The Late Child Read online

  “Harmony, this is absurd, why are you leaving me?” Gary asked.

  “Gary, I said you could come,” Harmony said.

  The next minute they were hugging and crying.

  “The sun’s gonna come up and I’m going to have to tell Jessie that you left without saying goodbye,” Gary said. “It’s going to be a setback for Jessie.”

  It seemed to Harmony that Gary was trying to make her feel guilty. Everyday life was a continual setback for Jessie. If Napoleon, her toy poodle, spit up a few grams of his food, it was a setback for Jessie. If Monroe, her boyfriend, belched too loudly while they were eating at Burger King, it was a setback for Jessie.

  But Pepper being dead wasn’t a setback. Pepper being dead was the end.

  “I have to go with my sisters, Gary,” Harmony said. “Otherwise I can’t stand it. I’ll go crazy and not be a good mom. I’ll do drugs and they’ll take Eddie away from me and put him in a foster home.”

  “I’m sorry, go then,” Gary said. “I don’t want Eddie to be in a foster home—it would break his heart.”

  “If you want to be useful, stop ragging Harmony and start loading the trailer,” Pat advised. “That high roller from Venezuela’s been calling a little too often. I’d like to roar out of here before he zeros in on me.”

  “Pat, just say no,” Harmony said. “Pretend you’re Mrs. Reagan.”

  Three hours later Harmony was shocked to discover that every single thing she owned would fit in a U-Haul trailer. Her queen-sized bed, her couch, her clothes, Eddie’s toys, the TVs, Eddie’s clothes, the dishes, the pots and pans, and all the surplus macaroni and cheese in her little pantry all fit right into the U-Haul. The only thing left to load was Eddie’s bunk bed—they wanted to wait until the last minute to wake Eddie and inform him that the move was in progress.

  Gary turned out to have lower-back pain, so Pat and Neddie carried the mattress downstairs. In fact, Neddie and Pat loaded the whole trailer, while Gary took a nap on the floor. Harmony wandered up and down the stairs, feeling that she was probably going to go crazy anyway, unless she was very lucky.

  By four a.m. every single thing was loaded in the U-Haul, except the coffee cup Neddie was drinking out of, the bottle of vodka Pat was finishing off, and some very old pills that had turned up in a box in the closet—they were remnants of old prescriptions Harmony had given up on. Gary was rummaging through the pills with a gleam in his eye, hoping to find some that would alleviate lower-back pain, heartbreak, headaches, and all the other ailments Gary suffered from. Eddie’s bed had even been packed. They had eased him off onto the floor, into a cozy pallet of blankets, while they took his bed apart and carried it out.

  Harmony was hoping Eddie—a sound sleeper—would sleep until they were a few miles out of Las Vegas. If he woke up in the apartment where there was nothing left but the wall-to-wall carpet, it might upset him. In fact, seeing the apartment empty upset Harmony—with nothing to occupy the eye except the dingy walls and the blood-spotted wall-to-wall, it was clear what a cheap, tacky little apartment Eddie had spent most of his life in.

  “I guess I don’t own very much,” Harmony said, as the four of them stood in the empty living room. “I thought I surely owned more than would fit in one trailer.”

  “Hon, you don’t even own as much as would fit in a trailer,” Neddie said. “We could cram in a king-sized bed and a couple more TVs if we had them.”

  “Be a little more diplomatic, Neddie,” Pat suggested. “Harmony’s depressed.”

  “Making her stuff seem any more piddly than it is cannot be helpful at a time like this,” Gary said, in his formal voice.

  “Oh well, gang up on me,” Neddie said, looking as if she might cry. She took the coffee cup and went out to the trailer.

  Harmony tried to pick Eddie up as gently as she could, so he would stay asleep until she could carry him to the car, but Eddie’s eyes popped open the minute she lifted him off the floor.

  He grinned at his mom, as he always did when he woke up, but then he looked around and saw that there was nothing at all in their apartment.

  “Where’s my stuffed animals?” he asked, in some alarm. “I hope they didn’t get anthrax and die.”

  Everyone looked startled, as they often did at Eddie’s statements.

  “I don’t think stuffed animals get anthrax, Eddie,” Gary said.

