Larque on the Wing

by Nancy Springer

  It did not matter that her mother had lifted the table skirt and was peering under it at her, with her round bottom in the air and her round face upside down and that look on it, the oh-dear-this-is-not-right look that meant in a moment she would blink. It did not matter, because no longer did two fugitives cower there. Instead, there was one person, Skylark, more or less complete again, and this forty-year-old kid knew what to do. With a yell of sheer glee, with an exultation of her muscular body such as Samson must have felt knocking the props out from under the temple, she stood up, bringing down the table and its god-awful cake.

  People screamed, somewhere nearby Doris laughed hysterically, and the towering dessert toppled right onto Florrie’s butt. It flattened her momentarily, almost buried her. And it was not just Styrofoam after all. Fighting her way clear of the tablecloth, Skylark saw the top two tiers breaking into edible bits. Angel food, of course. That was all right. She grabbed a greedy handful, covering herself with icing and crumbs, and stuffed her mouth. Feeding Sky.

  Her body, she noticed, was still slim and hard, still flat-chested, still boyish in boots and jeans. But her shoulders had narrowed, and her crotch felt different. Her spare part was painlessly gone. Okay. That was okay, dear God, just as long as she still felt strong.

  Short, besplattered, rather like a white maggot rearing up out of the garbage yet somehow majestic in wrath, Florrie arose from the cake crumbs. It was showdown time.

  Lark did not even consider running. Sky had not come back to her for nothing, and she was not going to let the kid down ever again. She spraddled her booted feet, kicking an angel on a stick to one side, and waited.

  “You,” Florrie gasped at her.

  What did Florrie want a confectionery heaven for, anyway, when everything in the real world was so spicy-bright? Lark saw it all as if never before, as if the camera behind her eyes were a tourist in a new world clicking slide after slide, transparencies more lucent than stained glass. There stood Doris in her fluorescent orange dress, talking excitedly to—Byron? My brother? In an African print shirt? Of course he was there, Florrie would have summoned him for the occasion, but he looked back at Lark without recognition. It was okay. Maybe Doris was filling him in. And that woman who had been tending the guest book—wasn’t it one of the Wiccan women, the witches who had seen Hoot in young Skylark’s future? All the others, all the guests with their yarn-dyed clothing and their ineffable skin tones—those rose and china blue undertones, the delicate mint green shadows beneath their chins—they all stood aside as if lining some cow town street, watching the gunfighters face off. Someday soon she would put them all in a huge painting, all the amazing people, her mother and her brother and her orange best friend and the Popular Street people and the poodle-haired Wiccan and the turbaned one and other people Lark remembered, her naked date and Uncle Ralph and her college roommate and the creepy kid next door, all, everyone, and in the painting they would be dancing in the fields on the far side of Cowshit Creek; with teasel sticks in their hands they would dance around the great rock of truth, the monolith with petroglyphs of dancing animals and their wands of witness upstanding.

  All this Lark saw in a single heartbeat. And she saw her father, Argent, resplendent in white linen, skulking near the front door, staying away from Florrie. Even from the distance and with danger crowding her mind Lark saw the silver sparks that were his cuff links. She saw the golden lights in the Virtuous Woman’s hair like a halo. She saw the black lights dancing like little devils on Shadow’s battered hat.

  He was struggling to get across the room to her, but there were too many people in his way. Lark saw a tableau: the Virtuous Woman, in shock, standing salt white and motionless like Lot’s wife, with Shadow dark and not yet acknowledged behind her, a premonition coming to the fore.

  “You,” Florrie intoned, drawn up to her full four-feet-ten-inches of rotund, sugar-frosted dignity.

  “Yes, ME!” The retort went up from Lark like a clenched fist. ME, the one you never let talk back. ME, the one you’ve never yet seen truly. ME, the rebel against your ideas of femininity. ME, the misguided woman with boots and dreams. “ME, Skylark, your daughter, remember?”

  “Pervert,” Florrie averred, “you’re ruining my party.”

  Did her mother see her? Did her mother comprehend who she was? Probably not. She never had before, not once in Skylark’s entire life. Why should she now?

