Tiger Eyes

  “You have a drinking problem,” I tell her.

  “I can stop anytime I want to,” she says.

  “Like hell!”

  The next day I go to see Miriam. Mom has set up an appointment for me and although I think of cancelling at the last minute, I don’t. I walk over to her office during lunch period, munching on a sandwich.

  Miriam turns out to be about forty. She is my height and somewhat overweight, but in a sexy way. Her shirt is unbuttoned enough so that you can tell she isn’t wearing a bra and when she walks across the room her breasts jiggle. She hikes her skirt over her knees when she sits. She is wearing textured stockings and western boots. She runs her fingers through her short brown hair several times and smiles. She doesn’t seem the Los Alamos type at all. I’m surprised.

  “So,” she says, “how do you like it here, Davey?”

  “I don’t.”

  “Why is that?”

  “It’s such a bore.”

  “Yes, it can be. But it doesn’t have to be.”

  “Maybe not,” I say. I feel really uncomfortable, sure that Miriam is analyzing every word.

  “It’s a beautiful day, isn’t it?” Miriam asks.

  We’re going to talk about the weather? I think. What a waste of time. But I answer, “Yes, it’s a very nice day.”

  “So, how are things at home, Davey?”

  “I’m sure my mother’s already told you. We’re not getting along that well.”

  “She mentioned that there’s been some tension.”

  “That’s putting it mildly.”

  “What do you think is causing it?”

  “She is. She’s getting to be just like them.”

  “Like who?”

  “Walter and Bitsy. My aunt and uncle.”

  “In what way?”

  “Well, she doesn’t think for herself anymore. She does whatever they tell her to do. She lets them make all the decisions. She even lets them choose her friends.” I look around the office, convinced that Miriam is recording this conversation so that she can play it back for my mother.

  “You understand that what’s said in this room is between you and me … that it doesn’t go any further.”

  I wonder how she knows what I am thinking. “You’re not going to tell my mother what I say?”

  “No. I’m here to help you both, not to report on either one of you.”

  “Oh.” I sit quietly, folding, then unfolding my hands.

  “What bothers you most about your mother becoming more like Walter and Bitsy?”

  “They’re afraid of everything.”

  “Like what?”

  “They won’t let me learn to ski, they won’t let me take Driver’s Ed … Santa Fe is dangerous, the canyon is dangerous, just breathing is dangerous!”

  “You feel they’re overprotective?”

  “Yes, definitely.”

  “Did your mother used to be less protective … did she let you try new things before?”

  “Always.”

  “Do you think her reluctance to let you try new things now comes from the circumstances of your father’s death?”

  “I don’t know,” I say, looking out the window. “Maybe.”

  “Are you afraid of anything, Davey?”

  I shrug and don’t answer.

  Halfway through our session Miriam says, “What about Ned … how do you feel about him?”

  “Ned?” I say, as if I have never heard the name.

  “Ned … your mother’s friend,” Miriam says.

  “Oh … you mean The Nerd.”

  Miriam laughs and runs her hands through her hair. “Is that what you call him?”

  “Not to his face.”

  “I see.”

  “I think he’s a creep,” I say, “and I don’t care if you tell my mother because it’s true.”

  Miriam nods.

  “My father was very handsome and he was smart, even though he never went to college. And he was funny, too. No one around here has any sense of humor. If it weren’t for Jason nobody in our house would ever laugh. But my father always had us in stitches.”

  “You miss him.”

  “Yes, I miss him.” I feel myself choking up and turn away.

  “You’re angry, aren’t you?” Miriam says.

  “Sometimes,” I tell her.

  “It’s okay to feel angry,” Miriam says. “As long as you admit it and try to understand it.”

  When my hour is up I tell Miriam about Jane and her drinking. Miriam hands me some literature and suggests that I get Jane over to the Alcohol Abuse Clinic. “There’s no charge,” she says. Then she asks if I will come to see her again.

