by Chris Lynch
It was the same silence as before when Davey returned, but now he was drenched to the marrow, so it was different. He was better, he was home, and home had become a better thing somehow since he got wet. He could wait. He toweled off, dropped onto the couch, and fell asleep still mostly soaked in front of the TV.
It was almost one in the afternoon when he woke up. And he found himself alone again. Finally, rested and strong and anxious to get on with it, with the whole new thing, he got up the nerve to go to the door and knock. He appreciated that they had had a long, hard-drinking day, but this was enough.
There was no answer to the first knock. There was no answer to the second knock. He didn’t wait for an answer to the third, just pushed the door open and knocked simultaneously.
Davey took two steps into the room and stopped. Lois was awake. Her nose was red, her eyes were red, her cheeks, the area between her top lip and her nose, all red, bright, and raw as if she’d been hanging over a boiling pot. Lois was staring blankly at Davey, through him. She hadn’t turned as he walked in, she was already staring and had been for hours, and he just stepped into the spot. Lois was alone again.
Davey backed out of the room. He was joyed to find one of his favorite episodes of Doctor Who starting up on the sci-fi channel.
LESSA LESTER
I’m on my bike now but it hardly feels like it. Yesterday I was on my bike and I was right here at this spot at this time of day but at that time it felt like it. Not like now. The hotness was gone the regular cool was in my thoughts were coming I could sort them I could speak them even and I pedaled and when Lester talked I knew everything. I told him and he told me just like a couple of friends are supposed to tell and so they can understand.
I told my friend Lester about my baby Dennis and how I missed him how I wasn’t there with him enough lately how I was gonna maybe have to spend less time with him my friend Lester so my baby Dennis could have me for him like the way he needs.
My friend Lester told me about how he understood perfectly because he had several sparklin’ babies he called them of his own scattered around the coast he would like to be spending more time with them too but there are demands on a man demands for providing for the rest and also that with the different babies in the different cities with the different mothers that maybe don’t like each other all too much and that maybe don’t even like himself Lester all too much these days reunionin’ with ’em all can be a hairy deal that hurts more than helps anybody. I could understand that. When Lester told me.
He said he didn’t like everything about what all he had to do to get by but there was prices you paid for things steal sometime here to make some money there take a little risk now to buy yourself a little relax later on in life. Gypsy boy I’ll tell ya he said to me because he was the one who named me that Gypsy Davey in the first place Gypsy boy I’ll tell ya he said I’m a decent man in an indecent business but still and never forget it a decent man that they cannot change not them on this side can change it and neither them on th’other. I do what I gotta do to get what I gotta get he said but I will be through with it all one day when I am still a young man. See I never young Gypsy when I was a young Gypsy like yourself I never liked not no nothin’ ’bout myself not a thing and that’s the truth. But I always figured figured and figured that if I only had me some money that all that would be different. Well now I got it. And it ain’t no different.
So he said so I gotta get outta this here ugly thing I’m into and get after chasin’ away that thing whatever it is, however I gotta chase it. Might be a God thing I gotta get into he said but I don’t think so.
That was yesterday. Today I’m back but Lester isn’t here. I ride to his spot and there’s some other guy standing there with a jacket on all black and satin like Lester’s but on the back it says Lester . . . Not. A joke I think it is. I know him one of Lester’s boys this guy and he sees me riding and riding in a circle looking for my friend Lester like I always do and he talks to me saying yo junior Gypsy boy you looking for your big ol’ Lester buddy well they he be and he points to a spot in the gutter where Lester’s white Mustang is supposed to be parked but instead today there is a big half-erased white chalk drawing of a big man in the gutter shaped like he’s flying like Superman only with just one arm stretched out ahead of him and the other arm pressed down against his side and big red stain maybe Superman’s cape in the middle of it.
