Lark did not sleep well, though, and her wakefulness was maybe not due entirely to the chill night and the hard, damp ground. A thought was disturbing her: now that she had found Sky, and now that Shadow was okay again, she could have him turn her back into Larque.
She could be a pear-shaped middle-aged woman again and go home to Hoot and her boys. That was the plan, wasn’t it?
Of course, the V.W. was not in the original plan. But the idea of booting her out was not unappealing.
And the idea of being back in Hoot’s arms was not unappealing. One thing she knew as well as she knew anything in this world: she loved him.
Why, then, did she also know damn well she did not want to do it?
She did not want to go back to dog hair and laundry piles, stain removers and sitcoms, mammograms and monthly utilities bills, that was why. But those things went along with marriage and maturity. She ought to accept them. She ought to feel guilty as hell if she stayed away a minute longer.
The minute passed. Why did she not feel guilty as hell?
Didn’t she want to be a halfway normal American married woman anymore?
Evidently not.
But since when was life about what Skylark Harootunian wanted?
Lark got up and quietly walked away from the others, out to the middle of the weedy field, where she stood looking at the night. There was not much to see out here—stars, a few nighthawks or bats or something flitting between her and them—but there were possibilities. She should go somewhere. It was only the second time in her life that she had ever been out in the night on her own, with no fear and nobody worrying. And maybe, if she did the right thing, it would be the last.
Certain phrases—Do the Right Thing, A Good Marriage—that used to clunk the great balance of things smack over to the safe side for her, now scarcely seemed to weigh in at all.
“I’ve gone over the edge, that’s what,” Larque muttered to herself. “I’ve dropped out, I’ve turned into a mid-life hippie or something. I’ll be smoking pot next, and humming a mantra.”
With scarcely any sound a shadow, Shadow, came and stood beside her.
Argent got up, took his linen jacket off, and laid it over the sleeping child, Sky. Lark had gone wandering into the night, and Shadow had gone after her, so there was no one around to see, which was good, but why he wanted to keep Sky warm he was not sure. He was shivering himself because of this half-assed idea of sleeping out, and now he would be colder. Fine. Maybe he would catch pneumonia and die. Maybe it would be a blessed relief to all concerned if he did.
Not being blind, and knowing Shadow better than Lark did, he had an idea what was on Shadow’s mind. It explained why Shadow had wanted to stay out here, rather than in the apartment where all the memories were, and where it would be impossible to get far enough away.
The thought pushed him beyond peevishness toward a clearheaded despair. He had no excuse to go after them—he did not own Shadow. Never had, never would. No one ever could. It would be like trying to possess the sound of thunder, the smell of lightning in the air. Shadow was often kind, affectionate even, but there was a cold core in him that was all his own, that Argent could never touch. Maybe no one could touch it. Maybe no one could coax him to admit to love.
And Lark—Argent knew he had no hold on her either. Maybe someday he would try to explain to her that the years had gone by differently for him, that when you are in a body that doesn’t grow old there are things you don’t think about, that you don’t notice how time is piling up—but she probably wouldn’t buy it. She adored Shadow, as well she should, and she didn’t think much of him, her father. She had no reason not to hurt him.
For Shadow to go to someone else—that was his right. Argent knew he could handle it. For Lark to hurt the father who had deserted her—Argent was standing so knee-deep in guilt that it made sense, even to him.
But for the two of them to do it together was maybe more than he could bear.
Argent tried not to think anymore. Like a pacing guard he strode in circles around Sky, flailing his arms, beating himself with his hands to try to stay warm.
In the night Lark saw Shadow only as a keener darkness, a sharp-edged presence—just her male height, she had not realized that before. It was touching, somehow, that he was no taller than she.
He stood quite close to her. “Something troubling you?” he asked softly. “Keeping you awake?”
Lark shrugged and shied away from really talking about it. “Just that I seem to be short on conscience these days,” she muttered. “I think it went with the V.W.”
