The Late Child (24 page)

“Can she stay with us, Mom? She doesn't have a place,” Eddie said.

“Sure, honey,” Harmony said, remembering some of her own hard times in Las Vegas, in the year after she tried and failed again with Ross. She was in her forties by then; she couldn't get a job in any show, and even the junkets didn't want her as a hostess. There had been a month or two when she was only one step short of having to hook herself, or else sleep in the bus station. Fortunately Gary and Jessie and Myrtle had all been true friends.
They had all let Harmony stay in their places, when she was at a low ebb; then, finally, she got a job in the recycling plant.

She knew quite well, though, that she could have been standing where Sheba stood, only at a later age, when it would have been a big adjustment to have to stand at a curb all made up and hope some guy with a hard-on would like her looks well enough to give her a little money for a minute or two of sex.

Looking past Sheba, Harmony could see where the minutes of sex were taking place for Sheba and her sisters: in the parking lot of a big, all-night grocery store across the street. When one of the girls would get in a car, the driver would just do a quick U-turn and whirl into the parking lot and park over by a bank of pay phones, where the lot wasn't too brightly lit.

Harmony looked at Sheba and saw something in the girl's eyes that reminded her of Pepper; of times when Pepper had been acting as if she expected something good to happen when really she wasn't expecting anything good to happen, or anything at all to happen, for that matter. It was the look of a little girl trying to be brave; Harmony couldn't bear it.

“I mean it, honey,” she said to Sheba. “You come in with me and Eddie. We'll all get a room and stay together tonight.”

“Thanks, Mom, I like Sheba,” Eddie said. “She's my first friend in the New York area.”

The light came back into Sheba's eyes as quickly as it had gone. Eddie held up Iggy for her inspection.

“Okay, Bright, now let's have a look at this Iggy person,” she said.

“I'm glad you think he's a person,” Eddie said. “My aunts just think he's a dog.”

Eddie and Iggy and Sheba started walking toward the office of the motel, chatting happily.

Watching them, Harmony felt too shaken to take a step. Eddie and Sheba were young; but she herself had become old. Even if she wasn't particularly old if you just counted by years, the fact was years were no way to count. Happenings were the way to count, the big happening that separated her from youth or even
middle age was the death of her daughter, Pepper. That death made her realize that life, once you got around to producing children, was no longer about being pretty or having boyfriends or making money—it was about protecting the children; getting them raised to the point where they could try life as adults. It didn't have to be just the children that had come out of your body, either. It could be anyone young who needed something you had to give. Some grown men were children; some grown women, too. Harmony knew that she had spent a good part of her life taking care of just such men. But now that she felt old she didn't think she wanted to spend much more of her energy protecting men who had had a good chance to grow up, but had blown it. If she never had another boyfriend—something she had been worrying about, on the plane—it might be a little dull in some areas, like sexual areas, but it wouldn't be the end of the world.

What
would
be the end of the world would be to let some little girl like Sheba get in the car with a bad man who would make a U-turn across the street and kill her right there in front of the pay phones, where pimps and crack dealers were making their calls.

With that thought in mind, she started into the No-Tel Motel. Just as the three of them were approaching the office, Neddie came out, followed by Omar and Abdul. Then Pat came out, followed by Salah. They all looked a little startled to see Eddie holding Sheba's hand while Sheba led Iggy on his leash.

“Hi, this is Sheba, does our room have a king-size?” Harmony asked. “Sheba is Eddie's first New York friend and she's spending the night with us.”

Omar and Abdul took this in stride, but Salah looked horrified.

“But, is unclean woman!” he protested.

“Mind your own business, raghead,” Sheba said. “I'm as clean as you.”

If either Neddie or Pat was surprised to see Eddie walk up with a young black whore they hid it well.

“Hi, Sheba, he makes friends real quick, don't he?” Pat said.

“Bright, he's the quickest,” Sheba said.

“I hope you've been watching the Discovery Channel for most of your life, otherwise it's hard to hold a conversation with him,” Neddie said.