They’s a lot lessa Lesta then they was yesta-day he says laughs to me making his two friends laugh too who are just waiting there against the wall behind him the same as he waited behind my friend Lester all the time up till yesterday. And maybe they oughta be lessa you too little Gypsy Davey boy never did like your stupid bike ridin’ shiny ass round here no how. I don’t want to leave even though it scares me plenty his words but I don’t want to. I ride and I ride and I ride up and down that little patch of the street past the street picture of my friend Lester then past it the other way looking at him reconstructing him putting his face back in the picture but they edge closer to me closer again till I can feel the mean breathing and I have no choice except to get away like they want me to. So’s why I’m on my bike but it doesn’t feel like it this time the cool not coming the hotness not leaving. Pump as hard as I can to get there but I never get there all I get is away away from my friend I talked to that I can’t talk to anymore away from the place I used to go that I can’t go to anymore.
GOIN’ WHERE THE WATER TASTES LIKE WINE
“Should you be doin’ that, Jo?”
“Shut up, Davey, all right?”
“It’s just that I heard you weren’t supposed to do that, when you’re, y’know doing that feeding stuff with a new baby.”
Joanne took a hard pull on the last of a roach she sifted out of her Holiday Inn ashtray. The baby took a pull at her breast. Joanne held her breath, squinted, blew it out. “Shut up, Davey.”
“. . . that it does something to them, to their heads, if you do that kind of thing when they’re still having the milk.”
Again she inhaled while he spoke, this time holding the smoke longer, letting it float to the top of her sinuses like the smoke hovering around the ceiling in a badly ventilated bar. She blew it out slowly through her nose into Davey’s eyes.
“Grab me the photo album over there,” she said as he rubbed the burn out of his eyes with the heels of his hands. Davey retrieved the album from the top of the TV and sat back down on the Herculon sofa next to her. Immediately, Joanne pulled the baby off of her breast and stuck him, crying and rooting around desperately for more, into Davey’s hands.
Davey bounced the baby Dennis up and down on his knee, then stood and walked him around, still bouncing as he walked. In a few minutes the baby was asleep, sucking on Davey’s neck.
“Put him down,” Joanne said without looking up from the pictures but pointing to Dennis’s room.
When Davey reentered the room, he stood over Jo, who finally looked up. “How come your eyes are black?” he said.
“They’re not black. Go in the kitchen and get us a couple of glasses of wine.”
Davey returned with two heavy goblets with Budweiser printed on the sides and black red wine brimming over the top. They took big gulps. As she flipped open the album, Joanne simultaneously started the video with the remote control. The wedding video.
“Did he hit you?” Davey said.
Joanne didn’t even look up from the photos. “We been married for practically a friggin’ year. Gus doesn’t care enough anymore to beat me up. I just don’t sleep so good, that’s all that’s wrong with my eyes.”
“They look darker than just—”
“Don’t look at me anymore, Davey!” Joanne yelled, stabbing Davey in the chest with her fingernail. “Not at me, at the pictures. Get it? Don’t-look-at-me. Look at the pictures, or go home. I wanna look at my pictures now.” She took a drink. Davey took a drink. They looked at the pictures.
“Was I beautiful, Davey?”
“Uh
-huh.”
“Day-vey. I mean, was I beautiful?”
“Jo, I don’t even know how to say it, you looked so good. I took a hundred pictures of you.”
“Ya, but you took about two hundred of that goddamn slutty waitress. What was the deal with her anyway, Davey?”
“Nothin’.”
“What, nothin’? Tell me.”
“Nothin’ nothin’.”
“You get anything off her?”
“I’m goin’ home, Jo.”
Davey stood to go and Joanne tugged him hard back down to the sofa, suddenly very afraid that he would leave.
“Okay, Davey, I’ll leave it alone.”
There was a long silence as Joanne slowly flipped one page, then another, of the book, then they both looked up to view a slice of the video provided by Happily Ever After Videographers. There was the cake. There was Gus’s uncle proposing the toast to his new in-laws, however he figured that. There were The Dogs making one truly embarrassing human pyramid in front of the bar, boys on top, girls on the bottom.
