Preschoolers screamed.
The Waving Man
10
The next day David was biking around town, looking at street signs. By noon he had covered Perkiomen, up and down a hundred different streets. He was always careful to obey traffic lights and never go down one-way streets the wrong way. For the tenth time he stopped and pulled out the little white card she had given him. It was done in green ink in fancy handwriting. It said:
Madame Dufee
Reader and Advisor
“Meet Your Tomorrow Today”
Tulip Street
He pocketed the card and kept riding. He was thirsty.
About an hour later he found it. He coasted down the gentle slope of a street called Pratt to its dead end, and there it was, white letters on a black iron sign: Tulip Street. It felt like the corner of Nowhere and Noplace. Not only did Pratt end there, so did Tulip.
David coasted down Tulip. There were no houses, no sidewalks. Loose stones washed like roadside surf into weed fields. Sparrows flirted with the broken windows of an abandoned garage. A rustle in the weeds. Groundhog? Rat?
Ahead, on the left, was another garage. Or was it? A sign was jammed into the bare earth in front of it. Coasting closer, David saw that it was painted in the same fancy lettering as the card in his pocket:
Reader
and
Advisor
He stopped, lowered one foot to the glaring dust. The paint was peeling so bad on the place it looked like a camouflage jacket. A big old shoe-box–shaped junker van without wheels sat alongside. Splatters on the flat back end looked like dried egg.
David was torn. The foot on the pedal wanted to beat it out of there. The foot on the street wanted to stay, check it out. The place had a front door and one front window. Something hung over the window on the inside.
Just as David decided to beat it, the front door opened. A face peeked out — a lady’s face topped by an explosion, a geyser of blonde hair. The lady made a cap bill of her hand to shade her eyes. “You have an appointment?”
What was she talking about? In the heat between them a dragonfly hovered like a miniature helicopter, then darted off. David grunted, “Huh?”
“No need to get mad,” the lady called. “You’re in luck. You don’t need an appointment today.” The door opened wider. “Come on. The flies are getting in.”
David knew there were a million reasons why he should not go in, but none of them had made the turn onto Tulip Street. He parked his bike by the junker. “Does a girl live here?” he said.
The lady’s feet were bare. Every toe had a ring. “Yes, yes. Now hurry. Flies.”
David went in. A smell hit him — flowery, but old and sour. He found himself in the softest room he had ever seen. Floor, walls, ceiling — all were covered with carpets. It reminded him of a tent. There was no furniture. The door closed behind him, shutting out the daylight. He could not see.
“Sit.” Her voice.
“Where?”
“Here.” Hands on his shoulders pushed him gently forward, then down. “Here.”
Nothing but rug beneath him. He sat.
“Who are you?” he said.
“Madame Dufee,” she said. “Who else?”
A drape parted. Light. Her silhouette leaving. The drape closed. Dark again. Night in a box. David alone. Scared.
He held his hand before his eyes. Could not see it. Since April 29 of last year he had never been in total darkness, never allowed himself to be. In his bedroom, low by the baseboard, near the dresser, his Jiminy Cricket night-light glowed and smiled and tipped its top hat every night, all night long, while he slept.
He pulled his knees up. He shuddered. Is a coffin like this? Are the walls moving in? He reached out.
Humming. Beyond the dark she was humming. Or someone was. His mother used to hum. Carolyn Sue Limpert. He remembered once. He was on the stairs, playing dinosaurs and soldiers. Tyrannosaurus rex was eating soldiers — privates, sergeants — sometimes two at a time, chewing them up, and below him, in the dining room, his mother was setting the dinner table and humming. Folding napkins and placing plates and spoons and forks and humming while Tyrannosaurus rex ate the whole army, generals and all. Her humming had been the night-light of his life.
Flame flared. Madame Dufee was back with a candle. He could see now that a teddy bear had been sitting across from him the whole time, its button eyes forever astonished. She sat down and placed the candle on the floor between them. Her tornado-whipped hair was the same, but now the rest of her was lost in a robe of flowers, birds, and dragons with flaming tongues. Golden hoops you could pitch a baseball through hung from her earlobes. Before she tucked her feet under, toe rings glowed in the flickering light like ten tiny halos.
“Take off your shoe,” she said.
Was she serious? “Which one?”
She frowned, thinking. “Which foot is your favorite?”
He thought. “Right, I guess.”
“Left,” she said.
He removed his left sneaker.
“Sock too.”
Sock too.
“Okay, lay down and gimme” — she flapped her fingers — “gimme.”
He lay on his back and gave her his bare left foot. She tugged until the foot was close enough to the flame to feel its heat. Cupping his heel in one hand, she brought the foot up to her face. She ran a fingertip across his sole. He shrieked, “Tickles!”
“Okay, okay,” she said, “the worst is over.”
For several minutes then she studied his foot, tilting it this way and that. She pressed the bottoms of his toes as if they were buttons. She poked his foot here, there. She began to nod. She closed her eyes. “Mm-hmm . . . mm-hmm . . .” She frowned with concentration. “I see . . . I see . . .”
