Lark and Termite

by Jayne Anne Phillips

  “It was me,” I say, “I’m the reason no one would ever say my mother’s name.”

  Elise holds up her thin hand. “It wasn’t you, Lark. From the time you got here, you were the joy in Noreen’s life, and Charlie’s. Noreen couldn’t have children. More every day, they were grateful. Lola gave them the child they could never have had. And she told Noreen she’d intended just that—you were no accident.” Elise leans forward and takes both my hands, her birdlike face intent. “I’m telling you this for your mother’s sake, Lark. My mother used to say, with babies, there are no accidents. And she was right. We can plan the bad, but who can plan the good?”

  She looks at me like I might answer. “I don’t know, Elise.”

  Elise smiles, wry and quiet. “You can understand Noreen didn’t appreciate Lola’s intentions at the time. She stayed with her, though, until you were born, there in Louisville. Then she left the second husband, the nightclub owner, and came home.” Elise leans back and lights a cigarette, looks out the window of the Coffee-Stop. “Small towns talk. Noreen kept Lola secret for you, to protect you from the rest of the story, your mother’s story. It was painful for Noreen, and it still is. She wanted you to grow up before you had to know about it. And you have.” The smoke from her cigarette lifts, trails its way to the open window.

  “What happened to her, Elise?”

  She doesn’t answer for a moment. “Sadness,” she says then. “The war happened. That boy she married was killed in Korea. People forget that a soldier’s death goes on for years—for a generation, really. They leave people behind. If he’d come back, they would have managed with the baby.”

  “Did he die before Termite was born?”

  “No one knows, but Termite was born by the time they notified Lola. Afterward she moved to Coral Gables.”

  “Coral Gables?”

  “Oh yes. That was Lola’s house, where she’d planned to live with her husband. And wanted Nonie to let you come and stay with them when he got back, which Noreen was not about to do.”

  “But he died,” I said.

  “It was a confused mess over there in Korea, first weeks of the war,” Elise says. “They never told Lola how or why he died, or sent a casket back.” She looks over at Termite and leans a little forward, lowers her voice under the music. “And the baby, at first she only knew he wasn’t normal, he didn’t cry. She kept going for over a year, thinking what to do and then deciding. I can imagine her wondering about taking him with her, as much care as he needed. Deciding, for some reason, not to.”

  “She knew better,” I say.

  Elise doesn’t say yes or no, just looks at me.

  “And Gladdy kept the house,” I say.

  “It was never Gladdy’s. She went down to Coral Gables to sell it for Charlie, and took such a liking to it that she told him to keep it. Her retirement home, she called it. Charlie was never there once.”

  “My mother,” I say to Elise. “How did she do it?”

  “Lark, Nonie wouldn’t want me telling you.”

  “Nonie isn’t telling me. But someone has to, Elise.”

  “I’ll tell you,” she says, “only because it would be so hard for Charlie.” She stubs out the cigarette, moves her hand to dispel the smoke, but it hangs in the air. “She’d arranged everything. She locked up that little house and hired a car to drive her to Louisville, to Billy Onslow’s club. He was Noreen’s second husband, older, well, much older. He was like an uncle to Lola. Owned a nightclub. Lola had moved back there, where she’d lived all during the forties, where she met that soldier in the first place. She still knew most of the girls who lived there.”

  “Why did they live there?”

  “He owned the building.” She barely pauses. “Lola sang in his club for years. Oh, she had a voice. Sweet and husky, like, say, Rosemary Clooney She never was famous like that, of course. For her it was a job, a job she liked. They thought she’d come back to sing again, where she had help with the baby. She’d been there about a week and had put him to bed. The girl she paid to watch him was on her way but hadn’t arrived. It was evening, plenty of people around, before the club opened. She walked downstairs, told everyone she’d be right back, she was going outside to have a cigarette and would they check on the baby in just a minute. Smiled. Waved. Walked a few streets away and shot herself with that little derringer the soldier had left with her.”

  The gun in the flag. Someone packed them into the boxes.

  “Lola was gone,” Elise says. “What could Nonie do but take the baby? She sent you away.”