“God, they’re great. Ain’t they great, Davey?”
“I don’t know if they’re great, Jo. Maybe, I guess. A lot of them threw up after you left without even going to the bathroom and then they just stood there in the middle of it and asked for more drinks. One of ’em asked me to take a picture of it. I didn’t like it too much.”
“Hah!” Joanne snorted. “Characters. I gotta get in touch with them again. Except that Celeste. Look at her, how fat she got. She’s a big pig.”
“Well it wouldn’t be too hard to get in touch with them. They’re still on the porch.”
“I will.” Joanne looked down and started rubbing her soft thigh, larger now than it was when she gave birth. “I’ll be back, y’know, Davey. I’m only seventeen years old, for Christ’s sake. I got a long way to go yet.”
“Seventeen and a half.”
“Fill us up, Davey,” Jo snapped, sticking her empty glass in his hand. He went and filled it, and when he returned Jo was giggling at the part of the video that makes her giggle every time they watch it together, which is about every two weeks. She freezes the frame with the remote. Watches it play in reverse. Plays it forward again. On the screen, Lois carries on a conversation with the priest, while Sneaky Pete from behind gratuitously tongues her ear and strokes her breasts.
“He is so cute. God, he still loves her, old dishrag that she is. That’s love, Davey, y’know it? That’s love. That’s it, that’s the thing.”
Davey looked down, at the album. He could never look at that sequence.
“And the priest, he loved it too. He’s a diddler. Look at him talking on and on like he doesn’t know what’s happening, his hands wigglin’ around in his pockets lookin’ for change for a goddamn half hour.” Joanne launched into a fit of hysterics, spilling wine in the lap of her gray sweatpants. “Wow. Was that a great day, or what?”
From the other room, the baby cried. Davey sprang up to get him.
“Shit,” Joanne said, punching the seat cushion. “Let him cry a little. He needs to cry a little. It’s supposed to be good for their lungs.”
Davey ignored her and brought Dennis into the room. When the baby saw his mother, he started lunging for her.
“Ya, ya, ya,” she sighed, throwing open her shirt. “All he wants to do is fuckin’ eat.” She looked down at the top of the baby’s head, the still-open soft spot throbbing in her direction. “Well get your fill, boy, ’cause this is last call. He’s seven months old already, he doesn’t need this anymore. And to tell you the goddamn truth, it used to be cute, and it gave me kind of a buzz, but I’m tired as hell of it. Tomorrow he stops, that’s it.”
“Where’s Gus?” Davey said, staring at that same soft spot on the baby’s head.
“Gussie’s at his mommy’s house, in Greece. Again. Same one we spent our honeymoon in with his fifty fucking relatives.” She stuck her finger in her mouth and made a gagging sound. “Seems his Yaya went to bed and bumped her head and couldn’t get up in the mornin’.”
“His grandmother’s dead, Jo?”
“How the hell do I know. All I know is he’s not here. But he’s never here, which is okay because even when he’s there he sends me the money here, so, I got no complaints.”
On the video, Jo and Gus are waving good-bye to the circle of well-wishers, circling again, then once more. Jo flipped her book to the still pictures of the same scene, following along like a children’s readalong tape, like she always does. “That was so clever of you, Davey, the way you took those pictures from so far away, to show that we were going so far away. Real artsy. I think maybe you got a gift or somethin’, for this photography thing. You might be somebody with it.”
Davey stood up to go as Jo rushed the video back to the tongue scene. “You can finish my wine, Jo,” he said, sliding his glass toward her over the walnut-veneer coffee table.
Jo popped up out of her seat, pressing the baby against her as he continued feeding. “Already, Davey?” Her voice shook. “I thought we’d have some lunch. I can make you lunch. I got macaroni and cheese. Okay? Sit back down.”
