She stomped twice around the van, then came back in. “You know what’s funny? You know what’s really funny?”
David, wide-eyed, shook his head. “I’ll tell you what’s really funny. She” — she pointed out the door — “she tells everybody the same thing. ‘I see a long and happy life.’ Doesn’t matter who. You could be ready to croak any minute. ‘A long and happy life.’ A lobster heading for the pot. ‘A long and happy life.’ ”
She kept saying it in a funny way, her head wobbling like a puppet’s, and David could not keep a laugh gob from popping out. Primrose didn’t seem to notice. “Well, while she’s telling everybody else what a long and happy life they’re gonna have, what kind of a life am I having? Huh? What about my future? Huh? I’ll tell you what.”
She held out her hand. She pretended to trace lines on the palm. “Ah, yes, here we are. I see . . . I see . . . a short and crappy life.” She gurgled up some spit, reared back, and sent a hocker flying out the door. “Ptoo! That’s what I get!”
She left the car again. She was pacing, flinging her arms, kicking stones. “She’s nutso. A crackpot. Like that nutcake waving at cars all day.” She bent over and flapped her arm goofily at the horizon. As she stomped around the van, David tracked her passing one door, then the other. “I want —” She came back in. “You saw me at the library, remember?”
David nodded.
“You know why I was there? Huh?”
David shook his head.
“I was there because I never went to sleep with my mother reading to me.” She flopped onto the beanbag chair. “Did you?”
David nodded.
“Right. So did everybody else — except me. I try it a couple times every summer. I go to Summer Story Time. I close my eyes. I try to pretend the voice is my mother’s. But it never works. I just keep hearing the story and hearing the story and I never get to sleep.” She snapped her face away from him. She slumped in the beanbag chair.
In his mind David heard the old familiar words: “Mike Mulligan had a steam shovel, a beautiful red steam shovel. Her name was Mary Anne. . . .” How those words used to spin the drowsies about him night after night when he was little. Even now it tickled him that a steam shovel had a girl’s name. He felt guilty for having such a warm memory in the presence of Primrose’s pain. He wished he could make her feel better, but he could not think of anything to say.
She was subdued now, dreamy. She reached for the framed portrait. She stared for a long time at the picture in her lap, and David understood that a great and terrible secret had fallen to him. He had been given custody of Primrose’s dream, her heart. He understood that he could not tell her that he knew the truth. Not ever.
24
For two full weeks Margaret Limpert wrestled with the question: Should she or should she not ask David to go with her to Midsummer Night’s Scream?
Though she knew that grandmothers were welcome, it annoyed her that the annual scary story night at the library was billed as a parent and child event. For that matter, life itself was billed as a parent-child event: grandparents were not exactly banned, but neither were they invited. They were allowed. Grandparents were substitutes, stand-ins, expected to step in and play a role to perfection when the star was ill.
But what happened when the star was more than ill?
When her son’s wife had died, Margaret Limpert had grieved as long and deeply as anyone. She had loved Carolyn as her own flesh and blood, and when David and his father came to live in her house, David became her new son in her mind and heart.
It didn’t take him long to set her straight.
From the minute he arrived, he had been grumpy and silent and even mean with her. She was not even allowed to call him Davey. She thought she understood. He had lost his mother. He resented another person taking her place. Margaret backed off. Gave him his space, as the saying went.
But how much space can you give to some one you live with? Someone you love? Was she supposed to let him go out in the cold without his gloves? Was she supposed to send him off to school without pointing out that his fly was open? She gave him what space she could, but matters only got worse.
Their relationship came to be symbolized by a carrot. She left a fresh one, washed and peeled, next to his peanut butter and jelly sandwich for lunch each day. She was careful not to hound him about it. Only once did she mention that carrots were good for him, they supply vitamin A, and, as her own mother had told her time and again, they help one to see in the dark. The daily carrot became her last stand — one small, pitiful, final attempt to bond with her grandson. He never took a bite.
Frustrated, she worked up her nerve for a showdown. She said to him at lunch one day, “We used to have such good times together.”
He went on munching his peanut butter and jelly sandwich. The carrot, as usual, lay untouched on the table.
“David?”
Munching. As if she weren’t there.
She went away in tears.
Two days later, out of the blue during lunch, an answer arrived: “You were Nana then.”
She stiffened. She stood in front of him, looking down on the top of his head, the brown hair she once loved to muss. “Then? I still am Nana.”
“No.”
“No?” Something delicate inside her fell from an edge and shattered. She could not keep the tremble from her voice. “What am I now?”
He did not reply. He got up and left the kitchen. A half-eaten sandwich lay on his plate. Sticking up out of the bread, like an orange dagger, was the uneaten carrot.
Unwilling to add to her son’s burden, she kept these things to herself. She bit her lip and counted to ten and reminded herself, he’s only a little boy, only a little boy.
So it went for months, and she thought it pointless to even think about going to Midsummer Night’s Scream. But then, that one night, she had heard him laughing in his room. “Something funny on TV,” he had said, quite pleasantly. And now more recently: all these questions about the Clark Gable picture. Little signs that he was thawing, inching back to his old self. She took courage. She dared to hope it could change.
