The Late Child Read online

  “Don’t say that, Gary,” Harmony said. “I don’t want you to pick another house.”

  “Can I just have coffee before I say something else dumb?” Gary asked.

  The next thing that happened was that conversation died. Harmony sat in a rocking chair, Pat sat on the floor, Neddie lay on the couch, and Gary sat at the kitchen table.

  “You don’t have to sit on the floor, Pat,” Harmony said.

  “I don’t have to do anything but breathe,” Pat said—after that, not a word was uttered for nearly twenty minutes. They all just sat and stared at whatever space was in front of them. Harmony began to feel a little desperate. Neddie and Pat were her family, Gary was her lifelong best friend, and yet it was as if they were all complete strangers; it felt like just an accident that they were all in the same apartment in Las Vegas, Nevada.

  “Can’t somebody talk?” she asked, when she felt she couldn’t stand it any longer.

  “I guess times like this was the reason TV was invented,” Neddie said. “When nobody has a word to say you can always turn on the TV.”

  “I don’t know what to do,” Harmony said. “I should go to my job. That’s what Eddie thought, too.”

  “Why bother, if you’re really going to move to Oklahoma,” Gary said. “I don’t think recycling is going to save the planet anyway.”

  “Gary, don’t be pessimistic,” Harmony said. “It might save the planet.”

  “Unless I can find a better boyfriend pretty soon I don’t care whether the planet gets saved or not,” Pat said.

  “Pat don’t care, she looks out for number one,” Neddie remarked.

  “Is it going to be like this if I move to Oklahoma?” Harmony asked. She had not stopped feeling desperate and, so far, the conversation had been as bad as the silence.

  “Like what?” Neddie asked.

  Harmony felt too tired to attempt to describe what she meant. She began to want to talk to Laurie Chalk and find out about Pepper’s life, in her last years.

  “Could we go to New York on the way to Oklahoma?” she asked. “I want to meet Laurie.”

  “I guess we could, but it’s thousands of miles out of the way,” Pat observed.

  “If you’re really going to move, why don’t I give you my car—it’s got a big trunk,” Gary said.

  “Gary, that’s so generous,” Harmony said. She had begun to wonder just how the move would be accomplished.

  “But how will you get to your job if I take the car?” she asked. Gary had always been impulsive—he often gave things away that he soon turned out to need.

  “Harmony, my car is not the only motor vehicle in Las Vegas,” Gary said. It was an example of his tendency to be a little smart-mouthed: of course she knew it was not the only motor vehicle in Las Vegas.

  “I just meant, what if you need it, Gary?” Harmony said. The thought of all the misunderstanding and tragedy there was in the world made her feel so low that she couldn’t seem to summon any optimism at all. She even began to wonder if recycling was worth it—maybe the planet had so much tragedy on it that it didn’t deserve to be saved.

  “I feel like giving up,” she said.

  “Hon, it’s just a mood,” Neddie said.

  “Poor thing, this death is just about too much to bear,” Pat said. She sounded sympathetic for once.

  “Gary, could you get me a drug?” Harmony asked.

  Gary seemed startled by the request, she didn’t know why. At one time or another Gary had taken every drug known to man.

  “Harmony, I don’t know if that’s a good idea,” Gary said.

  “It’s a great idea,” Neddie said. “She’s in pain. The whole point of drugs is to take away pain. Get her some dope.”

  “The fact is I don’t have a cent,” Gary admitted. “The dirty little boys robbed me before they shoved me out of the car.”

  “Oh, no—did they get your credit cards?” Harmony asked. Gary’s boyfriends were always stealing his credit cards and running up huge bills buying stereos or clothes.

  “Oh my God—that’s what I was trying to remember,” Gary said. “I came here mainly to use your phone—I need to cancel all my credit cards.”

  “Hurry, Gary, hurry,” Harmony said. In her mind she could already see four or five of Gary’s tough little boys in a stereo store, charging thousands of dollars that Gary would end up having to pay off. Once one of his boyfriends had charged fifteen hundred dollars’ worth of kitchen equipment and taken the stuff right out on the street and traded every bit of it for drugs.

