When Laurie smiled she was very appealing. It was easy for Harmony to see why Pepper had fallen in love; what wasn’t so easy to see was why Pepper hadn’t let the boys go and just had a life with Laurie. She knew, though, that Pepper’s problems with boys weren’t anything she should dwell on. They were about to go onto the George Washington Bridge—she wanted to take a last look at New York. When she was sixteen she had fully intended to go to New York to seek her fortune; it was just an accident that she chose Las Vegas instead. The accident had occurred because Continental Trailways was giving a special discount on tickets to Las Vegas—undoubtedly the casinos had made some sort of deal with them, to encourage people to head that way. It had worked for Harmony, she didn’t really have enough money for a ticket all the way to New York. Her plan had been to stop and work for a few months in some city like Chattanooga or Baltimore; in a few months she should be able to save enough to get a bus ticket on to New York. But the special rate at Trailways made it so much easier to get to Las Vegas that she got on that bus instead of the bus going east.
Now she was on a bus going west again, out of the city she had missed because Continental Trailways had offered special prices, all those years ago, before she even had a real boyfriend. Of course she had done well in Las Vegas; well professionally at least. She had no skills to speak of; she could type a little but she couldn’t do shorthand; she had not been particularly employable, except as a showgirl. Fortunately being a showgirl didn’t require any skill except good looks.
“We’re crossing the Hudson,” Laurie said.
The George Washington Bridge was so large that you couldn’t just look down off it, as you could most bridges. Harmony had to look far away to see water. Then they got off the bridge and sort of swung around into some other state; Harmony wasn’t quite sure which state it might be, but she did look out the window at the great buildings of Manhattan one more time. For a moment she felt a keen regret—she felt she might have made a wrong choice, all those years ago; maybe if she had not been tempted by the cheap ticket and had come to New York she would have had a better life—it wasn’t just herself she was thinking of, either; it was her children. New Yorkers all seemed so ambitious, maybe she could have developed ambitions too, if she had come there as a young woman. She might have managed to go to college, at least she could have taken Spanish classes or something—she had always meant to learn Spanish but she never had; once she had done a show in Acapulco for two weeks, but still she had felt handicapped by not being able to talk to the Mexican people.
Mainly what Harmony felt, as she looked across the Hudson at the great city she had missed, was that if she hadn’t missed it she might have done better by her children: Eddie might have a father who cared about him, and Pepper might not be dead. Gary was right when he said that most of the guys in Las Vegas were jerk-offs. It was a pessimistic view for sure, but there was a lot of truth in it. Harmony had always tried to be a nice woman, and yet she had never really even been able to find a man who cared enough about her to help her raise her children. Gary was the man who had helped her the most—by far the most, in fact—and Gary was gay. Probably the person who had meant the most to Pepper, her daughter, was the girl sitting beside her, Laurie, who was also gay; what that said to Harmony was that the fact that you slept with a member of the opposite sex didn’t make you a helpful person necessarily.
Then Eddie came up the aisle of the bus and crawled up in her lap. He had a solemn look on his face.
“Sheba’s sad, Mom,” he said. “She doesn’t want to leave her friends. What are we going to do?”
“Well, you didn’t want to leave your friends, either,” Harmony reminded him. “You were very sad about it, but you got over it in a few days.”
Eddie looked at her with his most solemn look, and shook his head.
“No, I didn’t get over it,” he said. “I’m still sad. I wish I could be on the bus with Eli, going to my school.”
“I guess I was just hoping you were over it so I wouldn’t have to feel guilty.”
“Well,” Eddie said, brightening a little, “you won’t have to feel guilty if you’ll let me see the President and Mrs. President.”
“That solves your problem, but what about Sheba’s?” Laurie asked. “She doesn’t really want to go to Oklahoma, does she?”
“No, she wants to get off the bus,” Eddie said. “Otis does too. They’re afraid somebody will get their Dumpster if they leave.”