“Where'd you get all these ragheads, honey?” Sheba asked Eddie.

“They came at the airport,” Eddie said. “Would you like me to introduce you?”

Sheba giggled appealingly, like a little girl.

“You don't need to be bothering, I know them pretty good myself,” she said. “Omar, he's tricky.”

“This is a funny motel, they rent them rooms by the hour,” Neddie said. “We took twenty-four hours, I hope that's enough.”

“That's plenty, I think we should just go to bed,” Harmony said.

“Good idea, I will be security man,” Omar, Abdul, and Salah said, in a breath.

“What is this, the Muslim Tabernacle Choir?” Pat said. “None of us are marrying any of you so why don't you just shove off?”

“Very important to have security man at the No-Tel Motel,” Salah said. “Otherwise everything vanish, never see again.”

“Many bad people, thugs and lawyers come here,” Omar said. “Should be called Take Your Chances Motel.”

“Listen, they don't need no raghead security men, they under my protection tonight,” Sheba said. “Why don't you ragheads go wash your turbans?”

Eddie thought Sheba's remark was hilarious. He laughed so hard that Iggy began to yip and jump around. Iggy had taken a dislike to Salah; he snarled every time Salah came near him.

“My mom is really sleepy, she's sort of wobbling,” Eddie said, when he got through laughing at Sheba's wit.

He was right. Harmony suddenly felt so sleepy she couldn't think, talk, or even listen. It was as if her eyelids were shades that someone very strong was trying to lower. She knew she was in a strange place and that it behooved her to be especially watchful
of Eddie, but Sheba was still holding Eddie's hand. He seemed okay.

“This is her key, honey,” Pat said, handing a room key to Sheba. “I don't know if the bed is king-sized, though.”

“I don't care about king-sized, I'm just looking for
inside
,” Sheba said. “Come on, Bright.”

The room didn't have a king-size, but it had two doubles, a fact Harmony didn't discover until she woke up, several hours later, to go to the bathroom. Eddie, Iggy, and Sheba were on the other bed. Sheba had taken the trouble to put Eddie's pajamas on, but had fallen asleep before she got around to turning the TV off—a Bob Newhart rerun was on, casting a blue glow into the dark room. Harmony watched it a minute, and went back to sleep.

Harmony had never liked waking up to no sun. In Las Vegas it was almost never a problem; once in a while there would be clouds, but the clouds over Nevada were usually moving along, toward somewhere else; they seldom obstructed the sunlight for a whole day.

When she got up to go to the bathroom for a second time and peeked out to see what a day might look like in New Jersey, what she saw was so horrible that for a moment or two she had a lot of trouble locating her optimism. Even in the worst of times she had usually been able to wake up with the feeling that it might turn out to be a good day. Looking out the window and seeing lots of sunshine definitely helped. She liked to see the sun shining on houses across the street, on little kids riding their bikes, on the men washing down the driveways of filling stations—there would be little rainbows in the spray made by their hoses. A little sunlight sort of jump-started the day—if she happened to be headachy, or hung over, or not getting along too well with her boyfriend of the moment, at least there would be the sunlight and the bright sky.

New Jersey in the morning was a shock. Not only was there no sunlight, there wasn't really even any sky. Where the sky usually was, there was only a kind of gray murk, with, here and there, a ring of brightness from the oil flares over the refineries.

Her window happened to look out at the parking lot of the all-night grocery store across the street. A skinny black teenager was lining up the grocery carts that had been left in the parking lot the night before. He was an expert at his job, too. He had about seventy-five carts shoved together and was weaving them across the parking lot in a kind of conga line. A boom box on top of the carts provided the music. Other than that, the only activity in the parking lot was the bank of pay phones, every one of which was
in use, most of them by skinny young black men not much older than the boy pushing the grocery carts.

When she came out of the bathroom Eddie was sitting up, holding Iggy. He had the remote in his hand and was working his way through many cable channels. Sheba was curled up in a ball, sound asleep.

“Mom, she wears a wig,” Eddie informed her.