  Naturally, Gary couldn’t remember the numbers of a single one of his credit cards—he had to sit and think for several crucial minutes before he could remember whether his Visa had expired or already been canceled. Harmony finally had to come out of her slump, in order to deal with it. Having to deal with major corporations such as Visa or American Express made Gary very shaky, even in the best of times. Pretty soon, thanks to the credit card crisis, he stopped talking about getting drugs for Harmony and started thinking about getting some for himself.

  “See what I mean?” Neddie said. “He ain’t gonna last a week without Sis.” At the time, Harmony was on the phone with the Visa people, waiting for them to check and see whether Gary’s Visa had already been canceled.

  “Let’s take him to Oklahoma with us—it might save his life,” Pat suggested.

  10.

  When the idea of moving to Oklahoma was first presented to Eddie, that night after his Aunt Pat had finished reading him several stories, his immediate reaction was negative.

  “No way,” Eddie said firmly. “My mom and I want to live here in Las Vegas, where my school is.”

  “Eddie, I’m not too sure your mother still wants to live here,” Pat said. “The school is no problem. We have wonderful schools in Oklahoma.”

  “But you don’t have my school,” Eddie reminded her. “My school is here in Las Vegas, Nevada.”

  “Eddie, any school can be your school, once you go to it for a while,” Aunt Neddie said, trying to help the discussion along. “I agree with Aunt Pat. I’m just not too sure your momma still wants to live in Las Vegas.”

  “Yes, she does want to, I’m sure,” Eddie said, annoyed that his aunts were trying to tell him what his own mother wanted.

  “She wants to live in Las Vegas, Nevada,” he repeated, loudly. “And I do! Forever and forever, until everybody in the world is deaded.”

  “Dead, not deaded,” Neddie said, patiently.

  “Deaded!” Eddie said, even more loudly. He hated to have his word choice corrected.

  Harmony lay on the couch, listening without much interest.

  “Please change the subject,” she said. “I don’t want to hear the d word tonight.”

  She thought Pat had chosen a bad time to bring up the move. After Eddie heard some stories he usually turned on his small TV and watched a video or two. Harmony had saved to buy Eddie the TV, and Gary had given him a VCR for his fifth birthday. Eddie had accumulated forty-eight videos already, most of them previewed. There was a shopping cart full of used videos right by the checkout counter in the supermarket. They were $4.99 apiece, a saving Harmony usually couldn’t resist.

  At the moment, Eddie’s favorite videos were Roadrunner and the Coyote cartoons, although the coyote’s stupidity annoyed Eddie at times. He had seen a program about coyotes on the Discovery Channel, a program that emphasized what smart animals coyotes were. But the coyote in the cartoons definitely wasn’t smart.

  “The roadrunner tricks him over and over,” Eddie complained to his aunts. “It’s a dumb coyote.”

  “Anything can be dumb, Eddie,” Pat said. “I’m no rocket scientist, myself.”

  Eddie failed to see what that had to do with anything.

  “Coyotes are supposed to be smart, not dumb,” he reminded her.

  “If the coyote was smart the video wouldn’t be funny,” Aunt Neddie said.

  “It’s not funny,” Eddie said. “It’s a story.”


  “Stories can be funny,” Pat argued. “All cartoons are funny.”

  “Change the subject again,” Harmony begged. She felt a little insane. Listening to her sisters and her son argue about cartoons made her feel like screaming, but she didn’t.

  “Don’t talk anymore, my mother’s sad,” Eddie said.

  Eddie walked over and lay next to his mom, on the couch.

  “Don’t be sad, Mom, be happy,” he said. “I have some hugs for you—do you want some?”

  Harmony wanted some. Later, once Eddie was asleep, Harmony remembered his effort to reassure her. The way he had said “I’m here” made her feel a little guilty.

  “Eddie shouldn’t have to comfort me, it’s too big a responsibility,” she said.

  “He’s your child, why shouldn’t he comfort you?” Neddie asked. She was drinking vodka for the second night in a row.

  “All he did was give you some hugs,” Pat said. “What’s wrong with that?”

  “Pat, I don’t know what’s wrong with anything,” Harmony said. “I guess I’m just scared Eddie will be unhappy if we move.”