  “Church camp,” I said.

  “Yes. Now that was uncharacteristic. You know what she thinks of religion. It was all she could find on short notice. A veteran brought the baby, someone who’d served with the boy in Korea. He was in uniform, I remember, walked with a bad limp. That was why they let him come home, because this was in ’51, the war was still on. I guess he was badly injured and spent months in a VA hospital. Then he looked for Lola, brought her a letter. The boy had asked him to give it to her personally, that kind of thing. Anyway, it was several weeks later Lola died.”

  “Sergeant Ervin Tompkins,” I said.

  “Was that his name? Came with his wife. Korean girl, war bride. Brought a nurse with them to care for the baby. Billy Onslow hired the nurse and provided the car, a big Packard.”

  “Is Billy Onslow still in Louisville?”

  “No. Died years ago, heart attack. But he did what Lola asked. Had that baby brought here, where her family was.” Elise looks over at me. “That was you.”

  I don’t know when the music stopped, but it’s quiet now. Elise looks around, like she’s just noticing as well. Termite is still, holding his head to the side, turned toward the jukebox and the window that looks out on Main Street.

  “Well,” Elise says, tearful. “We’ll get through this, and you and Termite will stay with me until we can.” She sniffs and stands up, takes a breath. “Don’t you worry about Noreen. The coroner’s report will clear her, and so will I. They had words about that watch in the car. Gladdy grabbed it off Noreen’s wrist, broke the band right in front of me. Noreen helped her anyway, carried those heavy bags of food up the steps.” Elise looks past me and nods, definitive. “I wouldn’t have, but Noreen did. She wasn’t gone a minute. Didn’t step foot in that house.”

  “Nonie told me about Gladdy,” I say, “this morning, before the sheriff came.”

  “Well, of course, she would have.” Elise fixes me with her nearsighted gaze. “I don’t know if she told you she saved my life. Reached into that car in the flood and pulled me out. I have a fear of water, and I wasn’t myself. I sprained her wrist, fighting her. I’ll tell them as much, on a stack of Bibles.”

  The jukebox sounds a series of clicks in the quiet, finishing up.

  “I’ve got to open the store soon, honey,” Elise says. “Just wait here while I go across the street for a minute, will you? Soon as I get back, you’ll go talk to your father.” She’s out the door.

  I go over and stand with Termite. “My father,” I tell him, “Charlie is my father, and yours died in the war. He never wanted to leave you.” I lean down close. “We’re going to Florida, Termite, to the ocean.” I feed the jukebox a few more quarters from the open drawer, push REPEAT. The street in front of us is empty and mostly shut down, but Elise’s music glides along like the sound of a movie we’re not watching. A horn, a tinkling piano. Couples could fill the sidewalks, dancing slow like they’re moving in another world.

  This morning, in the alley, I told Solly I was leaving with Termite. Quickly, tonight. Gladdy’s house in Coral Gables would be empty. We’d go there, and hope they didn’t find us. With the flood and the cleanup, they might look for us or they might not. If we were gone, and our own family said we were accounted for, they might just figure we weren’t their problem. Charlie would give me the keys, and directions. The story I told Miss Barker would get told.

  “Lark, if you’re leaving, I’m c
oming with you.” Solly was walking me back into the house, pulling me inside. The houses on the alley were empty. They were all on the buyout list, but Solly was already being careful. “The water ruined Joey’s car,” he said. “All I’ve got is the bike. I used the lift down at the garage and got it onto the second floor of the shop before the flood, but it’s half apart.”

  “It’s no good to go in a car,” I said. “Cars are easy to find. We’ll go on the train, in one of the boxcars, right out of the yard. No way to trace us. The Chessies go direct to Miami, and I know exactly when they run. They’re shuttling cars through, moving them out. In a few days, the yard will be empty. It has to be tonight.”

  We were standing with Termite then, in Nonie’s nearly empty living room. “I was on my way to Florida, more or less,” he said. “I already told Nick I’m going to school, and gave notice at the garage.” Solly knelt down to talk to Termite. “Termite, you mind if I come with you? We’ll grow a garden, maybe build a patio. I’ll take you to the beach. We’ll look at the ocean. What do you say?”