  “It’s mostly cows that get anthrax,” Neddie informed him.

  “Well, I have a stuffed cow named Teresa,” Eddie said. “I don’t want Teresa to die.”

  “She won’t, she’s just moving to Oklahoma,” Pat said.

  “Are we going away from our home, Mom?” Eddie asked, his eyes very wide.

  At the sight of his eyes, so surprised, Harmony felt guilty.

  “I guess so, Eddie,” Harmony said.

  “Forever, Mom?” Eddie asked. “Are we leaving our home forever?”

  “Oh, Eddie, I don’t know,” Harmony said. The way he said the word ‘forever’ struck her to the heart.

  Eddie sank to his knees, and put his head down on the carpet, as he sometimes did when overcome with sorrow.

  “He’s got a right to be sad,” Neddie said, sighing. “This has always been his home.”

  Eddie kept his head pressed against the carpet for a while. His Aunt Pat started to run over and pick him up, but then thought better of it.

  “He’s got a right to be sad,” Neddie said, again.

  Eddie looked up, anger in his face.

  “Don’t say those words!” he said. “Don’t say those words!”

  Then he stood up, marched outside, and crawled inside the trailer. All his stuffed animals were in three or four boxes. Eddie kept looking until he found his cow, Teresa. Then he crawled into one of the boxes, holding Teresa in his arms.

  Harmony, Neddie, Pat, and Gary all stood by the open door of the trailer.

  “I didn’t know he’d take it this hard,” Gary said. He was appalled by the depth of Eddie’s sorrow.

  Eddie saw all the adults looking into the trailer. He knew they wanted him to come out, but he had no intention of coming out.

  “Eddie, we have to leave,” Harmony said, finally. “Come ride with us in the car.”

  “I want to stay with my animals,” Eddie said. “They all might die of anthrax because they had to leave their home.”

  “Where would a kid that age get a vocabulary with ‘anthrax’ in it?” Pat asked.

  “Discovery Channel,” Gary said.

  “My kids never watch that stupid channel,” Pat said. “Now I’m beginning to be glad.”

  “Eddie, please come out, you can bring Teresa,” Harmony said.

  “No, I want to stay with my animals so they won’t die when we leave,” Eddie repeated.

  “Eddie, they won’t,” Harmony said—but just then another bomb of grief exploded and she began to cry. Her legs grew weak; she knelt in the street and cried. Neddie couldn’t calm her down; neither could Pat; neither could Gary.

  Finally Gary crawled into the trailer, in order to make a desperate plea for Eddie’s help.

  “Eddie, this doesn’t mean you’re going away forever,” Gary said. “It’s just that your mother is too sad to stay in Las Vegas right now. Please come out and see if you can make her feel a little better.”

  “She didn’t give me a chance to say goodbye to my friends,” Eddie informed him. “She should have told me sooner. I didn’t get to say goodbye to Eli and I didn’t get to say goodbye to Maggie.”

  “I don’t think she actually made up her mind to leave until tonight,” Gary said. “You have to try and be a little forgiving. Your mother’s been very upset since she found out that your sister died.”

  “Well, I’m very upset because I didn’t get to say goodbye to Eli and Maggie,” Eddie said.

  “Eddie, you can write them letters,” Gary suggested. “They’ll understand that it was an emergency. They’ll still be your friends.”

  “I hope so,” Eddie sai
d.

  After a minute or two he crawled out of the box of stuffed animals, bringing Teresa with him. He walked to the back of the trailer and jumped out. Harmony was still kneeling on the pavement, crying. Eddie sat Teresa on the pavement and put his arms around his mother’s neck.

  “Come on, Mom,” he said. “We all have to get in the car now. It’s a very long way to Oklahoma. We better get started.”

  Gary closed the doors to the trailer. Neddie and Pat began to argue about who was the better driver. Eddie continued to hug his mother—in a while Harmony stopped crying.

  “Oh Eddie, thanks for forgiving me,” Harmony said. “I don’t know what I’d do without my big boy.”

  “I’m afraid you might get anthrax,” Eddie said, as he and his mother and Teresa and Gary crawled into the car.

  12.

  Neddie had managed to outargue Pat and won the right to drive the first leg, but then, when she got in the car, she didn’t drive. Everyone in the car was in such low spirits that it seemed to paralyze her.