“Quite probably. But why does that concern you? Is it such a bad thing to be amoral?”
“Isn’t it?”
“Why should it be? You are daring now, you will do whatever seems good and appropriate to you. Laws and dogmas and codes of behavior mean little to you, but you try not to hurt the people you love.”
How would he know? “Are you describing yourself?”
He moved half a step away from her and did not answer. For a moment she thought Bingo, but then she was not so sure. How could anyone know what Shadow was thinking? He still stood too near. Were there amoral fantasies flashing through his mind, the way there were in hers? Were they flooding hot into the rest of him, the way they were in her?
No. What an asshole thing to think. He would never want her, she would never have him, because he knew what she really was: the f-word. Female.
Lark sighed and started talking again, this time telling him all of it. “I was thinking—now that you’re feeling better, I ought to get you to put me back. You know, the way I was before. So I can go home.”
In the starlight she saw him nod by the movement of his battered black leather hat. “But,” he said.
“But marriage is—just a word to me.”
“Go on. There’s more.”
“I love Hoot.” Her voice started to shake. “But I can’t—I don’t—I don’t want to give this up.”
“Your new body?”
“Yes!” Though it was more than just the body—it was the way of life, the way of thinking engendered by the body. “I love it. I hate being a woman.” He had surprised bottom-line truth out of her, and it shocked her so that she burst out to defend it, “Well, of course I do! Every book I read the whole time I was growing up, men did important things and women brought drinks on trays.”
“So when it came to the stories, the myths,” Shadow said quietly, “you learned to think of yourself as a man? So for your own life to have a story to it, a meaning, you have to be—a cowboy?”
There was gentle mockery in the last two words, but not aimed entirely at her. “You should talk,” Lark retorted.
“Yes. I buy into the literature too. But Lark, think.”
Then he stopped talking. “Think what?” Lark asked after waiting a while.
He was still silent, and she could see by the tilt of his hat brim that he was looking down at the ground now, not at her. “Think of what you really are,” he said finally, very softly, to her feet. “You did not let me make over your heart and soul, remember?”
“So I’m a middle-aged woman in a boy’s body. In other words, I am a walking hormone war. I’m a mess.” Lark’s laugh surprised her by coming out warm and easy. Being a half-assed sort of he-she was a predicament, but her rebel soul was loving it. And maybe also her wide-open heart.
Shadow’s eyes flashed up—she could feel them on her even in the dark. Without joining in her laughter he said intensely, “You are Lark in a boy’s body. Not just anyone, but Lark, don’t you see? You had choices. Your dreams—you are what you dreamed. You could have been what the rules say men are supposed to be, arrogant and quarrelsome and hard. You could have been one of those pathetic James Bond imitators, always positioned for advantage, always on the lookout for a put-down. But instead—” Strange, Shadow did not usually fumble for words. “Lark, the person you are—you call it woman, but I think it can be man—caring and gallant and full of p
oetry …” His voice lowered to a husky whisper. “In that exquisite body, it glows. Who you are—it makes you quite wonderful.”
She had very nearly stopped breathing. It was happening? But it could not be happening.
He had taken a step toward her. His hand reached out, touched hers—the mere contact of his fingertips tingled through her. But before she could lift her hand to answer his, he pulled back.
“I, also, have choices,” he mumbled—she could barely understand the words, they faltered so. Then he turned away from her and was gone in the night.
ELEVEN
LARK DID NOT GO BACK TO CAMP UNTIL DAYBREAK. WHEN she slipped in, Shadow was there, sleeping beside Argent. Lark lay down beside Sky.
An hour later everyone was up. Lark saw Argent give her a hard, watchful look. Didn’t he know Shadow had left her standing in a dark field with her fly zipped, her heart hanging out instead of her fun part? Evidently not. Or, maybe he did know and hated her anyway. That would be typical of him the way Mom had painted him: childish, unreasonable. What a crock. But it didn’t matter; she didn’t really care what he thought. Sky was worse.