  “Maybe,” I say. I’m still not sure that I can trust her. So I go home and write another letter to Wolf. There are six of them in the trunk now. I wonder how long it will be before the lizards run again.

  THIRTY-THREE

  The first orchestra rehearsal of Oklahoma! is held on the afternoon of my sixteenth birthday, and when I get home from school I find that Bitsy has fixed a special dinner, with my favorite foods—chicken marengo, spinach noodles and watercress salad. She has invited Jane over. I am surprised, and pleased. The Nerd is there too. He gives me a T-shirt that says, A Woman Without a Man is Like a Fish Without a Bicycle. He tells us that he sent away for it after seeing the ad in MS Magazine. I don’t get it but everyone else seems to think it’s funny, so I laugh along with them and thank The Nerd. Bitsy and Walter give me a digital watch. I didn’t expect anything so grand and I am really touched. I kiss Bitsy on the cheek. And then I have to thank Walter. I haven’t said a word to him since the night he insulted my parents and slapped me. Now I face him. “Thank you very much.” I say it formally.

  “You’re welcome,” he answers in the same tone. “Enjoy it.” He doesn’t look at me. I get the feeling he is as uncomfortable about that night as I am.

  Mom gives me a beautiful silver and turquoise bracelet. It is my first piece of Indian jewelry. I put it on my right wrist, since I am already wearing my new watch on my left. Jason has painted a picture for me and has written another poem. This one says,

  Roses are red

  Violets are blue

  You are my friend

  And I am yours, too.

  “Is that better?” he asks.

  “Yes … much,” I tell him, giving him a hug.

  “Hey … let go,” he says. “You’re squeezing my hemorrhoids.”

  “What hemorrhoids?” I ask, surprised.

  “Ha ha,” he laughs. “Fooled you, didn’t I?”

  Even though I am having a good time I can’t help thinking that my father and I had planned a weekend trip to New York for my sixteenth birthday. He was going to take me to a Broadway play. We used to talk about it all the time. I wonder if Mom remembers.

  After the dinner plates are cleared away, Bitsy turns off the lights and comes out of the kitchen carrying a seven-layer cake. It is decorated with sixteen pink roses. She and Jason must have been working on it all week. Everyone sings “Happy Birthday.” I make a wish and blow out the candles.

  The next afternoon a windstorm kicks up, turning the sky brown and stinging my eyes with dust. I ride to the canyon anyway, hoping that Wolf will be there, waiting for me. But there is no sign of him. And I can’t find a lizard anywhere.

  THIRTY-FOUR

  I hope my mother doesn’t bring The Nerd to the opening night of Oklahoma! I don’t want to hurt her feelings but I can’t stand the idea of him in the audience, sitting next to my family. Twice, I come close to asking her not to bring him, but at the last minute I don’t. I decide it’s best not to make a big thing of it and by opening night I’m glad I let it go because I am so full of excitement about the play that I don’t care if he comes with her or not.

  The play begins well and by the time I do my big number the audience is warmed up and there is so much applause that I do an encore. At the end of the play we all get a standing ovation.

  Reuben is
the first person backstage to congratulate me. “You were great!” he says. “I always thought you were shy but I guess I was wrong.”

  I don’t tell him that a person can be shy and still do well on the stage.

  “You were really great!” he says again, pumping my hand. “I mean it.”

  I smile and thank him and he gives me a quick kiss, near my ear. As he does I see Mom over his shoulder. She is holding a yellow rose and looking around for me. “Mom …” I call. “Over here …”

  She hands the rose to me. “You were just wonderful, Davey!” She kisses my cheek and hugs me hard. “I’m so proud of you.” She is close to tears.

  “Come on, Mom …” I say. “Everyone’s looking.”

  “Oh.” She laughs, then pulls out a tissue and blows her nose.