  “It’s a very long way to Oklahoma,” Eddie said, clutching his cow. “I think we should go now.”

  “What’s wrong with you?” Pat asked Neddie. “If you’re not going to drive, let me. I’m a better driver anyway.”

  “It’s a big deal, moving people away from where they live,” Neddie said. “I was for it in this case, but now I don’t know that I’m still for it. Maybe we should unload all this stuff and put it back in the apartment.”

  “Maybe we should,” Gary said.

  “No,” Eddie said. “I don’t want to be here anymore.”

  “But you did want to be here a minute ago,” Neddie said.

  “It makes my mom too unhappy,” Eddie said. “That’s why I don’t want to be here anymore. But I still want to get the puppy, Mom.”

  “We’ll get the puppy, I promise,” Harmony said. “We’ll get it as soon as we get settled.”

  “I hope it’s a yellow puppy,” Eddie said. “Yellow is my favorite color.”

  “There’s puppies every color of the rainbow in the Tulsa pound,” Pat said. “Switch on the motor, Neddie. Let’s go while we have at least one person in the mood.”

  “Drive down the Strip—I have memories,” Harmony said.

  At a stoplight between Caesar’s and the Stardust, Gary suddenly leapt out.

  “I can’t do this,” he said. “I can’t live in a place without casinos. My soul would starve.”

  He began to cry and gave everyone in the car kisses that had tears mixed in them.

  “I apologize, I apologize,” Gary said; then he ran across the street and just missed getting hit by a taxi.

  “I hope he explains to Jessie,” Harmony said.

  “It may be for the best,” Pat said.

  “I don’t think anything’s for the best except Eddie,” Harmony said.

  “Yeah, he might not have fit in too well in Oklahoma,” Pat said. “Some people around Tulsa aren’t too friendly to gays.”

  Once he made it to the safety of the sidewalk, Gary turned and waved. Harmony and Eddie waved, too; Eddie stuck his head as far out the window as possible so Gary would be sure to see that he was waving. Then they drove along the Strip all the way to the end. At one of the stoplights, Eddie went back to sleep, his head on his cow, Teresa. “Postcards,” was the last word he said, as he faded out.

  “I think he means he wants to send them to his friends, the ones he didn’t get to say goodbye to,” Neddie commented.

  Harmony looked at the casinos as they passed them, one by one. Caesars Palace and the Stardust, the Sahara, the Sands, Circus-Circus and the Tropicana, the MGM Grand. She had been a showgirl in every one of them, at one time or another, but now, when she looked at them with all their glittering lights, no memories came, she just felt numb.

  When they were a little ways east, out of town, Harmony saw a line of buttery light ahead, on the horizon, meaning it was dawn. They were near the little road to Myrtle’s duplex, where she and Pepper had lived when Pepper was a teenager, just before Harmony made her futile stab at hooking up again with Ross. The little house on the edge of the desert had been nice—she had even been able to have peacocks for a while, and the fact that Myrtle ran a permanent, three-hundred-sixty-five-day-a-year garage sale in the driveway meant that there were usually a few characters around, pawing through the stuff.

  “Should I say goodbye to Myrtle, or would it upset her too much?” Harmony asked.

  “I don’t know about Myrtle, but it might upset you too much,” Neddie said. “Let’s keep rolling while we’re rolling.”

  “Good advice,” Pat said.

  BOOK TWO

  1.

  “Do we even know where we’re headed?” Neddie asked, when they were about fifteen miles out of Las Vegas. To the east the sky was lightening, but in the west it was still night. Harmony looked out the back window of the car, watching the lights of Las Vegas, bright against the dark western sky.

  It had always been her magic place, Las Vegas. Now life had abruptly jerked her out of it, she had no idea why. In a way it seemed like years since the news of Pepper’s death came, but in another way it only seemed like minutes. She was in a car with her son, her sisters, and all her possessions. What the future held she did not even want to try and guess. All she hoped was that she could live long enough to be an adequate mom to her son, who slept beside her, his curly head resting on his cow, Teresa.

  “I guess where we go next should be Harmony’s choice,” Pat said, in a tone that was more subdued than her usual tone.

