Sometimes in the night, when fireflies outside his bedroom window blinked and jiggled like stars on strings, when sleep curled furrily about him, sometimes then he thought he could feel his mother getting closer.
With the help of Refrigerator John, Primrose put a cement birdbath in her picket-fenced front yard. She filled it with water. She backed off a good twenty feet. She looked long at the van that had become her room that had become her home. She borrowed Refrigerator John’s camera. She took a picture.
One Saturday morning David’s yo-yo string broke. He fitted Spitfire with a new one. The old string he cut into several lengths, which he absently played with as he watched a Bugs Bunny cartoon. When the cartoon was over he looked down at his lap. The strings were braided.
28
The man on the TV screen had shiny black hair piled high and a blue glittery necktie. He sat on a porch, but even David could tell it was a fake porch on a stage somewhere. People were lined up. One person at a time walked up the steps and across the porch and stood before the high-haired, glittery man.
Every one of the people asked the man about somebody who had died, usually somebody in their family — a parent, a child, a grandparent, a wife, a husband. Someone even asked about a parrot. Each one had to tell the glittery man the name of their dead person — or parrot, whose name was Booger. The glittery man asked a few more questions, and then the person forked over something that had belonged to the dead one. Usually it was an item of clothing — a hat, a shoe. The glittery man held the item against his forehead and closed his eyes and swayed and hummed, and when he came out of his trance he told the person that he had been in contact with the “dearly beloved” and that the dearly beloved, even the parrot, had spoken to him. Usually he just heard a voice from beyond the grave — “the Other Side,” he called it — but one time he actually saw the dead person. It was someone’s wife. The glittery man told the husband what she looked like on the Other Side, and the husband was excited and saying “Yes! Yes! That’s her!” and he was crying and laughing at the same time and he practically knocked over the glittery man trying to thank him and hug him, and two bodyguards had to help him off the porch.
29
David chose a Thursday night because he knew Primrose would be out shopping. Even so, he didn’t want to risk parking his bike outside and having it seen, so he walked.
As he passed Refrigerator John’s abode he was drawn like a moth to the warm windows of light, but he forced himself to keep going. He wished he had brought a flashlight. He wished he ate carrots.
Here the chorus of crickets was loud and neverending. Every few steps he looked back at Refrigerator John’s, its golden windows receding like the portholes of a departing ship. He kept his hands in his pockets. He squeezed the memento.
The house gave no light; darkness seemed to have puddled here. He wanted to turn back, but he had come too far. He found the front door — or rather, the front space. The door was wide open. He reached over the threshold, waved his hand around. Nothing but the smell of sour flowers.
He felt queasy. He whispered, “Hello?”
No answer.
“Anybody home?”
Nothing.
Louder: “Madame Dufee?”
The darkness parted. Someone was coming, a face floating ghostly in candlelight. The face stopped before him. Was it her? He couldn’t tell. The wild hair caught in the light was dark, not blonde. Frayed old nightshirt. No flaming dragon tongues. Maybe he came to the wrong house, got mixed up in the dark. He took a step back.
At last she spoke: “Are you looking for my girl?”
“No,” he said. “I’m looking for Madame Dufee.” He looked down at her bare feet. No toe rings. “Are you Madame Dufee?”
She reached into the darkness with the candle. “Is she out there?”
“Who?”
“My girl.”
“You mean Primrose?”
She smiled. “Primrose Periwinkle Dufee.”
Periwinkle?
“I want to ask you a question,” he said.
“Do you know her? My girl?” She was still looking over his shoulder.
“Yes,” he told her.
“She lives out there.” She pointed with the candle.
“I know. Madame Dufee —”
“She doesn’t sleep with me anymore.”
“Madame Dufee!”
He flinched at his own voice, but she continued to gaze at the stars. “Yes?”
“I want to ask you about my mother.”
Slowly, for the first time, she turned her face to him. Candlelight glimmered in her eyes and the tips of her wild hair. She smiled. “I know.”
“You do?”
“Everyone wants to know about their mother. Everyone loves their mother. Do you love your mother?”
“Yes.”
“Good boy.” She laid her hand on his head. “Your mother will have a long and happy life.”
“My mother is dead.”
She tilted her head, as if testing the sight of him from a different angle. She closed her eyes. She nodded. “Ah.” She stepped aside. “Come in.”
He went in and followed instructions to sit opposite her on the floor. In the soft, dim light the room looked more like a tent than ever. She placed the candle between them. They sat like that for a long time. Her eyes were closed. There was a faint smile on her face. Was she making contact with the Other Side? Was his mother there? Here? Somewhere in the shadows beyond the candleglow?
She said, dreamily, “Your mother . . .” She was silent for a while, then said it again: “Your mother . . .”
The candle flame wavered. He felt a spike of excitement. “Do you see her?”
“Your mother . . .”
He clutched his knees. “Carolyn Sue Limpert! She was born in the state of Minnesota! She has brown hair and green eyes!”
She was staring at him. “Green eyes?”
