Lark and Termite

by Jayne Anne Phillips

  The girl lies beside him, one arm across him to touch the boy, waiting.

  Leavitt looks at her. The last daylight filters into the tunnel with the green smell of trees and earth. Kilul irosumnida, he tells her. I’m lost.

  Anyo, she says in Korean, no. A little way more.

  He thinks about giving her the revolver. He can’t concentrate, protect them. The colors he saw, the plunge and vibration, the speed and floating, the thinking and then seeing, are maybe only the brain flashing as it shuts down. He focuses on the girl. He can feel her near him, the hard slim line of her body tense with energy. He looks into her face. Her lashes are short and thick, the whites of her eyes very white, her black irises in the almond shapes of her lids so perfect they look jewel-like. Her gaze darts and shines. She thinks she can move them, keep them alive until they can get out.

  She seems to pause then, looks at him intently. Almost formally, she moves to hold herself just above him, and bows her head to him.

  Sugo hashiyssumnida, she whispers.

  There are many ways to say thank you in Korean, depending on the originator of action and the quality of gesture. There are ways to say thank you when someone has helped you beyond any expectation.

  She thinks he saved them. It’s why she won’t leave him.

  And she reaches across him to touch the boy, to indicate that her action includes him. Gently, she turns the boy’s head so that his gaze falls unseeing on Leavitt’s face. The uneven blue of his pupils is impenetrable, depthless and cloudy, but the blue seems quietly, deeply lit. The blue never wavers. What does he see behind it. Shadows. Sounds. Leavitt doesn’t ask but the boy inclines his head as though to answer.

  Ihae hamnida, Leavitt says. I understand.

  The light darkens around them. Beyond the tunnel, the guns start up. Random pops of automatic weapons fire, warning shots. Troops are shooting past the entrances, keeping everyone inside. Quickly, the girl pulls the boy soundlessly onto her back. She leans over Leavitt, her eyes locked on his, and begins to pull him, drag him deeper in. Behind her, he sees the inverted curve of the tunnel, glinting as though some reflection or trick of light moves across it.

  Winfield, West Virginia

  JULY 26, 1959

  Lark

  I decorate the cake in three pale colors, and the light in the fridge makes each one glow. Icing sets up just right in the cold. After supper Nonie tells me to take the plastic stacking chairs out of the shed where they stay clean and I put them beside Termite’s chair. I have a little round plastic table I put there too, for the drinks. Nick has mowed the alley. He takes off his work shirt and washes like always at our outside spigot.

  “Cocktail hour at last,” he says. He puts the shirt back on and his wet skin soaks it through in spots, then he combs his thick dark hair straight back with his hands. Water drips onto his collar in rivulets.

  “Take a load off, Nick. You want some ice tea?” Nonie comes outside in her housedress. She takes off her apron and folds it in pieces, smaller and smaller, like her own flag, her own little ceremony.

  “Jesus, is that all you’re serving tonight?” Nick Tucci says. “I work like a dog on the pasture here and you give me some tea?”

  It’s a joke. The second husband cured Nonie of ever having liquor in her house. Nick knows the story. “I made a cake,” I tell him. “A birthday cake. I’ll get it in just a minute.”

  “Another birthday? That’s the second one this month. Lucky fellow.” He puts the flat of his palm on Termite’s head. “How you doing, Junior?”

  Termite never answers Nick Tucci, he just gets quiet and holds still, like he thinks Nick is part of the mower or he carries the sound of the mower inside him. Maybe the sound is in Nick’s hand, like a vibration, and Termite hears it. Maybe the vibration is there.

  “Junior ought to take up for me,” Nick Tucci says. “We men got to stick together.”

  Nick won’t call Termite by his name. He says that’s the name of an insect, a bug, not a kid, a boy, but he’s the one who never waits for Termite to talk back. He fixed Termite’s chair, though. We had this upholstered chair with arms Termite liked to sit in like a nest, and Nick turned it over one day so the bottom showed all strange and naked. He took off the flimsy wooden stumps it had for legs and screwed on silver wheels he said were strong enough for carts that move pianos and refrigerators. He said they were sure strong enough for this dinky kid. Nonie says Nick is handy. Charlie, now, he can’t fix a sink or a lamp cord. Nonie does all that at the restaurant, but Nick helps her here. Nick fastened a handle onto the back of Termite’s chair so we could steer it, and he put a wooden ramp stapled with stair treads leading out the back door, over the stoop and the one step.

