Lark and Termite

by Jayne Anne Phillips

  Lark

  I put Termite in the wheelchair Stamble gave us and take him with me downtown, past Barker Secretarial. Murphy’s flooded but those old ceilings are high. Barker’s is open, same as always, or will be, for third term in two weeks. I think about Nonie this morning, her arm in that sling, walking toward the sheriff and me along the mud path Nick Tucci dug out to the alley. Mud piled up on either side like sloggy drifts and the boarded-up kitchen windows of the house behind her. “I’m sorry about this, Noreen,” the sheriff said next to me, “but there’s going to be an inquest. We’re going to have to hold you until we can straighten this thing out.”

  Gladdy Fitzgibbon had swelled up some when they pulled her out of her flooded basement, and Nonie’s wristwatch was in her tight-shut hand. Otherwise, with the gash on Gladdy’s head and her twisted ankle, they might have assumed she fell down those stairs when she was alone. There was no one to say she didn’t— Charlie stayed at the restaurant two full days, and it was full of Civil Defense workers and volunteers. Everyone knew that Nonie and Elise took Gladdy home in the car, it was raining so hard, and Nonie would have walked her inside. Gladdy was nervous about ice and weather. She would have demanded help walking up the porch steps that were slick with water, and Nonie would have carried the bags of food Gladdy brought from Charlie’s, more than usual because she knew she’d be housebound a few days.

  But no one knew how long Elise waited in the car. Like a lot of people, they didn’t get home the night of the flood. They couldn’t drive to the river side of town because the water was too high, then it came up around the car so sudden. The car was half submerged, and the rescue squad wouldn’t push it onto dry ground. They said they had enough to do. Unless Elise and Nonie wanted to climb up on the roof of that car and hope for the best, they had better get into the truck and get themselves driven to the Armory, where evacuees were spending the night.

  All night Nonie was gone, her wrist sprained and scratched from where the band of the watch pulled apart. Someone holding on awful hard, like Gladdy always did.

  I keep on going with Termite, left on Spring Street to Miss Barker’s house. We turn up the walk to her front door. Like everybody else’s, her porch is full. Rugs laid open, drying. Ruined things on the grass. Miss Barker would have saved a lot, moving whatever she could upstairs. She’s very practical, Miss Barker is, never distracted. I have to put the brake on the wheelchair and leave Termite at the foot of her porch steps while I go up, ring the bell without thinking. Then I knock hard.

  She opens the door looking mismatched like we all do. That red-and-black hunter’s jacket must have been her father’s. “Lark,” she says, eyes wide like she’s seen a ghost.

  “Sorry to bother you, Miss Barker. But I came for my evaluation? We’re going to be leaving town, Termite and me. Going to stay with my mother, down south.”

  She steps back on that one. “Your mother?”

  “Yes. She heard about it all, and we can’t stay here. The house is pretty much ruined, except for the attic. Anyway, I’ll be getting a job, in an office, I hope, and the evaluation would say what I’ve studied so far, my speeds and all.”

  “Well, what about him?” She lowers her voice, looks down at Termite, sitting below us in his chair. “How can you get a job when you have to look after him?”

  “My mother will help. He’s her son, after all. She’s looking forward to some time with him. Or I may get a job where I can bring him along. He can be quiet, if he feels safe. In small towns, you know, people might be understanding. Especially if I have good evaluations, and a letter of recommendation that, like you say, inspires confidence.”

  She’s nodding, though I’m sure she finds the idea of taking Termite to a job site completely unprofessional, and absolutely out of the question. “Of course,” she says. “I have your evaluation, and a letter of reference as well. I’d already typed them all out, and I brought all the files here before they locked the building. You were best of class. Executive ability. Remember, bigger firms, insurance, lawyers. Room for advancement. Of course the evaluation will help, and the letter will serve as a character reference.” She’s the same Miss Barker, with her hair uncrimped, in a man’s odd camphor-smelling clothes. The cedar chest would be upstairs. Anything in there would have stayed dry.

  “I’m sorry I couldn’t finish the course, Miss Barker.” I turn then and look back at Termite. “Just a minute,” I call down to him. “Be right there, Termite.” He surprises me then, starting up for all he’s worth, good and loud. Right there, right there, right there. Pounding his wrist on the right armrest, like the bell from the old chair at home is there when it’s not. Moving his head side to side.