  Termite only breathed, short sighs. “He wants his ribbon,” I said. “Termite, there’s no time.”

  Solly touched Termite’s hair. He left his hand there, on Termite’s head and white neck. “He’s never had a mother or father, and he never will. He has us.” Solly pulled me close to them, put his mouth almost on mine, made his voice quiet, every word distinct. “We’ll take him and we’ll leave here. We’ll get married as soon as you’re of age. You have the birth certificates. You can prove you’re his sister. Even if they find us, no one will take him.”

  “Solly, I’m not eighteen for seven months.”

  “That’s not long. We’ll go to Florida, lay low in Coral Gables. A good mechanic can always get a job. I’ll wait on school.”

  “You might not have to. Lauderdale isn’t far. But if you come with me, Solly, you have to do it my way. No record of where we are or how we got there. And tell no one you’re with us, not Nick, not Zeke—no one. You’re going to school early, that’s all. Be at the rail yard by eight twenty, just after dark. If you can’t get there, or you change your mind, promise me, tell no one. The cars move at eight twenty-seven. We’ll have to find an empty Chessie.”

  He looked at me. “I’ll be at the rail yard. You’re not riding a boxcar to Florida alone, with him. I’ll be there.”

  Now I see Elise coming out of the restaurant and I wonder if everything I’m planning is a dream, like this music. If I’m in a panic I can’t feel, and I’m not thinking straight. Then Elise looks up and sees me through the window, and she waves at me. A little wave, like, It’s all right now, come along. Just like that, I know we’re going.

  I won’t ask you why,” I tell Charlie.

  “The ‘why’ was you,” he says. “I knew the minute I saw you. All the regret began to end. For Noreen as well. And then, you are who you are. It might not have turned out that way, but it did.”

  “I’m sorry about Gladdy”

  “There were things in her life she couldn’t see, things she wasted. I tried to take care of her, without doing the same.”

  Once I would have told him he was wrong, but now I’m glad they kept their secrets, glad there’s no gravestone or public knowledge of what happened to my mother, what she did or where she is. Not here, anyway, or where we’re going. I put my hand on Charlie’s.

  “Things caught up with me,” he says. He looks white in the face. The restaurant is empty except for us. He’s so alone here without Nonie. He takes my fingers into his big palm and holds them. “I don’t want you to worry about Noreen. Elise told you. She saw what happened, and Noreen will be cleared.”

  “You can all stop telling me not to worry. I’m not a child. We don’t know what’s going to happen, or how long it will take.”

  Termite is sitting in his wheelchair, pulled up to our table, like the three of us are a meeting Nonie and the sheriff have missed. Charlie looks at him, and nods.

  It’s all laid out like a hand of cards someone’s holding and hasn’t played yet. I smooth Termite’s hair back from his face. “With all that’s happened, Social Services will put Termite in one of the ‘care situations’ they’ve mentioned before. I need to leave now, while they’re occupied with the mud and the mess. We can go to Florida, to Gladdy’s house. No one will know us there. No one will be looking for us. I’ll tell people we’re going to stay with my mother. That she’s contacted me. But I won’t say where, and you won’t either.”

  Charlie gets up and goes to the safe. It’s under the counter, behind a shallow false shelf he calls his security system. I hear him dial the combination, open the heavy door of the deep box. “The house in Coral Gables is yours, Lark. I put it in your name years ago, after your mother died.” He sits down with us and gives me an envelope. “This is a copy of the deed. It’s down on paper, held for you with Noreen as trustee until you’re eighteen, in case I kicked off while you were growing up. It was always yours, not Gladdy’s, not mine. I mortgaged the restaurant to buy it for your mother, but it’s paid off now, free and clear. She’d made the down payment just before Termite was born, but his father wasn’t coming back from Korea, and Noreen and I wanted to help her.”

  “We’re leaving tonight,” I tell him, “Termite and me.”

  “How?”

  “We have transportation to Miami,” I tell him, “and then we’ll take a cab.”

  He looks doubtful, starts to speak.

