Lark and Termite

by Jayne Anne Phillips

  He hears the slow swing of the song’s wordless phrases now and sees himself standing in the spot, playing alone onstage, eyes closed, but he’s on the dance floor with Lola. Her hands are laced easily behind his head, moving on his neck as they dance close in the crowded club. Sometimes they danced to the jukebox, but now they’re in this strange split moment, hearing him play a song that only he plays exactly this way. They’re together and she’s got that languorous satisfied smile and wet-eyed look she wore in the wake of making love, a look that always seemed unbearably sad to him. He has to go now; there’s no more time. He knows she loves this song, the serious, funny words like a question and answer game, a riddle for mended hearts. Is your figure less than Greek? He’s kissing her because this is the last time, ever… laughable, unphotographable. They could go into Onslow’s office and lock the door, but the Korean girl is watching them through the phrases of the song, holding the sightless boy in her arms, pressed on all sides by the crowd pouring into the tunnel. He looks at the boy, and looks at him, and Lola sees him too, through her own labored breathing. She cries out sharply, as though it’s she who must reach the boy, save him. She often cried out as though in pain when they made love, until Bobby moved her past her first sharp arousal. It was like moving through a steep and narrow passage, like following her up flights of narrow stairwell at the club that first night, with only shadows and colors showing in the dark. He knows her body as he knows his own and he listens with his muscles and his nerves, with his pounding heart, pacing himself, moving with her and holding back, opening, opening into her. When he’s inside her nothing seems haphazard or happenstance; it’s all inevitable, terrible, beautiful. He touches her hard high belly then and feels the baby pushing, pushing to get out of her. The tense bands of muscle in her pelvis are like iron. Leavitt wants to hold her but she screams in anguish, falling away from him. She can’t follow him; she stays, her breathing strained and loud. He knows she won’t come with him; she’s staying with the boy.

  July 27

  Winfield, West Virginia

  JULY 27, 1959

  Lark

  He starts moving the colors as soon as I give him the crayons, edging a perfect curve on the newsprint. Over and over, fast, then slow, like there’s one arc he can trace. He leans forward, starts and doesn’t stop, both hands. He presses darker and darker, like he’s been waiting to cover the words and the white, like he knows all his drawings are one picture I keep interrupting. I bring him to the basement on hot days. No matter how hot it is outside, it’s cool here. I can feel him listening while I walk back up the basement stairs to shut the kitchen door. He knows I’ll come back with my pencils and sketchbook, and he sits so still that I can hear what he hears. The give of the stairs, like an easing. My footsteps across the broken basement floor to the storm-cellar stairs, five stone slabs that open out into the yard. Even with the lilac bushes on one side, heat and light pour through like syrup. I remember when the storm doors were wooden. Now they’re steel, so heavy I have to shut them one at a time, pull them down from inside like I’m shutting us into a cave. Termite hears the storm doors pound into place when I let them fall.

  I give him his big crayons. At first I taught him colors. He knows one color from another, like he smells or hears some difference, even if he can’t see. I tried to teach him shapes. I held his hands and traced shapes on the newsprint, like we were in school, but he would go rigid and tense, sink into himself. He wanted to move his arms, make the one shape he draws deeper and deeper.

  Now he knows I’ll let him. I start to draw and I don’t think about him. I don’t think about the boxes piled against the wall or what’s inside them, or myself or anyone. I look at Termite and I draw, shading closer and closer to what I really see. I draw the way he moves, sitting so straight, focused so sharp and true there’s nothing else. He reminds me there’s a clear space inside the chores and the weather, inside cooking and cleaning up and taking him downtown or to the river, inside the books in my room and Win-field and the alley, and typing words on machines at Miss Barker’s. It’s quiet in that space.

  In the quiet, I can hear.

  “Termite,” I tell him, “I know you want the radio. We’ll listen later.”

  His arm moves, coloring.

  I’ll take him to Charlie’s for lunch, even though it’s so hot we’ll be alone on the bumpy sidewalks and the street leading downtown.

  “Termite,” I say. “It’s too hot to sit by the alley.”

