How to Get Along with Women (17 page)

Then Peteyboy interrupted these thoughts and said, Remember when Daddy was going to build us a house up in this tree?

Yeah.

You think we could still do that one day?

What, me and you?

Yeah.

I thought about that. We'd need some wood, I said. We'd need some big boards. If we had the right kind of wood, we could do it.

He took off the headphones.

Would we need a ladder?

I said, A ladder would be nice. A ladder would give our house some class.

That's just what I was thinking, too, Peteyboy said. Then he said, Abe?

You ready to go?

Abe?

Yeah.

When I'm trying to go to sleep tonight, will you sing me a song?

I can sing.

But don't tell none of my friends I asked you.

Okay.

Don't tell none of your friends, neither.

Okay.

Okay.

Can we go back to school?

I wanted to talk to him about the EVP to see if he remembered about it too, but he looked so sad and a little like an animal there with the big earphones in his lap that I didn't think talking about ghosts would help him out any. I had to get him down out of the tree. He sounds kind of miserable, but you've got to remember that he's only seven and it's not that easy an age.

It's true what Peteyboy said about the treehouse. Don't ask me how he remembered about it, though. I don't have all the answers. It's like he had some miracle brainwave, because the last time my father talked about it I was maybe six years old, and that makes Peteyboy only two or three.

The way it went was like this: Mama was chiding him about it. She's a tease. She said, Well boys I can see I had better nail a cardboard box up in that tree for you because that's a better house than you'll get from your old man. We were sitting out and eating peanut butter sandwiches for supper at the picnic table and she really had a big cardboard box, too, because the man had come from the furniture store that day and brought her a new washing machine that wasn't so rusty. And Mama said that and Daddy put down his sandwich and went inside the house and slammed the screen door and one of the hinges slapped off, so then the door hung crooked.

I know that was the last time, because I remember that same night Mama and Daddy had a big fight, and they never fight too much, so it's a thing you retain. I don't know what he was so mad about. Mama had just got back from one of her trips, you'd think he'd be glad to see her, and they were yelling and screaming at each other in the hallway and Peteyboy got out of bed and started to cry. He was just standing there in the doorway with his diaper sagging off him and his face all wet and his mouth wide open. Mama went to get him but my father was faster and got him up into his arms and took him into the bathroom and locked the door. Then nobody was shouting anymore, just Mama sitting on the floor with her shoulder leaned against the bathroom door, singing sweet words. Talking all kinds of sweetness to make my father come back out of that room and bring her baby with him. She was singing really beautiful through the door, so beautiful that I went to sleep and the next day and every other day we didn't talk about a treehouse anymore.

By the time it was three o'clock I had decided my talent was magic and I was itching for the bell to ring so I could go and see Ms. Clarkson. She's our school librarian but only on Tuesdays and Fridays, because the school doesn't have enough money to have a library open all week long. I was hoping she would have a book for me, maybe a secret book, even better. I was looking to produce the kind of show where things are disappearing and reappearing and girls are getting sawed in half. Yeah. And maybe some birds, trained birds that would fly out of my hands, which you previously thought were empty. I decided I needed a stage name that would tell you all that, and also it had to sound a little like my name, because credit where credit is due. Plus maybe a little continental. People always like a foreign name. The Astonishing Arborio, or Abercrombus X.

Ms. Clarkson had a book all right, but it was good and dog-eared, like some other guys had this idea before me. It was called Best Magic Tricks for Kids to Learn and mostly what it had were card tricks, which everyone knows are lame. There was one good vanishing trick in it, though, and all you needed was a toothpick and a ring. I thought if I figured out the trick of vanishing something small, like a toothpick, then maybe I could expand my knowledge and learn to vanish bigger things, like the dog or Peteyboy or Nana Louise. I laid the book across my handlebars and started reading up on the way home, going slow so I wouldn't get sick from reading and travelling like sometimes happens if you're taking a bus ride somewhere.

