Gypsies

  Trying to think what was really happening those days. The old house on Constantinople. It would have been 1959, 1960 maybe. No real memories (unless the dream is a memory). But I do remember the house. The bedroom I shared with Laura, Timmy’s room, Mother and Daddy’s room with the big wooden bureau and Grandma Fauve’s afghan carpet. The stairs, the mantel clock, the big RCA Victor TV set.

  She hesitated, then wrote:

  The doll.

  Memory, she wondered, or flotsam from the dream?

  “Baby,” she whispered to herself. The doll was named Baby.

  Remember Daddy looking at Baby. “Where’d you get this, Karen?”

  His big eyes, and the stubble on his cheek.

  “From a man,” I said.

  “What man? Where?”

  I could never lie to him. I told him about Timmy, the ravine, the door, the dark city.

  He was angrier than I’ve ever seen him. I waited for him to hit me. But he stormed off to Timmy’s room instead.

  Timmy screamed…

  She remembered huddling in her bed clutching Baby against herself. Daddy had beaten Tim with a belt and Tim had screamed. But the memory was incomplete, diaphanous; the harder she fished for it, the slippier it became. Well, damn, she thought.

  Pretty soon after that they had moved out of Constantinople Street. From Constantinople they had moved to—she thought about it—the apartment in the West End. Right. Then a year in Duquesne, and a dozen places after that.

  “We’re like gypsies,” her mother told her one time. “Never in one place for long.”

  Karen set aside the journal, more depressed than ever.

  1:15, the clock said.

  At 1:23 she heard the key in the front door. She picked up her cup, wanting to look casual; the cocoa was stone cold.

  The door closed. Michael stepped in from the foyer.

  Karen said, not angrily, “You’re late.”

  “I know.” He shrugged out ^f his worn leather jacket, hung it on a peg. His dark hair was disarrayed and there were rings under his eyes. “I’m sorry, Mom. I didn’t know you’d be up.”

  “I was just restless. You want some hot chocolate?”

  “I should hit the sack.”

  “One cup,” Karen said, wondering at the desperation in her own voice: am I that starved for company? “Helps you sleep.”

  Her son smiled wearily. “Okay. Sure.”

  They sat in the kitchen, uneasy in the tall-backed vinylette chairs. A wall of sliding doors looked out over the dark backyard. Karen felt the shades of her dream moving like a separate creature inside her. She got up, pulled the drapes, sat back down with her hands clamped around the cup. Her fingers were cold.

  Michael had his feet up on the opposite chair. He was good-looking, Karen thought, in a fragile way. His dark hair made his skin look pale; he was thin, young-looking for his age. The paraphernalia of teenage toughness—jacket, tight Hanes T-shirt, faded jeans— wore uneasily on him.

  She cleared her throat. “You saw a movie?”

  He nodded.

  “With Amy?”

  “Right. Dan and Val drove us downtown.” “Good movie?”

  “I guess it was all right. Car-chase flick. You know.” He forced a smile. “Boom. Crash.”

  “Doesn’t sound too great.” She ventured her best guess: “Having problems with Amy?”

  “Amy’s okay.”

  “You seem down, is all.”

  “Not because of Amy.”

  “What, then?”

  He looked at her across the table—his serious look. “You want to know?” “If you want to tell me.”

  He sat back in the chair with his hands in his pockets. “I saw that guy again.”

  The words fell like stones in the still air of the kitchen. The refrigerator hummed into silence. Outside, there was a shrill of crickets.

  September now. Autumn closing in.

  “We were driving home,” Mike said tonelessly. “We turned onto Spadina. He was there. Standing in front of a Chinese restaurant. The place was closed. It was dark. He was just standing there. Like he was waiting, you know? And he saw me. Four people in the car, but it was me he was looking at.” He pushed the cocoa away, put his hands flat on the table. “He waved.”

  Karen didn’t want to ask, but the question had its own momentum: “Who? Who waved?”

  Michael peered into the darkness. “You know, Mom.”

  The Gray Man.

