“Now tell me!” she says.
“You’re sure you can keep a secret?” Gypsy teases.
“Of course.”
“You’re the only person I’m telling, so if you-know-who finds out…”
“I won’t say a thing.”
“All right. I signed up on a dating site.”
Aleah feels her stomach sink a little. Gypsy notices.
“It’s not like that,” she says. “It’s a Christian dating site.”
Aleah does her best to appear comforted.
“Aren’t you a little young for a dating site?” she asks.
“It’s not like they check your ID. And it’s just flirting, mostly. Or it was.”
“What is it now?”
“I told you…I’ve got someone. And I need your help.”
“Help with what?”
Gypsy flashes a coy grin.
“You got your driver’s license, right?”
Aleah sees where this is going.
“Gypsy, I can’t—”
“You wouldn’t have to take me far. Just to the ice cream parlor on Pearl Street. He wants to meet me for real.”
“Why doesn’t he just pick you up?”
“You know why. Mama can’t find out. Besides which, I got butterflies. I need you with me.”
Better and better, Aleah thinks. She sees herself playing chaperone, sitting beside Gypsy in a cramped booth, looking across at…She hates herself for being mean, but what kind of guy would date Gypsy?
If there even is a guy, she thinks. Maybe Gypsy is playing some kind of game. Maybe she doesn’t know herself that she’s playing. Maybe this is a fantasy spun out of control. Whatever the case, Aleah does not want to encourage her. Then again, she doesn’t want to discourage her, either. It’s hard enough being Gypsy Rose Blancharde.
“I want to help,” Aleah says, “but—”
“No!” Gypsy cuts her off. “No buts! Please, I’m begging you. I have to see him now, before I can’t anymore.”
“What does that mean?”
“I told you, I have to have another surgery on my eyes. What if something goes bad?”
“Nothing will—”
“The doctor’s hand could slip. Or I could have some kind of allergic reaction. Or maybe he just won’t be able to fix me. I have to see him while I still can. That way, if we end up together, I’ll be able to picture him when I hear his voice. I’ll be able to see his smile. I’ll know what he looks like when he looks at me.”
Aleah hesitates. Her instincts are screaming at her to stay away, but Gypsy looks so desperate, and in the end she has a point: how many opportunities will a girl in Gypsy’s situation have? If this is even a real opportunity.
“All right,” she says. “But maybe you better tell me a little about him first.”
“Thank you, thank you, thank you,” Gypsy says.
And then she goes quiet for a long beat. When Aleah looks over, she sees that her friend is crying.
Chapter 13
“Ow!” Gypsy says, jerking her head away.
“See, that’s how you get cut,” Dee Dee says. “Then you blame me. Now hold still.”
They’re in the living room, Gypsy seated on a plastic stool with a short back, Dee Dee standing behind her, working the hair clippers. The TV is on in the background, tuned to a hospital-themed soap opera Dee Dee calls her “story.”
“Why can’t we just let it grow?” Gypsy asks. “I think I’d look pretty with long hair.”
“You look pretty now.”
“But if I had hair, I wouldn’t have to wear that hat you hate so much.”
“We’ve been over this, Gypsy. It’s the cancer won’t let you grow your hair. I’m guessing you don’t wanna shed like a dog?”
“Maybe I wouldn’t. We could try it. Just the one time.”
“Enough already, Gypsy. Under my roof, we keep things neat and tidy.”
Gypsy thinks: Don’t you mean the church’s roof? Which reminds her…
“About what Pastor Mike said, I was thinking—”
“Don’t start with that now. He shouldn’t have said nothing without asking me first. Now quit squirming. I’m about done here.”
She runs a finger over her daughter’s nearly bare scalp.
“I don’t like this mole you’ve got here one bit,” she says. “Keeps growing on me.”
“But Mama,” Gypsy says, “who turns down a free trip to Disney World?”
“Maybe you should’ve thought things through before you pulled that stunt the last time. Damn near gave me a heart attack.”