Harmony got up and went to the back of the bus, leaving Eddie with Laurie Chalk. Sheba was crying and Otis looked bleak. Harmony was remembering that Gary had almost been hit by a taxicab when he jumped out of the car. They were on a pretty big freeway—for sure she didn’t want to take any chances of Sheba and Otis getting hit by cars.
“Honey, you don’t have to go to Oklahoma,” Harmony said. “You don’t have to go anywhere, if you don’t want to. Eddie’s going to miss you, but he’ll get over it.”
“No, I won’t,” Eddie said—he had followed her to the rear of the bus. “I’ll never get over it, but I don’t want Sheba to be sad. And I don’t want Otis to lose the Dumpster.”
“Probably already gone,” Otis said. “Ten people probably living in it now.”
“Yeah, all of them your girlfriends—dumb sluts,” Sheba said. Even so she was holding Otis’s hand.
“I don’t want to leave Bright and I don’t want to leave you, because you kind,” Sheba said, looking at Harmony sadly. “Nobody’s been kind to me like you have, letting me stay in your room right off the bat. But me and Otis be like fish out of water, down in Oklahoma. They ain’t gonna like two New Jersey niggers coming in on them. How we going to make a living down there?”
Eddie crawled up in Sheba’s lap, and clung to her, sobbing.
“I hate to lose my friends,” he said. “I hate to lose Sheba, most of all.”
“Oh, Bright,” Sheba said, hugging him.
“We might not be able to find no Dumpster, in Oklahoma,” Otis said—obviously leaving the Dumpster had been a big step, for him.
Harmony felt overwhelmed. She gave up, and went back to sit with Laurie. Eddie’s big thing was keeping people together, yet it was the one thing his own mother had never been able to manage. Despite her best intentions, she had never been able to keep even three people together for very long, much less a busload.
“I don’t know what to do,” she said, to Laurie.
“Eddie got attached, and so did Sheba and Otis,” Laurie said. “Maybe I can talk them into going at least as far as Washington—we could send them back on a bus.”
She went back to chat with Sheba and Otis, and when she did Sonny Le Song immediately sat down in her seat beside Harmony.
“That’s Laurie’s seat,” Harmony informed him immediately. Omar glared at him and Salah stood up and shook his fist.
“Oh, sit down, Salah,” Harmony said. “I’ll make him move when Laurie comes back.”
Sonny Le Song got the look on his face that he always got when his feelings were close to the surface, but Harmony didn’t care. She wasn’t about to let him sit in Laurie’s seat.
“I don’t want to sit by you and I didn’t invite you to Oklahoma, either,” she said. “And I don’t care how close to the surface your feelings are.”
“Your sisters invited me,” Sonny said. “They took pity on me because I’m down on my luck. You used to take pity but I guess you ain’t got a soft spot for old Sonny, anymore.”
Harmony didn’t say anything—she knew him well enough to know that talk would only make him worse.
“Is it because I made a pass?” he asked. “I know it was bad timing, but I miss you so much I couldn’t help it.”
Harmony kept silent—New York City was receding in the distance. She still felt her regret when she saw the tall buildings growing dim behind them.
“Remember when you used to come to the Chevron to hear me sing?” Sonny asked. “The guys at the gas station thought I was lucky, to
have the prettiest showgirl in Las Vegas check out my gig.”
Why is this man talking to me, what does he think it will change? Harmony thought. She kept a close watch on his hands, while she maintained her silence.
“Harmony, I was missing you that way,” Sonny said. “That’s what caused the bad timing.”
“Sonny, it wasn’t the pass, it’s that I have absolutely no interest in having you in my life right now,” Harmony said. She knew it would sound like total rejection, but she didn’t care. He shouldn’t have been so quick to take Laurie’s seat. Besides that, he had shown up outside Laurie’s apartment—in her book it was stalking; she had had other old boyfriends stalk her on occasion and it was not something she could feel tolerant about in her present state.
Sonny looked at her as if he was about to cry, but this time she knew he wasn’t about to cry; mainly what she saw in his look was belligerence; he didn’t like it that she said what she said about not wanting him to be in her life anymore. The bottom line, in her view, was that Sonny Le Song was a jerk-off from Cleveland or Wyoming or somewhere and he wanted to be the one to decide whether he got to be in her life or not. How dare he poke his dick at her leg when her sisters and her son were both in the room, it would have been rude enough if nobody had been in the room.