  “Go ahead,” Lark challenged. “Blink me if you can.”

  It was crazy. But something in her would have gone crazy if she hadn’t done it. It was time.

  “Go away.” Confronted by unpleasantness, Florrie blinked.

  Lark felt the effect like a spasm of sickness passing through her. She threw up her hands in protest and saw them fading before her eyes.

  “No!” The yell was partly hers, partly Shadow’s. She saw him struggling toward her, towing the Virtuous Woman by her wrist.

  “Lark, fight it!” he called. “Fight it!”

  From inside her she felt Sky answer. A fierce, wordless cry of defiance tore out of her; it was Sky’s. Her pain was Sky’s, and her fear, and her—anger, searing anger, rage at being violated again; she would not let it happen. The rage buzzed through her like electricity, shaking her hands but making them return to solid form. “I am ME!” Lark shouted. Every light bulb in the room popped, sending glass flying with an ethereal tinkling sound, angel-wing slivers of it lodging in the white ceiling tile. Electrical appliances thudded to silence, and outlets sparked and smoked as the wiring blew.

  Inside Lark as if inside a dark closet a child was crying, I am me I am not going to be blinked I am not I am not. I love me.

  “Lark.” Shadow arrived urgently at her elbow with the Virtuous Woman in tow. “Take her back, quickly. You’re not strong enough yet. Take her back.”

  “That monkey face? No way.” The child inside Lark was in full control. “I don’t want to.”

  “Lark—”

  “How dare you,” Florrie gasped, though not at Shadow, and not entirely because this other person had called her sweet daughter a monkey face. Mostly, it was because her wishes had been defied. The unpleasantness was still standing there in front of her. She blinked again.

  Shadow saw it coming and got in the way, protecting Skylark with his body. She hated that. Jumping Jesus, didn’t anybody believe she could take care of herself? “Let me alone!” she yelled, and she shoved him aside, stepping past him so she could get to her mother. “I hate you!” she screamed, glaring at Florrie. Not for the first time she noticed a few unlovely protrusions on her mother’s face, moles, each producing a single gently curling iron gray hair. “Warthog!” she shrilled. “You’re just a hairy old warthog!”

  A doppelganger animal materialized instantly, four-footed, rock solid, hirsute, and complete with six-inch tusks. Luckily the warthog was distracted from goring anyone by the angel food cake all over the floor. It roared deep in its chest and attacked the food.

  Most of the guests, who up until now had been interested in the proceedings despite the electrical outage, chose this moment to leave.

  “That wasn’t nice,” the Virtuous Woman reproached Skylark. Standing there with her high heels elevating her above the mess on her carpet, she waited like a lamb led to the slaughter, making no attempt to jerk her wrist away from Shadow’s grasp, unaffected by the warthog ravening around her dainty toes. Yet she wasn’t passive enough to let Skylark do anything that was not nice.

  “No, it certainly was not!” Florrie scolded, and once more she blinked.

  Shadow wasn’t there this time. Skylark caught the full brunt; those two round blinking eyes might as well have been double barrels sending a blast of buckshot into her. It hurt. “Damn you!” she screamed at her mother, but anger wasn’t enough to save her now. She felt perforated, as if her soul was bleeding out through her skin. Shock weakened her. The world seemed unreal. She staggered, stumbled against the warthog, and almost fell. If that happened it would be all
over. She would black out; her self would slip away and never come back.

  Take care of me! Sky cried inside her. You promised!

  Standing at a safe distance, Byron was watching the action blankly, as if watching TV. “Help,” Lark mouthed at him.

  He, Byron, get involved in this melodrama? The idea took him aback. He retreated a few steps. “Don’t—don’t look at me,” he stammered. “I’m just your brother.”

  At least he knew who she was, in case he had to identify the body. Big help.

  Maybe nothing could help.

  Lark’s vision went gray, then black.

  Maybe nobody could help.

  Shadow …

  She reached out, groping for Shadow’s shoulder to hang onto. It wasn’t there. Instead, she felt something breasty and unresisting thump into her outstretched arms.

  Take her back! Now!” Shadow’s voice ordered. He had thrust the Virtuous Woman at her.