Much worse. No, there was no pain, she said. No, she did not feel sick to her stomach. But her skin was the color of putty, she wobbled when she walked, and there was no energy in her, not even enough to be snippy with Lark.
“What would you like to eat?” Lark asked her.
The little girl shrugged her scrawny shoulders. She had refused everything that was still left in the grocery bag, but who could blame her? It was junk.
“I’ll get you anything you want.”
Sky barely seemed to have heard.
“What is the matter with her?” Lark appealed to Shadow. “I don’t understand what is happening to her.” It was as if Sky were in the last stages of starvation, victimized by a famine that had lasted for months, maybe for years.
Shadow shook his beautiful head. He did not understand either. His dark eyes were opaque and somber. Lark felt her heart go hot with loving him, then cold with knowing it was useless to love him—but she would have to worry about that later. Right now her worry was all for Sky.
“Can we take her to Gypsy Davy? Will he help?”
“Maybe.”
Sky could not walk that far. “Can we take turns carrying her?”
“Count me out,” Argent said. “I am going home.” His voice sounded harsh. His cream-colored clothes were soiled from sleeping on the ground, beard stubble shadowed his face, and his hair lay flat, its platinum luster gone. Argent was not a happy camper.
“To Popular Street?” Lark asked him.
“Of course, to Popular Street, where else? You two”—his glance raked a swift stroke from her to Shadow—“do what you want.” He strode off. Sky sat crooning to herself on the ground, not even aware that her father was leaving her again.
Looking after Argent, Lark called him a name—rather unfairly, as she herself at one point last night had been very much looking forward to doing the act it described.
“No, he’s not,” Shadow said in his quiet way. “He’s having a hard time.”
“Well, he sure acts like one.”
“I’ve never seen him like this, and I’ve known him almost thirty years.”
But—it had not come home to Lark before: could Shadow be that old? What was this guy? A gorgeous fake, like Argent, like her? An old goat in that young-stud bod?
Or a god?
Priorities. Lark said, “Come on, Sky,” picked the girl up like an oversized rag doll, and got moving.
“Follow Argent,” Shadow directed, walking beside her. “No one will be at the carnival so early.”
“But—can’t we find him somewhere else? Where does he live?”
Shadow said, “You can’t find the sun at nighttime, and you can’t find Gypsy Davy before the middle of the afternoon.”
This was awful. Sky looked as if she might die before then. “Is there a doctor we can take her to?” Lark begged.
“I don’t know of any doctor who treats doppelgangers. Easy, Lark. She’ll last.”
In fact, as Lark carried her, Sky’s color began to look somewhat better. The little girl revived enough to put her arms around Lark’s neck.
There was a long walk before they made it through Soudersburg’s industrial outskirts to the little streets of the city proper, but after that it was easy. Shadow picked up a bright chip of plastic to use as a token. They turned a corner, and they were on Popular Street.
Something was different, though. Cars were rolling through—muscle cars with radios blaring and the drivers leering, Buick sedans with the windows rolled up and the fat-faced kids staring out the back. Pickups packed with rednecks.
“Tourists in fairyland,” Shadow said, his voice taut but utterly level. He was acting toward Lark just as he always had. There was something about Shadow that bided its time, seldom smiling, seldom scorning—like the cloud shadow through which lightning passed, he hung steady no matter what was going on around him. He watched from a distance. Even walking right there beside her he seemed distant. Lark did not know if she would ever get past his poise again. Or rather, if he would ever again show his heart to her. It was not something she had caused or could ever cause to happen. He had come to her.
Why?
And then, the next midnight moment—why had he backed away?
“Shadow,” Lark whispered.
He seemed not to hear.
“Shadow!” she called as if he were half a mile away.
He turned to her.
What could she say? She just looked at him. He looked at her, and she understood. He was what he had always been, a suspended being. A thundercloud hangs halfway between the earth and the stars; Shadow hung somewhere in the darkness between her and Argent.