“But I learned my lesson, Mama. Nothing like that’ll happen again.”
“You bet it won’t. I should’ve had that man arrested. Who runs off with a child?”
“He didn’t know how young I was on account of the costume. And we didn’t run off, we—”
“Drop it now, Gypsy,” Dee Dee says. “You’re working my last nerve, and it ain’t even noon yet.”
But Gypsy’s mind is already drifting back to last summer, to the time when the man in the orange jumpsuit with the fake bionic leg almost set her free.
* * *
The trip had been a gift from their New Orleans church. Pastor Dan had noticed Dee Dee and Gypsy’s shared love of sci-fi movies, from The Thing (the classic 1951 version) to Close Encounters to E.T. (though that one always made Gypsy cry). The pastor started a fundraiser to send them to Intergalactic Con in Naples, Florida. He chose the conference because it featured a space-themed art show—a contest that all attendees with an artistic bent were encouraged to enter. As he was seeing them off at the airport, Pastor Dan put a hand on Gypsy’s shoulder and said: “Bring the prize home, kiddo.”
She’d had a month to prepare, during which time she was never without a pencil in her hand. The idea came to her early on: a large-scale design of the first human colony on Mars. Instead of houses or apartments, she imagined a futuristic hybrid: ranch-style homes with earth-colored metallic exteriors stacked in structures that looked like ultra-sleek parking garages. High-speed conveyor belts replaced sidewalks, and there were no streets at all since cars would be able to fly. There were no zoos, either, since animals of every stripe would be domesticated, and she did away with hospitals and cemeteries because disease and death would be things of the past.
Advertising, however, would be alive and well in the future. She imagined billboards hovering in midair; spotlights projecting logos for everything from brand-name beverages to three-dimensional video games; jingles playing continuously on a public radio that could never be shut off (though Gypsy wasn’t sure how to convey the latter without using words).
The final drawing filled a poster-sized canvas and looked like an elaborate blueprint with minuscule detail lurking in every crevice.
“I gotta give it to you,” Dee Dee said, “you sure worked on this one. Can’t imagine what you’re gonna do with yourself now.”
“Maybe I’ll be an architect,” Gypsy said.
“Maybe you will at that.”
It was the only time Gypsy could remember her mother sounding proud.
The first two days of the conference were the very best of Gypsy’s life. Their room was on the top floor of an eighteen-story hotel, and all Gypsy could see from the window was pure-blue sky and endless water. The jam-packed lineup of events included an alien-themed comedy show, a staged light saber fight between two stuntmen who worked on The Phantom Menace, an exhibit of alternate designs for the Millennium Falcon, and a screening of deleted scenes from all three Back to the Future movies.
“I don’t want this to ever end,” Gypsy told her mother.
But it wasn’t just the spectacle and setting: for the first time in her life, Gypsy did not feel out of place. True, she was one of very few participants in a wheelchair, and maybe the only one with an oxygen tank, but nobody seemed to notice. It was OK to be strange with so many robots and storm troopers and space creatures roaming the hotel. Here, people talked to her w
ithout the slightest trace of pity or revulsion.
That was how Gypsy met Robert: he just walked up to her and started talking.
It was during the costume ball on the last night of the conference. Gypsy was dressed as an alien, and Dee Dee as the Sigourney Weaver character from the movies. The winners of the art contest had just been announced. Gypsy’s drawing placed third out of eighty-seven entries. It wasn’t enough to win her the $1,000 prize, but it did earn her a ribbon, and they even put a photo of Gypsy and the drawing up on a projector screen. Gypsy was ecstatic…until she looked up and saw her mother’s face.
“There weren’t two drawings better than yours,” Dee Dee said. “Not even close. Those judges robbed us, and I ain’t gonna go quietly.”
She walked off, leaving Gypsy alone on the edge of the crowded dance floor. Gypsy sat and sipped from her Shirley Temple, feeling like she might cry for the first time all weekend.
“Excuse me,” a voice said.
