choir sings and the recorder group plays and usually the drama group puts on a skit or two. The parents all come and sit on wooden chairs in the gym, and then at the end everybody has to get up and stack their chairs back together so the caretaker can store them away again under the stage in the morning. In short, it's an event for girls. It would be hard to think of a girlier thing to do than be in a spring fair.

Of course there's no arguing that two hundred dollars is a lot of money and I've got just as much talent as the next guy.

Tom said, What kind of bike is it?

A dirt bike, Geraldine said. I want the money if I win.

Madeleine came walking up. I didn't even know she was behind us.

It's a Pithog, she said. 50 cc. Comes with a helmet and gloves and everything. Worth way more than two hundred bucks.

Aw, my mother won't let me ride a dirt bike, Raji said. He went to get his ball that was rolling away. Geraldine rubbed her shoulder. I slipped my finger down into my fifth pocket and felt my mother's smooth ring in there and thought about how happy it would make her to see me winning motocross races on my brand new Pithog that I won by showcasing all my talent. I might even let her paint a picture of me standing next to it. My hair would be all ruffled and I'd have the helmet tucked against my body under one arm and maybe in the other hand I'd be holding a trophy. When I was grown and had made a lot of money racing bikes I could buy her a bigger house with a real fireplace in it, and whenever I went home she'd say, Oh darlin' let me make you a cup of coffee, and we'd sit in the living room and drink our coffee and look up at the picture of me hanging over the fireplace and we'd have a good laugh remembering how I won that bike. It was obvious to me that I was going to have to enter that contest, for Mama's sake of course, and I was just about to say it out loud, too, but then my brother's friend Lucas Pickersgill came running up and said that Peteyboy had biked home after lunch and wasn't back yet and was he in trouble. So instead I went to the principal's office and told them I needed to go home and check on my poor father who was in bed with a fever and had no one to look after him and they told me to be back by two o'clock.

What Peteyboy likes to do when Mama is gone is get up into a tree and watch down the road to see is she coming back yet. You can't fault him for this because he's young and little kids do a lot of worrying. So when I got home that's where he was, with his bike lying on the ground like he had leaned it up against the tree but maybe the tree kicked it away. I dropped my bike into the grass and climbed up onto his branch. At first we didn't say anything, but we just sat there with our thoughts. Peteyboy had Mama's old tape recorder in his lap and some big muffy headphones on his ears. I could tell he wasn't listening to anything because the little wheels inside the tape recorder weren't moving. He just likes to have things over his ears.

It was nice and quiet up there in the tree, with no horns honking or other street-type noises to bother us, and I got to thinking about my Grandpère who was Mama's grandfather before he died and who used to live down the road from us when we still had our old house. He lived there with Grandmère. Even after she passed on, you could tell it was her house. I mean there was the usual old lady stuff like plates hanging on the wall that you don't eat off of, but besides that. What she is like is the lady in the portrait that you see in cartoons, you know? Like when there's a portrait on the wall in some old creepy mansion and some teenagers are exploring the house and they split up and you see the eyes in the portrait following them down the hall. That's what her house was like, only without the portrait. Just the eyes.

Grandpère liked to keep in contact with her when he could. He learned all about a thing called EVP, electronic voice phenomenon, and how even Thomas Edison thought he'd invented a machine that could record voices from the next world. He set up a cassette recorder on the dining room table and every night before he went to bed he hit record, and then in the morning he would listen and see what he got. A few of the tapes were duds. But he found some little thing on most of them, either a hello or a darlin' or a just fine and then he labeled them and filed them in a shoe box and stacked all the shoeboxes in his closet. After he died, Mama brought all the shoeboxes home to our house because she said even if the old man was crazy as shit, how could you throw that stuff away? So there they are, stacked up in the shabby shack with all Mama's other stuff. Ghost tapes.

Sometimes Mama pulls out a tape and puts it on when she's working, so you come into the shack and there she is with her big man's shirt on over her clothes, just painting and listening to silence.