  Mommy! Sky wailed. I want my mommy!

  “So do I, honey,” Lark muttered. Admitting it didn’t help. Behind the anger was nothing but pain so bad it had blinded her. She shook her head, trying to send away the pain, trying to see. The world was a blur of misery. Out of the fog, so close they were almost nose to nose, the Virtuous Woman’s wide Bambi-brown eyes peered at her.

  “What’s the matter?” the V.W. asked. “Are you okay?”

  The words were too gentle. Lark couldn’t bear it. Tears started down her cheeks.

  “Don’t cry.” Motherly, the Virtuous Woman put her arms around her. “What’s wrong?”

  It didn’t matter that this frilly-bloused manifestation was a yutz-face and didn’t understand. The embrace was enough; it was enough that for some reason she cared. Maybe because she was a nice person in her way. Maybe even nice to perverts if they were family. Maybe not, but momentarily it didn’t matter. Lark hugged her back.

  Lark took her back.

  It felt good in a bland way, like eating hot oatmeal on a cold day. This woman was creamed tuna on toast, graham crackers for a snack, warm milk before bedtime. She probably wore flannel nightgowns. She was the archetypical parent: stolid, boring, a bit of a pain in the butt, but safe. Her prejudices were what made the world go round. Her fussiness kept the home fires burning. She said something soft to Sky and calmed her down. Her cleansing-cream presence was salve on Lark’s many wounds. Her weight made Lark’s booted feet feel solid on the ground again.

  Not Lark any longer. Still booted and jeaned, slim and strong, yet thoroughly a woman again, Larque stood there.

  “Mom!”

  “Hey, it’s Mom!”

  “Yo, Mama woman!”

  Rodd, Jeremy, Jason—how long had they been watching? Now, bless their thick male heads, they came running and flung their hard young arms around all parts of her, as if she had been gone for a long time. Now that she was back, somehow despite her changed appearance they recognized her at once, almost as if there was something special about her.

  “Whoa,” she said, hugging them back, her voice thick. “Get out of the cross fire a minute.”

  She shoved them gently away and turned to face her mother again. Cross fire? Did it have to be this way? Facing her was an unhappy little old lady, distressed and far too old to change—but forty years before, this woman had nursed a baby and diapered it and cuddled it and kissed it and probably loved it as well as she knew how. Probably had not blinked it once until it was old enough to talk back.

  “Mom,” Larque said, surrendering to the moment, “you’re impossible.”

  Never one to appreciate personal comments, Florrie frowned and blinked.

  “Hey!” But nothing happened. Nothing at all, except that off to one side Shadow relaxed and actually grinned.

  “I’m not mutable anymore?” Larque asked him.

  “Looks like not.”

  “Holy shit.” But it made sense. Now that all her contradictions were acknowledged, she felt complete as never before. She felt invincible; she felt like flying. The Virtuous Woman didn’t get along with the adolescent male in her, but so what. She could be her security; he could be her dreams. The artist would keep the V.W. from running Larque’s life. The child would give Larque wings. It was wonderful, being whole. Solid. Real. Herself.

  “No more magic makeovers for you, woman,” Shadow said. As usual, Larque could not tell what he was thinking. Had she heard emotion in his voice, or had she imagined it?

  Florrie scowled at him. “Go away, queer,” she told him, her voice trembling. She blinked him. The attempt failed. Florrie blinked hard, trying to make it all go away—her ruined cake, her spoiled party, this ungrateful trousered travesty of a daughter. But it all stayed. Altogether, Florrie had not been having a very good day. All her effort produced only tears, blinked out of her bewildered eyes, wetting the gentle creases of her old-lady cheeks.

  “Awww,” Doris murmured, standing on the sidelines with Byron.

  “Poor Mom.” Now that this pathetic woman no longer had power over her, Larque found that everything had changed. Squishing her way through spilled cake, she went to the frustrating little eyeblinker and hugged her, getting herself all sticky with displaced sugar. Florrie did not hug back, but suffered herself to be embraced. Her head came only high enough to rest against the softness of Larque’s newly regained breasts.

  “You are totally absurd,” Larque told her mother gently, “and I love you.”