  “Let me get them for you,” Miss Barker says. “I’d ask you in, but of course, there’s nowhere to sit. You go stand with him, so he won’t be upset. I’ll bring them out to you.”

  She disappears into the house and I’m waiting behind Termite’s chair when she comes back with a manila envelope. “There are multiple copies of the reference and the evaluation, and if you need more, you just let me know. You realize it’s perfectly proper to apply for several positions at once.” She takes my hand, shaking it like she showed us in mock interviews. Except both her small dry palms enclose mine. “How wonderful you’ve heard from her. That you’ve got somewhere to go until all this is… resolved.”

  “That’s right.” I know she’ll tell people, discreetly, over the next few days, as they begin to ask. “Good-bye, Miss Barker.”

  “Now, if anyone wants a phone reference, have them call me. I’m here.”

  “Thanks, Miss Barker. Thanks for everything.”

  “Of course, dear. Of course.”

  She stands politely while I turn the chair around on the narrow walk, then I hear her go back inside, quick fast steps, as we move down the walk and out the gate. She always kept the gate shut, but it’s gone now. The curlicues of the iron fence are clogged with brown tufts, grass and weeds that got caught.

  “We’re going to see Elise now, at the Coffee-Stop,” I tell Termite. “The power is on along Main Street. She’s probably getting ready to open.” I can use her phone, I think. Then we’re coming up on the phone booth at the corner of Spring and Main, and I realize it’s better to call from here. Privacy. I slide the glass door open on its hinges. The glass is beige about two feet up, but when I put a dime in the slot, the dial tone comes right on. I pull Termite’s chair around so he can see me. “It’s working, Termite. I’m going to make a call, and you watch me, OK?”

  He tilts his head to look past me.

  “I’ll be right out,” I tell him.

  I know he hears me, but he’s quiet since the flood. The moving around, everything missing and changing. Things I can’t help. Maybe he thinks I can’t manage, and doesn’t know I will. I line up some dimes on the little metal shelf in the booth, and shut the door. If someone walks by, I don’t want them hearing me. I dial the number, and Social Services answers, sounding just the same, like there was never a flood or a Civil Defense motorboat in the fog.

  “Winfield County Social Services?” She says it like a question.

  I know this receptionist’s voice. She’s been there for years. “Hello? I’d like to speak with someone about Mr. Stamble, please.”

  “Is he a client, Miss?”

  “No, he worked at Social Services. He was my social worker.”

  “And your name?”

  I tell her my name, and Noreen’s, and Termite’s. I’m sure she knows who we are, but she doesn’t let on. Confidentiality. I hear phones ringing on her end. Pandemonium, and I’m glad.

  “Stamble, did you say? I’m almost certain there’s no one by that name working here, but I’ll check the personnel files.”

  I can hear her opening file drawers, flipping pages. “He doesn’t work there now,” I tell her, “but he did. A young man, thin, blond. Stamble, Robert Stamble.” I need his previous address, I want to say, next of kin, some way to find out more. />
  “No, nothing here. I think you’re confused. I can tell you there’s not been anyone here by that name, not in the eight years I’ve been here.”

  “He’d only been there a few weeks. He was new.”

  “Oh, then definitely not. Our last caseworker hire was two years ago. We certainly could use more help, but we don’t have it.”

  “Could I speak to your supervisor, please?” Phones ringing, and ringing.

  “Miss? Let me look up your file and refer you to your assigned caseworker. Whatever the problem, she can help you. I’m sure you understand greatest need takes precedence now, but we’re doing everything we can to assist Flood Relief.”

  “No, don’t bother,” I tell her. “I must have been mistaken.” I don’t want a referral, or anyone to take notice. I hang up fast, before she can ask if I want to leave a message. They’re supposed to log calls, but she’s so overwhelmed, maybe she’ll forget.