“Yes! Green!”
“My Primrose has green eyes.”
He shouted: “My mother! Carolyn Sue Limpert! Is she here?”
Her eyes rolled to the ceiling, beyond the ceiling. “Your mother . . . is everywhere.”
Frantically he looked around. “Where?”
“Your mother loves you.”
“Where is she? I want to see her.”
The shadows, the soft walls were moving. He was standing, turning, reaching . . .
She said, “You were a pretty baby.”
He ran from one wall to the next, clutching at the wooly hanging carpets.
“Where is she?”
“My Primrose was a pretty baby.”
She was staring at the candle.
He fell to his knees. The candle flame seemed to fatten and grow. It seemed to invite him into the bright heart of itself. She was in here . . . she was close . . .
He pulled the memento from his pocket. It was a little purple plastic turtle. His mother loved turtles. He had bought it for her birthday with his own money. She had made it into a pin. She wore it every day. She was about to be buried with it, but he had reached into the casket and pulled it from her dress, so they wouldn’t bury all of her. No one had tried to stop him.
He held out the purple turtle. “This is from my mother.” He set it on the carpet.
She ran her fingertip over it. She picked it up. She cradled it in both her hands. She closed her eyes, smiled, sang softly: “Rock-a-bye baby on the treetop . . .”
Dumbfounded, watching her swaying and singing, he knew it was all wrong, he should never have come here. He snatched the turtle from her. “Crackpot!” he shouted. The force of the word blew the candle-point in her direction. “You’re a crackpot!”
He ran from the house.
30
He wandered aimlessly, feeling nothing, feeling everything. The night was brighter now. The moon was high and round, like a new softball. Cricket sounds puttered like the motors of tiny toys. Faintly sweet and rotten smells came to him from the trash bags an
d cans lining the curbs. His mother — snippets of memory — fell through the night like summer snow, fell in moonlit whispers: “Davey . . . Davey . . .”
In time he wanted only to sleep. He dragged himself onto a porch. There was a grassy mat in front of the door. It said welcome. He lay down on it, curled himself up . . .
A loud slap, and something hit him in the face. He opened his eyes to see a folded newspaper leaning against his nose. A car was accelerating up the street.
The morning paper . . .
The morning paper!
He heard his mother’s last words to him: “We’ll see the sun rise tomorrow.”
He jumped to his feet, ran to the sidewalk. Across the street, beyond the rooftops of Perkiomen, the sky was pale gray with an unmistakable tinge of pink.
“No!” he shouted. “Not yet!”
He started running before he realized he didn’t know which way to go. His house was on Brewster. Where was Brewster? Where was he?
Headlights coming toward him. He stood in the street, waved. The car stopped, the window went down.
“Can you tell me where Brewster Street is?”
The man pointed. “Over there. You okay?”
But David was already running . . . running . . . racing the rising sun, racing down the middle of streets, flying over lawns and flower beds, jamming his eyes to the ground, beseeching the unstoppable sun: “not yet . . . not yet . . .” With every step the night was draining away. He dared look up to get his bearings. Nothing familiar. No Brewster Street. He ran on, flowers colorful smears beneath his flying feet . . . “not yet . . . not yet . . .” Another look up — still no Brewster — but there . . . a herd of appliances. Refrigerator John’s! He raced to the door, pounded. “Refrigerator! Refrigerator!”
The door opened. Refrigerator stood in boxer shorts and a T-shirt. David burst past him into the living room, dove into the sofa and buried his face in a pillow.
31
It took some doing, but John finally dragged two pieces of information out of the groggy boy on the sofa: One, he had been out all night, and two, he wanted to sleep. Well, maybe John didn’t know much about kids and grandmothers, but he knew about worry, and this kid was going home to do his sleeping in his own bed — now.
The boy went ballistic when John pulled him from the sofa. “No! No!”
He lugged the boy across the room. “Your grandmother’ll be worried sick.”
“She doesn’t know.”
“I don’t care. At six in the morning you belong in your own bed.”
The boy dug in his heels, clamped his hands over his eyes. “The sun!”
“What about it?”
“Is it up?”
“Sure. It’s light out.”
The boy clutched his arm. He was frantic. “Go see for sure! Please!”
Was the boy going daffy? John was inclined to just sling him over his shoulder and haul him out of there, but in the end he decided it was less trouble to just do it. He went outside, took a gander, came back in. “Yep. Sun’s up. Let’s go.”
The boy still balked. “All the way? Sunrise is over?”
What was this boy afraid of? “It’s over. Next one’s not till tomorrow.”
He felt the boy relax in his arms. From then on he was no trouble. He climbed into John’s truck and went right back to sleep. John knew the address. When they got there, not wanting to wake the boy again, John carried him to the front door and rang the bell.
He had to ring it four or five times before the door finally opened. In the doorway stood a woman hardly taller than himself, clutching a pale blue bathrobe at her throat. His first thought was that she looked much younger than the old crone that David’s descriptions had led him to expect. Her hand shot to her mouth and she gasped in wide-eyed shock: “David! Oh my God!”