He was right about the wig. Sheba was thin—too thin, Harmony thought—a very skinny black girl with her hair cut very short. It wasn't cut just any old way, though—it was cut nicely. When Harmony bent to get a closer look Eddie shooed her away, even frowning a little. He was determined that Sheba get her sleep out.

Somewhere in her purse Harmony had Laurie's number. The piece of paper the number was on was a little crumpled, but Harmony smoothed it out and put it right on her bedside table, near the phone. She would have no trouble reading the number when she finally felt the moment was right to give Laurie a call and let her know that they were in New Jersey.

But the moment didn't come immediately. The number stayed right by the phone, visible and accessible, but Harmony didn't call it. Now and again she looked at it, thinking it might be a good idea to memorize it, in case the little piece of paper got lost; but she didn't memorize it. She just left it there, by her phone.

In the course of switching channels with the remote, Eddie came upon a veterinary show. It seemed to be a twenty-four-hour cable channel devoted entirely to veterinary concerns. At the moment, a young vet was explaining what to do if your dog didn't want to put all four of its paws on the ground at the same time. The vet was explaining that this behavior didn't necessarily mean the dog had a broken leg. There were various other occurrences that might cause a dog to walk on only three legs from time to time—sprains and stickers and bites of various kinds.

Eddie, a dog owner, was fascinated.

“Mom, this is important,” he said, crawling over into her
bed. “It could help us know what to do for Iggy if he got sick. It's a good thing we didn't have Iggy when we lived in Las Vegas.”

“Why?” Harmony asked.

“Because we didn't have this channel in Las Vegas,” Eddie said. “I thought they had all the channels in the whole world, but they didn't. New York has a lot more channels.”

“Eddie, would you do me a big favor?” Harmony asked.

Eddie wrinkled his nose. He liked having his mother ask him favors.

“How big?” he asked.

“Big, big,” Harmony said.

“Just big big?” Eddie said. “That's not very big.”

“What would be very big?” Harmony asked.

“Fourteen bigs—that's as high as I can count,” Eddie said.

“Oh, Eddie, you can count higher than fourteen, you just don't like to,” Harmony said.

“No, because I get dizzy in my brain if I count higher than fourteen,” Eddie informed her.

“Anyway, it's a big favor,” Harmony said. “I want you to dial a phone number for me and say hello if someone answers.”

“That's not even big big,” Eddie said. “Show me the number.”

When Harmony showed Eddie the number he immediately dialed it, but since he hadn't dialed 9 first, he only got the hotel operator.

“Can I help you?” the operator asked.

“You can help my mom,” Eddie said, handing the phone to his mother.

Harmony apologized to the operator, who sounded weary and told her how to dial New York.

“If you want to send your little boy down to the office I'll give him a doughnut,” the operator offered. “He sounds like a cute little thing.”

Eddie reached for the phone. “Is it a glazed doughnut or chocolate?” Eddie asked. Just hearing him ask brought back a little of Harmony's optimism.

“Well, we got glazed and we got chocolate and we got some
with goo in the middle,” the operator said. “We have a variety to choose from.”

“The problem is I would like to bring Iggy but he isn't awake,” Eddie said. “Could you save me one glazed?”

“Is Iggy your little brother?” the operator inquired.

“No, he's my dog, he was on the Hopi reservation being an orphan and I found him,” Eddie said. He went on to tell the operator a number of things about Iggy, so many that by the time he hung up Harmony had forgotten her original plan, which was to have Eddie call Laurie.

“That was a nice conversation but you didn't do me the big favor yet,” Harmony said. “I still need for you to dial the number and say hello.”

“Sorry,” Eddie said. Harmony gave him the sequence and he immediately dialed the number.

Before he could ask for instructions, Laurie answered the phone.

“Hello?” she said.

“Hello, who am I speaking to, please?” Eddie asked.

“Hi, Eddie, you're speaking to Laurie,” Laurie said. “What a pleasant surprise. I know it's got to be you because I spoke to you a few times when your mom called your sister.”