  Stamble never worked at Social Services. That’s why there were no forms about the chair. Social Services can’t flip a light switch, Nonie says, without duplicate and triplicate forms. The chair just appeared, like he did. Solid, when he wasn’t. He was real in his way, but not from now, or here. And he was right, a smaller chair is easier, especially when you’ve got somewhere to go. We’ve got to take it with us, before someone asks where we got it. If they asked, what would I tell them?

  Termite’s listening. I look at him through the glass and turn my fingers in the round dial of the pay phone. It clicks and makes a chiming sound, like a call to nowhere. Maybe that’s where Stam-ble came from, and where he’s gone. I don’t know if they’ll find him, washed into the mounds of mud and debris and broken buildings they’ve pushed aside with bulldozers. Or if he’s somewhere else. I come and go, he said. Maybe Solly was right, and Stamble wasn’t in the boat. Maybe he didn’t need to be there for us to see him. And he didn’t need to work at Social Services to bring us a wheelchair we didn’t ask for. I can feel he’s gone. He gave us what we needed, like he knew who we were, and where we needed to go. The rest is up to me.

  I look down the street and see the lights on at the Coffee-Stop, dimly, in the bright morning. Elise will be talking to lawyers and police on Nonie’s behalf. It’s better if I don’t tell her anything, but there are things she needs to tell me.

  Nonie said it was amazing how fast Flood Relief got to us, that it was what came of knowing people in high places. Charlie’s command center, she called the restaurant. We stayed with Elise two nights, but then we were back home. The yard was packed mud, but the house had been scrubbed and nearly emptied, down to its stained walls. Flood Relief said it was “relatively sound” but not worth renovation. They frowned about the cleaning, a misuse of resources: they were putting our house on the buyout list. Elise wanted us to move in with her. She had an extra room and a pull-out couch, and it would take weeks for the government to resolve the paperwork or cut a check. We didn’t have lights but the plumbing was working, and there was plenty of bottled water. Solly brought Termite’s wagon down from the attic, and his big upholstered chair for him to sit in. Flood Relief left us blankets and cots and I set them up in the living room. Here was our couch, I told Nonie. So to speak, she said. The waterlogged piano was left, too big to move, but the top made for a shelf, and the bench was a table. “You’d set up housekeeping in a ditch,” Nonie said. “Don’t be getting comfortable here.”

  I didn’t have to tell her what I knew. She guessed at all of it, the minute I walked her up to the attic and she saw the opened boxes, the red kimono robe still on the floor. She touched Robert Leav-itt’s uniform jacket where I’d put it on the bed with my mother’s metal box. “You saved so much, Lark,” she said, and I knew she meant it. I had questions, but she looked so tired, her wrist bandaged, her arm in the sling. She wanted me to pack everything, she said, all the clothes, the bedding. Fasten up these open boxes, and any papers and documents should go into the safe at the restaurant. Someone would be moving us out. We were sitting on the bed and I saw a police car pull up on the packed mud where the alley used to be.

  “That’s the sheriff’s car,” I said. “Is Flood Relief buying the house now, already?”

  Nonie leaned over me to look out the window. “No,” she said, “the sheriff is here about Gladdy They found her yesterday, before Charlie even got home, and they want to talk to me.” She looks at me in the narrow space between us. “Lark, Gladdy fell down her basement steps during the flood, and she died. The police did house-to-house searches before the all clear, when evacuees were allowed to go home, and they found her in her flooded basement.”

  “Oh.” I thought of Charlie. His mother dying alone, like mine did. Like I think she must have. “Nonie, why do they want to talk to you?”

  “Because I was the last to see Gladdy, when Elise and I took her home in the storm. And because she took my watch, broke the band, actually, and she was holding it, like Gladdy would. Her body had been in the water of her basement almost two days, but the watch was still in her hand. There may be some sort of hearing.” She could see I didn’t understand, or couldn’t believe it, and she sat beside me on the piled-full bed. “Elise knows how I hurt my wrist, but they’re investigating how Gladdy fell, whether Ipushed her.” Nonie touched my hair, smoothed it back from my face. “Maybe Gladdy deserved pushing, but not to a death like that, and I would never have hurt her. You know now that she was your grandmother, and you have every ounce of her drive and determination, without her more irritating qualities.”

  We heard, through the open window, the slam of the car door, and saw the sheriff standing in the alley, wearing rubber boots that came to his knees.