  In typical Florrie fashion, her mother ignored the gist of this. “Well, then I wish you’d get rid of those big heavy boots,” she said huffily into Larque’s shirtfront. “They are so ugly.”

  Larque knew she would keep the boots forever. She teased, “Do you think I’m ugly, Mom?”

  “Of course not! You’re my daughter.” Florrie backed off to look at her and blinked rapidly, like a coquette. “There, that’s better,” she murmured, and although nothing had happened she seemed to like what she believed she was seeing, because her square old face softened into a smile.

  Near the doorway Argent stood frantically beckoning at Shadow, in a sweat to get out of the house before his ex noticed him. But Shadow stood watching Larque and her mother with his opaque look in his tarnished silver eyes. On impulse, Lark went to him and hugged him. “Thank you,” she whispered in his ear.

  “I didn’t do it. You did.”

  She stood back, hands on his shoulders, and studied him. “But you—I—you helped. This is the way you are, isn’t it?”

  Some strange sort of pain flickered across his face. “No. It is the way I would like to be.” Then he lifted one hand to her and walked away.

  Shadow and Argent were very silent, walking home. It had been one of those days after which things cannot remain the same. No logical reason, yet they cannot. Carrying in his hand a tiny plastic dove off Florrie’s cake, Shadow sensed this. Troublesome thoughts kept rising in him, bubbles out of a dark whirlpool hidden in the midnight of his psyche. And he knew Argent must be feeling some similar turmoil, because already they had walked past half a dozen streets that could have been Popular Street, yet they kept walking.

  “Do you think we’ll see her again?” Shadow asked when two more corners had been passed.

  Argent said gruffly, “Anybody’s guess. She’s my daughter.”

  “Do you want her to come see you?”

  A long pause. Then, “Yes,” Argent admitted.

  Shadow stopped walking. Argent stood still and faced him.

  “Those were my grandchildren there,” Argent said. “Good-looking boys, almost grown. They don’t know me. I don’t know them.”

  Shadow nodded.

  “Or Larque, not really. Or Byron. He’s—I think he’s kind of useless, but I’ve never given him a chance to show me otherwise.”

  Shadow listened.

  “Hoot seems like a good son-in-law. Imagine, me with a son-in-law.”

  “Yes.”

  “I really think Larque’s pulled Florrie’s fangs now.” Argent’s tone was wondering.<
br />
  Shadow nodded again.

  “That Larque.” Argent shook his head. “She’s something.”

  “Go back,” Shadow told him. “Get to know her better. Be part of her life.”

  “I want to.”

  “Then do it.”

  Argent’s eyes narrowed with some kind of pain, and his gaze moved down and off to one side.

  Shadow knew what he was thinking: the unspeakable. “You want to do it right,” he said.

  Argent’s eyes flashed up to him.

  Shadow nodded, though he had to swallow hard before he could say it. “I’ll help you.”

  Argent whispered, “I’m not sure I can go through with it.”

  “Why?”

  “I’m not—sure I can—bear to give you up.”

  “You don’t have to,” Shadow told him, his hand lifting toward him, ever so slight a tremor coming into his voice. “I will still love you.” He saw Argent’s beautiful mouth go soft, his beautiful eyes open wide. “I will always love you.”

  It was not a thing he had ever said to Argent before. But now he stood with a plastic dove in his hand and said the words and knew them to be true. He knew it because what he had to do hurt his heart: it was a sacrifice. He knew it because he wanted what was right and good for this man, his beloved.

  He knew it because he could feel the tears running down his face. When had he ever cried? He could not remember ever crying.

  Argent was hugging him, they were hugging and hugging one another on the public street where all Soudersburg could see, and Shadow felt his lover’s chest heave with pain or happiness, and knew there were mysteries to be learned, wonders of which he glimpsed only the beginning.

  “The year’s at the spring,

  And day’s at the morn …”

  Larque sighed. Cleaned up and pacified, her mother was toddling toward the front door, warbling a set-to-music version of Browning’s song from Pippa Passes.

  “Morning’s at seven;

  The hill-side’s dew-pearled;

  The lark’s on the wing …”