  “Well, we ain’t bound for L.A., are we?” Neddie asked. “If we ain’t bound for L.A. we might as well go east and see where the road takes us.”

  “I vote for New York City, if Harmony feels up to it,” Pat said. “I’m in no rush to get back to Oklahoma. I’d just have to deal with my broken engagement.”

  “Not to mention your fucked-up kids,” Neddie added.

  “Yours are no better,” Pat said.

  “I didn’t say they were,” Neddie said. “Do you think we ought to call and see if any of them are in jail?”

  “No, let’s forget Oklahoma for a while, do you mind?” Pat said.

  Harmony was getting the sense that her sisters’ lives weren’t too perfect, either. She also got the sense that neither of them was in a great hurry to get home. That was a little bit of a shock. She had always assumed that her sisters loved their homes.

  “What about your families, don’t you miss them?” she asked.

  Neither sister answered.

  “Neddie, what about Dick?” Harmony asked.

  “Well, what about him?” Neddie said.

  “He’s your husband,” Harmony said. “Won’t he get lonely without you?”

  “Dick don’t have enough imagination to get lonely,” Neddie said.

  “I second that,” Pat remarked.

  “Nobody asked you, it’s my husband we’re talking about,” Neddie said.

  “It wasn’t so much him as his lack of imagination we were talking about,” Pat said.

  “Pat, his lack of imagination is him,” Neddie said. “That’s our whole problem, in a nutshell. Maybe if I run off to New York for a while he’ll show a little initiative and rustle himself up a girlfriend or something.”

  “Neddie, why would you want your husband to find a girlfriend?” Harmony asked.

  “So he’ll let me alone,” Neddie said.

  The thought struck Harmony suddenly that maybe her sisters’ lives were even more depressing than her own. If so, it was a bad comment on life. It seemed to her that all three of them were nice women. Even if Pat was troubled by sex addiction, she was still a nice woman. Why were they all driving around in a car in the desert, all of them middle-aged and totally uncertain about what might happen next?

  “What do you think is supposed to happen next, Pat?” Harmony asked. One minute Neddie seemed more stable than Pat, but the next minute Pat seemed more stable than Neddie.
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  “Nothing’s supposed to happen next, Harmony,” Pat said. “Do you know what the word ‘arbitrary’ means?”

  “I think so,” Harmony said.

  “Well, that’s how life is,” Pat said. “Arbitrary.”

  “Christians don’t believe that,” Neddie said. “At least Baptists don’t.”

  “I’m not a Baptist,” Pat said. “I don’t even know if I’m a Christian. Does Eddie go to Sunday school?”

  “No, but he went in a synagogue once,” Harmony said. “His friend Eli took him.”

  “Mom will be glad to hear that,” Neddie said. “If I were you I’d skip that chapter when you get into how Eddie’s been brought up.”

  “Mom’s just confused on the subject, Neddie,” Pat said. “She can’t tell Jews from Arabs.”

  Harmony decided that it was going to be a little taxing, listening to her sisters bicker for as long as the trip turned out to be. It was just their way of being sisters, she knew; but that didn’t mean it couldn’t get on the nerves of other family members. Already it was getting on her nerves, and they weren’t even out of sight of the lights of Las Vegas.

  “I hope you two aren’t going to fight all the way home,” she said.

  Both sisters looked surprised.

  “Honey, we ain’t fighting, we’re just chatting,” Neddie said.

  “To me it sounds harsh,” Harmony said. “Eddie’s very sensitive to harshness. He likes gentle words.”

  “Good Lord, Harmony, do you want to raise him in a bubble?” Pat said. “There has to be a little give-and-take in this world.”

  “Why?” Harmony asked.

  “Because if you just agree all the time, it gets boring,” Pat pointed out.

  “I guess that’s why I’ve never been bored,” Harmony said. “Nobody ever agreed with me about anything. It’s why I never married but once.”

  “Now she’s getting maudlin,” Pat said. “Let’s stop at the next bar and get a drink.”

  “I bet Gary wishes he’d come,” Neddie said. “It would be a change from the same old routine.”

  “I don’t want to stop until Eddie wakes up,” Harmony said. “He might want a waffle—it might cheer him up.”