She looked up, saw the man in the orange jumpsuit with the fake robot-leg standing over her.
“I couldn’t help but overhear,” he said. “I agree with that woman: you were robbed.”
Gypsy wondered if the man could see her blushing in the room’s dim light. For her part, she could just make out his features. He had a nice face—the kind of thin, angular face she liked to draw.
“That’s nice of you,” she said. “But third place ain’t bad. Not with all those people who entered.”
The man smiled.
“My name’s Robert,” he said. “It’s nice to meet such a gifted artist, Gypsy Rose.”
And then, without knowing she would, Gypsy repeated a line she’d heard in countless movies: “Why don’t we get out of here, Robert?”
Chapter 14
It wasn’t the kind of thing she’d have said, or even thought to say, in any other setting.
Robert didn’t hesitate:
“Do you have someplace in mind?” he asked.
Gypsy scanned the ballroom. Her mother was nowhere in sight.
“Someplace away from all these people,” Gypsy said.
“My thinking exactly.”
He wheeled her out of the ballroom and down a long corridor to the bank of elevators. Gypsy resisted the urge to look over her shoulder. She wished Robert would push faster. It wasn’t until the elevator door closed behind them that she knew she’d made her escape, though she couldn’t say exactly what she’d escaped from, or what she was running to. After a quick wave of relief, she was suddenly very afraid. She glanced up at Robert. The harsh overhead light aged him ten years (he was as old as Dee Dee—maybe older), and his face wasn’t so much thin and angular as gaunt and pale.
“Are you cold?” he asked.
She hadn’t noticed that her limbs were shaking. Now that he’d pointed it out, she couldn’t think of anything else. The trembling spread through her body and into her jaw so that her teeth were knocking together loud enough for him to hear.
“I’ll be OK,” she managed.
He put his hands on her shoulders, rubbed her back with his thumbs until the doors opened.
No going back now, Gypsy thought.
His room was only on the sixth floor and didn’t face the water. It smelled a little musty, and though the bed was made, there were clothes strewn all over the floor and dresser and desk.
“Sorry,” he said. “I wasn’t expecting company.”
And then Gypsy noticed something that put her at ease, or at least more at ease than she had been. The surface of his nightstand was covered in pill bottles, with the bottles stacked in columns reaching three or four high. Maybe, Gypsy thought, he’s sick. Like me, but not as bad. He’s sick like me but has no one to help him.
Thinking this made her want to be his princess, even if he was more frog than prince.
“Would you like something to drink?” he asked. “I have a nice bottle of Irish whiskey that should warm you right up.”
“Um, OK,” Gypsy said. She wasn’t about to tell him that she’d never had so much as a drop of alcohol, any more than she’d confess to this being her first time alone with a man.
He went into the bathroom and came back carrying two plastic cups, the kind hotels give you to gargle with, already filled to the brim with brown liquid. He handed one over.
“Obliged,” Gypsy said: another expression she’d picked up from the movies.
“Cheers,” he said, raising his cup.
“Cheers,” Gypsy echoed.
In her short life, Gypsy had tasted syrups and serums of every kind, but nothing that burned quite like this. She could feel her eyes watering, her cheeks turning red.
Robert smiled, sat across from her on the edge of the bed.
“Take your time with it,” he said. “Whiskey’s an acquired taste.”
“What’s that mean?”
“It grows on you,” Robert said.
He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, so that their faces were just inches apart. She could smell the alcohol on him, imagined that he could smell it on her, too.
“Tell me about yourself, Gypsy Rose,” he said.
Gypsy grinned, looked around the room as though there might be some other Gypsy Rose lurking in a corner.
“What should I tell?” she asked.
“Well, for starters, where are you from?”
Gypsy took a slow sip of whiskey. This time there was no burn—just a pleasant warmth sliding down into her body.
“New Orleans, to start with,” she said.
“Ah,” Robert said. “The Big Easy.”