  Chapter Two

  1

  Michael skipped breakfast next morning.

  “Straight to school,” Karen said. “And straight home. All right? I don’t want to be worrying about you.”

  “Straight home,” Michael said—offhandedly, but with a seriousness under that, maybe even a little fear.

  But that was good, wasn’t it? It would make him cautious.

  She stood at the window with the curtain tucked back and watched her son walk down this empty suburban street until he was lost from sight, down beyond the intersection of Forsythe and Webster, where the McBrides’ big maple tree was shedding its leaves.

  The mailman dropped a letter through the slot in the door: the letter was from Laura.

  Karen carried it downtown, beside her on the front seat of her little Honda Civic, to the restaurant where she had agreed to meet Gavin. When he was late—predictably late—she took the letter out of her purse and turned it over in her hands a couple of times. The envelope was of some thick, clothy paper, like vellum; the return address was a P.O. box in Santa Monica, California.

  California. She liked the look of the word. It radiated warmth, security, sunshine. Here in this Toronto restaurant everybody was dressed in fall grays and fall browns, fashionable downtown people scattered among these mirrors and tiles like leaves. Cold air prickled on her arms whenever the door swept open.

  She opened the envelope slowly, with a halting motion that was eager and reluctant at once.

  Dear Karen, the letter began.

  Open loops and dark fountain-pen ink. The words as she read them took on Laura’s throaty contralto.

  I got your note and have been mulling it over. Since you ask—and I know it’s none of my business— here are some thoughts.

  First off, I am sincerely sorry about you & Gavin. Is it any consolation to say I think you are 100 percent correct on this? (Even if the divorce isn’t—as you say— your own idea.) We gypsies aren’t cut out for middle-class life.

  I know the whole thing must come as a blow. And of course there’s Michael. Fifteen years old—dear God, is that possible? I really would like to meet my only nephew. Is he as cute as his pictures? (Don’t tell him I said that) But I take it for granted. A heartbreaker. Is he adjusting?

  I’m convinced that we ought to be more than Christmas-card relatives. It would be nice to see both of you again.

  Yes, big sister. These are hints.

  Karen, listen: they play old songs on the radio and I think of you. “Cast Your Fate to the Wind.” Remember? It’s better advice than you think.

  I’m serious. Auntie Laura could use your company.

  I can put you up for a week, a month, whatever. On short notice or immediately.

  If you can’t say yes, say maybe. Ask and I’ll send directions, but RSVP.

  It was signed in Laura’s unmistakable, overflowing script. Karen smiled in spite of her misgivings, reading it.

  P.S., it said, under the bottom fold of the paper. The age of miracles is not over. Her smile faded.

  She looked up and saw Gavin standing across the table. He gazed at her loftily and said, “You look like shit.”

  She sighed. It was the kind of opener he seemed to prefer these days. “Well,” she said, “you don’t. You look impeccable.” It was true.

  Gavin was nervous about clothes. He studied the fashion columns in Esquire as solemnly as a general planning a military campaign. He was tall, with a build he had developed at the racquetball club across the street from his office; he
smelled of Brut and antiperspirant. “Seriously,” he said, pulling up his chair, peering at her. “Are you sleeping okay? You look tired.”

  “Well, I am… hell, yes, I am tired.”

  “I didn’t mean anything by it.”

  “No,” she said. “I know.” It was just his way of talking. Truce, she thought desperately. What was important now was that Michael was in danger. “We’re here to talk.”

  To talk. But it sounded ominous, so they ordered lunch instead. It was a restaurant Gavin knew, close to his office. He was in his element here. He ordered a seafood salad and a light beer. Karen ordered cottage cheese and fruit. Gavin talked a little about his work; Karen told him how Michael was doing in school. They were talking, she thought, and that was a beginning, but they were not talking—she didn’t mention the Gray Man.

