The Late Child Read online

  About noon, when Harmony was thinking she had better either steal the car or go inside and cool off, Neddie came out to check on her again.

  “Are you ever coming in? It’s hot in that car,” Neddie said.

  Harmony didn’t answer. It was hot in the car, but she still felt reluctant to get out of it. As long as she was in the car she felt that she had options.

  “You wasn’t thinking of running away, was you?” Neddie asked. “That little boy would never get over it, if his Momma did something like that.”

  Harmony knew then that she had waited too long to steal the car.

  “You can’t run away and leave that little boy,” Neddie repeated. “That would be the worst possible thing you could do.”

  Harmony didn’t answer. How did Neddie know what the worst possible thing she could do might be? Even though Neddie was older, she couldn’t know everything.

  “Worse than if I became a drug addict?” she asked, in a voice that was almost a whisper.

  “Yes, worse,” Neddie said, without hesitation. “I was a dope addict myself, but I didn’t go off and desert my kids.”

  “You were a dope addict?” Harmony said. “Neddie, I didn’t know that.”

  “After Davie was born I got on them pain pills,” Neddie said. “I stayed on them three years. Dick could never figure out where the egg money was going. That’s where it was going, to pay for my dope.”

  “Oh, Neddie, was it a hard birth?” Harmony asked.

  “It was hard enough, but that wasn’t why I stayed on the pills,” Neddie said. “I was sick of my life, so I doped out.”

  “Here,” Harmony said, handing Neddie the letter.

  Neddie got in the front seat of the hot car and unfolded the yellow sheets of paper. Neddie still moved her lips when she read; Harmony thought that was interesting. When Neddie finished the letter she folded it and handed it back to Harmony. When she did Harmony took the keys out of the ignition and gave them to Neddie.

  “What do I want with these keys?” Neddie asked.

  “Just give them to Gary when he comes to get his car,” Harmony said. She didn’t want to tell her sister that she didn’t trust herself not to desert Eddie.

  “Well, that’s a decent letter,” Neddie said. “It sounds like Pepper had a true friend in her hour of need. That’s more than some people get.”

  “More than a true friend, Neddie,” Harmony corrected. “Pepper was the love of Laurie’s life. She died in the bed they were happy in—that’s what the letter said.”

  “I can read,” Neddie said. “If she was a girlfriend, so much the better, I guess.”

  “It says they shared it happily, that’s good,” Harmony said. “Pepper was the love of Laurie’s life—that’s a big thing to say.

  “Is Dick the love of yours?” she asked, seeing that the phrase hadn’t quite registered on her sister.

  “No,” Neddie said. “I like Dick and I respect him. But I was never in love with him.”

  “Not ever?” Harmony asked, shocked.

  Harmony tried to figure out what that could possibly mean, in terms of her sister’s life. She had lived with a man for more than thirty years, but had never been in love with him? Of course, she herself had frequently brought men home without being in love with them—Jimmy Bangor was a recent example—but she didn’t keep them around for thirty years.

  “Neddie, that’s sad—isn’t it?” Harmony said.

  “Not everybody gets everything, Sis,” Neddie said. “I was in love with Rusty, though. I guess I still am. He just won’t do nothing about it.”

  “Who’s Rusty?” Harmony asked.

  “Dick’s baby brother,” Neddie said. “Rusty’s a whole lot cuter than Dick. He’s even got a sense of humor. Dick Haley wouldn’t know a joke if one clobbered him.”

  “Where does Rusty live?” Harmony asked, trying to remember if she had ever known Rusty. So far her memory drew a blank.

  “Down the road about two miles,” Neddie said. “Rusty’s a big help to me anyway. I go see him two or three times a day.”

  “So maybe he’s kind of the love of your life,” Harmony said.

  “If he ain’t then I didn’t get to have no love of my life,” Neddie said.

  “Neddie, you’re not old,” Harmony said. “You could still have a love of your life.”

  “In Tarwater, Oklahoma?” Neddie said. “At my age?”