“Wasn’t nothing easy about it,” Gypsy corrected. “Katrina ripped my home up and blew it away, just like in The Wizard of Oz. I live in Missouri now. Sounds like misery, but it’s a nice enough place. The people are nice, anyway. It was my old pastor set up this trip. He encourages me with my art.”
She noticed herself saying me and my, quietly avoiding any hint of her mother, who, she realized, must have started searching by now.
“There are some good things about it, too,” she continued. “Missouri, I mean. Like, I ain’t seen a single cockroach since I been there. In New Orleans, they’re big as your fist, and most of ’em fly. There’s no getting used to that no matter how long you live. And it’s quiet in Missouri, especially at night. In New Orleans, I slept with a fan on just to block out the street noise, but in Missouri there’s no noise to block out. Sometimes it’s almost too quiet, like in a horror movie right before the girl gets attacked.”
She knew that she was talking too much, that she should stop and ask about his life, but she’d slipped into a rhythm she couldn’t break. Maybe it was the whiskey, which had her feeling a little like the meds her mother gave her at night, except that she wasn’t tired. This was more like the wide-awake time just before she got tired, when thoughts were like feathers in her head and she was chasing them all around.
Robert let her go on a while longer before he interrupted.
“That’s a dandy of a wheelchair,” he said.
She gave him a vacant look: no one had ever complimented one of her chairs before.
“Sleek and chic,” he continued. “Like something from the future. Like the type of conveyance people might use in your Mars colony.”
“I hadn’t thought much about that,” Gypsy said. “I guess you’re right.”
“Tell me,” he said, “can you walk?”
“You mean without the chair?”
He nodded. Something about him had changed. His eyes were stretched wide, and he looked like he’d never wanted anything so bad as for her to give the right answer.
“Why would I wheel myself around if I could just get up and walk?” she asked.
He didn’t seem to hear. He bent forward, set his cup on the floor, undid the Velcro straps that held his fake bionic leg in place.
“You see,” he said, “I can take this off whenever I want, and then I’m just like everybody else. But you…you’re special. You can’t be anything
but special.”
“Special?”
“Unique. No matter what, your experience of this world will never be like everybody else’s.”
He took her half-full cup and set it on the floor beside his own. Then he touched her hand. He was so sincere. So eager. Gypsy felt the fear creeping back. She tried to concentrate, but his face kept dropping out of focus.
“I’m going to kiss you now,” he said. “And then I’m going to lift you onto that bed.”
Gypsy gripped the arms of her chair, let his lips touch hers. His stubble scratched her skin; what he was doing with his tongue confused her. She thought it could only be the whiskey that kept her from shaking all over again.
“May I?” he asked, forcing one arm awkwardly under her legs.
And then, before she could answer, she heard her mother’s voice tearing through the hall outside, followed by a furious banging on Robert’s door.
“Gypsy Rose, goddamn it, I know you’re in there!”
Gypsy looked up at Robert. His face was turning colors and there was a saliva bubble swelling out the side of his mouth. She wondered if it was possible to be rescued and taken prisoner at the same time.
Chapter 15
Aleah sits with her mother in the front pew of Springfield Methodist. The church is full, but the crowd is so quiet that Aleah feels alone with Pastor Mike and his words. He stands behind a large mahogany coffin, his open palms raised skyward.
“Dee Dee Blancharde,” he intones, “was taken from this world far too soon. She was taken from this community before any of us really got a chance to know her, though certainly we know about her. We know about her devotion to her daughter. We saw enough of Dee Dee to know that her actions were in keeping with her values. Despite the demands placed on her as full-time caretaker, a duty she fulfilled out of love rather than obligation, she served this church with the fervor and dedication of someone who’d grown up among us.”
Aleah has trouble concentrating. She’s never been this close to a coffin before. She can’t stop picturing the body inside, the bones and flesh lying still with no hope of ever moving again. In life, Dee Dee had been all motion, always fidgeting, always jumping up to fetch something for someone: a glass of lemonade or a plate of cookies for guests; a pillow for Gypsy when her back started to ache from so much sitting.
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