  There had been a time when talking to Gavin was easy. They had met at Penn State, where Karen was a year behind him in a B.A. course. Gavin was dissatisfied—not randomly rebellious in the way that was fashionable then, but looking for a way to inject meaning into his life. He was a Canadian, and he had resolved to go back home and study law. Law, he said, was a point of entry into people’s lives. It was where you could apply leverage, make a difference, change things for the better. We all want to change the world, Karen thought, recalling the Beatles tune, lately a TV ad for Nike shoes. Maybe Nike was one of Gavin’s clients.

  The divorce was still pending. They were, in Gavin’s preferred language, “separated.” “Separated” meant he had left her last May to live with his girlfriend in her lakefront apartment. It had come as a shock: the separation, the girlfriend, both. Gavin cheated as impeccably as he dressed; Karen had never suspected. He just told her about it over breakfast one morning. It’s not working between us. I know that, you know that. Very cool. I’m moving out… Yes, I have somewhere to go… Yes, there is a woman.

  She hated it. All of it. She hated the fact of his infidelity and she hated this feeling that her role had been defined for her: the jealous wife. Well, she told herself, to hell with that. I can be as cool as he can.

  So she had gone along blithely: no yelling, no major scenes. Now she wondered if that was not simply another kind of surrender. Gavin, a lawyer, understood life as gameplaying, rough sport played in earnest, and what he had achieved with Karen was a kind of checkmate. Because she concealed her feelings he wasn’t forced to deal with them.

  She had been bluffed and outmaneuvered.

  No more. Too much at stake now for fuzzy thinking. She had made a list before she left the house: Questions to ask. Gavin was pressing to begin the legal proceedings, and she knew she shouldn’t agree to anything before seeing her own lawyer—as soon as she found one—but she wanted to raise the question of the house.

  She wanted to move. She needed to move. Not only did the house contain what had become sour memories, but there was the problem of the Gray Man. She was vulnerable and alone in the big suburban house; she felt encircled there, besieged. For Michael’s sake, it was vital that they leave… and she wondered if they should not move out of the city entirely. The problem was that she had no independent income. Last week she’d gone to see an employment counselor and when he asked for a resume Karen was forced to admit she hadn’t worked outside the home for as long as her son had lived. Her prospects, the man informed her, were limited.

  And now the household money was low and she didn’t want to ask Gavin, again, for cash. Come the divorce, she guessed he would be paying support. But that was in the future.

  So she had worked out a plan. They would sell the house. With her share of the income Karen could relocate and take a vocational course, programming or something. And the support payments, when they finally began, would keep her and Michael fed.

  It had seemed like a good plan when she worked it out at home; now, here in the restaurant, she was less certain. Gavin embarked on some story about the firm, office politics, it was endless; the waiter stole away with her half-eaten cottage cheese and replaced it with coffee and she realized, panicking, that lunch was almost over, time had run out, her courage had failed. “The house,” she said abruptly.

  Gavin sipped his coffee, rested a knuckle thoughtfully against his chin. “What about it?”

  She stammered out her plan. He listened, frowning. She didn’t like the frown. It was his patient look, his concerned look, the look she imagined him exercising on his clients. She thought of it as his yes, but expression: Yes, but it will cost more than you think. Yes, but we’ll have to go to court.

  “It’s a good idea,” he said when she finished. “But not practical.”

  He sounded so sure of himself. The finality of it was crushing. She mumbled something about common property, the divorce laws—it wasn’t his house, not entirely—

  “Nor yours.” He drained his cup. “I explained this years ago, Karen. The house is a tax write-off for my mother. She bought it out of Dad’s estate. In the eyes of the law, we’re tenants. The house doesn’t belong to either of us.”

  She had some vague memory of this. “You said that was a technicality.”

  “Nevertheless.”

  She sat upright, shocked at her own disappointment, the depth of the frustration welling up in her. “Don’t tell me it’s impossible. We could work something out.” But this was too much like pleading. “Gavin—I made plans—”

  “It’s not up to me.” He added, “It’s the way things are. But you always had trouble with that, right? Dealing with reality—it was never your long suit.”