  “The tail don’t get to wag the dog, and the child oughtn’t to wag the parent,” Neddie said.

  “He’ll do fine in Oklahoma,” Pat said. “Dad can take him fishing.”

  “Dad can still see to drive pretty good, unlike Mom,” Neddie said. “Mother couldn’t see a brick wall if it fell on her. She’s blind as a mole.”

  “As a bat, you mean,” Harmony said.

  “No, as a mole,” Neddie said. “Bats can see a little ways, but moles can’t and neither can Mom.”

  “I’m not sure Mom really wants to see,” Pat said. “Everything she does manage to catch a glimpse of irritates the hell out of her.”

  “Like what?” Harmony asked—her mother had never had a very positive attitude.

  “Like her friends’ clothes, and the fact that Pat’s children have long hair,” Neddie said.

  “She don’t think your kids are no angels, either,” Pat said.

  “She’s right,” Neddie admitted.

  “How does Mom get around, if she can’t see?” Harmony asked.

  Both sisters gave her blank looks, as if she had just asked a question an alien might ask.

  “In her car, of course,” Neddie said.

  “Yeah, but who drives for her?” Harmony asked. In fact, even before her sisters started giving her funny looks, she had felt a little bit like an alien—a person who didn’t quite fit on planet Earth, and never had.

  “She drives for herself,” Pat said.

  “But I thought you said she couldn’t see a wall,” Harmony said.

  “She can’t but it don’t stop her,” Neddie said. “The only thing that slows her down is that she loses her car keys every five minutes. Usually she blames it on the niggers. Mom’s racist, among other things.”

  “I guess if I move home I could drive for her,” Harmony said. “It might protect the public a little.”

  “Nope,” both sisters said, in unison.

  “Why not?” Harmony asked, feeling that she had lost track of the point of the conversation.

  “Where is Gary?—I thought he went off to buy you drugs,” Neddie said.

  Harmony had been wondering about that herself. Gary had been gone several hours. Drugs weren’t hard to locate, in Las Vegas. So where was he?

  “Why can’t I drive for Mom?” she asked, hoping to clear up that puzzle.

  “You ain’t thick-skinned enough—neither is a rhinoceros,” Neddie said. “Neither is anything. Mom’s critical and she don’t take no prisoners.”

  “Even getting in the car with her would be a mistake,” Pat said.

  “Starting the motor would be another,” Neddie said. “Mom hates to start up the car.”

  “Why?” Harmony asked.

  “Islamic terrorism,” Pat said. “She’s afraid some Arab has put a bomb under her hood.”

  “The real reason is she hates to spend money on gas,” Neddie said.

  “I didn’t know there were Arabs in Tarwater,” Harmony said.

  “Mother’s view is that anything that’s in the world anywhere could be in Tarwater, trying to blow her up,” Neddie said.

  “Mom never liked me—what if I move home and she still doesn’t?” Harmony asked.

  “Besides being a racist she’s a sexist too,” Pat said. “She only likes men. She adores Billy, even though the rascal is in jail for making obscene phone calls.”

  “Pat was always Dad’s favorite,” Harmony remarked. “Dad thought Pat hung the moon.”

  “I did hang it,” Pat said, with a grin.

  Neddie began to look over the furniture and count the dishes.

  “I think we should just stick this stuff in a big U-Haul trailer and go,” she said. “Maybe we could whip through New York and let Harmony visit with Laurie a little before we go home.”

  “I don’t much fancy pulling a big trailer through them crack neighborhoods,” Pat said. “If Harmony goes up there and meets Laurie she’s going to have to deal with the fact that Pepper was gay.”

  “Pat, she’s dead,” Harmony said. “I don’t care that she was gay. I just hope she had a little happiness in her life, that’s all.”

  The next thing she knew, she was beating Pat with one of the pillows on the couch. Something broke inside her—she just jumped up and started hitting Pat with the pillow.

  “Harmony, I hope you didn’t break my bifocals, you knocked them off,” Pat said. She was on her hands and knees, looking for her glasses. Otherwise she didn’t seem to be too upset by the fact that Harmony was pounding on her with the pillow.

