The Late Child Read online

  Harmony hugged her son tight—really tight. Just for a moment, kneeling on the glass-strewn sidewalk, her sunny five-year-old in her arms, she was able to kid herself, to pretend that it was still a normal day.

  2.

  “Mom, you need a Band-Aid,” Eddie said, when he saw the blood on his mother’s feet. He wasn’t too concerned, though. He himself often needed Band-Aids—fortunately there was a big box full of them, in the bathroom. One of his mom’s toes was allover blood, though.

  “I think it might take five Band-Aids!” Eddie said, when he noticed that his mother was crying. “Can we still have the macaroni and cheese?”

  Harmony remembered that she had promised Eddie macaroni and cheese for dinner—it was his favorite meal. Fortunately she had made it to the supermarket the day before and had plenty of macaroni and cheese. She picked Eddie up—he looked so cute, with his little book bag that mainly had coloring books in it. Jimmy Bangor, meanwhile, was frantically trying to spread paper towels to protect the carpet when she carried Eddie in.

  “Wait, hon, wait, you’re bleeding,” Jimmy said, but Harmony didn’t wait, she went right to the kitchen and got out the macaroni and cheese. Long ago her friend Gary, a man who knew as much about life and death as anyone in Las Vegas—maybe as much as anyone, anywhere—told her that the best approach when someone close passed away was just to keep on doing normal things as normally as possible. Making macaroni and cheese was a normal thing; so was popping Eddie’s favorite movie, Benjy, into the VCR.

  “Mom, make it go fast until we come to the grizzly bear,” Eddie requested; then he picked up the remote and made it go fast himself—he wanted to get to the scary part right away—the part where the wolf gets after Benjy.

  “Maybe Jimmy can watch the scary part with you,” Harmony suggested—Eddie definitely liked company while the scary parts were happening. She tried very hard to follow Gary’s instruction to do normal things, which meant concentrating on the macaroni and cheese.

  “Honey, you’re bleeding all over everything, this whole carpet will have to be took up,” Jimmy said. He stood by the refrigerator looking helpless, a roll of paper towels in his hand.

  Harmony knew that bleeding pints of blood on the wall-to-wall wasn’t too normal, but the major normal thing that still seemed within her grasp was to make Eddie the macaroni and cheese she had promised him yesterday, before the tragedy happened, or before she knew about it, at least. She felt that if she concentrated on the macaroni and cheese and made it and fed it to Eddie, as she had so many times, she might not go crazy. But she had to concentrate very hard on that one thing: feeding her son. Her feet were down there somewhere, bleeding, and the carpet was down there too, getting bled on, but Harmony couldn’t direct her attention to the plight of her feet, much less the plight of the carpet. She had to get the right dishes out of the cabinet, and she had to turn the stove on.

  “Hon, I’m going up to the Circle K and get some cigarettes,” Jimmy said, setting the roll of paper towels on the counter by the sink.

  “Need anything?” he asked, just before he went out the door.

  “No, Jimmy … I guess not,” Harmony said, glancing at him. Even before the door closed behind him she had the feeling that Jimmy Bangor was gone. The look in his eye, before he stepped through the door, had been the going-away look, a look she had seen, sooner or later, in the eyes of every man she had ever been involved with except one. At a certain moment, because of this or that, it just seemed that life with her became too much for her boyfriends to handle. One after another, year after year, they went out for bread or beer or cigarettes and never came back. How women got men to stay with them, month after month and year after year, was a mystery to Harmony. Whether it was better cooking, or tricks in bed, or proper housekeeping techniques, she had no way to know. Men seemed to like her, and certainly she liked them. But usually only a few weeks or at most a few months would go by and she would look up one day from making spaghetti, or maybe a sandwich, and there her man would be, at the door, the going-away look in his eye. She was pretty sure it had just occurred with Jimmy Bangor—maybe it was her bloody feet. Jimmy was sort of a squeamish man, even if he did like to fish.

  “Do you think he’ll bring Popsicles, Mom?” Eddie asked. The grizzly bear had just scared the wolf away from Benjy, which meant that he could relax his attention for a few minutes.

