Without even blinking Argent retorted, “Well, that may be the only thing we have in common.”
Lark did not know what to say, so, like a typical male, she glared. She was still glaring, and Argent was ignoring her, a moment or two later, when Shadow padded in barefoot from his shower.
“Have a look outside,” he told Argent. “No, on second thought, don’t. I’ll tell you.”
But Argent had already stepped to the window. “What next,” he said in doomsday tones.
“I told you not to look.”
Lark slipped out from under Sky and went to see. It was just the Virtuous Woman again, marching up and down punily with her hyperventilating message, protesting. Except—
“Mama mia,” Lark groaned.
Except it was not just the V.W. Marching along with her—no, not marching. Toddling up and down Popular Street on short legs and stubby sneakered feet, toting another homemade antigay placard, was a beaming little lady with every blue-gray hair firmly sprayed in place.
“Florrie,” Argent moaned.
“Mom,” Lark said at the same time in exactly the same tone. This impossible woman was another thing she and her father had in common.
“Get back.” Shadow pulled Lark away from the window. “Don’t let her see you. Right now you are in terrible danger from her if she feels like changing you to suit herself. You are all in pieces. I have never met anyone more mutable.”
“And with more talent for making trouble,” Argent grumbled.
“Think of it as potential.”
“I don’t want to think about it at all.”
“You’d better start to think—”
“Suppose you start to think with your head instead of your ass!”
Lark left them there quarreling and went back to Sky. She got soup and offered it to the child and tried to spoon it into her. But Sky was not interested in eating it.
With a satisfying sense of pattern in a disorderly world, Lark stole Florrie’s Suzuki Samurai that afternoon, drove it to the Valu-Mart Shop-All Plaza, and ditched it next to the same dumpster where she had left the Chevette, which was now gone—maybe it really did go with the trash? She hoped she would not find it waiting for her when she got home. If she got home, ever.
Argent had refused to come along this time, and Shadow had stayed with him. Probably they were fighting. Probably after they were done fighting they would make up and make love. There was order in a chaotic world, all right, but Lark did not appreciate it this time. Fuck them both.
She carried Sky in her arms to Gypsy Davy’s booth. The little girl rode along without looking at Whack-A-Mole or the green rubber frogs leaping toward their plastic lily pond or the ferris wheel or giant fully poseable stuffed flamingos or any of the bright things they passed. When they reached the pony ride Lark said, “Hey, snorting horsies!” but Sky lay limply, her eyes closed, her head nestled against Lark’s shoulder.
Curls holding his magenta Stetson high, eyes merry, Gypsy Davy leaned burly-shouldered over the counter of his booth. “Hats for heroes! Hats to live on in legend!” he bellowed. “Chance of a lifetime, right here! Come one, come all! Be a cowboy!”
A guy didn’t just walk up to another guy and say, “Please, save my baby.” Carrying her doppelganger, Lark tilted her young-stud chin a little higher and greeted Gypsy Davy, “Yo.”
He focused on her, and from the way his eyes changed, no longer merry, she realized he had not seen her coming. He had been watching something else.
“Can you help Sky?” she asked, still trying to keep it dignified. “The way you did Shadow?”
By way of answer, he came down out of the booth and took the doppelganger in his arms, but his eyes were stricken. Sky lay looking small and fragile against his broad chest, as unresponsive as before.
“She’s not like Shadow,” Gypsy Davy said, his voice low. “She’s not made the same way.”
To hell with dignity. “Please,” Lark begged.
“It’s not up to me! She’s yours. Flesh of your flesh. It’s up to you if she lives.” Gypsy Davy handed her back. “I’m sorry, but it’s the truth.”
Why did he have to say so? Was he a truthteller or not? Maybe he was sometimes, or maybe he had been once—but he had lost something. On the toe of one of his boots, a silver star was missing.
“But what am I supposed to do?” Lark cried to his wide, sad face. “She won’t eat!”
“Feed her.”
“But I can’t! I just said, she’s not eating!”
“She’s a spirit. What she needs is not anything you can get in a supermarket. Feed her what she needs.”
“But what is that?”
