The Late Child (32 page)

“What kind of mood would you be in if your best friend left town and you had no TV and your burn was infected and all you had to look forward to was having part of your hipbone transplanted to your neck?” Gary asked. “Plus, probably losing your job. What kind of mood would all that put
you
in?”

“I wish you hadn't been gay, so we could have got married,” Harmony said, unexpectedly.

There was silence on the other end—Gary hadn't expected such a comment, probably.

“Harmony, did I hear you correctly?” Gary asked, in a subdued, almost shocked tone.

“Gary, I can't help it,” Harmony said. “You're the only man I trust.”

“Well, I was bi at one point, but I didn't know you then,” Gary said. “It's kind of a pity.”

“Yeah,” Harmony said, but she didn't want to emphasize how big a pity she thought it was, it would only make Gary feel guilty. She felt she must have gone a little crazy, as a result of her grief.
She had been around Gary for years and had even slept in the same bed with him without ever really feeling the urge to have sex with him, but now that she was two thousand miles away in Laurie Chalk's apartment in New York, she was wondering if maybe it would have been fun to have sex with Gary.

“You never acted like you were attracted to me,” Gary said.

“Gary, it's just that I don't trust anybody else,” Harmony said. “It seems like it would be better if there could be some trust and some sex with the same guy.”

“I see your point, you sure couldn't trust any of the guys you sleep with, at least not the ones I've known.

“I haven't felt too sexy since Derek pushed me off the wall,” Gary said. “My burn is pretty bad, I imagine that's the reason.”

Then there was a long silence. Harmony felt a little embarrassed by what she had said. Ever since she had been afraid to get out of the car on the Hopi mesa, for fear of being sucked away, she had sort of had the feeling that she wanted to be married again, to someone who would want to always be with her. Gary was just the sort of person who came to mind, if the trusting and the always being there were part of the qualifications.

“I never should have said it—now I've upset you,” she said. “I didn't plan to say it, Gary. It just popped out.”

“Harmony, I'm not upset,” Gary said. “No guy is going to be upset by the thought that you might want to sleep with him. Even if I'm gay I'm still a guy, and it's flattering. After all, you were the most beautiful woman Las Vegas has ever seen.”

“Gary, was I?” she asked.

“Absolutely—Mr. Sinatra even said that to me once,” Gary said.

“But now it's past,” Harmony said. “I'm in a different time of life. I'm older and I don't know what to do next, other than raise Eddie.”

“Harmony, can we put the part about getting married on hold, until you come out for my operation?” Gary asked.

“On hold—how do you mean?” she asked.

“I mean just sort of not rule it out a hundred percent,” Gary
said. “It's a pretty flattering thought. It's even taken my mind off my burn for a few minutes, and it's pretty hard to get my mind off my burn these days.”

“Okay,” Harmony said. “Okay. If it will help with your burn that's fine. Let's just put it on hold.”

“I wish I had a TV, that's all,” Gary said. “It's pretty boring not to have a TV when you're burned. Sometimes I click my remote and try to imagine the shows that would be there, if I had a TV.”

“I should have left you my new one,” Harmony said. “Now it's gone forever.”

“What?” Gary said. “You mean some jerk stole your new TV?”

“No, it went over into a canyon, all my possessions did,” Harmony said. “The trailer came unhitched and all was lost except Eddie's stuffed animals. Those were in the trunk of your car.”

“Speaking of my car, how is it doing in New York?” Gary asked.

“It isn't in New York—it had a bad explosion in New Mexico,” Harmony said. “We had to fly to New York.”

“Hey, easy come, easy go,” Gary said.

Then there was another silence—a longer silence.

“So, okay, the marriage stuff is on hold. I don't want to think about it too much or I'll get nervous,” Gary said. “I'm supposed to try and keep the stress levels down between now and the time of my operation.”

“Fine, it's on hold, don't give it another thought,” Harmony said.

Rather than take the chance of any more silences developing, they hung up.

“What was that all about?” Neddie asked. She had been eavesdropping on the last part of the conversation.