  I draw his arm as a blur, an opening. The rest is outside. The stones and grass. Kanawha Hill and Main Street, unrolling past Nonie and the Formica counter at the restaurant. The field by Polish Town, so lush it lulls whatever moves in the tall grass. I sink shadings and shadow into the thick paper in my notebook. Everything else stops.

  We get to the restaurant when the lunch rush is well over and the counter is empty. I never bring Termite until later, when his chair is always free. Charlie has one stool at the counter that’s actually a child-sized barber’s chair, with a leatherette-upholstered back and arms and a metal footrest. He got it years ago for Termite, from a barbershop that closed down and gave away its equipment. It’s the same height and distance from the counter as all the other stools, bolted into the floor like the rest, with a foot pedal that doesn’t work anymore. That chair is the first seat people take if they’re alone and thin enough to fit into it. It’s cushioned and comfy, ladies like it, and I’ve seen kids fight over it. I bring the wagon in through the wide restaurant door and park it in the space between the counter and the wall, where it’s not in anyone’s way. Nonie wipes down tables, resupplies condiments. Then she’ll start on the supper special. Charlie’s already doing prep. I hear him in the back, chopping on the broad butcher block beside the sink. I hear Gladdy running on at him.

  “There’s just no sense in it.” Her reedy voice carries over any other sound. “The city’s hiking taxes. You’ve got to lower expenses, not raise them. Why use country sausage when you could use hamburger?”

  If Gladdy finds out what they’re making up in bulk, she always gets after them to use cheaper ingredients. She gets after Charlie for hiring hard-luck cases as dishwashers or extra waitresses, even if they’re excellent workers, like this place is in danger of falling off the social register. She would have been after him long ago to fire Nonie, except she knows she couldn’t get the same amount of work out of anyone else. Gladdy, if she’s not in Florida, is here every day for lunch, and she comes just in the middle of the rush, sashays in and sits at her own little table. She’s exercising her rights as owner and checking up on everyone when it’s busiest. Then she hangs around until customers clear out so she can harangue Charlie. Funny how she’s always by herself. Meaning it’s no wonder. Nonie refuses to wait on her. Gladdy orders the special, like she’s testing it. She won’t address the help, but half the time she’ll send a note back to Charlie—“needs salt” or “too rich.” She never orders dessert, due to her diabetes, but she’ll send a note about a dessert she observes—“whipped cream unnec. on berry pie.” Nonie keeps all of Gladys’ notes in a drawer; she calls them Charlie’s fan mail. In twenty years, Nonie says, not a compliment. The food is actually pretty good at Charlie’s. Not fancy, but good, and the portions are big. Charlie says he’s got just the kind of place he wants: no liquor license, no problems. Good food, reasonable costs, dependable clientele. The tables are full every meal, but it’s slow enough between rushes that they get the prep and cooking and cleanup done. He closes at nine without fail, wraps up the supper special in a neat package, and takes it home. Nonie refers to this as Gladdy’s dog bag. And well worth the trouble, Charlie will say, keeps Gladdy out of the restaurant but once a day. A wonder that woman can make her own breakfast, Nonie will say, and a miracle she does.

  I put Termite in his barber-chair stool and sit beside him. I order the tuna-salad plate and the kids’ mac and cheese for Termite. He loves it and it’s easy for him, he likes to feed himself at Charlie�
�s. Nonie’s got the napkin holders lined up on the counter, and a box of napkins bound a hundred to a bunch, so I start filling the holders.

  Gladdy’s holding forth. Now she’s standing in the kitchen doorway and glances out and sees us. Knows she’s got an audience. “The kids’ mac and cheese you make with American cheese and your homemade sauce is good enough for any grown-up. Inexpensive to make and perfectly good. Just put some parsley on top. That should be your special.” She picks up her pocketbook, like she’s got a schedule to keep, but there’s always one more thing. “What about this storm they say’s coming? Did you patch the roof where it was leaking, out there by the back door?”

  “I did,” Charlie says. “No need to worry.” Out of sight, by the sink, he’s chop chop chopping.