“You never used to be so hard-hearted when you were younger,” Sonny commented—definitely she heard some belligerence in his voice. Probably Sonny was smart enough to realize that bursting into tears wasn’t going to work, not with Harmony, not at the present moment, so he switched to the macho mode instead.
Harmony didn’t respond to the hard-hearted comment—why should she? Saying goodbye to Sheba and Otis was going to be sad; she had no space in her to worry about whether Sonny Le Song thought she was hard-hearted. She knew he was just trying to make her feel guilty enough to sleep with him at some point; the first time they were alone or even if they weren’t alone he would be shoving it against her leg again, or against whatever part of her he could reach.
Laurie came walking back up the aisle. When she saw Sonny in her seat she got an annoyed look on her face. She came on along the aisle and tapped Sonny on the shoulder.
“Can I help you?” he said, looking up at Laurie as if he had never seen her before.
“Yes, you can help me, you can give me back my seat, please,” Laurie said.
Sonny stood up and peered at the seat as if he were looking for something, but he didn’t move into the aisle so Laurie could sit down.
“I don’t see no name on this seat,” he said, in a tone that was neither friendly nor polite. “It don’t say reserved for dykes or nothing. Maybe you better sit somewhere else, honey.”
Laurie flushed with embarrassment, she didn’t know how to react but Harmony reacted: she stood up and punched Sonny in the mouth as hard as she could, which was hard enough to split his lower lip open—it might have split his upper lip too if there had been any upper lip to split. It was a solid enough punch that it knocked him across the aisle into the seats on the other side of the bus.
“You ditsy cunt, you busted my lip!” Sonny said. He put his hand to his mouth and looked at the blood on his fingers.
“Watch your language, buddy, there’s a child on this bus!” Laurie said. Sonny tried to slap her, but he was off balance and Laurie was on guard—the slap didn’t come anywhere close. Then Sheba came dashing up the aisle; evidently Sheba really disliked Sonny: she waded right in and punched him in the eye.
“You black whore!” he said, but before he could say more Omar and Salah pounced on him, and Otis rushed up to help Sheba; it was such a melee that all Harmony could see of Sonny was the blood on his shirt, from the lip she had split with her first punch.
The bus was kind of rocking from the struggle; Harmony could tell G. was not pleased, but he kept his eye on the road and slowly eased the bus off on the right shoulder and brought it to a stop. Harmony was grateful to him; it was reassuring to have a driver who kept his presence of mind even when a fight was going on in his school bus. Harmony glanced around to see what her sisters were making of it—after all, they were the ones who had invited Sonny to come along on the trip. Both of them were watching with surprised looks on their faces; probably they had been dozing or something and had no idea why Harmony had suddenly punched him. She was grateful to G. for stopping the bus, and to Sheba and Omar and Salah for coming to her defense; but, still, it was her fight. He was her old boyfriend; she was the one who should have to reap the consequences of having made such a dreadful mistake as to sleep with him in the first place.
“Let him go, Salah,” she said, stepping into the aisle. Salah was the one who was mostly holding Sonny; Salah was bigger and had an arm across Sonny’s throat—unfortunately blood from the split lip was getting on Salah’s nice clean white smock, probably it wasn’t a smock but Harmony didn’t know what else to call it.
“But he is a crazed man,” Omar protested.
“No, he’s not crazy, he’s just selfish,” Harmony said.
With some reluctance, Salah released Sonny. Sheba and Sonny were glaring at one another; Sheba had a look in her eye that was a little scary. Obviously, given the chance, she was going to go for Sonny again.
“I want you all to go to the back of the bus, please,” Harmony said. “Sonny’s getting off. I just want to say a few words to him.”
“Why’s he getting off, what’s happened?” Pat asked.
“Pat, he’s getting off, mind your own business,” Harmony said; she was not in the mood to have to explain things to her sisters.