As if they had talked, he turned back to the crowd on the street. “How did they get in?” he said of the intruders.
When they came up the stairs to the apartment above the Bareback Rider, Argent was already out of the shower—he had been able to walk home faster than they. Dewy in a white terry cloth robe, he stood leaning on a windowsill, looking down somberly at the invasion of traffic in the street. He seemed both calmer and more desperate than earlier, and glanced up at Shadow without speaking.
“Nobody owns Popular Street,” Shadow said quietly. “Nobody owns me, either.”
Just as quietly Argent said, “I know that. But I can’t help how I feel.”
“About what? This?” He gestured toward the out-of-control world below. “Me? Your daughter?”
“All three.”
“All three of her?”
Argent snorted and turned away from the small attempt at a joke. He said to Lark, “Why don’t you take your doppelganger and get out of here.”
“She needs to eat!”
Argent deeply sighed. “Take her to the kitchen.” Then for some reason he followed Lark there, pulled a pan out of a cupboard, and banged it onto the stove.
Her arms aching, Lark put Sky down on a chair at the table, but the kid went limp in protest. “Spaghetti bones,” Lark complained. “Sit up.” Sky couldn’t be that weak.
The little girl spoke for the first time in an hour. “I want to sit on your lap.”
“I hate to tell you this, Sky, but you are grimy and you stink.”
Snot began to run. Sky was crying again.
“Oh, okay. Jesus.” When her boys were little, bawling and clinging to Larque’s legs and following her into the bathroom, she had vowed that she was never going to go through this sort of thing again. Never again would she sit at a kitchen table with a slurping kid in her lap. But life has a way of coming around for another try at you.
Come to think of it, that was what life was doing to Argent. Taking another swipe at him. Look out, here she comes again. First the mother, then the daughter—in triplicate. Lark felt as though she could be sorry for Argent if she ever stopped being angry at him. And he at her.
Feeling the way he
felt, why was he helping her? For some reason he had put some Lipton’s chicken soup on to simmer for Sky. Now he was crouching by Lark, or rather beside the child in Lark’s lap, with a moist washcloth, scrubbing gently at Sky’s face and hands, trying to clean her up. Shadow was in the shower. Argent smiled at Sky but said to Lark in carefully quiet tones, “What the hell are you trying to do to me?”
In tones not nearly so careful or quiet she retorted, “I’m schizo. What do you expect?”
“I mean it. I want you to explain. Start with yesterday. Why did you pull that fat old man, you know who, out of me?”
Lark glanced down apprehensively at Sky. But the little girl seemed to be in a stupor, following none of this. It was an alarming symptom of how far gone Sky was that the child, whose wits were usually as sharp as her elbows, had not yet linked the doppelganger of her father to Argent.
Lark admitted, “That wasn’t meant for you. I was aiming at Shadow.”
“You can’t do that to him.”
“Do you mean I can’t, or I’d better not?”
“You can’t. He’s not like us. Was that the first time you tried anything like that?”
“On him? Yes.”
“But on other people?”
It seemed important to impress on this irritating man, her so-called father, that she had never made a deliberate with-malice-aforethought effort to doppelganger anyone. “Not people! I just doppelgangered my way into Popular Street once.”
There was a heartbeat of silence. Then, “God have mercy,” Argent whispered, letting his washcloth drop to the floor. “The whole street?”
She nodded.
“God help us. Lark, what am I going to do with you? You’re dangerous.”
“Just—just stop making me mad!” At the time this seemed a reasonable solution. “Shadow wanted to change you back to being who you really are. Why couldn’t you just do it? For your daughter? For Sky?”
“Why couldn’t you do it for your husband? You love him, don’t you?”
Touché. So thoroughly, hurtfully touché it nearly took her breath away. For some reason, maybe because it was the truth or maybe to wound him back, she said, “I love Shadow.”
Larque on the Wing Page 16