  “Somebody could show up and surprise you,” Harmony said. For some reason it had become important to her to at least keep the hope that her sister Neddie would get to have a love of her life, even if it was only her husband’s brother, Rusty Haley.

  “Who was the love of yours?” Neddie asked—they both saw Pat coming down the sidewalk with a pitcher in her hand, and three glasses.

  “Didier, he died when I was eighteen,” Harmony said, without hesitation.

  “Seems like it’s been kind of a long drought, in the love-of-your-life department, for both of us,” Neddie said. “Let’s ask Pat. She gets a new love of her life every week or so.”

  “Why are you two sitting in this hot car?” Pat asked, getting in the back seat. “I brought some martinis—if you’re going to be hot you might as well be drunk.”

  “Okay, Pat, come clean,” Neddie said, accepting a martini. “Who was the love of your life?”

  “Mind your own business, Neddie,” Pat said. “Is that what you two have been doing out here all this time? Talking about sex?”

  “Nobody said a word about sex, Pat,” Harmony pointed out. “You’re the first person even to mention the word.”

  “Harmony, are you calling me a slut, or what?” Pat asked. “Get to the point. Just because I’m drunk don’t mean I’ll stand for much name-calling.”

  “Who was the love of your life, that’s all we want to know,” Neddie asked. “I’ve already confessed that Rusty Haley is mine, so who’s yours?”

  “Rusty’s more like the lust of your life, Neddie,” Pat said, unsentimentally. “If you’d gone on and had sex with him a few times, you’d have got it out of your system and figured out what a lazy piece of shit that man really is. Now you and him have put off doing the wild thing for twenty years and you think you’re the love of one another’s life. Oh boy.”

  “Quit dodging,” Neddie said. “You still ain’t told us about the love of your life, if you can remember him.”

  “I won’t tell you because he’s famous and you and Harmony would blab to the newspapers,” Pat said.

  “He’s several cuts above Rusty Haley, I can assure you of that.”

  “Pat, don’t be mean,” Harmony said, wondering why she bothered to say it.

  “Famous for what?” Neddie asked. “You don’t mean that old boy who got famous for trying to steal two thousand drilling bits from a warehouse in Oklahoma City, do you? Is that what you call famous?”

  “No, Jesse was just a criminal, and a dumb one at that, though I will say he was good-looking and a fine dancer, too,” Pat said. “But Jesse Birch don’t come nowhere near being the love of my life, Neddie.”

  “Pat, you can tell us,” Harmony assured her. “I don’t even know the phone number of a newspaper and anyway we’re in Nevada.”

  “News travels fast and far,” Pat said. “I don’t trust either one of you.”

  “I want to get some orange juice in case we drink vodka,” Harmony said. She got the keys back from Neddie and they drove the two blocks to the Circle K. There Jasmine was, in the parking lot of the Circle K, crying because the bottom had dropped out of her bag of groceries. Her bottle of wine had broken when it hit the cement. Two black teenagers were skateboarding around in circles in the parking lot.

  “There’s Jasmine, let’s find another Circle K,” Pat said. “That woman depresses me.”

  “Pat, she’s my neighbor, besides, her daughter was killed,” Harmony said. She went in, bought the orange juice, and persuaded the little Asian man who was managing the Circle K to come out with a broom and dustp
an and sweep up Jasmine’s mess. Jasmine was so dejected by the loss of her wine that she had wandered out into the street—she was almost hit by a Dr. Pepper truck.

  “Life’s not for the faint-hearted,” Neddie observed.

  When they got back to the apartment Harmony still didn’t feel like going inside, so they sat in the hot car and drank more martinis.

  “What would I do if I went back to Oklahoma?” Harmony asked.

  “Well, you could steal Pat’s boyfriends, you’re younger and prettier,” Neddie said. Often, when she drank, Neddie developed a wicked tongue.

  “Yeah, but she don’t know as much about sex,” Pat said. “Harmony was always an inhibited little thing,” Pat said.

  “Inhibited—I was a showgirl, Pat,” Harmony protested.