She chose the same setting as before: the kitchen, lunch. Again he was having peanut butter and jelly. Her nerves were quaking like a girl’s. She asked if he would like to go with her to Midsummer Night’s Scream.
He said no.
25
Primrose would have swallowed spiders before admitting it, but there was at least one way in which she was like her mother: she enjoyed pretending. Specifically, she enjoyed pretending to be somebody she really wasn’t.
She had not done so since Easter morning, when she imitated a dead body in the leaves. Now another chance had come her way. It had begun with a poster she and David had seen at the 7-Eleven checkout counter. It told about the library’s Midsummer Night’s Scream.
Their first reaction was: “Let’s go!” Then Primrose noticed it said “Parent-Child,” and David said, “Oh.”
Days later David told her his grandmother had asked him to go with her, and he had said no.
“You’re not the only one,” said Primrose. “It’s a problem for me too.”
“What do you mean?” said David.
“I mean I’m a kid too. How am I s’pposed get in without my mother?”
“So ask her to go with you.”
“Yeah, right.”
Primrose was silent. As she stared at him, a faint smile appeared.
“What?” he said.
“So who says I have to go as the kid?”
David stared at her. She could see her meaning sink in. He said nothing. She didn’t press it.
Next day she said, “So, what do you think? Me going as a mother?”
He shrugged.
She thought about it. He wasn’t saying yes, but he wasn’t saying no either. That put Primrose ahead of his grandmother. She knew deep down he wanted to go. She also knew that out of respect for his mother she shouldn’t get too pushy about it.
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And then she found herself in a thrift shop, flipping through ladies’ clothes, picturing herself. Asking herself: Could I really pull it off?
She could not resist. She bought the clothes. That night she put them on, along with jewelry, makeup, and the final touch: her mother’s blonde Madame Dufee wig. She practiced lowering her voice, standing, walking, sitting, waving (“Hi, Mabel!”), laughing, sipping tea. She dressed herself up and tried a test run to 7-Eleven. The girl behind the counter didn’t say anything, didn’t look at her funny. She thought about trying it on Refrigerator John, but chickened out.
The plan was to keep it out of David’s hands. Spring it on him. Let him see her in her mommy outfit, get used to it, see it was no big deal.
So that’s what she did the following day. When he came over, she met him at the doorway with the outfit on. She posed. “What do you think?”
He shrugged. “Whatever.”
She kept the outfit on while they finished the paint job on the van — white with blue trim on the outside, bright green inside.
A couple of times, stirring paint, she mentioned nonchalantly that as long as she had the outfit, well heck, she might as well use it and go to Midsummer Night’s Scream. By herself if need be. What were they going to do, kick her out because she — a mother — showed up without a kid?
“I know you’re not going,” she said nonchalantly, stirring paint, “but just to let you know, I’ll prob’ly have to walk past your house Wednesday night on my way to the library. Prob’ly about eight o’clock.” She watched him out of the corner of her eye. He went on painting. He said nothing. He did not seem to have heard.
On Wednesday night, at quarter till eight, he was waiting in front of his house.
26
The only problem was the navy blue panty hose. They must have been too big, because they kept bagging around her knees and Primrose had to keep hiking them up.
Well, maybe there was one other problem: the high heels. They were murder. She had just bought them today to top off the outfit — ninety-five cents at the thrift shop — and halfway to the library her ankles were sore from all the wobbling. She wished mothers wore skates.
The rest was fine: the powder blue mid-length skirt, white ruffled blouse, navy blazer, pearl necklace, pearl earrings, navy shoulder strap pocketbook, makeup. She had brought the wild blonde wig under control with hair gel. But more than anything else, it was the boy walking beside her, her “son,” that completed the outfit.
It surprised Primrose to discover how easy it was to play mother. The thok-thok of her high heels upon the sidewalk, the pocketbook brushing her side declared she was a lady, maybe twenty-five, twenty-six. Two blocks from the library, crossing the street, she took David’s hand. One block away she said to him with a touch of warning in her voice, as she imagined a mother would do, “Now, you behave tonight. Hear?”
He scowled at her.
Outside the door, she stopped and pulled him around to face her. She cupped his chin in her hand and tilted his face upward. His face was clean, but she rubbed his cheek anyway and clucked her tongue. “I’ll bet you didn’t brush your teeth either, did you?”
He swatted her hand away. “Knock it off.”
She hiked up her panty hose and took him inside.
An arrow pointed downstairs to the community room. Hanging over the doorway were fake cobwebs that had to be pushed aside like curtains. Nothing especially scary seemed to be going on. A few little kids were going nuts, otherwise people were standing around munching cookies.
The main thing that struck Primrose was that, except for size, you could hardly tell the mothers from the kids. They were all wearing jeans or shorts, sneakers or sandals. What was the point of being a mother if you didn’t look like one? Disgraceful.
As near as she could tell, two fathers were there. They weren’t dressed any better, but with them it didn’t seem to matter. It hurt to look at them. She turned away.
Somebody approached in an ugly old-hag costume. “Welcome, welcome,” said the hag. “As you can see, I am Miss Viola Swamp. And who might you be?”