  Harmony went to the couch and sat down beside him—she felt like being close to her son, for a little while. As for Eddie, he always liked to be close to his Mom; he immediately climbed up in her lap. After all, the really scary part of the movie was coming up: the part where, just when the black wolf almost has Benjy, Benjy tricks him and the wolf goes off the cliff and falls for a long time and never comes back. It meant the wolf was dead, Eddie believed, though you never really got to see the wolf being dead, which made Eddie worry just a little. It would have been good to see that the wolf was really dead. Then no one would have to be afraid that he would somehow make his way back up the cliff and chase Benjy again.

  “Do you think Jimmy will bring Popsicles, Mom?” Eddie asked, again.

  “I don’t know—did you really like Jimmy?” Harmony asked. It made her feel a failure, that her little boy would always have to be losing people he really liked. But Eddie had been a little cool with Jimmy, a little reserved—maybe it wouldn’t be such a heartbreaker for him, if Jimmy turned out to have hit the road, rather than just going for cigarettes.

  To her surprise Eddie looked up at her with a giggly look.

  “I didn’t really like him but I can’t tell you why, Mom,” Eddie said.

  That was sort of unusual—Eddie was such an open little boy: he would even talk to her about his little penis, if he got a good feeling in it while he was wiping himself on the potty, or fooling around a little in the bathtub.

  “Honey, if you didn’t like Jimmy, why can’t you tell me why?” Harmony asked. It took her mind off Pepper for a second: what if Jimmy had molested Eddie or something. Eddie had a giggly look on his face, though; probably he wouldn’t have looked giggly if there had been some form of abuse.

  “I can’t because it’s a bad word,” Eddie said. “At school you’re not supposed to say it.”

  “Eddie, you’re right here with me, watching Benjy,” Harmony reminded him. “What kind of bad word would mean that you didn’t like Jimmy?”

  “Fart!” Eddie said, before dissolving into helpless giggles.

  “Oh,” Harmony said.

  “He farts all the time—I could smell him in my bunk bed,” Eddie said.

  “Oh,” Harmony said again. It wasn’t as bad as abuse, of course—on the other hand it sort of made her wonder a little about the level of boyfriend she had chosen to bring home. Why should her beautiful little boy have to smell her boyfriend’s farts, while he was in his bunk bed trying to sleep? It wasn’t a huge failure, like taking in a child molester would have been, but it didn’t exactly make her a candidate for the mom honor roll, either.

  “You’re supposed to fart outside,” Eddie reminded her. “You’re never supposed to fart inside.

  “I don’t care, though, if he brings the Popsicles,” Eddie added. His mom looked like she might cry. Maybe he had said the fart word too much.

  Harmony was remembering that she had been a little offended by that very problem when she first began to go out with Jimmy—or rather, when she had first sort of given up and gone to bed with him. It was during their intimate moments that Jimmy’s habit of expelling wind—lots of wind, and no fragrant breeze, either—had first manifested itself. Harmony’s first thought had been, Whoa, what am I getting myself into, here? But Jimmy hastened to explain that it was a digestive condition he had picked up in Asia, while in the service. He didn’t want her to think it signified any lack of social graces—it was just a medical problem, really. He looked so hangdog when he discussed it that Harmony, as usual, felt sorry for the man. After that she did her optimistic best to turn off her smelle
r, at such moments, if Jimmy’s digestive condition began to act up—and it usually did.

  But then, after all, nobody was perfect. After rashly, and to be truthful, accidentally, having Eddie at age forty-two, Harmony herself had developed a female problem that probably wasn’t too attractive—it may have been the reason Webb left her, a bare six months after their son was born. Webb was one of the best tow-truck drivers in Las Vegas—he had spent twenty years racing to every wreck, particularly big smashups on I-15. Webb definitely liked to be first on the scene when there was a big smashup; he was the first to admit that he was an impatient man, it didn’t matter whether it was getting a burger quick at Jack-in-the-Box or breakfast or sex or what, waiting was not Webb’s mode. Harmony was a little messed up after having Eddie; there had been a few complications. She eventually healed fine, but long before that day Webb had decided he couldn’t wait, he was gone. It was rare, after that, that she could get him to take even twenty minutes’ interest in Eddie, even after Eddie learned to walk and talk and was obviously a wonderful little boy. Webb was just too impatient to get interested in watching children grow, even his own sons—he had three more sons around town that he also wasn’t watching grow.