  “I didn’t say you wasn’t an exhibitionist,” Pat said. “That doesn’t mean you’re any fun in bed.”

  “Pat, drop the sex stuff, we ain’t addicts like you,” Neddie said. “The one thing Harmony could do that would be real useful is help out with Mom and Dad.”

  “You got a point,” Pat said. “I’ve about had it with Mom. It’s time Harmony came home and did her part.”

  “It’d give Eddie a chance to get to know his grandparents, too,” Neddie observed.

  “Okay, I’ll come,” Harmony said. She wanted to get it settled in her mind. The thought of not having her sisters with her made her feel total panic.

  The thought of her parents, though, just made her feel guilty. She definitely had not been a dutiful daughter—Eddie was five and had never met his grandparents; that was one example she wasn’t proud of.

  “I don’t see how Dad stands it,” Pat said. “All she does is cuss at him—it’s been ten years since the poor man’s been able to do anything right. I been trying to get him to get a dead bolt for his door.”

  “Why a dead bolt, are there thieves?” Harmony asked.

  “One thief, Mom, she robs him of every cent he gets right out of his billfold. She’s got it in her head that he stole a hundred thousand dollars from her when they sold that worthless piece of land over by Broken Arrow. Now every time she catches Dad with cash money on him, she steals it.

  “The reason I think he ought to get the dead bolt is because she’ll sneak up on him some night, thinking about that hundred thousand dollars, and beat the shit out of him with a ball bat or something.”

  “Pat, she wouldn’t—would she?” Harmony said. It was very hard for her to imagine her mother beating her father with a ball bat, or beating him at all, for that matter.

  Harmony thought of Eddie—she wondered if it would shock him to move far away to Oklahoma.

  “Is Tulsa on the cable?” she asked. “Eddie’s never lived anyplace that wasn’t on the cable.”

  “What do you think we are, hicks?” Pat said. “Of course Tulsa’s on the cable.”

  “Tarwater, too,” Neddie said.

  9.

  About the middle of the afternoon, the three sisters began to try to do something about their hangovers. Harmony took a long hot shower and then ate three bowls of Cheerios—they were watching a rerun of The Man from U.N.C.L.E. at the time. Neddie swallowed some Excedrin and washed her hair in the sink. Pat lined up six pills of different kinds and mixed herself a Bloody Mary. Then she swallowed all the pills.

  “Pat, are you sure it’s safe to take six pills at once?” Harmony asked.

  “Hangovers are mostly psychological,” Pat informed her. She continued to drink Bloody Marys until long after the rerun had ended. It was just as well that it ended—Neddie was blow-drying her hair and the dryer made static on the TV.

  “Everything’s psychological, according to you,” Neddie said. “I can do without psychology myself.”

  “Nobody can do without psychology, it’s just your mind and your emotions mixed together,” Pat informed her. “I’m the one with a B.A., not you.”

  “I don’t mix my emotions with anything,” Neddie said. “It’s hard enough work just living with them separate.”

  “I hope Eddie won’t mind leaving his little friends,” Harmony said, but before her sisters could comment the doorbell rang.

  Neddie was closest, so she answered the door.

  “Uh-oh,” she said, when she looked out.

  Harmony hurried over—it was Gary, he was bleeding on the doorstep from cuts on his face and hands. Before anyone could say a word Gary staggered out in the yard and began to vomit—then he collapsed and flopped on his back.

  “Oh God, are you dying, Gary?” Harmony asked; she had seen Gary with black eyes before, but she had never seen him collapsed on a patio.

  “I think he’s got stab wounds, I’m calling nine-one-one,” Pat said.

  “No, I’m not dying, forget about nine-one-one,” Gary said. “I just drank too much.”

  Then he got to his feet, as if he were perfectly all right, and marched right into the apartment. Harmony noticed that he was dripping blood on the wall-to-wall, but so what? She had done it too. Anyway, Jimmy was the one who couldn’t tolerate any threat to the wall-to-wall, and Jimmy was probably already back in Nampa, Idaho, or somewhere quite far away.