  We perform again on Friday and Saturday night, and the boy who plays Curly, the male lead, develops laryngitis. Still, we are a great success and my picture appears in The Monitor, the weekly newspaper.

  We have a cold snap the last week in April, and a spring snowstorm dumps thirteen inches of snow on us the first week in May. But it melts in a day and then the weather turns balmy. Everyone in school is hit with spring fever and we all cut classes and go for a hike in the Jemez mountains. There are wildflowers everywhere and the sky is a deep shade of blue.

  Jane hasn’t mentioned the pamphlets from Miriam. Of course, I didn’t tell her they were from Miriam. I just said I’d seen them around the house—that one of Bitsy’s clubs was discussing the problems of teenagers. When I gave them to Jane she didn’t say anything. She just put them into her notebook.

  Now, as we walk through the woods I say, “Did you have a chance to look over that stuff I gave you?”

  “What stuff?”

  “Those pamphlets … on drinking.”

  “Why should I waste my time reading them?”

  “Because you have a drinking problem.”

  “I told you before. I can stop any time I want to. I don’t have to drink. I do it because I like it.”

  “Why don’t you stop lying?” I ask. “Isn’t it about time you faced the facts? Isn’t it about time you were honest with yourself?”

  “You’re a good one to talk about being honest!” Jane says.

  “What do you mean?”

  “You told me your father died of a heart attack. You call that honest?” She walks away in a huff.

  “Jane, wait …” I call, hurrying to catch up with her. When I do, we walk together for a while, not speaking. Finally I say, “How did you find out?”

  “Your aunt told my mother. I’ve known for months.”

  “Why didn’t you say something?”

  “I figured you had your reasons.”

  “I couldn’t deal with the truth,” I tell her.

  She stops walking, faces me, and says, “There are things I can’t deal with either. Did you ever think of that?”

  “No,” I tell her. “Your life seems so easy …”

  “Well, it’s not,” she says.

  THIRTY-FIVE

  When I get home I phone Miriam’s office and set up an appointment for the next day.

  Miriam greets me warmly, as if I am a long-lost friend. I sit in the same chair as last time although there is a sofa and another chair in her office.

  “I read about you in The Monitor,” she says. “I wanted to see the play but I was out of town that weekend.”

  “It went well,” I say.

  “I’m glad.” She smiles at me. “Last time we were talking about your family …” she begins.

  But I don’t wait for her to finish. “I lied about my father,” I say. “I told Jane he died of a heart attack.”

  Miriam arches her back and leans forward. “Why do you suppose you did that?”

  “I know why. Because it was easier to make up a story than to tell the truth.”

  “Yes …”

  “But since then I wrote to a friend and told him that my father was shot and killed.”

  “Did you feel better after you told him?”

  “A little … but I didn’t tell him all of it.”

  “Do you want to tell me?”

  “Sometimes I think I do … that if only I could tell someone it would help … but other times I’m afraid … I’m afraid to bring it all back.”

  “Maybe you have to bring it all back in order to be done with it.”

  I feel myself tensing and I shift in my chair, unable to find a comfortable position.

  “Your mother was out with Jason on the night that your father was killed …” Miriam says, prompting me.

  “Yes.”

  “Where were you?”

  “I was in the backyard with my boyfriend, Hugh. We were making out when we heard the gunshots. I thought they were firecrackers.”

  “And then …” Miriam says.

  “We ran to the store. I remember the sound of my screams when I saw my father on the floor. He was still alive. He said, Help me … help me, Davey. And I said, I will … I will, Daddy. I held him in my arms while Hugh phoned for help.” My voice is growing smaller and smaller. Maybe I shouldn’t have come back here.

  “Can you go on, Davey?” Miriam asks, gently. “We’ll stop if it becomes too difficult.”