  “I won’t tell you more,” I say. “You’ll have to trust me. We’ll talk about it another time.”

  “I don’t want you going alone,” Charlie tells me.

  “I’m not going alone.”

  He wants to ask, but he doesn’t. “This is the address.” He’s writing it down.

  “Beach Road,” I say. “I know the address.”

  “There’s a phone,” he says, “and a used car Gladdy bought. The bills are paid through the restaurant, but she has a checking account in a bank there. After I get things settled, I’ll put it in your name. But take this.” He gives me some folded bills and the keys, on a key chain that’s a plastic daisy. “Gladdy’s keys, to the car and the house.”

  A car, I think. Solly can teach me to drive. On a sand road by the beach.

  “You call us as soon as you arrive,” Charlie says.

  “I will,” I tell him, “but not from the house.”

  We both stand, and he embraces me in his big arms. He has, lots of times, but it feels different now. I turn Termite’s chair to go, and then I remember. “Charlie,” I tell him, “I’ll want you to send me my mother’s things. And mine, and Termite’s, whatever’s in the attic at Nonie’s. It’s going to be Lola’s house again, and ours.”

  • • •

  I hear someone at the kitchen door. Solly, I think. But I look through the glass and it’s Nick. I almost don’t let him in, but I open the door. “You out of work early, Nick?”

  “Night shift tonight,” he says. “On my way. I’ve come from seeing Noreen.”

  “She told me to stay away. Charlie says—”

  “Charlie,” Nick says. “If it weren’t for Charlie, Noreen wouldn’t be in the county facility. I’d like to strangle him. Playing the big cheese. He should have taken his own mother home in the storm.”

  I could say Charlie is sorry now, sorry he didn’t. But I don’t. “Elise says Nonie will be cleared.”

  “Maybe,” Nick says. “And how long that takes depends on how aggressive they want to be.”

  At least Nick will tell me the truth. I’m moving back just enough to let him into the kitchen. I don’t want him coming into the living room and seeing that I’m packed to leave.

  “I’ve talked to a lawyer,” he says.

  “I’m glad, Nick, but I hope she won’t need one.” I move as though to walk outside with him, but he takes my arm, touches my shoulder. He turns me, lightly, almost like we’re dancing, so that I’m standing against the wall in the empty kitchen, and he’s very
near me.

  “I should get back to Termite,” I say.

  “This isn’t for him to hear,” Nick says softly. His hand is warm and cushioned and I remember how strong his arms are. How I used to fall asleep on his chest. “Listen to me, Lark. It’s only a matter of time until they take him, and not much time. Fighting it could take weeks, and you have no home, nowhere to live. Staying with Termite at Elise’s won’t satisfy them, and you can’t live with Charlie, it doesn’t look right. He’s too involved.”

  I want to tell him everything, that I’m leaving and taking Termite, but I can’t speak with his hands on me.

  “If you were married,” he says, “to someone with a home to offer you, someone older, with a good job, and a family to support and help you, the county wouldn’t pursue it. They’d let you be. You’re like a sister to my boys, you grew up with them. I’ve always loved you, Lark—”

  I draw in my breath, turn, and he turns with me.

  “Yes, like that,” he says, “for years now, for too long.”

  I can’t breathe, or move, with his mouth so close to my eyes. I feel the heat of him near me, how practiced his body is, how powerful.

  “I wouldn’t have said anything, maybe ever, but everything’s changed now. In this state, you can marry at sixteen with parental consent.”

  “You asked Noreen if—”

  “I’m not asking Noreen,” he says. “I’m asking you.” He touches his hands to my face, moves them, touching me, until he’s laced his fingers lightly behind my head, but he doesn’t pull me toward him. He’s waiting for me to move, or even let him know I want to. Anything, a breath, a look. “I don’t want you to pick the wrong person, or series of people. You can’t. There’s too much at stake. And I—” He stops speaking, tense, trembling. His dark eyes are wet, like he’s holding something heavy, straining not to move.

  I feel that syrupy pain coming up in me like tears I want to jam down. I want to put my fingers into the dark thick hair of Nick’s chest and pull hard, hear the sound he’d make, see his eyes.