  Her coffee cup twisted in her hand. The coffee spilled out; the cup crashed against the saucer. She pushed herself away from the sodden table.

  “For Christ’s sake,” Gavin said tightly.

  He had always hated scenes.

  She drove away dazed.

  Home, she felt feverish. She poured herself a drink and sat down with her notebook. Her mind felt busy but blank, a motor revving in a motionless car. She turned to a clean page and wrote:

  Dear Laura.

  It was like automatic writing, unwilled, a conspiracy between pen and fingers. She surprised herself by continuing:

  Invitation accepted. Michael & I arriving by the time you get this. We’ll be staying at that hotel in Santa Monica, you remember the one, same as last time. Or I’ll leave a message at the desk if there’s no room. Look for us there.

  Love—

  And signed it. And put it in an envelope, and addressed the envelope, and marked it SPECIAL DELIVERY and loaded it with stamps.

  She would mail it later. Or maybe not. Well, she thought, probably not. It was a dumb idea, an impetuous idea; she was only disappointed because of Gavin.

  She crumpled the envelope. Then, “Well, damn,” she said, and unfolded it and put it in her purse. Outside, the light was failing. She looked at her watch. It was after six o’clock. Michael was late.

  2

  Michael left school at a quarter after four and began the walk home alone.

  He had evaded Dan and Valerie on his way to the lockers. He didn’t want company, he didn’t want a ride. It suited his mood to be alone.

  He wondered, not for the first time, whether solitude might not be his natural condition.

  It was only September, but autumn was setting in in a serious way. He lived six long suburban blocks from the school and the shortest route home took him down two winding residential streets and across a power company right-of-way, past high-tension towers that sang in a demented high-pitched buzz whenever the weather turned cold. He walked that way now, no buzzing today but only a silence, the sound of his feet in the brown summer grass.

  He liked this place, the isolation of it, the trees and wild meadows and high steel towers. On the left, there were box homes under construction, beams like naked ribs; on the right, an old stand of wild maples. Down the middle ran this meadow, gently rolling pastureland gone to seed at the foot of the power-line gantries. Walking here, he felt suspended between worlds: school and
home, tract and countryside.

  Real and unreal.

  He pushed his hands down into his jacket pockets and rested a minute against a length of Frost fence. Off among the trees, a cicada began to hum. The wind, already an autumn wind, tousled his hair.

  He felt sad for no reason he could understand.

  The sadness was connected with his mother and connected with the divorce—a word Michael had only just permitted into his vocabulary. No doubt, it was connected somehow also with the Gray Man.

  The worst thing, he thought, was that there was nobody to talk to about it. Especially not at home, especially not these days. You just couldn’t say certain things. Everything was fine, until somebody said the wrong word—literally, a word, like “divorce”—and then there would be a chilly silence and you understood that this terrible thing, this obscenity, must never be mentioned again. He couldn’t say “divorce” to his mother: it was taboo, an unword.

  On TV, he thought, it would be easy. She would ask him how he was feeling, he would admit something—guilt, pain, it wouldn’t matter, something— maybe cry a little—there would be that release. Roll credits. Out here, however, here in the real world, it wasn’t practical.

  And it wasn’t just the divorce. Michael didn’t have much trouble with the idea of divorce; half his friends had divorced parents. Much more problematic was the notion of his father living with someone else, a woman, a stranger—trading his family for that. It was hard to imagine his father’s life meandering on like a river, with Michael and his mother becoming something abandoned in the course, an elbow lake or an overgrown island. Michael wasn’t angry—at least not yet—but he was bewildered. He didn’t know how to react.

  Hate him for leaving? It didn’t seem possible.

  Hate his mother for driving him away?

  But that was not an allowable thought.

  Maybe it didn’t matter. Maybe he wasn’t affected by it. That was possible. He had, God knows, other problems.

  But he recalled the moment last week when he had crept into his mother’s bedroom, opened the top drawer of her desk, and copied out the telephone number she had written on the last page of her address book… the number of Michael’s father’s new home, the lakeside apartment Michael had never seen.