  Why am I thinking about all this? Pepper’s dead, Harmony thought: then she remembered birthday parties when Pepper was six or seven, and she remembered dance classes and taking Pepper to school—she began to swirl downward into memories that were like blows, any one of them could knock her reeling.

  “Oh Eddie, I nearly forgot the macaroni and cheese,” she said, kind of dumping him off her lap as she stood up.

  “Mom, it’s the wolf part, very soon,” Eddie said. “Just watch the wolf part with me—it’s too scary.”

  What Harmony ended up doing was turning the TV a little, so Eddie could sit on the cabinet, right where she was working, and be close to her while the scary part of the video was showing. Having him close was good for her too, otherwise some memory of Pepper might hit her and flatten her before she could finish fixing Eddie his macaroni and cheese.

  She did fix it, too. The movie ended, with Benjy still safe—the black wolf, whether alive or dead, at least had never reappeared.

  “When are we getting the pup, Mom?” Eddie asked. He had eaten a more than acceptable portion of macaroni and cheese and had been rewarded with a big scoop of chocolate chip ice cream, although bossy little Connie, who worked next to Harmony at the recycling plant, had tried her best to convince Harmony that chocolate was a bad substance that should definitely be kept out of the mouths and stomachs of little children Eddie’s age. To hear Connie talk, chocolate was only a little less harmful than rat poison, but Harmony took all that with a grain of salt. Eddie loved chocolate chip ice cream and so far his skin hadn’t turned green from eating it, so why not?

  “Eddie, we’re going to get you a nice puppy, I just don’t know when,” Harmony said. She opened the door and looked out, hoping she had been wrong about Jimmy—maybe he was just off having a few beers to calm his nerves—the sight of her bleeding on the carpet had probably upset him quite a bit. She still hadn’t done anything about her feet, either; the carpet looked like a few chickens had been slaughtered on it, but that was the least of her worries. She was thinking that pretty soon she was going to have to call the person who had been kind enough to write and tell her about Pepper’s death. She wanted a few details; well, wanted them and didn’t want them, it wouldn’t be such an easy call to make. Also, she would have to call Madonna, Pepper’s old dance teacher, and Gary and Jessie and a few others who had known Pepper when she was a beautiful little girl, growing up in Las Vegas.

  What Harmony was hoping was that Jimmy Bangor would get control of his nerves and come on home; maybe he could give it another week or two, at least. If he would only come back she would have him to hang on to, in bed, and not have to be totally alone on the night that she learned of her daughter’s death. Having him there at least for one night would make up for a lot; certainly it would make up for the farts.

  So, despite herself, every few minutes, Harmony would walk over and look out the door, hoping to see Jimmy coming up the sidewalk. Finally, after she had given Eddie his bath and read him his favorite Porky Pig story three times, and sat by him until he fell asleep—the falling asleep didn’t take long, Eddie had had an active day at school—he counted his mother’s fingers once or twice and twisted the little wedding band Ross, Pepper’s father, had given Harmony twenty-five years earlier, when they married; then, Eddie’s eyelids went to half-mast and, in another moment, he was sleeping like an angel.

  Eddie twisting the wedding band reminded Harmony that Ross was also someone who would have to be called—she had not heard from him in more than five years. Ross was a light man and was undoubtedly at some casino somewhere, working the lights for some floor show; but what casino and what floor show was anybody’s guess. Harmony would have to do some asking around, which meant that Ross would probably get a few days’ grace before he had to face the fact that he didn’t have a little girl anymore.

  Harmony turned the light off over Eddie’s bunk bed and went to the bathroom and ran water in the tub—just enough to soak the crusted blood off her feet. The fact was, her feet were kind of shredded but even so she couldn’t keep her mind on them, she just soaked the worst of the blood off and went downstairs. After opening the door and looking for Jimmy and shutting it again in disappointment, Harmony thought, Why shut it if I’m going to open it again in two minutes? She left the door open and sat down outside, on the step. When she did she felt a few prickles—in his panic to keep her from bleeding on the carpet Jimmy had not done a perfect job of sweeping up the broken glass. To keep her mind off things, she gathered up a few sharp specks of glass herself and held them in her palm.