  “You’d best stay here the night if we get the storm they’re expecting,” Gladdy calls over to him. “Keep an eye out. Insurance is so slow to pay if there’s damage.”

  There’s a clatter of pans from the back. Charlie sleeps here once or twice a week when Gladdy’s in town, storm or no storm. The pullout couch in the office makes into a single bed. Elise jokes that Nonie can balance Charlie and the restaurant accounts in the same two hours, in a room the size of a freight elevator.

  Now Gladdy ventures out among us, having finished her confidential chat with Charlie, and Charlie is right behind her with a bowl of the pureed soup he makes for Termite. “We have storms in Florida certainly,” Gladdy says, “but not the winters, the ice.” The idea of the storm reminds her of her second home, and the sacrifice she makes to be here with us more than half the year. “I know my place is here, but the sun is there.”

  “Sure is,” Elise says. “Come January, maybe we’ll all come down and visit.”

  “It’s a tiny place, but the porch gets the sun.” Gladdy sighs and goes on. “I’ve got all I can do to save the airfare by November, but it’s worth it to stay through the worst months of ice. At least Charlie can run things here without worrying about me falling on these icy sidewalks.”

  “You’re a trouper,” Elise remarks.

  “Gladdy,” I ask her, “is Coral Gables near Miami?”

  “Surely,” says Gladdy. “I fly into Miami and take a bus right from the airport. Some would take a taxi a distance of thirty miles, especially at my age, but it’s not a way I’d spend money.” She sniffs. “I don’t tarry in Miami. Miami has a bad class of people.”

  I decide to ask. “Did you know my mother, Gladdy?” Nonie shoots me a glance before the words are out of my mouth.

  Gladdy doesn’t hesitate. “Well, no, not really. Not to speak to.” She looks into space. “I mean, I knew of her. Everyone in Win-field knows of everyone else.”

  I’m thinking about the boxes in Nonie’s basement, the moving company logo. No street address. Just Miami, Florida, like that’s all anyone in Florida would need to know to call up Bekins Van Lines. We have a moment of silence and Gladdy stands there, smoothing her dress, one of those jersey old-lady dresses with buttons down the front and a patent-leather belt. Today it’s navy with white polka dots. On her way in the door, she’ll have hung her broad-brim white hat on the coatrack. As a resident of the Deep South, she’s always thinking about her skin. Which is funny, Nonie says, because Gladdy was as wrinkled as an old prune before she ever started going to Florida. She’s a thin little thing, all bones and hardness. “Parsimonious” is the word to describe her. I don’t picture my mother, I can’t see her, but I feel her as a warmth, all curves and movement, just the opposite of Gladdy.

  I stand beside Termite and help him hold his bowl of soup while Charlie grates cheese over top. I like the restaurant after the rush. Despite Gladdy, it’s cozy, like something has just happened and now it’s over and everyone’s relieved, and the air is full of warm smells and the dishwasher is making its steady whoosh in the back. It’s a watery undercurrent sound Termite likes. Usually there are two or three customers at the tables, but today it’s just Elise, taking her lunch late. She often does, and refers to her presence as a visit. She’ll have the chicken noodle soup Charlie is famous for, three packets of crackers, and then two cigarettes while she talks to Nonie. She takes her full manager’s hour and sits at a table in the front, where she can see across the street into the window of the Coffee-Stop and make sure the girl she left in charge stays at the cash register. I like how Elise’s lipstick leaves a little pink smudge on the tips of her Camels, even after she’s had the soup. Elise has her own lunch rush over at the Coffee-Stop— workmen buy doughnuts and the hot dogs she cooks in one of those electric contraptions that rolls the wieners around on a slotted tray until they look sunburned. Elise gets a charge out of Gladdy. I think she’s secretly pleased when she meets up with her at the restaurant, which is the only place anyone ever meets up with Gladdy. Gladdy walks the ten or so blocks back and forth from her house at the east end of Main Street for exercise. Other than that, she doesn’t even go to church. A person would feel sorry for Gladdy if she wasn’t so hard to feel sorry for.

  Now she sails toward the door. She’s on her way home, holding her pocketbook up to her chest like a shield, but she isn’t quite finished. She stops just opposite Termite and me, and says, over the lunch counter between us, “I suppose you look related, but then again who could tell.”

