Gypsy Davey Read online

  “I am,” Davey said. “I’m the best kind.”

  “Ta-daaa,” Lois sang as she reentered the kitchen. Leo turned toward her, bunched his fingertips together, and kissed them like she was food, spraying the whole mess at her. Davey ate.

  “Thank you, thank you, thank you,” she said and clanked glasses with both of her gentlemen. “An embarrassment of riches,” she said. Her hair was still matted with water on top from where she had tried again to smooth the huge lump that was always there in the wake of the permanent.

  “Thanks for the food, Leo,” Davey said, standing and gulping the last of his second glass of wine. “I’m gonna go for a little ride now, Ma. I’ll see you later.”

  “Okay, sweetie,” Lois said, giving him a big dramatic kiss on the cheek, leaving a red and pink and cream-colored makeup bruise over half his face.

  Two glasses of wine, different from one glass of wine, made Davey do things. He rode, of course.

  He rode as fast as he could. He rode down the long steep hill that led into the big intersection where even if you do have the light your way you stop because there isn’t any respect for that light. As he neared the light he heard it, heard the bad muffler, the accelerator push as the light turned yellow. Davey heard it, and he pedaled harder because he could tell that the car was ahead of him and might pass harmlessly through before he got there. He pushed, to twenty, thirty miles per hour, baring his teeth into the wind he was creating for himself. He leaned, an aerodynamic bullet, slicing that wind to get there, and when he hit the bottom, he closed his eyes. He straightened up and took his hands off his handlebars.

  The big old Cadillac rocked him as it thundered past two feet behind Davey’s rear wheel, the driver having no more intention of stopping, slowing, or swerving than Davey had.

  Davey laughed out loud as he crossed out of the intersection, opening his eyes now but still riding no hands, the hands rubbing excitedly up and down over his own chest.

  He rode to Jo’s house, didn’t even wake her as she slept on the sofa. He strolled right by her, walked into baby Dennis’s room, stood there looking at the body curled up in a ball, wearing only a diaper. He pulled a blanket up over him, kissed him, and walked out again.

  He rode to the place he wasn’t supposed to ride to. He visited the man who stood in dead Lester’s shoeprints. The man told him he still didn’t like his shiny ass; Davey said he understood. The man gave Davey the five dollars and the address and Davey delivered. Then Davey took his five dollars over to the next block and handed it to the big lady who hugged him and told him that she loved him. She took him into the vestibule, told him to hush his jumpin’ heart, and let him touch her. She gave him a kiss and a slab of jalapeño corn bread and told him again that she loved him.

  Davey rode to the quarry, did not call out for fear of attracting anybody and giving up his solitude. He took off his clothes and swam in the frigid water, a quarter mile to the opposite side, and back, with a ten-minute pause in the dead center to tread water and bob like he was nothing but a head in the great wide open. He put his clothes on his dripping body, then finally called out, his answer coming back to him in a wave, some of it words, some of it not quite words but all of it Davey, from the inside of him.

  It was after midnight when Davey stepped back into the house, clammy and goose-pimpled, the damp clothes puckering all over his long bones. He paused in the living-room doorway to look at Leo’s shirt thrown over the back of the couch, his black Bostonian shoes on the floor next to Lois’s shoes.

  Then, without warning, Leo was there, standing side by side with Davey, the two of them staring at the shoes. Davey glanced sideways, down at Leo. He was rounder and shorter in his tank-top T-shirt and no shoes.

  “So, how was your night?” Leo said, wise-guy words, but not a wise-guy attitude.

  “Good,” Davey said, and when Leo went to say more, he cut him off. “But I don’t care how yours was.”

  Leo shut his mouth and nodded. He collected his stuff under Davey’s mute supervision, they shook hands, and he left.

  In the morning, Lois was eating the macaroni and cheese out of the pan with a big wooden spoon while Davey watched TV. It was sunny out and when it was sunny Lois liked to spend the morning—the entire morning—in the window seat with her back to the world, her head leaning against the pane. When it was rainy, she liked to spend the morning in the same window seat but turned around, staring at the rain. Now she stared at Davey, as much as her red-rimmed eyes were actually focused.

  Slight as it was compared to the TV noise, when the doorknob clicked in the front hall both Davey’s and Lois’s heads snapped to it. Why would the door ever open? They were both here already.