“See what?” he said.
“I see . . . bread pudding.”
“Huh?”
“Bread pudding.”
“I don’t like bread pudding.”
“You will. You will sprinkle it with cinnamon and you will love it.”
He doubted it. “Anything else?”
“I see . . . pretty babies . . . children . . . grandchildren . . . a house with a white fence . . . a rocking chair on the porch . . .” Her concentration softened. She opened her eyes. She looked into his face. Firelight danced in her eyes. She smiled. “You,” she said, pointing, “you lucky buck. You are going to have a long and —”
Suddenly all went white — her face, the astonished bear, the room — as the front door flew open. A black silhouette stood in the blinding light, spoke: “He’s not a customer.”
11
It was her.
“David from Minnesota,” she said. “Come on.”
He got up and went toward her, squinting against the glare.
“Shoe.”
He went back, picked up his sneaker and sock. To the ring-toed lady at the candle he said, “What did you see?”
Madame Dufee was about to speak, but the girl beat her to it. “A long and happy life. Now come on.”
The girl clopped out the door. She wore skates. He followed. Both sat on the single shallow step, he to re-sneaker his foot, she to remove her skates.
“I saw the bike,” she said. “I figured it was you.” She stood in bare feet, no rings. “Want to see my room?”
“Okay.”
She led him — Was she serious? — to the junker. She ran a finger over the petrified egg splats on the back. “I usually scrape them off first thing in the morning. Didn’t get around to it today.”
“Who did it?” said David.
“Hah!” She laughed. “Who didn’t? They get their older brothers and sisters to drive them over.”
“Why?”
She stared at him. “Why what?”
“Why do they do it?”
She looked up the street. “Who cares?” She looked at him. “I sure don’t.” She thrust a skate at the sky and yelled, “I don’t care!” She reared back, hai
r ropes flying, and spit: “Ptoo!”
David laughed. He had never seen a girl spit before.
She opened the driver-side door. “Welcome to my room.”
The first thing David noticed was that the steering wheel and seats were gone. He ducked in. She was right: it was a room, or as close to a room as the inside of a van could get. Curtains. Dresser. Rugs. Bed — well, a bedroll. Even a black-and-white polka-dot beanbag chair.
“Watch your head,” she said. “What do you think?”
“Neat.”
“I’m going to get some posters. Put them on the ceiling. I’m definitely going to paint the outside. Put a little white fence around it. Flower boxes. Like this.” She opened a House Beautiful to a picture of a window with a flower box.
“Who’s that?” David pointed to the picture on the dresser.
“That’s my father. His name’s Bob.”
“Is he dead?”
“Why do you say that?”
David shrugged.
“Well, he’s not. I just don’t know exactly where he is, that’s all.”
David said, “I have a father.”
“Give that kid a prize.”
“He works in the state of Connecticut. That’s two hundred miles away. He’s the boss of a big mall. He only comes home on weekends. He’s overwhelmed.”
“That so?”
“Yeah.” David sat on the beanbag chair. “I’m thirsty.”
“Good for you.”
“Don’t you have anything to drink in this car?”
“It’s a room, not a car.”
“Well, do you?”
“You see a refrigerator?”
“No.”
“So what do you want? A beer?”
“No. Mango Madness.”
Her eyes shot open. “Really?”
“It’s my favorite.”
She wagged her head. “Amazing.”
“What’s amazing?”
“Me and a little kid runt like the same drink.”
“I’m not little,” he said. He leaned back into the beanbag chair. “Is that your mother in there?”
She glared at him. She snipped, “What makes you think she’s my mother?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did I ever say she was my mother?”
“No.”
“Did I ever call her Mom? Mommy?”
“No.”
She glared another second, then laughed. “Yeah, she’s my mother.” She gave him a friendly smile. “She’s goofy, huh?”
David giggled. “Yeah.”
The smile vanished. “You calling my mother goofy?”
David froze. “No.”
She laughed. “Why not? She is goofy.”
David was going goofy with confusion. He took no more chances. He kept a blank expression on his face and said nothing.
“My mother is psychic,” she said. “Scratch that. My mother thinks she’s psychic.”
He risked a question. “What’s that?”
“It means she can, like, tell the future.”
“She’s a fortune-teller?”
“Yeah. She thinks.”
“The sign says ‘Reader.’ ” When he first saw it, he thought the person inside must be a reader for Summer Story Time, like his grandmother.
“That means she reads your palm. Tells you what your future will be.”
“She read my foot. It tickled.”
She snickered. “Yeah, sometimes she does that too. She says she’s exploring new territory.”
This was all new territory to David, this strange girl and her strange mother. “Are you psychic too?” he asked her.
She snorted. “Nah. Thank God. It’s all bullcrap. I’d never want to be my mother.” She was twisting her hair. “She lives in the clouds. In the future. I think all those palms got to her. Not me. I’m living now. Today.” She laughed. “Plus!” She swatted at a fly with House Beautiful.
“Plus what?”
She pointed toward the garage-size house. “There’s only one bedroom and one bed in there and I have to sleep with her and she snores.”