“Lark,” he said unhappily, “she’s you. You should know. If you don’t, I can’t tell you.”
It was like the night she had reached Hoot’s limits. Lark stood there with the same stunned feeling, staring at Gypsy Davy, unwilling to believe anything he was saying.
After a moment he reached up and brought down a plain black felt broad-brim hat from one of his displays and put it on Sky. The child’s head rested against Lark’s collarbone, so he had to hang it on her as best he could. “That might help a little,” he said. “Not much, though, and not for long. Think with your heart, Lark.”
She turned away, hot with disappointment, and did not look back at him as she walked away.
In a moment, though, she began to think she should have thanked him, for Sky lifted her head.
“Hey,” Lark said to the little girl. “Hi.”
Without answering, Sky raised a twiggy hand, straightened the black hat on her head, and looked around.
“You feeling better?” There was, Lark noticed, a rawhide strip on the hat by way of a band, and fastening the ends of the strip was a silver ornament in the shape of a flying bird.
“Where am I?” Sky asked.
“At a carnival. Would you like something? Ice cream?”
Sky shook her head.
Give her something that was not food, Gypsy Davy had said. Sky was watching the dinky little carousel go around. “Would you like to ride on that?” Lark asked.
The doppelganger shook her head again. And she didn’t seem to want to get down and walk. But at least she was looking at the bright sights of the carnival now, and the people.
Sometimes the people were sights in and of themselves. Lark carried Sky through crowds of them but felt too bummed to pay much attention until one, a vivid orange one, caught her attention. Christ, some women shouldn’t wear the new neon colors. That Day-Glo dress made this one look like a giant flashing Pussy Galore sign.
The woman in question spotted Lark at the same time, came running up and started babbling in her face. “Lark!” Doris blithered. “I know you, are you Lark? And that’s Sky! Right? Lark? But if you’re her, then who’s the square-ass that’s been sleeping with Hoot? Would you please tell me what the hell is going on?”
“My group sent me out here to affirm my neurosis by getting into greasy fries and cotton candy like everybody else,” Doris explained as they left the carnival in her Toyota. “But it’s not working. I just want to go home and have a big batch of carrots.” She glanced over anxiously as she drove. Lark had told her some of what was happening—though it was not exactly easy to explain—and as for the rest, well, she had eyes. “Do you think carrots would help Sky?”
On Lark’s shoulder, the little girl was sleeping, her black outlaw hat clutched in her bony hand.
Lark said rather sharply, “Somehow I doubt it.”
“What are you going to do about her?”
“I don’t know.” Some skewed but motherly quality of this daffy female friend touched off a crying reflex in Lark the way Shadow’s austere concern did not. She managed to keep from sobbing, but felt tears running down her cheeks.
“I love a guy who dares to be vulnerable,” Doris quipped, passing the Kleenex.
Jesus, what a mouth. “Shut up and drive.”
“It’s you, all right.” No longe
r motherly, Doris grinned, showing her orange-tinged teeth. “I can tell. Sweet and polite as ever.” She stopped grinning. “God, I’m glad you’re back, even if you are in three parts, one of them donged. I went over to see you yesterday, I mean, I thought it was you, and I got really freaked. I could have cried.” She glanced over anxiously again. “Now I’ve got you in the same condition.”
“I’m okay.” This was true. Doris’s crack about vulnerability had been just what Lark needed, and maybe Doris even knew it. “What was I doing that upset you?”
“You were getting your damn big homophobic placard ready. You were judgmental, you were moralistic, you had no sense of humor at all, you had turned overnight into an antieverything crusader, and you wore No Nonsense pantyhose and those ghastly slip-ons from K-mart. Just a total dweeb. I came home and ate five pounds. My sweat is orange today. I smell like carrots. I knew it had to be some sort of weird psychotic episode, but I didn’t know what to do.”
Whether turning overnight into a yutz constituted the psychotic episode, or whether Doris was referring to her own aberration of eating five pounds of carrots at once, was unclear, but Lark let it go. Another thought was more galling. “I bet my mother loves the new me,” she said.
“Oh, she does! She’s at your place all the time. You and she are closer than you’ve ever been.”