  Termite was smaller then; he was so small when he started liking that chair that his feet didn’t reach to the end of the seat cushion. His legs were always curved, but we used to keep them out in front of him. It was later that he whined and made noises until we tucked them under him, like he didn’t want to see them anymore after he knew what they were.

  Nick sits down in his own chair now, and Nonie sits just opposite, and he fixes her with a look. “Noreen,” he says, “I’m forty-four years old.”

  Nonie pours us three glasses of tea. “You’re a spring chicken,” she tells Nick. “Good God, you can’t complain until you’re fifty, and if you’re a man, you can’t complain then.”

  “I got this passel of wild teenagers running around. They got three junkers between them now and I never know where they are.”

  “Who says you need to know? You ran around plenty, Nick. You might not remember, but everyone else does.”

  “Yeah,” he says, “I’m still running. All day I feed the wrapper, and every night that cold beer gets colder.”

  I think about Nick and the wrapper, how he stands between the belts and lifts the bales from one to the other. The plant makes business forms, and the wrapper is the big machine that thuds a few thousand pages into a batch, wraps and seals them in plastic for shipping. Bale in and bale out, Nick Tucci says, his calling in life.

  “I could near dive into that beer,” he goes on, “I get too thirsty to live.”

  “You don’t want to get that thirsty,” Nonie says.

  Termite says exactly what she does, without the words, and he starts moving.

  “What is it he wants,” Nonie says. “Lark, get him a plastic glass and his straw, and get him that little doo-dad he likes. I swear, he’s crazy about that thing.”

  “I’ll get the cake too,” I tell them.

  While I’m in the kitchen I can see them through the window, and I can hear them. They keep talking like I can’t, like they think they sent me to another country.

  “What are you going to do about her, Noreen,” Nick Tucci says.

  “What do you mean? She’s finished her first year down at Barker Secretarial. That will give her something, a lot more than her diploma from that high school Zeke doesn’t show up to half the time. She’s got some financial assistance, for the good grades she always had. Barker girls can even be legal secretaries, if they go all three years. The last year is work-study Maybe she can get a job with one of the lawyers in town.”

  “She’s a woman now, Noreen, and she doesn’t even have a bedroom with a door. She just going to sit here for three years, taking care of Junior in the days, and typing at night?”

  “What would you like her to do, Nick,” I hear Nonie say. “Run around with one of your boys, maybe?”

  I’m looking for Termite’s doo-dad, the little pitcher he likes. Where has that old thing got to. It’s small, fits in my palm. Pale yellow porcelain, easy to lose in a sinkful of dishes. He doesn’t like me to wash it or take it from him, but he holds it so often I want it to be clean. The fat moon face on the front is winking and smiling, ridged and bumpy. Maybe that’s why Termite likes the feel of it.

  “Jesus, Noreen,” Nick says. “Someone, sometime, is gonna drive up here by the alley and open the door for her to j
ump in. Don’t you know that?”

  I have to move all the dishes before I find the pitcher; it’s so small it falls through the skinny rubber rungs of the drainer to underneath. I’ve got it in my hand, washing and drying the face. I can hear them outside, I can hear them perfectly well.

  “Uh-huh,” I hear Nonie answer. “And you think she’s just going to ride off and leave Termite sitting here.” There’s a beat of quiet. “You remember Lola, and I do,” Nonie says, “but Lark is nothing like her.”

  Nick doesn’t say anything then, and Termite doesn’t say anything either. It’s no wonder I think he understands some of what people say. I hear the bell on his chair. He presses it with his wrist, just a small, glancing sound, once, and twice, and three times.

  Be right there, I tell him, but I say it in my head. I catch myself doing that, like I think he can hear me. Here’s his plastic cup and straw, and the handle of the moon pitcher fits around my smallest finger, like a ring. I put the silver-plate pie server in my pocket, the one I found last week in the basement, in the boxes Nonie keeps down there.