  “Just protect your specs, Pat,” Neddie advised. “She needs to get this out of her system.”

  Harmony was about to wear out when Gary came through the door—he had his own key, a fact he had forgotten that morning, when he was bleeding so badly.

  “Oh my God, violence,” Gary said.

  “Shut up, Gary—you got shoved out of your own car,” Harmony reminded him.

  “No I didn’t, because you had borrowed it,” Gary said. He could be extremely reasonable, just when you didn’t want him to be.

  “I got shoved out of somebody else’s car,” he informed her.

  “I was just hitting Pat with a pillow,” Harmony said, dropping the pillow. Pat was still crawling around on her hands and knees, looking for her glasses. She didn’t seem very upset, but Harmony was upset. What did the gayness have to do with anything? Gary himself was gay, and he had been like a father to Pepper—or at least like an uncle.

  “She needed to get that out of her system,” Neddie said, again. “We’re a family—it don’t matter if we beat on one another a little, with pillows.”

  “I wish I didn’t have Eddie,” Harmony said. “If I didn’t have Eddie I could die. It would be so nice to just be dead.”

  Everyone looked away from her, when she said it. Harmony knew she had said a terrible thing—somehow she had just been unable to hold it in.

  “I know it’s wrong to say that,” she said. “I can’t help it, though. It’s how I feel.”

  Still, nobody said a word. Pat found her bifocals and got to her feet.

  “The fact of the matter is, you’ve got Eddie,” she said.

  “I’ve wished I was dead several times, with less excuse,” Neddie said.

  “Yeah, life isn’t for sissies,” Pat said. “Gary, do you know where we can get some boxes?” Pat asked.

  “I guess at a liquor store,” Gary said. “Why?”

  “Harmony’s thinking too much,” Pat said. “She’s gonna lose her mind if we don’t get a move on. I think we should just pack up and leave.”

  “You mean tomorrow?—that’s awfully soon,” Harmony said.

  “I don’t mean tomorrow, I mean tonight,” Pat said. “Come on, Gary, let’s hit the liquor stores. Is there an all-night U-Haul rental in this town?”

  “Pat, everything’s all-night—this is Las Veg
as,” Gary said.

  “Bring some newspapers,” Neddie said, as they were leaving. “We need to wrap the dishes.”

  11.

  “Why do I have to take the dishes?” Harmony asked. “Why do I have to take my clothes? Pepper thought they were tacky anyway. Why can’t I give them all to Myrtle to sell in the garage sale?”

  Neddie was smoking, and methodically wrapping dishes. Pat wrapped the glassware. Gary stood in the middle of the floor, looking lost. It turned out that he had purchased some drugs for Harmony, but the thought of her leaving upset him so that he took them all himself.

  “I’ve depended on you for thirty years,” he said, several times. “What am I going to do when you leave? Who will take me in when some boy breaks my heart?”

  “Gary, you can come,” Harmony assured him. “You’re welcome wherever I am—come. We’ll just all pile in your car and leave.”

  “There are no casinos in Oklahoma,” Gary reminded her. He was costume manager at the Stardust; no costume manager in Las Vegas was more respected.

  “There are no floor shows, in Oklahoma,” he said. “What would I do? I’d starve.”

  “That ain’t true, there are floor shows all over Oklahoma,” Pat said. “It just that they’re titty-bar floor shows.”

  “It’d be too much of a comedown for Gary,” Neddie said. “He’s been in the big time all his life.”

  “He could take the civil service exam,” Pat suggested.

  Harmony was trying to adjust to the fact that within an hour or two she would be leaving Las Vegas, her home for more than thirty years. She didn’t know why she was leaving—it had been her sisters’ idea—but she also didn’t know how she would survive if she didn’t leave.

  “The civil service exam?” Gary said, horrified. “Do I look like a civil servant, Pat?”

  “You’ve always been civil to me—why not?” Pat said.

  “I’d go mad being a civil servant,” Gary said. “I’d do something irresponsible and they’d send me to prison.”

  “It was just a thought,” Neddie said. “You could probably get work in the oil fields now that the price of oil is up a little.”