“Oh, nothing. Gary and I were thinking about getting married but he has to have surgery first,” Harmony said.

Pat wandered in just as she said it.

“You and Gary? That's the dumbest thing I ever heard,” Pat said. “Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't Gary gay?”

“Shut up, Pat,” Harmony said.

“My opinion is, we ought to be thinking about how to get back to Tarwater, the quickest way,” Neddie said, when everybody was awake and they were trying to decide what to do with themselves.

“Can't leave before Eddie do Letterman,” Sheba said. “Those Letterman people be mad as hops if we do that.”

“Well, but when's that?” Neddie asked. “We've already seen the Statue of Liberty—I'd like to get started home sometime today.

“Anything could be happening, back in Tarwater,” she added.

“But, Neddie, you're
here
, in the greatest city in the world,” Laurie pointed out. She and Eddie had just returned. Eddie was feeding Iggy a piece of pancake he had brought home in a napkin.

“Don't mean much to Neddie,” Pat said. “She'd rather get back to Tarwater and listen to the wind blow.”

“Ed got to take advantage of all these opportunities while he's hot,” Otis said. “Nobody stay hot but two or three days, not in New York. By tomorrow people be starting to forget about the dog that fell off the Statue of Liberty.”

“You should at least go out and walk the streets a little,” Laurie said. “It's a great place to people-watch.”

“Yeah, but too many of the people watch back,” Pat said. “Like muggers and rapists and winos and the homeless.”

“You should be kind to the homeless,” Eddie said, a little sternly. “Sheba was homeless till she met us, and Otis lived in the Dumpster.”

“Yeah, and I be homeless again when you go, Bright,” Sheba said. “Who knows if Otis even let me in the Dumpster.”

“This place a lot nicer than the Dumpster,” Otis said, looking around Laurie's cheerful apartment. The floor was bare and there was not a lot of furniture, but the apartment had high windows
and the sun had just come out and was shining through them brightly.

“Wait a minute,” Eddie said, to Sheba. “What did you say?”

“What
did
I say?” Sheba asked, a little startled by Eddie's statement.

“You said you'd be homeless again, once Ed leave,” Otis said.

“Yeah, that's right, I was just speaking the facts, Bright,” Sheba said.

“No way,” Eddie said. “I'm not going to Oklahoma unless Sheba and Otis come with me, and Iggy's not going either, and that's final. I
don't
want to leave my new friends.

“Then there's Omar and Abdul and Salah and G.,” he added. “I don't want to leave anybody out. It might make them sad.”

“It might make them sadder to live in Tarwater,” Pat said.

“Oh, shut up, Pat,” Harmony said. “Eddie's not pessimistic, like you are.”

“Harmony, that's twice you've told me to shut up in twenty minutes,” Pat said.

Laurie had brought pastries from a local bakery. She put big white plates on her table and divided the pastries between the plates.

“These are knishes,” she said.

“I don't think I want to eat something if its name starts with k,” Neddie said, looking at the knishes suspiciously.

“Boy, are you weird, Neddie,” Pat said. “It's a dish. What difference does it make what letter of the alphabet its name starts with?”

“They're very good knishes,” Laurie said.

“Every time you say the name of them I get the shivers,” Neddie said, and she gave a little shudder, to prove her point.

“You eat kraut, don't you?” Pat said. “Kraut starts with a k.”

“Not the kraut I eat,” Neddie said. “I only eat sauerkraut, which starts with an s.”

“Oklahoma must be one funny place,” Otis said, not unkindly.

“It is, Otis—it's a great, friendly place,” Neddie said, responding to the kindness.

“To tell you the truth, Otis, it's only friendly if you're white and have lived there all your life, and it ain't
that
friendly even if you
are
white and
have
lived there all your life,” Pat said.

Just then the phone rang. Laurie smiled at Harmony before she picked it up. Harmony thought Laurie probably grinned to reassure her that she wasn't disturbed by Neddie's refusal to eat the knishes. After all, everybody's relatives were a little bit out of the ordinary—Jimmy Bangor had had a sister who was quite out of the ordinary: she weighed four hundred and sixty pounds and wore see-through nighties.

