Tiger Eyes

  Not like Dad.

  He kept the gun in the store, on a shelf right under the cash register. But it wasn’t loaded. He was afraid Jason would get hold of it or something. So the bullets were in a locked drawer and only my father had the key. We’d been robbed two other times, but the second time my father waved the gun at the guy and he took off with just a six pack.

  My father’s dream was to sell the store and open a small gallery with sculpture and paintings. My father could have been another Van Gogh. Or, at least, a portrait artist. He was really good with faces, especially eyes. He kept his easel in the store, right by the register, and when business was slow he sketched. There are charcoal drawings, most of them of our customers, hanging on a wire around the perimeter of the store. And upstairs, in my parents’ bedroom, the walls are covered with portraits of us. Mom, Jason and me. A family history.

  Hugh had been working in the store all summer. That’s how we met. We didn’t start going out right away, though. At first it was just me saying, “You want help stacking the bread?”

  And Hugh answering, “Sure, why not?”

  Hugh didn’t say much. All I knew about him was that he was going to be a senior and that he liked his pizza with pepperoni. And I knew how I felt when I stood close to him. Or when he looked at me. Or when his hand brushed against my arm.

  FIVE

  One afternoon I am sitting in the living room, leafing through a magazine. I can’t read anymore. I try, but the words blur together, or I find myself reading the same sentence over and over and still don’t know what I have read. My mother and Jason are in their rooms, napping. We are getting to be experts at sleeping during the day. So when the doorbell rings, there is no one to answer it but me. And it is Hugh.

  “How’s it going, Davey?” he asks, as he hugs me.

  Before I can answer, before I can lie and say, okay, Hugh begins to cry. I feel his body shaking and I back away, looking anyplace but at him.

  I hear him sniffle and take a breath. “How about a walk on the beach?”

  “No,” I tell him.

  “Your mother says you haven’t been out of the house since the funeral.”

  “So?”

  “So … it would be good for you to get outside.”

  My mother comes into the room then, pulling her robe around her. “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell her,” Mom says. “She needs some fresh air.”

  “Oh, all right,” I say, seeing the pained look on Mom’s face. I go into the bathroom and splash my face with cold water. I have dark circles under my eyes and my suntan has faded to a yellowish color. I pull my rope belt through my jeans, which are falling off because of all the weight I’ve lost since that night. I look like hell. But I don’t care.

  Outside, the bright sunshine hurts my eyes and I have to shade them with my hand. I follow Hugh down the stairs but I don’t look at the store. I know there is a CLOSED sign on the door. I saw Walter printing it the day after the funeral.

  Hugh takes my hand. He rubs his thumb along the bottom of mine, trying to soothe me. I know this is hard for him, too. I tighten my fingers around his, to let him know I understand. We walk to the Boardwalk, then across it, to the beach.

  I take a deep breath and inhale the salt air which is mixed with the aroma of roasting peanuts, taffy and the musty smell of the amusement piers.

  I was conceived on the beach, under the Million Dollar Pier. My parents used to call me their Million Dollar Baby. I’m the reason my father gave up his sports scholarship to Rutgers, and my mother went to work in a James’ Saltwater Taffy shop. In those days Atlantic City was the pits. But not anymore. Now that gambling’s been voted in, Atlantic City is supposed to become the next Las Vegas. Hotels and casinos are sprouting up all over the place.

  “What are you thinking?” Hugh asks, as we walk along the ocean’s edge.

  “Nothing,” I say.

  And then Hugh puts his arms around me and kisses me. I want to kiss him back but I can’t. I can’t because kissing him reminds me of that night. So I break away from him and run. I hear Hugh calling, “Davey … wait.”

  But I don’t wait. I run and run, until I am home. Then I get into bed and stay there for five days.

  SIX

  I don’t want to start school. I don’t want to do anything but stay in bed. Stay in bed, with the covers over my head. All day. At night I prowl around, carrying my breadknife, and I check the lock on the door and listen for footsteps. I try not to remember. Not to remember that night. Not to remember the brown paper bag on my closet shelf. Not to remember anything.