Primrose cleared her throat and set her voice on low. She put her arm around David. “This is David Limpert. My son.”
For an instant Miss Swamp seemed about to cackle hideously, but instead she said, “Good, good. Well, the program will begin shortly. In the meantime” — she waved a bony hand — “help yourself to bug juice and spider cookies. Hee-hee.” And off she went.
“This isn’t scary,” grumbled David. “It sucks.”
Primrose grabbed his shoulders. “One more word like that, young man, and you’ll get your mouth washed out with soap.”
“Yeah?” he sneered. “Who’s gonna do it?”
She shook him and whispered hard into his face. “Don’t you ever talk to your mother like that.”
His eyes locked on hers. To break the tension she gave his nose a motherly tweak and whispered, “Don’t have a cow. We’re just pretending.” When he walked off, she let him go.
She caught a mother looking at her. She shrugged and rolled her eyes and gave a weary smile that said, These kids, what are we going to do with them?
She found him at the refreshment table. He had one cookie in his mouth and one in each hand. “Put them down.”
“No,” he said, spewing crumbs.
She smacked a hand, the cookie fell. “Pick it up.”
“No.”
No respect, these kids today. Well, they weren’t going to walk all over her.
“I said pick it up.”
“No.”
She smacked the other hand, and the second cookie fell.
“Pick.”
“No.”
She wanted to scream. She wanted to pour the bowl of bug juice over his head. She wanted to ram the cookies down his throat. Everything that came to mind, a mother wasn’t allowed to do. So she pinched him.
He howled: “Owwwww!”
He pushed her.
She pushed him.
He screamed, “Don’t touch me!”
“I’ll touch you all I want!” To prove it, she grabbed him.
“You’re not my mother!”
“Yes I am!”
He kicked her in her sore ankle, freeing himself. “No you’re not!” he yelled and yanked the wig from her head. He flung it into the gallery of eyes and dashed out through the cobweb curtains.
Minutes later, walking home, Primrose noticed that her steps were getting shorter and shorter. The crotch of her panty hose, she discovered, had come down to her knees. While voices catcalled from passing cars, she tore off her high heels and stockings and left them on someone’s front steps.
She walked. She did not know where. She just walked. Only dimly was she aware of the darkening sunset, the streetlights buzzing on, the sidewalks cooling under her bare feet.
Once, at a deserted corner well after dark, she stopped and waved at an imaginary car going by. Not liking the imaginary driver’s imaginary response, she yelled, “Oh yeah? You too!” and spit after it.
She never did aim herself home, but eventually she smelled fresh paint and found that she was there. Even before she pulled the van door open she heard snoring. Refrigerator John had rigged up a battery powered lamp for her. She turned it on. Her mother was in her bedroll with Willy the bear, fast asleep.
Primrose cracked.
“Out of my room! This is my room! My place! Out! Out! Out!”
In a flapping flurry of nightgown, her mother fled.
It was not until later, as she was lying down, that Primrose noticed Willy was still there, his white button eyes gawking as if to say, I don’t believe you did that. She grabbed him by a leg and punched him. She flung him into the street. “Out!”
Who Cares
27
They lived in the same town, but only the sky was vast enough to measure the distance between them.
David rode his bike and spun his yo-yo and watched TV and read Beetle Bailey. Read, bu
t did not laugh much.
He rode every day. He no longer rode in circles around town. He rode in straight lines out of town. He rode over the bridge and under the railroad trestle and past the salad-dressing factory and the river and the farm. It was a zoo kind of farm. You were allowed to walk around the pens and stalls and see the animals. Every day at the sheep pen David came upon the same sheep. Every day he felt like punching it in the face.
Thursday nights Primrose went “shopping.” On Saturday she peddled her goods at the flea market. The rest of the time she worked on her room.
In his dreams David saw two halves of a worm groping about for each other. One of the halves was bleating, “Davey, where are you?”
As she had long intended, Primrose fixed flower boxes to the side and back windows of her room. In the boxes she planted purple and yellow pansies. She loved the feel of their velvety petals between her fingers.
On one weekend David and his father played miniature golf. Afterward they had Dairy Queen milk shakes. Another weekend they went to a fair. There were warm donuts from a machine. David ate three. They watched goats and cows compete for blue ribbons. The straw on the ground smelled like Madame Dufee’s carpet-covered reading room.
August waved shimmering images above the roads he pedaled on. August thundered like falling chairs in a distant room.
Primrose surrounded the van with a one-foot-high white picket fence. The ground in the driveway was hard, so she used a spoon to dig holes for the fence posts.
David became more careful than ever about obeying rules. It was easier to do now that Primrose wasn’t around. Sometimes he even made up his own rules — the more to obey, the better. He crossed streets only at corners. He looked both ways. He carried candy wrappers in his pocket for hours until he found a trash can. He never took a shortcut across someone’s lawn. He never went in an OUT, out an IN, up a DOWN or down an UP. He never spat on a car. He never stepped on an ant, wiped his hands on his pants, picked his nose, blew bubbles in a drink, said a bad word, flicked earwax, sucked on a shoelace, played in mud, burped on purpose.