“Hello,” Laurie said, picking up the phone.

“Oh my gosh, is this a joke?” she said, looking nervous all of a sudden.

“Oh my gosh, I guess it isn't, Mr. President,” she said. “He's right here.”

Then she offered the phone to Eddie.

“It's the President,” she said. “He wants to talk to you and Iggy.”

“Oh,” Eddie said. “I guess he heard about Iggy on TV.”

“The real President?” Pat asked.

“It's the real President,” Laurie said.

“Hello, thank you for calling,” Eddie said, in the new, brisk voice he used now that he was an experienced talk show celebrity.

“Iggy's fine,” he said, listening a moment. “He's right here but I don't know if he can talk because he's a dog and he might not feel like yipping.”

The President spoke again and Eddie listened.

“Well, I could
come
to see you because we have a school bus,” Eddie said. “But I don't know where you live. I'm with my mom and my aunts and some friends, and I have to be on TV today. So I
could
come later, if I knew where you live.”

Everyone was gathered around the phone, listening to Eddie talk to the President, who was puzzled by the reference to G. He asked for clarification.

“G. is his name!” Eddie insisted. “He's a turban man and he has a beard and it's black.

“Well, where is she?” he asked, after another pause. “I don't know if Iggy will yip at her, either—he's not very yippy today, although he usually yips when he's on TV.

“Mrs. President wants to talk to me,” he informed the eager crowd, after the President had signed off.

“She's not Mrs. President, she's the First Lady,” Otis said, quickly assuming the role of chief of protocol.

“I call her Mrs. President,” Eddie informed him, firmly. “Because he's Mr. President and she's Mrs. President.”

“Okay, Ed,” Otis said.

“Hi,” Eddie said, when the First Lady got on the line. “Thank you for calling.”

Then he listened a moment.

“Well, he's an orphan,” he said. “Somebody put him out on the road and I found him when we were up high on the mesa.”

Harmony thought how strange life was. Her son, who was only five, had just talked to the President and now was talking to the First Lady. Her sister Neddie had just refused to eat any food whose name started with a
k.
She herself had just told her oldest friend, who was gay, that she wished he wasn't, so they could marry. Four men with turbans were there, and two black teenagers who lived in a Dumpster in New Jersey. She herself had no job and no prospects and her brother was in jail in Tarwater for making obscene phone calls. Pepper, her daughter, was dead of AIDS.

It was a lot to adjust to, if adjust was the right word. Harmony had the fear that maybe she wasn't capable of adjusting to so much. Even at that moment she wasn't really taking part in any of it. She had just sort of faded into the background and let people who were more connected with life figure out what her son should do. She had always been an active mom, too, but now she was just sitting in an apartment in New York, not even that eager to know what the First Lady was saying to her son. She could tell that Otis and Sheba and Laurie and even Neddie and Pat were really excited that Eddie was talking to the White House. Eddie was just being friendly and informative, he might have been
talking to Gary or his friend Eli or just someone he met in a store about Iggy's amazing fall.

“Okay, I'll ask my mom, and I'll ask G., because he's the man who drives the bus,” Eddie said. “Maybe we could come and see you and Iggy could run across the lawn. There wasn't much grass for him to run on in Arizona—there were cactus and he had to watch out for prickles.”

Then he listened a little more.

“Somebody has to write down the number so we can go visit Mr. and Mrs. President,” he said. “Laurie, could you please do it?”

Laurie took the phone and wrote down the First Family's phone number.

“Wow,” she said, when she hung up. “I never thought I'd be chatting it up with Hillary. I sure have led a more interesting life since you came into it, Eddie.”

“Wait till they hear about this in Tarwater,” Neddie said. “When Mom and Dad find out Eddie talked to the President it'll get him off the hook for not believing the whale ate Jonah.”

“Why don't you believe the whale ate Jonah, Bright?” Sheba asked.

“Whales don't eat people, they eat plankton,” Eddie said, matter-of-factly.