  “Take a shower, Davey,” my mother says, on the night before school starts. “Wash your hair. I’ll bet it’s been ten days. That’s not like you.”

  It’s been thirteen days. Thirteen days since I’ve bathed. I know I smell. But I don’t care. I roll over and pull the bedsheet up over my ear. My bed smells too. I like it. A warm, salty, slightly sour smell. My own unwashed smell. Coming from the inside of me.

  “Please, honey,” Mom says. “Don’t wait until tomorrow morning to get ready for school.”

  As if I am planning to jump out of bed in the morning and head right for the shower.

  She shakes me a little to make sure I am listening. “For me, Davey. Do it for me, okay?”

  It is the for me that gets through. My mother doesn’t pull guilt trips on me very often. And maybe she isn’t even trying, but it works. There is still a side of me that feels badly for behaving the way I am. After all, I’m not the only one who cares about my father.

  So I get out of bed, feeling wobbly from lack of exercise and so little food. And I head for the bathroom.

  Minka follows me. She jumps onto the toilet seat and laps up water from the bowl. She has her own bowl of fresh water in the kitchen but there’s something about drinking from the toilet that really appeals to her. I’ve given up on trying to get her to stop. Minka is a beautiful calico, with white paws. I got her for my twelfth birthday. She was the only female in the litter. Lenaya says Minka has an oral fixation. That she wasn’t suckled enough as a kitten, so she’s trying to make up for it now. It’s true that she’ll lick you. Fingers, toes, you name it. But that only makes her more lovable.

  I wonder if Minka understands about my father. At times I think she does. That she senses something wrong. She’s lost a lot of her playfulness since that night and spends most of her time curled in a ball, sleeping on my bed, next to my legs. Or maybe she is just trying to comfort me. Who knows?

  I stand under the hot shower, soaping myself all over. I shampoo my hair twice and let the suds drip down into my face, stinging my eyes.

  I used to sing in the shower. I like the way my voice sounds with an echo chamber. I wonder if I’ll ever sing in the shower again? I wonder if I’ll ever want to?

  I wrap myself in a towel and walk down the hall to my room. My mother has changed the sheets on my bed.

  “You didn’t have to do that,” I tell her.

  “I know. I wanted to,” she says. “You’ll sleep better.”

  “I don’t feel very well,” I tell her. “I might be coming down with something.” I get into bed and lie back on the clean pillowcase.

  Mom sits down on the edge of my bed. “I remember my first day of high school,” she says, tossing her hair away from her face. “I had violent stomach cramps. I didn’t want to go either.” She takes my hand in hers.

  “It’s not that,” I say. “It’s …”

  “I know, Davey.” Tears well up in her eyes. “Don’t you think I know?”

  “Yes,” I tell her. “But having you know isn’t enough.”

  The next morning, when I walk into the kitchen, Jason is wearing his Dracula cape and gobbling up his cereal. He can’t wait to go back to school. “And this year I’m going to read real books. No more baby books. Right, Mom?”

  “Right, Jase,” Mom says, buttering her toast.

  “And what else … what else will I learn?” Jason asks.
r />   “Oh, a lot of interesting things,” Mom says.

  I stand in front of the open refrigerator, but nothing inside tempts me. Part of me is hungry, another part can’t get the food down.

  “What’d you learn in second grade, Davey?” Jason asks, his mouth full of Grape-nut Flakes.

  “More of what I learned in first grade,” I tell him. I close the refrigerator door. “You’re not going to wear that cape to school, I hope.”

  “Why not? I like it.”

  “It makes you look like Dracula,” I say.

  “It’s supposed to.”

  “Mom … do you think he should? I mean …”

  “Oh, I think it’s all right,” Mom says. “If it makes Jason feel comfortable …”

  “Comfortable,” Jason repeats. He eats a piece of toast, then says, “What about the store, Mom? Are you going to open the store today?”

  “Not today,” Mom answers.

  “When?” Jason asks.

  “I don’t know,” Mom tells him.