She laughed. David took a chance to join in.
“So that’s why I moved out,” she said.
David had heard his grandmother snore once or twice, but never his mother. “Are you an only child?” he asked her.
“Yeah. You?”
“Yeah.”
“Only way to fly.”
“What’s that mean?”
She sat cross-legged on the floor. “I don’t know. A saying.”
They were silent for a while, David floating in the polka dots of the giant black-and-white beanbag, feeling something good from long ago. At last he said to her, “Why aren’t you dead?”
She looked at him; she laughed. “Don’t look so heartbroken. If it’ll make you feel better, I’ll kill myself.”
“You tricked me.”
She rolled a skate into his foot. “Not really. I knew about the egg hunt. I went in the back way to get a couple of eggs for breakfast. I’m too old now to be in it. Not that I would ever go running down the hill with the rest of those idiots. And then” — she rolled the other skate — “I heard everybody coming and I saw the leaves . . .” She grinned.
“What?” he said.
“That bug. Boy, you don’t know how hard it was to keep still with that thing crawling on my face.”
“I flicked it off.”
“I know.”
David sat up. “You did trick me! You saw my memento!”
“Don’t have a hernia. How could I see it? My eyes were shut. I was dead, remember?”
“You could’ve peeked.”
“I didn’t.” She grinned again. Her grin seemed to say, I know stuff you don’t. “So, are you going to show it to me now?”
“No.”
“Do you have it on you?”
“Maybe. Maybe not.” He always had it on him.
She grinned. “Is it from your mother?”
“No!” he shot back. “And nunna your business anyway.”
She grinned some more. He was liking her less and less.
“So,” she said, “want to know my name?”
David stared at the ceiling. He shrugged. “I don’t care.”
“Primrose.”
He snickered. “Right.”
“Really, that’s it. Primrose. Ever hear such an ugly name?”
He did not answer. He would not get suckered into another trick.
She got her skates. “Come on.” Outside, she put on the skates and stood, now taller than ever. She took a bill from her pocket, a twenty. She waved it before his nose, grinning. “Want a Mango Madness?”
“Where did you get that?”
“Can I see the memento?”
“No.”
“You want to know where I got all this money, don’t you?”
“No.”
She cloppered across the dirt to the street. “I knew you did. But to find out, you have to come with me tonight. Late tonight.” She looked back at him. “Are you allowed, little boy?”
“I can do anything I want,” he said. When my father isn’t home, he thought. “I’m not little.”
“Good,” she said. She pushed off. “Let’s go get some Mango Madness.”
He pushed off. Over the gravelly surface of Tulip Street, his bike tires were quieter than her skate wheels. Along the way, he sometimes thought to call her Primrose, but he did not for fear that it was a trick. He hoped it wasn’t a trick. Because he thought it was the second-most-beautiful name he had ever heard.
12
Luckily, David’s grandmother’s house was an old-fashioned rancher, with all the rooms on one floor. To sneak off, all he had to do was lift up the screen and climb out. Which is what he did that night at precisely 9:30 p.m.
A voice came out of the dark. “Over here.”
She was waiting in the alley. She turned on a flashlight, aimed at something — a wagon. A big wagon. The bigg
est wagon he had ever seen. Wood-slatted sides up past his waist. “Wow!” he said. “Where’d you get it?”
“Refrigerator John made it.”
“Who’s that?”
“You’ll find out.”
“Can I pull it?”
“Be my guest.”
David pulled the wagon down the alley.
“It’s really dark,” he said.
“That’s night for ya.”
“Maybe you ought to shine the flashlight.”
“Only when I need to.”
“You sure it’s not stealing?”
“I’m sure I’m not going to explain the whole thing again.”
She had explained the whole thing that afternoon. They were going “shopping.” That was her word. His word was trashpicking. Tomorrow was trash pickup day. Which meant, she had explained, everybody would have their trash out on the curbs tonight. So it was perfectly okay for them to come along and take whatever they wanted. And what they wanted was stuff she could sell at the Saturday flea market. So she could make enough money to buy paint for her room (the van). Counting what she had left over after buying their lunch (Mango Madnesses, chili dogs, sour cream and onion chips, beef sticks, Klondike bars), she figured she needed about forty-five dollars.
They came to the street, and a streetlight. David felt better.
She went straight for the curb at the end of a driveway. There were two trash cans and a tiny leaning rocking chair. The chair was leaning because it lacked one rocker. She picked it up. “Isn’t this cute? For a two-year-old. I can sell it for five dollars if —” She set it down and took the lid from a trash can. She aimed the flashlight into it. “Ah-hah!” She pulled out the other rocker. She laid chair and rocker in the wagon. “Refrigerator John will fix it.” She waved. “Onward, Nellie.”
David was feeling less better. The streetlights, it turned out, were far apart, oases in a desert of darkness. He discovered his voice could substitute for light.
“What if somebody thinks we are robbers?” he said.
“I guess they’ll shoot us,” she said.
“Why is your hair that way?”
“What way’s that?”