Davey just had to move, to put his feet on the pedals and pump madly until the wine seeped out his pores and rolled down his face and the wind froze it there. “I gotta go, Jo.”
“Okay,” she said, walking him to the door. “But you come back right away. Tomorrow, if you want, okay?”
Davey smiled, a bit too sweetly maybe, making her feel like the little one. Joanne straightened up, took a brief grab at the old cat cool. “But call first. You gotta call first before you come here.”
Davey nodded. Jo stood in the doorway, holding the baby around the shoulder blades, almost by the neck, as the rest of the little body dangled below like a windless wind sock.
“Remember all the calls I used to get at the house, Davey? Remember all the calls, the crazy phone ringing all day and all night and Lois screaming me out and pissed off and jealous? Remember the sound of that phone goin’ all the time?”
Jo hardly seemed to notice Davey backing down the stairs with his bike over his shoulder, didn’t seem to hear him tell her that he did remember, even if he wasn’t quite sure that he did.
GREAT THINGS IN CONVERTIBLES
Sneaky Pete stopped sending money. That wasn’t all that unusual. He stopped sending his monthly money every two months or so, but he always started back up again and usually made up the difference. Lois lived and died with those payments, but she always survived because she knew they’d get there eventually. But this time, when it reached three consecutive dry months, she had to start something. She started a correspondence.
“I have a child here” was the gist of the first letter.
“Get a job” was the gist of the reply.
“I’ll get a mouthpiece” was the return.
“You better get a bloodhound,” Pete answered, “ ’cause I’ll be gone like smoke.”
This went on through four, five, and six penniless months, and as her pitch rose in the letters, it crashed in person. Without her monthly boost, Lois slowed down. Her perm grew out to look like an SOS pad that had been used to scrub a thousand pots, frayed, burned, and tin gray. She couldn’t go out where the action was so much, so she stayed at home, watching TV with Davey and composing letters.
“I’m going to kill you, Peter. I’ll walk to Florida if I have to and when I get there I’m going to sink my claws so far into your throat they’re going to come out your ears. I mean this. You are a dead snake.”
Pete wrote promptly back. “Lois, if you will call me on the phone and talk to me like that for just two minutes, I promise I’ll pay you all your money and more. I love you.”
Lois showed the letters to Davey. “Your father is a very sick man. And he’s a deadbeat. I’m going to put him in jail, Davey. I hope you understand that.”
Davey nodded, returned the letters to her. “I’d do it,” he said, then went to the kitchen to make them the macaroni a
nd cheese they ate every night for supper.
For the first time, men started actually coming to the house. Sometimes Lois brought them back with her from the bar. Other times they took her out for dinner and came back later toting a couple of bottles of wine. If it was early, Davey hopped on his bike and came back quietly in the night. If it was a dinner date, he just made sure to be in bed when they got back.
Lois came bouncing through the door with Leo on her arm one afternoon while Davey was stirring the macaroni.
“Oh put that nonsense away for tonight,” Lois said. “Here.” She stuck a dripping basket of buffalo wings in his hands. “Leo here insisted on buying tonight.”
Davey turned off the burner, placed the pan directly into the refrigerator for when his mother would undoubtedly be rooting for it in the morning. He sat down and started into his chicken while Lois went into the bathroom to reapply a generous layer of makeup—where does the old makeup go? he wondered—and Leo yanked the cork out of one of the two bottles he’d bagged in.
Davey’s mouth was full when Leo placed a full milk glass of wine on the table. Davey instinctively grabbed it.
“Are you supposed to have this?” Leo asked politely.
Davey nodded. “Ya, I’m supposed to have it.”
“You seem like a good kind of kid,” Leo said, filling two more glasses of different sizes, then sitting across from Davey. “Your sister, from when I met her that time, she seemed like a fresh one. But you, you seem like a good kind of kid.”