He tried to smile reassuringly. “It’s okay, Mrs. Limpert. He’s only sleeping. He’s fine.”
Her eyes darted from his face to the boy’s to the street beyond. She was baffled.
“What —?”
Right there John decided to lie, to spare her what he could. “He just showed up at my house this morning. I guess the birds woke him up and he decided to visit me.” He looked at the boy’s face, so peacefully sleeping. He wagged his head. “Kids, huh?”
The smile she gave the sleeping boy was loaded with a history he could not read. But he could read the love in her brimming eyes.
“How about if I carry him to his bed?” he suggested.
Her head snapped up. She seemed to see him for the first time. “Yes — I’m sorry. Come in. Come in.”
She led him down a hallway to a room in the back of the house. As he deposited the boy in his bed, she laughed and said, “Here you are putting my grandson to bed and I don’t even know your name.”
“John Daywalt.” He held out his hand. She shook it like a man. “I do appliances. Fix. Sell. Trade. Over on Tulip.”
She squinted at him. “Refrigerator John?”
“That’s me. And you must be the grandma.”
“Margaret Limpert.”
They shook hands again.
“Let me get his shoes off,” she said, “and we’ll go put some coffee on. Can’t have morning without it.”
“You got that.”
And so they talked over coffee in the kitchen. They started off discussing his business and the town and so forth, but pretty soon they zeroed in on the only thing they really wanted to talk about: the boy. David.
“Did you know his mother died?” she said.
He said yes, he knew.
“He was very attached to her.”
“I know.”
“He still misses her every day.”
“I know.”
The conversation went on like that until it occurred to him that he better stop saying “I know.” He was feeling uncomfortable, guilty even, because he knew so much about her grandson. In some cases more than she did. He wondered if she was aware of how the boy talked about her. If she was aware, she wasn’t letting on. She had nothing but nice things to say about her grandson. John admired her for that. He liked her. She had a pleasant, somewhat plumpy face and a full friendly smile. Yes, there was gray in her hair and a crinkle about her eyes, so that a nine-year-old might call her “old,” but she was hardly ready for the glue factory. And she was obviously devoted to her grandson. John knew from the boy’s talks with Primrose how he treated his grandmother. He knew how it must hurt her. But she did not let it show until they had been talking nonstop for well over an hour. Then she paused and sipped her coffee and looked away. Her smile wilted, and when it came back it was no longer real. “Well, I shudder to think what he must say about his grandmother!” She said it with a laugh and a forced not-that-I-care airiness.
But he wasn’t buying it. His heart went out to her. He knew what she was hoping for. She wanted him to refute her fears. She wanted to believe that the boy was unkind only when he was with her, that when he was with other people he spoke of her with affection.
He gave her exactly what she craved. “Hey” — he pumped up two thumbs — “he loves his grandma.”
She winced, blinked, brought back the fake smile. She knew he was lying. She reached for his empty cup. “More?” From then on he did most of the talking. He was careful not to say anything that would give away the boy’s late-night escapes from his bedroom. He talked about Primrose, about the two of them practically living at his house. As soon as he said “practically living,” he regretted it.
It was midmorning when he got up to leave. At the door her smile was real once more, but not quite so big. “Well,” she said, “I’m glad he has you two.” He shook her hand and walked away and heard the door close softly behind him.
32
Several days later, David woke up to find a note on his bed. It said:
Meet me at my place. Now!
A minute later he was on his bike, wondering, Is this another trick? But still pedaling.
Sh
e was outside, sunning herself on a lawn chair by a birdbath inside a shin-high white picket fence that surrounded the white and blue van-home. Bare feet. Sunglasses. She did not move as she said, “I stopped over for you. I Baloneyed for you. Where were you?”
The last two weeks, the separation, vanished.
He said, “Shopping for school clothes.”
“With your grandmother?”
“Yeah.”
He didn’t like her in sunglasses, lying there so still. “Is this a trick?”
She got up laughing, wagging her head. “You still think everything’s a trick, huh? Well, you’re right. I’m gonna . . . kidnap you!” She lunged for him. He jumped back. She howled.
“I still don’t like you,” he told her.
“Good,” she said. “I still don’t like you either. And I’m still waiting for you to say something.”
“About what?”
She rolled her eyes. “About what?” She spun around, thrust her arm toward her new home. “Didn’t you happen to notice anything a little different?”
David looked. “Mm, yeah.”
“Well?”
“Well what?”
“What do you think?”
He shrugged. “It’s okay.”
She stared at him. She nodded thoughtfully. “ ‘Okay,’ he says.” She tapped the fence with her toe. “You hear that? You’re okay.” She knocked on the birdbath. “You too, you’re okay. That’s spelled O-K-A-Y. Did you ever get such a monumental compliment before? I sure didn’t. I don’t think I can stand it. I think I’m gonna faint.” She struck the back of her hand to her forehead, she swooned. “Oh! . . . Oh! . . .”