  The tray with the rim around it is good for carrying things. Plates slide and don’t fall off, but the edge is low enough that the cake still looks pretty, sitting in the middle with dishes and spoons beside. People ought to see something pretty moving toward them. That way they get time to want what they really can have. I like coming out the door with something on a tray. Nonie looks over, and Nick does. Termite turns too, like he can feel them looking, and then Nick is up and comes to hold the door. He winks at me, pleased and jaunty. For a minute I see how he looks like his boys, young in his eyes like them, and how his boys might look when they’re older, if they broaden out like Nick. I guess it takes a man built like Nick to run the wrapper. There’s a lever a man swings, timed just so, and Nick fixes the wrapper too, keeps it running. It’s as big as a couple of cars parked side to side. Nick says it makes a noise like a jet engine pausing to yell Wham! every thirty seconds. A man has to be big to throw that lever and stand in that noise, move the bales on time like he’s part of the machine. Nick’s boys are all long and thin and they move fluid as dogs. They have taut ropes of muscle in their necks, like they’re always tense or ready, and swells of hard crescent under their nipples. Come spring, Joey and Solly and Zeke work on their cars in Nick’s yard. They go without their shirts and their pants ride low on their hips. You can see the perfect run of their spines as they bend over, lean and white, lost to the chest in their engines. They were always hard and skinny, even when they were little kids. I can’t see Nick’s boys ever being big and broad as Nick, like a wrestler, moving so heavy, like he moves now, coming toward me. I can feel his footfalls on the stone walk through my bare feet. Then he’s here, making a mock bow before he reaches to take the tray. I’m taller than Nonie now, and Nick’s dark eyes are level with mine. His forearms are furred with dark, curly hair. I look away when Nick gets too close. He’s like a blur at the limit my eyes can see.

  “Lark, you’re too much,” he says.

  “It’s just a cake,” I say.

  “Yes, it’s a cake,” Nonie says. She shakes her head at Nick.

  “But look at it, Noreen. Little white garlands in the icing, and the garlands are braided. How does she do that?” He nods over at Termite. “You were here, Junior. How does she do it?”

  “An icing bag with special attachments,” I say. “Gourmet baking set. I got it for my birthday.”

  “My point exactly,” Nick says. “For your birthday you want some fancy cooking gadget. My thugs want new carburetors, so they can drive even faster and end up in the pokey in the next county, and their old man can come bail them out.” He’s in front of me carrying the tray and I follow the bulk of his back. “Joey’s latest thought is to join some special forces unit in the marines. Driving delivery for the plant’s not good enough, he wants to see the world. Zeke can’t pass tenth grade but he’s got him a car put together so he can drive away from the courthouse with his learner’s permit, soon as he turns sixteen. And Saul. Graduated high school, and now he wants a motorcycle.”

  “He want you to buy it?” Nonie asks.

  Saul is the middle one, the one most like a wolf, with his green eyes and his thick fair hair, and that dark skin, like Nick’s. Solly has been in school with me since first grade over on Lumber Street. They put him back a grade though, for skipping school so much when he was nine or ten. He ended up a grade behind me, even though he’s a year older. Their mother left before school even happened, when Zeke was barely walking. Nick Tucci bought the groceries and Nonie took care of those boys. She fed us all supper at night, then sent us over to Nick’s when he pulled in from work. She used his car to go off to Charlie’s for the dinner shift, then closed up and got home around eleven, carried me down the alley from Nick’s house to my own bed. She says I never stirred, but I remember the leaves on the trees moving, blowing above me at night. There used to be trees along the alley, a long time ago. After Termite came, Elise stayed with him and me at night, after Nick’s kids went home. Nonie would go to work and Solly would come back over. Guess you think we’re better than TV over here, Elise would tell him, better than Jack Benny. If we weren’t doing homework she’d have us “helping out,” running the sweeper, folding laundry, entertaining Termite. Elise brought over a clock radio she got with S&H green stamps, and she taught us dance steps or card games. Solly played rummy with her while I read to Termite, or Elise brought what she wanted to hear. Gone with the Wind. Little Dorrit. Ladies’ Home Journal magazine: “Can This Marriage Be Saved?” Elise said I was better than the radio, better than Playhouse po.