“Thanks a lot.” Lark felt her eyes turning green. Jealousy. An irrational feeling, but aren’t they all? She allowed it.
Doris, as was expected of her, twisted the knife. “Hey, you’re her sweetie pie now, her cherub, her little tootsiewootsie. You’re throwing a big party for her to celebrate the twentieth anniversary of her born-again virginity. Open house. You’re inviting practically everybody she ever knew.”
“Twentieth anniversary of her what?”
“Her born-again virginity.”
“That’s a pisser,” Lark complained, airing her hurt feelings. “My own mother and I didn’t even know she was a born-again virgin. What the hell is a born-again virgin?”
“Sounds like an oxymoron to me.”
“What the hell is an oxymoron?”
“A stupid person who indulges in deviant behavior with animals.”
“Speak for yourself, Doris. Don’t talk that way about my mother.”
“You always do.”
Lark said nothing, because Sky stirred in her arms, woke up, and started to cry without much conviction, in a thin whining way, like one of those pitiful infants in a war movie. It was time for somebody to say, “Mama ain’t got no milk.”
Nobody said it. Instead, Doris turned into the driveway and said, “Home, sweet home.”
Inside, the two women—depending on how you define woman—the two of them tried feeding Sky Special K with bananas and milk, toast with peach preserves, even carrots. The kid ate little, but put on her black hat and seemed better.
“Can we stay here tonight?” Lark asked as Doris fed her more of the same.
“Sure thing, babe. If anybody asks, you’re my nephew and my niece.”
“Larque Harootunian isn’t coming over?”
“Her? That twit? Nah. She’s too busy trying to close down Soudersburg’s pickle district.” By now Lark had seen the headlines. Doris had showed her. It was front-page news to Soudersburgers that they had a gay presence. Even though the Kennel Club grounds had been put to good midnight use for many years, they were outside of town and, therefore, what went on there could be ignored; the local assumption was that, “around here,” “those people” kept in the closet where they belonged. The fact that the Popular Street lair of iniquity seemed to move around depending on where Larque Harootunian chose to find it was of secondary importance to the shocking truth itself: Soudersburg had queers. Blatant ones. NOBODY’S CHILDREN ARE SAFE ANYMORE, trumpet-called an editorial. There was a picture on the front page of Larque Harootunian marching, with the caption COURAGEOUS WOMAN SAYS HOMOS HAVE TO GO.
Lark asked Doris, “How are Hoot and the boys taking it?”
“Taking it? Okay, I guess. Just because their wife and mother has suddenly mutated into a foaming-at-the-mouth anal-retentive bigot, why should they not be okay?”
Lark put down her cereal spoon. “I hate you,” she said.
“So you’ve told me. Many times.” Doris left the dishes in the sink and sat down chummily beside her. Sky was lying on the living room sofa, asleep again. “Okay, you cutie you,” Doris said to Lark in sultry tones, “let’s try something.”
“Doris—”
“Oh, hell, not that.” Doris gestured kindly dismissal with apricot-colored fingers. “I’ve given up. Anyway, I know you’re not in the mood. Chill, woman.” She got serious. “Let’s try to sort it out. List all your problems in order of priority.”
“Doris,” Lark said wearily, “you’ve got more shit in you than a baby robin.”
“You say the nicest things, Lark. Come on. Triage.”
“Oh, okay.” Why the hell not. Though maybe not in order of priority. “I’ve got the hots for Shadow,” Lark said first, to shock her.
She succeeded. “You what?” Doris did exactly what Lark’s penis was trying to do at the thought; she sat straight up. “Shadow’s the ultimate guy, right? And you’re a guy, right?”
“Mostly.”
“So what do you want to do with him? Cruise Hershey bar alley?”
“Why do you want to know?”
“Has he cruised you?”
“Fuck it, Doris, this is not a logistical problem.” Lark, who had expected to be amused, instead found herself genuinely angry. “The problem is—”
The problem is, I love him, Lark wanted to say, but she did not say it, because all things concerning Shadow demanded truth. And this was true, but not the way Doris would take it. Loving Shadow was like loving wind and rain. Loving Hoot was like loving fresh-baked bread in a warm kitchen. Suddenly Lark knew: she could do both.