  Harmony sat in her doorway till one in the morning, long past the point when she had given up on seeing Jimmy Bangor again. Jimmy was no night owl—nine-thirty was normally lights-out for him, unless it was Saturday night, when he might try to stretch his wakefulness till ten, in order to maybe attempt a sex act or something. Harmony rarely turned her TV off until one or two; years as a showgirl had accustomed her to real late hours. Besides being a farter, Jimmy had been a snorer; she had to keep the volume up a little higher than she normally would in order to hear over his snores. It was a little inconvenient, but at that it was better than what she was looking at now: no one to hold her when she started sinking. Pepper, her daughter, was not only dead, she was cremated. The person who had written the letter, a woman named Laurie, had wanted to know where Harmony wanted the ashes sent—Harmony had noticed that line in the letter before she stuffed it in the iced-tea glass.

  In Tulsa, where Harmony came from, dead people were usually just buried whole—she had never given any thought to what should be done once a human body was cremated and reduced to ashes. Maybe the ashes would be as fine as the little specks of sharp glass that she held in her palm for almost three hours. That such a thing as death could happen to a child she had given birth to, and arranged birthday parties for, and picked up after dance class, was too terrible. Harmony felt such a feeling of tearing and ripping inside herself that she began to squeeze the little sharp pieces of glass into her hand. She needed to feel something different from the ripping—even a cut. Jimmy wasn’t coming, no one was coming, yet someone had to, she couldn’t sit there on her own step and survive the tearing and ripping feeling, not much longer, not alone. Pain was coming up in her throat, it was going to become a scream or something—if it was a scream it was going to be so loud it might wake the neighbors; Eddie might hear it and be scared—sometimes Eddie had bad dreams anyway; he certainly wouldn’t get the normal amount of sleep he needed if he had to be awakened by his mother screaming in the yard.

  After all, it was one in the morning: Harmony didn’t have the school bus coming, or the macaroni and cheese to make, or Benjy or the Porky Pig stories to help keep her a stable mom. She didn’t even have Jimmy Bangor, snoring o
r farting beside her; usually he snored so loud that she couldn’t hear the comics on the Comedy Channel. Now it was just her alone, on the step, with the terrible news.

  Harmony jumped up—she began to shake and was about to stumble back into the house and dial the first phone number she could remember, when the gate to the yard creaked. Harmony turned in her doorway and saw Juliette coming.

  “What’s wrong, Harmony—what’s wrong?” Juliette asked. She was way back down the sidewalk, trying to get the latch on the gate to work correctly; but she picked up some vibe out of the air—it was most unusual to see Harmony on her doorstep at one in the morning.

  Juliette came hurrying up the sidewalk, still in her tux: she was a blackjack dealer at the MGM Grand, dealers were still required to wear tuxedos at the Grand. Juliette was a little chubby; sometimes she reminded Harmony of Lou Costello, whom she had met long ago, in her first days as a showgirl. Juliette was very kind; she would always make tea for Harmony and listen to her troubles if she happened to be low. Juliette herself didn’t seem to have troubles—actually, there was no one in her life to cause her trouble, loneliness was probably Juliette’s trouble; but, for the moment, with a scream of pain about to pour out of Harmony’s throat and maybe wake her young son, Juliette in her tux was the answer to a hope she had not expected would be answered at all.

  “Oh, Juliette, Pepper’s dead, she’s cremated,” Harmony said.

  “Pepper, your daughter?” Juliette asked—she had never met Pepper herself, but of course she had seen the scrapbook Harmony kept, of all Pepper’s recitals and shows. Seeing even two pictures of Pepper was enough to tell anyone that she was beautiful; the camera loved her, always had.

  “Pepper, your daughter?” Juliette asked, again—it was a stall, mainly. She was trying to keep her wits about her and think what to say or do next.