  I feel as if the real me is very far away. Not in this room at all. When I speak my voice is barely a whisper. “I don’t know how long it took before the police and the ambulance got there. I heard the sirens from a long way off. And then the flashing lights made a pattern on the walls and ceiling of the store. By then, my father was unconscious. I didn’t want to let go of him. The police had to pry me loose. They let me ride to the hospital in the ambulance with him. But when we got there, Daddy was already dead.”

  The room is very quiet. The only sound is of an occasional car passing outside.

  Finally Miriam says, “So that’s how it was.”

  And I say, “Yes.”

  Then she looks away for a long time and I’m glad.

  When she faces me again she says, “It must have been terribly hard to hear your father asking for help, Davey. But there was nothing you could do. It was out of your control.”

  “I wanted to help him. I wanted to help him more than anything.” I cover my face with my hands and begin to cry.

  “Of course you did,” Miriam says. She hands me a box of Kleenex. “I know how it hurts.”

  When our session is over Miriam walks to the door with me. She puts her hand on my shoulder and squeezes it lightly. “You’re beginning to deal with it, Davey, and that’s important.”

  I step outside. My head is pounding. Just as Miriam is about to close the door I say, “I still didn’t tell you all of it. I didn’t tell you anything about the blood …” And I turn and run.

  I run all the way home and go straight upstairs, to my room. I open the door to my closet, look up to the corner of the top shelf, then quickly close the door again. I can’t. I can’t do it. I sit down on the edge of my bed. My heart is beating faster and faster and I am sweating. I have to, I tell myself. I have to do it. I stand up and go back to the closet, flinging the door open, and this time, before I have a chance to think about it, I reach up and take the brown paper bag off the shelf. I grab the breadknife from the trunk, shove it into the bag, and run downstairs.

  I ride Bitsy’s bicycle as fast as I can, to the canyon.

  I have trouble climbing down. I trip and slide several times. When I finally reach the bottom I walk directly to the cave, the cave that Wolf showed to me. I open the brown paper bag and pull out the clothes that are inside. My jeans and my halter. The clothes I was wearing that night. They are covered with dried blood and they smell terrible, but I don’t care. It is my father’s blood, I think. My father’s blood. I hold them close for a moment, remembering.

  There was blood everywhere that night. Everywhere. It was splattered on the loaves of bread that were stacked under the cash register. It was dripping down the charcoal portrait on my father’s ea
sel. It was forming a puddle on the floor, next to my father’s body. It had soaked through his clothes. And when I held him in my arms, it soaked mine, too.

  I fold the jeans and the halter and place them inside the cave, tucking the breadknife between them. I build a pyramid of rocks over them, until there is nothing left to see. Nothing but rocks.

  Goodbye, Daddy. I love you. I’ll always love you. This doesn’t mean that I’m not going to think about you anymore. This doesn’t mean that I’m never going to think about that night, either. Because that night happened. And there’s nothing I can do to change the facts. But from now on I’m going to remember the good times. From now on I’m going to remember you full of life and full of love.

  I sit outside the cave for a while, letting the sun warm me. Then I get up and walk away. As I do, I see a lizard racing behind a rock.

  THIRTY-SIX

  Two days later a small package arrives for me. There is no return address. I try to make out the postmark. I think it says Big Sur, California. I open the package quickly. Inside there is a white box and inside that, a flat, polished stone, as big as a quarter. Its colors change from brown to golden, depending on the light. It is beautiful. When I lift the stone out of the box I find a note under it. A tiger’s eye for my Tiger Eyes. Wolf.

  Where are you? I say to myself. Los lagartijos corren. When will you be back?

  But even as I wonder I know that what matters most is that he is thinking of me, and he must know that I am thinking of him, too. I hold the tiger’s eye stone to my lips.

  When Mom gets home from work she says, “I’ve made a dinner reservation at Philomena’s.”

  “For all of us?” I ask.

  “No … just the two of us.”

  “You and me?” I say.

  “Yes.”

  “Without Ned?”

  “Yes.”

  “Should I change … should I wear a skirt?”

  “If you feel like it,” Mom says.