  “Gary, it’s more than drinking too much, you’re cut,” Harmony pointed out. “I think we ought to drive you to the emergency room at least.”

  “Somebody’s been washing their hair in the sink, I can smell the shampoo,” Gary said, trying to get his face under the faucet.

  “It smells like it came from Wal-Mart,” he added. Gary was definitely a snob about things like shampoo.

  “Yep,” Neddie said, looking a little bit offended.

  Gary immediately realized he had hurt Neddie’s feelings.

  “I’m sorry, Neddie—I should be grateful I have a sink to bleed in,” Gary said. “It’s just that I have allergies. Some shampoos make me sneeze.”

  “It’s all right, I ain’t too proud to shop at Wal-Mart,” Neddie said, still a little bit offended.

  “Gary, what happened?” Harmony asked. “You’re still bleeding.”

  “The little fuckers shoved me out of the car,” Gary said. “I don’t know how fast we were going at the time, but we definitely weren’t stopped.”

  “Oh,” Harmony said. Quite a few of the boys Gary fell in love with were prone to criminal acts; but none, so far as she knew, had ever shoved him out of a car before.

  “I still think we oughta go to the emergency room,” Pat said. “You might have a concussion or a broken neck or something and not even know it.”

  Gary ran several gallons of water over his face and neck and began to pat himself down with a lot of paper towels. It seemed, from looking, that he was just a little skinned up. Harmony didn’t notice any stab wounds.

  “Why are you three girls so glum?” Gary asked. “I’m the one who got shoved out of a car.”

  A second later he remembered Harmony’s tragedy.

  “I’m sorry, Harmony,” he said. “It was just a memory lapse.”

  Then he came over and put his arms around Harmony—Gary really was a very old friend.

  “We’re all hung over, and I’m moving back to Oklahoma with Neddie and Pat,” Harmony said.

  Gary looked shocked. “No, you can’t,” he said. “If you go back to Oklahoma where will I go to wash up when some dirty little boys shove me out of a moving vehicle?”

  “Couldn’t you at least find clean boys?” Pat asked. She had never been totally reconciled to Gary’s homosexuality.

  “Pat, it was a figure of speech, actually I’m very careful,” Gary said. “I just don’t know what I’ll do without Harmony, she’s my only true friend.”

  Sometimes Harmony had a little difficulty with Gary’s homosexuality herself, the difficulty being that it meant Gary wasn’t ever going to be a boyfriend. There were times when Gary was brokenhearted over some lost love when he would just sort of move in and stay with her and Eddie for weeks. That could only happen, of course, if Harmony herself happened to be without a boyfriend
at the time. When it did happen she and Gary and Eddie got along just fine; Gary even cooked, sometimes, and they watched a lot of TV together and played some of the card games that Eddie knew how to play. Gary had been known to stay with them for six weeks or so, if the heartbreak was a serious one. Usually he just fell asleep on the couch watching TV, and slept there, but sometimes Harmony made him sleep on the other side of her queen bed. Once in a while Gary would come in looking so exhausted that she didn’t want him sleeping on the couch; she insisted that he occupy part of her bed. Sometimes they even held hands in the night, if they happened to be chatting or something. They almost never quarreled, and if they did it was usually only for a minute or two. Gary sometimes got a little smart-mouthed about some of her habits, or a hairstyle or something. Once in a while Harmony would enjoy the fantasy that Gary had stopped being gay and wanted to marry her. Eddie loved Gary and preferred that he be there; usually Eddie was in droopy spirits for a few days when Gary left.

  Gary had always been a sort of honorary uncle for Eddie—there were times when Harmony wished he could be more than honorary. If they were married it would be better for Gary, too; he would be a little less likely to get shoved out of cars. It seemed to Harmony that she and Gary had a good chance of being sweet to one another, long term, even if they lived together, but of course it wasn’t going to happen, it was a fantasy.

  “I doubt you’ll last long without Harmony, myself,” Neddie said. “You two have been friends a long time.”

  “I’m beginning to wish I’d picked another house to hose off in,” Gary said. “You girls are too gloomy today.”