“I just asked,” Pat said. “I nap for five seconds and the next thing I know, you’re throwing the man off the bus. Can’t I even be curious?”
Neddie took her arm.
“Let’s go back where we can smoke in peace, Pat,” she said. “If Harmony’s got something to settle with the man, let her settle it.”
There was some huffing and puffing on Salah’s part, and on Sheba’s, but finally everybody moved away. Sonny stood there feeling his lip, which had nearly stopped bleeding. Pat handed him a Kleenex, before she moved back up the aisle.
“Why were you waiting around my daughter’s rehearsals?” Harmony asked—she was feeling some very ugly feelings toward Sonny Le Song right at that moment. The fact that he knew exactly where her daughter had lived was a disturbing fact, in her book.
For a moment Sonny looked as if he might spit it out, he still had a belligerent look in his eye, but then he lost it, he shifted, he let the macho go. Probably he picked up something in Harmony’s attitude, the something being that she was going to kill him if he made a wrong move, or said a wrong word. He shrugged, stopped huffing, made himself look smaller.
“I seen her picture in the paper, that’s all,” he said. “I thought, What’s Harmony’s little girl doing up here all by herself? I thought maybe I could be helpful, that’s all. I only seen her like a maximum three times.”
Harmony was having the impulse to grab Sonny by the throat and squeeze until his guts popped out; never in her life had she had such a terrible impulse to rip into a man’s body with her bare hands. For all she knew, she was looking at the man who had given her daughter the disease that killed her—among Sonny’s many bad habits was a tendency to use the needle when he could afford it. Obviously there were only two reasons why Sonny would go to the trouble to find Pepper at a rehearsal. One was to mooch, to see if she could help find him a booking agent, or introduce him to a producer, or help him get gigs. The other reason was to fuck her: that was the one that was making Harmony want to rip a hole in his throat and pull his entrails out through the hole.
Harmony had a notion from the scared look in Sonny’s eyes that she knew which one it had been—not that it couldn’t have been both.
“Hey, forget it, I don’t want to interfere with your trip, I’ll just get out and hitch,” Sonny said; he even forgot his new T-shirts in his hurry to get off the school bus. G. opened the door and Sonny popped
out so quickly that some of the oncoming traffic on the expressway honked at him—maybe they thought they had a suicide on their hands, though Sonny’s main thought was probably just to get out of the bus before Harmony strangled him. He was right about that one, too—if he hadn’t fled and she had actually got her hands on Sonny Le Song he might have been dead before anyone could have pried her loose.
“G., could we just go?” Harmony asked.
G. immediately shut the door and eased the bus back into the traffic; the problem of where to drop Sheba and Otis was a problem they would have to cope with later. Harmony sat back down—for a while, no one came to sit with her or speak to her. Probably she had scared them all, she didn’t know. The thought that Sonny Le Song might have seduced her daughter was so disturbing that if she let the thought settle in her mind, even for a second, it made her want to take the wheel of the bus herself and go back and run over Sonny—not just once but over and over again, until she had ground him into the asphalt; until there was nothing left, not even a stain. All he was was a stain anyway: a stain on her memory, a stain on her motherhood, a stain on her conscience, a stain on her life.
After the bus was moving along smoothly, Eddie came down the aisle and crawled up in Harmony’s lap. He peered out the window, to see if he could see Sonny Le Song, but Sonny was somewhere back down the road, around a curve. All Eddie could see was traffic, and a last outline of the buildings of Manhattan.
“I like it that there’s towers,” Eddie said, as the towers became shadows against the gray sky. “Demons and monsters and warlocks could live in the towers. And men with trunks like elephants.”
Harmony was still feeling like doing terrible bodily injury to Sonny Le Song—she couldn’t concentrate on her son’s vision of men with trunks like elephants, in the towers of Manhattan.
“You pummeled him, Mom, didn’t you?” Eddie said.
“No, but I socked him,” Harmony said.
“Salah pummeled him, though,” Eddie said. “I think Omar pummeled him, too, and Sheba poked him in the eye.”
The Late Child Page 30