In a situation like that, the bike gets to have a mind of its own. My eyes were down in the magic book and not on the road and where the bike decided to go was right by that girl Madeleine's house. She and Geraldine were out in the yard playing at gymnastics on the swing set. The set had one regular swing, and then a high bar and a set of rings you could do flips on. Madeleine was hanging upside down from the high bar by her knees and letting her fingers scrape the ground and some of her hair was, too. The bottom of her shirt was doing a funny little flip thing. I noticed that my legs weren't working the pedals quite so fast. I rode a touch slower.

Madeleine yelled out to me, Well Abe, are you coming to my house for supper? and I yelled back Whatcha having? and she yelled Tripes à la mode de Caen! Tripes à la mode de Caen! and swung herself back and forth, upside down like that.

Geraldine screeched, Don't talk to him! and Madeleine swung her arms up and grabbed the bar and did a kind of somersault until she was on her feet. The bottom of her shirt flipped back so that it was flat against her stomach again. She came over near to where I had stopped my bike and stood there with both hands on the low fence and leaned over it toward me. She had some bits of old leaves sticking out of the ends of her hair. She sure looked sweet. She said, I bet I know something you don't know, Abe.

Yeah? I said. I folded up the book. I was about ready to get off my bike, too.

I heard a big truck came to your house this morning, Madeleine said, and took away all your Mama's things. She was combing her hair with her fingers to get the leaves out. She said: Your mother doesn't live with your Daddy anymore. She doesn't because she loves someone else now.

I looked her straight in the eye. I said, That sounds about right.

Madeleine said, I heard she came and sat in the truck while they packed up all her paintings and stuff and your father didn't even get out of bed to see her. He didn't even say her a goodbye.

I said, Geraldine, I hope you like fancy food. It sounds to me like you're going to get some good dinner over here with Madeleine.

Madeleine said, I'm sorry for you, Abe.

Well, I said. I've got some practicing to do if I'm gonna win that Pithog. I think I'll be going home. I stuck the book into my backpack and pushed off on my bike, standing up, you know how you do when you're really trying to get going somewhere.

We used to live in a different house that was close to where Grandpère lived, and in that house there wasn't any shabby shack for Mama to paint in and we lived with a different father then, too, our first father. When we lived in that house Peteyboy was just a baby so he usually doesn't remember too much about it, like when I say remember that old rope swing we used to have? Peteyboy nods and says yes, but there wasn't any rope swing because I just made that up. One thing that was different about that house is that when Mama went away she never left us there, she took us down the road to Grandpère's house until she came back. That's how I know about the tapes, because I used to help him set up his recorder every night and I saw the shoeboxes with their labels, okay and mon cher. She took us down the road because that other father couldn't look after us. If you were crying and standing up in your crib he might hit your face and make your nose bleed, which isn't really all right to do with a baby. When Mama was there he didn't do that stuff too much because she would make sure she was standing in the space between him and the crib.

These are the things I remember about that other father: he was tall, much taller than Mama, and his hair was black, like he'd combed it with ink or shoe black or something. He wore long-sleeved shirts with collars, but the sleeves were always rolled up short over his elbows and he wore wire-frame glasses and had a long, thin nose. He could play the violin and the piano and any kind of horn you gave him, so he was a lot of fun when there was a party at our house or any other house. He was someone Mama met when she was travelling and after she took us to live with our present father, he sold their house and went back to wherever he was from and didn't give her any of the money but she said she didn't want any of it anyway. Sometimes when I'm trying to think of things that happened around the time we left I get mixed up and forget which father did what, like all that treehouse stuff seems to me to belong to the first father but then since Peteyboy remembers it too, I know I must have it wrong. The father we have now is a bit more like a real dad that you see on television. He doesn't yell or scream too much, except he will lock you in your room, and when Madeleine says he didn't get out of bed to say goodbye I can believe it. Sometimes when I'm biking home I want to go down our old street and see Grandpère's house, but I don't do it because there's just a tiny part of me that wonders if my other father is still there in the old house and if he sees me he will remember that he loves me too much and will make me stay there and live with him instead.