  “Lark,” Nonie said, “you and I never had this conversation. You don’t know anything but whatever the sheriff chooses to tell you. If they want to hold me, I’ll stay voluntarily, because I don’t want them arresting me, and the women’s facility at the courthouse is perfectly comfortable. Don’t worry, and stay away. Don’t remind people you’re alone, taking care of Termite. This may take time to sort out, and if it does, the county may try to enforce protective custody of both of you.”

  I was already thinking, trying to plan.

  “You’re not of age,” Nonie said. “I’ll look into assigning guardianship to Elise, but they may want to put Termite into care, until—”

  “Will Social Services accept Elise? She isn’t a family member.” And she’s small and skinny and getting old, I wanted to say, and works ten-hour days at the Coffee-Stop. She chain-smokes, and that’s not good for Termite. “I’ll think of something,” I told Nonie. “I’m going out to the alley now. I don’t want him coming in the house, thinking it’s too bad for us to stay here.”

  “There’s over two hundred dollars in that salt box where I keep loose cash,” Nonie said. “You use it, and Charlie will get you whatever else you need.”

  I checked on Termite in his chair in the living room and went out, and asked the sheriff, cheerful, if he was here about the buyout. No, he said, was my Aunt Noreen at home. He didn’t say anything else until Noreen was there, and then she got in the front seat with him as though they were going to a meeting. They drove off down the alley in the cruiser. There were chains on thetires, like for a snowstorm, but they were silent, clogged with mud. The surface was dry enough to crack under the wheels, but underneath the mud smelled wet and dark. I looked down the alley after them, and that dirty orange cat that trails Termite everywhere came right out and sat itself in front of me, like a warning, not ten feet away. Someone would come in a car soon, and take Termite. I looked back toward the Tuccis’ house, and Solly was walking toward me.

  The Coffee-Stop has a CLOSED sign on the door, but I see Elise inside, wiping down the narrow counter. Elise’s store is the shape of a diner. She likes to say she has an eight-person seating capacity, every seat a window seat, but the Coffee-Stop is really just a grocery that sells hot dogs and cigarettes and coffee. I knock on the glass and she opens the big door t
o let us in, leans down to make a fuss over Termite.

  “Well, look at this new chair you’re riding in.” She tousles his hair. “The power’s back on. You want to hear some music?” Elise has a jukebox unit on the wall. Her favorite songs, regardless of fashion. Now she joggles the coin drawer and takes out some quarters, turns Termite’s chair so he’s in front of the little window where the 45s slide and click. “Chet Baker,” she says. “He has a new one. Termite can listen while we talk.” She knows he likes it loud, but the song’s melodic, and I can hear her under the phrases. “You want some coffee, Lark?” She’s got her ashtray and cup at the end of the counter, and she beckons me over. “That Chet Baker,” she says, “pretty as a woman, and sounds like one.”

  I sit just beside her. “Elise, do you know who my father is?”

  “I do know, honey, but even if Nonie had never told me, I could hazard a guess.”

  “Why? Why can you guess?”

  “Charlie helped Noreen raise you in that restaurant and dotes on you completely. Even Gladdy accepted it. Charlie wouldn’t have it otherwise.” She looks at me, lights her cigarette, and nods. “It’s not unusual, an aunt raising her sister’s children.”

  “Why would Charlie have a child with my mother? And why would Nonie come back here, after he did?” I’m asking, but I know, I remember. Inside you. Be careful when you’re young. Now you get it.

  “Lola”—Elise is saying and her voice trails off—“well, she had a hard time. She was too much for anyplace. And she wasn’t lucky, not from the very beginning. You’re not like her, honey. You’re just about as pretty, but you’re steady, like Charlie. There’s no one steadier than Charlie, or as loyal. He stood by Gladdy all those years, a woman only a saint could love, even if he is her son. And he’s stood by Noreen as well, in his way. I know you blame him for not marrying her, but truth be told, it was Noreen who wouldn’t marry Charlie, after she came back to Winfield. He’d betrayed her, and his being sorry didn’t change it. He talked her into coming back to him, and she helped him save that restaurant. She hasn’t married him since because she’s happy as she is.”