  My mother hasn’t set foot in the store since that night. None of us has. I don’t know what we’re going to do.

  I meet Lenaya at the bus stop and when the bus comes we find two seats together. It is crowded, with some kids standing in the aisle by the time we reach the next stop. I begin to get a closed-in feeling. It starts with my hands getting cold and clammy, then there is a queasiness in my stomach, and finally, I begin to feel dizzy, as if I might pass out. I put my head down to the floor.

  “Are you okay?” Lenaya asks.

  I can’t answer.

  She bends over, her mouth close to my ear. “Did you eat any breakfast?” she asks softly.

  I shake my head.

  “Here,” she says, going through her lunch bag. “Eat this.” She hands me an orange that has already been peeled.

  I shove a piece into my mouth and bite into it, tasting the sweetness of its juice.

  I feel better.

  I make it through assembly, where the principal welcomes our class to the school, through a short homeroom session and through English, where Lenaya and I sit next to each other. She keeps looking at me, offering half smiles and once, she reaches over and touches my hand, which is trembling. But I hadn’t known it until then.

  After English, I am on my own, trying to find Room 314, where my geometry class is scheduled to meet. But I can’t find it and I begin to feel frightened. I can hear each thump of my heart. I can’t seem to catch my breath, so I breathe harder and faster, trying to get some air into my lungs, but it doesn’t work. Nothing works. Groups of kids are coming toward me in the hall, laughing and talking. One of them could be the junkie who killed my father, I think. There is no evidence that the killer was a junkie, or even a kid, but that is what I believe.

  I want to run. I want to run as far from school as I can. But I can’t move. Can’t get my feet going. Can’t breathe. And then I pass out, hearing the thud of my head as it hits the floor.

  Later, I am told that two girls and a boy helped me to the nurse’s room.

  The nurse assumes that I am having First-Day-in-High-School-Panic.

  “It’s not that,” I try to explain from the cot where I am resting. I notice that my belt has been loosened and that my Adidas are arranged neatly under the cot.

  “Then what?” the nurse asks. She is very pretty with dark hair, tied back, and gray eyes. She has an accent I can’t place at first, but after a while I recognize it as Oklahoma, because my mother has a friend, Audrey, from Tulsa, and that’s how she sounds.

  “Growing up isn’t easy,” the nurse says, and I feel like laughing because she is so naïve. “A lot of us don’t feel ready to leave the nest.”

  “No,” I say. “You don’t understand.”

  She smiles. “Oh, I think I do.” She looks over my medical form, which our doctor had filled out the end of June, and reads, “No heart problems, no diabetes, no history of severe pain, or fainting spells, and normal periods. Well … no medical disorders at all.” She smiles at me again and closes the folder. She walks across the room, puts the folder back in a filing cabinet and returns with a cup of water and two white pills. She hands them to me and says, “Down the hatch.”

  “What are they?” I ask, suspiciously.

  “Aspirin.”

  “I don’t have a headache.”

  “With that bump on your noggin?”

  “It doesn’t hurt,” I say. “Unless I touch it.”

  “Even so …” she says, “let’s go.”

  She is going to stand over me until I swallow the aspirin. I can tell. I might as well get it over with. So I sit up and take the pills.

  “That’s a good girl,” she says, pulling a chair up to my cot. She sits down, adjusts her uniform over her knees, leans close and says, “Is it that time of the month, Davey?”

  “No.”

  She looks at me for a while. I wish she would go away. Doesn’t she have anything better to do on the first day of school? I wonder. Then she says, “Do you do drugs?”

  I don’t answer. I am offended by her question.

  “Strictly off the record,” she says. “Just between the two of us.”

  “No,” I tell her. “I don’t do drugs.”

  “You didn’t get stoned last night?”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “Booze?”

  “No.”

  “Is there a chance you might be pregnant?”

  “No.”

  “Not even a teensy-weensy chance?”

  “Not even that,” I say.

  A boy comes into the room then and calls, “Nurse … I’ve got this incredible earache.”