I got home and dropped my bike around the side of the house. I walked into the backyard and let myself into the dusty shabby shack the way only I know how. Mama keeps a secret key under a rock three steps to the left and one down from the doorway. Where the daffodils come if it's April. She showed it to me once and said, Don't tell your father, don't tell anybody this is here, otherwise I'll never get any peace. They'll be forever walking in, asking me to taste this dish and see is it salty enough, or will I string some beads for them, or did I see whether the newspaper came yet. But she said I could come in anytime I liked, especially if she wasn't there. I put the key into the lock and let it sit in there a moment without turning or jiggling it and I just concentrated on my thoughts, and my thoughts were: Oh please.

Oh be there.

Go ahead and be there, all you paint pots and rags and old shirts Mama likes to wear when she's working. Just be there this one time and I will never again steal this key and sneak into this shack and I will never again ask her for nothing.

Never. Please.

Then I told myself Amen, because it seemed to me the right way to end these thoughts.

But when I pushed open the door, true enough, there was nothing left. The shack seemed way smaller than it used to before, when it was full of stuff. Before, you could hardly move as you came in through the door. You thought you might knock something over and catch hell, but now that it was roomy and airy I could see just how tiny the place was. I could see why we called it the shabby shack.

There was just nothing.

A big ledge under the windows all spotted up with spilled paint. That's it.

I pulled the magic book out of my bag and set it up on the ledge. I reached into my fifth pocket and pulled out Mama's ring and from another pocket I got a clump of toothpicks that I found in the kitchen at school. I slipped the ring onto my finger, third finger, left hand. It fit pretty good. Her hands must be about the same size as mine, even though she's grown and I'm not. I wiggled it up and down on my finger but it wasn't loose enough to come right off, and that's all that matters where this trick is concerned.

This is how the trick works: You hold up the toothpick so everyone can see that you've got one. Then you wave your hand up and down real slow to distract your audience, but while you're waving you kinda push the toothpick down the back of your finger, between your skin and the ring. Then the ring holds it there nice and tight, and you can spread your fingers and show the spectators how it's not in your hand anymore. Pretty neat, huh?

At first I had to go real slow and easy and not do too much waving, but after about an hour I noticed that my fingers were moving a whole lot faster and by the time the sun was going down I didn't really have to think about what I was doing anymore. My fingers could do the walking.

I thought about some other things instead.

I made up some stories.

I made up one story I liked. It went like this: One day, maybe a month from now, maybe a little more, Mama sends for me. She sends a taxicab to get me and a note that says, Abe you better come and see me right now and please don't forget to bring your old guitar because a girl can use some music when she's feeling low. So I pack up my suitcase and my guitar and load them into the taxicab and the driver takes it all over to Mama's new house. I don't ride in the cab because I'm following behind him on my Pithog. When I get to the new house, which is white and shiny and just what you think it should be, Mama is sitting there on the couch with a lace hankie and she does look burnt. She says, Abe, I sent him away. I had no choice. That man wouldn't cook for me! And I remember how she used to like it when I made her a cup of tea and crispy toast with a slice of ham on it, and I say, Mama, let's celebrate. Mama, I'm going to make you some kind of fancy dinner. She says, Abe, what are we having? and I say, Why, Tripes à la mode de Caen, of course! Mama says, Tripes à la mode de Caen! My very favourite thing! Thank goodness you're here! Do you know that man wouldn't even look at Tripes! He wouldn't even let me have Tripes in the house! And I say, Well that's all over now, Mama, and I get cooking and we have a great old time just eating and talking and laughing about things, and then after dinner I show her my repertoire of magic tricks. Starting with the vanishing toothpick, which is the first trick I ever learned.