  When I was eleven Elise started running the Coffee-Stop across from Charlie’s. She sold cigarettes, magazines, sodas, hot dogs, and worked long hours. After that I took care of Termite myself. He was little. I could do it as well as anyone. Solly still came by. I know Solly like I know the shelves in my room, and the turn of the walls. There’s always been a wild quiet about Solly. It stays in the air near him like a scent.

  “Solly doesn’t need me to buy him anything,” Nick says now. We’ve reached our little enclave and he puts the cake on the round table. “He’s been pumping gas and fixing cars down at the Texaco all year. Somebody pulled in with this thing on a flatbed and now Solly thinks he’s got to have it.”

  “Well, he doesn’t,” Nonie says. “He lives with you and you’re his father and you can tell him he can’t have it.”

  “Sure,” Nick says, “and I’ll see his back real quick. The kid got through high school not half trying. I want him to work, save money, maybe go to college next year.”

  “His grades were good,” I say, “Solly’s smart. He should go to college. Couldn’t he play football somewhere?”

  “You tell him.” Nick turns and looks at me. “I’m serious.”

  “That’s not her job,” Nonie answers him. Then, “She’s the one should be going to college.”

  There’s no college near enough, though. Nowhere I could take classes at night. “Sit down, Nick.” I’m moving the plates, handing out napkins. I put Termite’s moon pitcher into his palm. He holds it in his lap, rubs the flat of his wrist across its grimace of a face that’s all wrinkles and bulging cheeks, like no face, even a porcelain face, is too small to wink or sigh. Termite moves his wrist across and across the bumpy surface like he didn’t have hold of it just this morning. I have the cake server, a shiny wedge shape with a carved handle and serrated edge. It has its own velvety envelope to keep off tarnish; there’s just a shadow of dark along the blade. I touch that shadow with my thumb. If these are my mother’s things, why are they here? I always thought of her walking, moving, some landscape streaming away behind her. Now that I’ve actually taken something from her secrets, I think of a green lawn holding her, or a coastline where she disappeared, even an alleyway where it happened. A dark bitter alley, cinders and trash. No. Make it an alley like ours, grass, white gravel, summer dusk. I see Nonie recognize the cake serv
er in my hand, but she doesn’t say anything. “I’ll cut the cake,” I tell them, “if everyone will kindly take a seat.”

  Termite gives me his little half smile and starts talking. Take a seat. Take a seat.

  “He sounds like a bird sometimes,” Nick says.

  Take a seat is what I say to him when we’re in the basement, cooling off, sitting on the old couch that has its springs out right through to the cold cement floor. It’s the couch Charlie used for years in the office of the restaurant, a narrow room behind the kitchen where Nonie does the accounts and bills. It’s a big couch, long and broad. This summer I realized the use they must have put it to, nights when I was a child and slept at Nick’s, with Solly curled up next to me. This summer, too, I started looking through Nonie’s boxes. Pretending is a lie I’m tired of telling her. Down there with Termite one of the hot afternoons, I saw how the boxes were stacked, balanced and squared, like they’d been there a long time. Termite sits on the broken couch and I put a breadboard across his knees so he can use the big crayons he likes. Once I get him started, he moves his arms up and down, back and forth, long arcs in one color across an unfolded newspaper, while I draw in my notebook. He doesn’t look at what he makes, but I watch his colors get darker. Most of the time, I draw him. Standing in space. No chair, no alley. One day I turned the radio loud the way Termite likes it. “Heartbreak Hotel” was on and I looked over at the boxes. Well since your baby left you. You’ve got a tale to tell. The boxes had always been in that corner, sometimes covered with other stuff. They were big and they were all the same size, like from a moving company, a solid dusty wall stacked four across and three deep, solid and hard to rock, taped shut and never opened, addressed to Nonie in somebody’s handwriting. I wiped off the dust and saw they were stamped BEKINS VAN LINES, Miami, Florida. I decided to go slowly. I know the stuff in the box I’ve gone through was never Nonie’s. A set of silver plate in its own velvet-lined box, each piece marked LENOX in tiny script on the back, like a code. Porcelain dishes, service for eight, in a gold-edged flowery pattern, packed with cardboard, neat and professional. No pictures though, no documents, no papers to tell me more than I already know.