She said, “The problem is, he’s my father’s lover.”
“Your father?”
“Yes. Argent’s my father. Didn’t I tell you?”
Obviously not. Doris was struggling hard with the concept. “Argent is the other incredibly gorgeous gay, right?”
“Right.”
“So he’s your father, as in, your parents needed a sperm donor?”
“No.”
“He’s bi and you’re adopted?”
“No, no.”
“A psychotic nurse switched babies in the hospital?”
“No, no, no. This is not a soap opera, Doris. Argent is my father as in, he came out and he left Florrie and had a magic makeover and he’s been with Shadow ever since.”
“Right, of course. Why didn’t I think of that. So now the problem is you need to get Shadow away from him?”
“No, no, no, no. They love each other. The problem is—” Lark hesitated, then said what she had not acknowledged till then. “The problem is my father doesn’t love me.”
Her voice had quavered. There was silence.
“Who owns the problem?” Doris asked after awhile, gently.
“Screw your psychojargon, Doris.”
“Okay. Look at it this way—”
“This way?” Lark tilted her bad-boy head, and Doris actually got mad.
“So you’re a tough dude with a rotten attitude. Do you really think flirting with Shadow is going to make your father like you better?”
“Sure. That’s exactly what I’m thinking.”
Doris made a hostile gesture and got up to leave the table, but Lark grabbed her wrist to stop her.
“Okay,” she admitted. “Maybe I am acting like an asshole because I am pissed at Argent.”
“Your father. And now he is pissed at you and you’re here instead of there.”
“Yeah. But Doris—he never loved me.”
Silence again. Then Doris challenged, “You sure? Not ever? Not even a little bit? When you were a baby?”
“Oh, okay, maybe a little. Maybe when I was a kid. He see
ms to like Sky. Maybe he still sort of cares about me some, but not—not really, you know?”
Doris knew. She had family problems too. “Who loves ya, baby?” she said softly.
“Damned if I know.”
They sat side by side in friendly silence. “Can you make your father love you?” Doris asked after a while.
“No.”
“Fuck it, then. Right?”
“Right. Fuck it.” Lark lifted her hand. They high-fived the concept of fucking it.
“Next problem,” Doris said.
“Woman, you have just summarized the problem of my whole fucking life. Who loves me? Not my mother. She just loves a kind of trained monkey that sort of resembles me.”
Doris did not challenge this, because she had seen and knew it was true. “Fuck it some more,” she agreed, and they slapped hands. “Hoot?”
“He—he kind of has opinions too, of what he wants me to be.”
“Men,” Doris the divorcée agreed too readily. Before she could suggest another fuck-it, though, Lark got up and headed toward the bathroom.
“Your kids love you,” Doris yelled after her.
Sitting on the john, Lark wondered why this, while undeniably true, did not help.
Lark took her time going back to the kitchen, but Doris was still sitting there, waiting. “We still haven’t talked about the main problem,” Doris said, glancing toward Sky.
Lark said, “I sort of think we have.”
TWELVE
LARK COULDN’T SLEEP. SKY SLUMBERED UNDER THREE crocheted afghans on Doris’s sofa; Doris slept in the mostly celibate bed of a divorcée, but Lark took the Toyota and drove to Soudersburg.
All the way there she thought about Sky. She had read in some historical novel about people starving, maybe in the Irish potato famine, who just stayed in bed and slept all the time to keep their dying bodies warm, to conserve what little life they had left. This seemed to be what Sky was doing. Driving, Lark begged the deities of an out-of-control world to let Sky last another day. Roaming the night, she knew she was looking for something, an answer, but she wasn’t sure how best to phrase the question.
Who loves ya, baby?
Near the middle of Soudersburg she parked the Toyota and started walking. It was right around midnight. Under the cold glare of those tall, looming streetlights they call cobra lamps, a few people loitered on each downtown corner. Youngsters, mostly. Out looking for love, the way she was. The end of the world might be looming like a snake in the sky, but there they were, peering into the darkness of cruising cars and across the block-long stretches of white, empty sidewalk.
Larque on the Wing Page 17