  “Tell what?” I ask her.

  “What he’d look like, if whatever happened to him hadn’t happened.”

  Termite’s eating his soup, vegetables and meat ground up so fine he can swallow it, using the fat round spoon Charlie saves for him. I’m putting napkins in the holders lined up in front of me, and I don’t even look at her. “Nothing happened to him,” I say. “He was born just as he is. And he can hear every word you say.”

  “Of course he can.” The pocketbook snaps open. “But he can’t tell what I mean. That’s all right, though. None of the rest of you ever seem to know what I mean either.”

  Charlie’s standing in the kitchen doorway. “Are you still here, Mother? Thought you were going home.”

  He has a harsh tone in his voice, but Gladdy’s got to have her say. She nods her head, very deliberate, unfolds the hankie she’s taken out of the purse. “It just seems he’d be better off where people trained to do it could take care of him.”

  “I take care of him.” I turn full toward her, between Termite and her, to keep her eyes off him.

  “Well, you’re used to him. That’s training of a kind.” She blows her nose. “Commendable, I always say, I tell everyone. How generous my son is to work around your needs. No matter what it costs us, it’s commendable.”

  “Actually” Elise says, “the more it costs, the more commendable it is, wouldn’t you say, Gladdy?”

  Gladdy ignores her and looks at me. “I don’t know how you’ll manage when he’s a man as big as Charlie.”

  Elise says, “When he’s as big as Charlie he’ll be running this joint and you won’t be allowed in it.”

  “I wouldn’t know why not.” Gladdy shuts her purse, the hankie balled up in her hand. She touches the hankie to her brow as though she’s wounded. “I’ve never been unkind, though I get no thanks for it. Be that as it may, he’s in here most days, isn’t he? I don’t object.”

  Elise raises her penciled brows. “Aren’t you objecting right now?”

  “We all have to make a living, partly for his sake,” Gladdy says. “Most customers are used to him, I suppose.”

  I suppose, I suppose, I suppose, Termite chimes in and keeps chiming, louder and louder as Gladdy moves toward the door. She nods to herself as though considering, doffs her hankie over her shoulder like a wave good-bye. Then she’s gone.

  Charlie’s walking toward us, chuckling and wiping his hands off on his cook’s apron. “You’re a sly one, Champ. I definitely want you in my corner. I believe I’ll make you a vanilla milkshake with chocolate syrup, blended smooth just the way you like it.”

  Termite is quiet, listening, his ear tilted up at Charlie. He gives his sideways look
and a corner of his mouth turns up in that quizzical movement that might be a smile.

  Nonie reaches out and tousles Termite’s hair. “A milkshake sounds fine,” she says, “but not until he’s had that mac and cheese.”

  Later, when Nonie gets home, I could ask her: What about that ? How can you say he doesn’t know what goes on? And she’ll look at me and shake her head. Lark, she’ll say, what about the other ninety-nine times out of a hundred, when he sounds off strictly according to his own rhyme and reason?

  She doesn’t understand. That’s the point: he’s got a rhyme and reason. We only see the surface, like when you look at a river and all you see is a reflection of the sky.

  Elise has gone back to the Coffee-Stop and the dishwasher is still running. Charlie says the storm will hit late this afternoon. The river is already high, though Main Street seldom floods. Our part of town, the water gets high every big rain. Nonie calls them grass floods because the water just covers the grass a few inches. She never moves a thing and brags her basement is tight except for where the floor slants. She says that’s water come up from underground where the cement’s cracked, not leaking in the walls or new storm doors. Gladdy’s basement floods two or three feet, any big storm. Nonie says it could be fixed, but Gladdy is too tight to spend the money. High water is a feature of river towns. When we were kids we watched the grass floods from Nonie’s back stoop or Tuccis’ porch. An inch or two of standing water on the alley and the yards looked magical. We made little boats from silver foil and set them moving. Sometimes they floated all the way up the alley and disappeared. When the water had gone down we’d find them two or three streets over, smashed and still glittery.