  The nurse pulls the white curtains around my cot, giving me privacy. I hear her telling the boy that two aspirin will probably help. I close my eyes and drift off to sleep.

  On the second day of school I pass out on my way to lunch. I am with Lenaya and she gets me to the nurse’s room.

  “Again?” the nurse says, clucking her tongue at me. “What are we going to do with you?”

  When it happens on the third day of school, the nurse says, “You know what, Davey? I think it’s time for you to see a doctor.”

  So Mom takes me to Dr. Foster’s office. He listens to me as I explain what’s been happening, gives me a quick examination, and tells me to get dressed and come into his office.

  My mother and Dr. Foster are waiting for me there. On the doctor’s desk is a picture of his wife and two sons, when they were small. They’re older than I am now. He writes something on my chart, then he looks up and says, “You’re hyperventilating, Davey. Do you understand what that means?”

  “I thought I’ve been fainting.”

  “It’s different than fainting,” Dr. Foster explains. “This is caused by the way you’re breathing.”

  “I breathe that way because I feel like I can’t breathe. I feel like I can’t get any air at all.”

  “Yes, well …” Dr. Foster says, “we can all make ourselves hyperventilate. Divers do it … sprinters, before a race. You get a rush of oxygen to the brain. It can make you feel lightheaded.”

  “Why am I doing that?”

  “Anxiety. You’ve been through a lot.” He looks over at my mother, who is fastening and unfastening the clasp on her purse. Each time she does, it makes a clicking sound. Other than that the room is very quiet. “A new school … a tragedy in the family,” Dr. Foster continues. “It’s a lot to contend with at once.”

  I think it is interesting that he puts the new school before the tragedy.

  “Of course, facing up to it is the best way of dealing with it.” He rubs his eye. “Tell you what,” he says, “let’s give it another week. If you feel that you’re beginning to hyperventilate, talk to yourself. Tell yourself that you’re feeling anxious. That you have a right to feel anxious. Tell yourself to relax. Try to breathe slowly, regularly.” He scribbles something on his prescription pad, rips it off, and hands it to me. “And I want you to take this hig
h-potency vitamin, with minerals.” He stands up. “A change of scene might do her good,” he says to Mom. “It might do all of you some good … if it’s possible.”

  “Thank you, Dr. Foster,” Mom says. She always thanks him when we are leaving, as if he’s doing us a favor by being our doctor.

  “Anytime, Gwen,” he says. “And I mean that.”

  “Yes, I know,” Mom says.

  He pats me on the shoulder. “You’ll be all right, Davey. It takes time … that’s all.”

  That night Mom phones Bitsy and Walter in New Mexico. “I’d like to take you up on your offer,” she says. “Davey’s been having some …” She pauses, trying to find the right word. “Some trouble,” she says. “And the doctor has recommended a change of scenery.”

  When Mom gets off the phone she tells us that Bitsy and Walter are very glad that we’re coming to visit.

  “Do they have an ocean?” Jason asks.

  “No, but they have mountains.”

  “How high?”

  “Very high,” Mom tells him.

  “Can you fall off?”

  “No.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Yes.”

  Walter and Bitsy make all the arrangements for our flight from Philadelphia to Albuquerque. They even arrange to have Minka travel in the cabin with me, instead of underneath, in the baggage compartment.

  I worry about paying for the tickets because I know we don’t have any extra money. Then Mom tells me that they have been pre-paid, by Walter and Bitsy. “Of course I’m going to pay them back,” Mom says. “As soon as I get things organized.”

  We are going to leave in three days. I don’t go back to school. It doesn’t make any sense, when we’ll be gone for more than two weeks. And Mom doesn’t give me an argument about it so I guess that she agrees with me. I don’t hyperventilate once in those three days. Instead, I think about the trip. About getting away. I try to picture New Mexico. I try to keep my mind from wandering back to that night.

  Every morning Mom reminds me to take my vitamin. It is huge and hard to swallow. It also turns my pee green.

  When we are on the plane, somewhere between Chicago and Albuquerque, I flush the rest of the vitamins down the toilet.