  Sneaky Pete strolled in, took his seat next to Davey on the couch, with his arm around him, and started leafing through the two-month-old TV Guide. “Breakfast ready, hon?” he said, smiling.

  For a few seconds nobody moved. Everybody gawked. They waited for it to go away. Lois figured it was just a little leftover grape. After all how many times had she conjured this scene under the influence? Davey, for his part, had reached the point where he could believe absolutely anything and absolutely nothing. If Pete transmogrified into a bat or a vulture or a flying monkey and disappeared out the window, Davey would have turned quietly back to his program.

  “You have got brass balls, Pete,” Lois said, dropping her pan on the floor.

  “Thanks, Lois. You’re lookin’ kinda metallic yourself.”

  “Where’s my money?”

  “Ain’t got no money.”

  “Then what are you doing here?” Lois was now walking, stalking Pete’s way.

  “It was that last letter of yours, the fresh one. You know, the one with all that physical stuff about the places you were going to put your fist and your foot and all that. Made me crazy. I just had to come up.”

  Lois was standing right in front of Pete now, in her thick gray terry-cloth bathrobe, bare feet, swatches of makeup on her cheek, her chin, her hair. The black eye makeup that was too much when it was in place now made her chilling, and the look from inside her was not pro-life. Davey scooted down the couch away from them.

  “Where’s my fucking money, Peter?”

  Pete was coolest, as if having his life threatened was not all that unusual. “This time you don’t get a check, Lois. You get me instead.”

  Lois took a step back. She looked at Davey, whose blankness was no help. Then back at Pete. “What does that mean, Pete?”

  “Daddy’s home,” he said, grinning, his hands extended palms up to accept the applause.

  “Home? Home where?” she said.

  “Home here.”

  Lois turned to Davey again. “You see, Davey, this is my curse. My animal magnetism, it makes me attract all kinds of animals.” She turned back to Pete. “Get out of here, you pig,” she said, then stomped back to her window seat, scooping up her bucket of macaroni on the way.

  Sneaky Pete got up and slowly walked to the stereo. He flipped it on, threw “Sinatra at the Sands” on the turntable, and strolled Lois’s way.

  “Forget it,” she said, menacing him with her wooden spoon.

  When he reached her, she didn’t hit him. He kissed her on top of her greasy head. “Look,” he said, pointing out the window. Lois turned around, kneeling in the chair, as Pete pointed out an antique showroom-new sea-green 1960 Cadillac El Dorado convertible at the curb.

  Pete got very humble. As Sinatra crooned “It Was a Very Good Year” for a backdrop, Pete told her, “That is where your money for the past few months went—I was savin’ up. I bought it for you. I mean, I’ll drive it and it’s registered to me, but it’s for you.”

  Lois could not stop looking at the car, first smiling, then giggling. “It is the single most beautiful thing I ever saw,” she said. She started crying. “You really staying, Pete? I mean, really?”

  “Really. I thought about it long, Lo, and I figured I was just kiddin’ myself these last years, that
maybe I’m not the kinda guy who should be alone. I decided I could be great, livin’ back here. What I need in my life are witnesses. As long as I got witnesses I can behave.”

  “Davey,” Lois squealed, “you have to come see this.”

  Davey came to the window and looked down at the glimmering machine, its new green leather interior open to the sunlight.

  “It’s a nice car, Ma,” Davey said.

  She took both of Davey’s hands in hers and squeezed, bouncing up and down. “God, Davey, you don’t know. This is a sign. This is bigger than all of us and bigger than that car down there—”

  “Which is pretty goddamn big.” Pete was happy to cut in.

  “Davey, it’s like, great things have always happened to me in convertibles. That’s all I can say.”

  Pete laughed out loud. Davey looked again out at the El Dorado for some sign of its magic life.

  “And look at that pretty Florida license plate,” Lois said. “I always said it was the prettiest of all license plates. It just says so much, it’s so tropical and glamourous and nice.” She turned to Pete abruptly again, turning serious in a blink. “Really this time, Pete? No flitting, no smoke tricks, no scheming?”

  Pete shook his head and held up his hands like she’d pulled a gun on him. “This monkey’s been chasin’ the weasel too long. I’m out.”

  “Pop goes the weasel,” Lois sang, hugging Pete hard enough to make him cough. “Why don’t we go for a ride? Right now. Can we, Pete?”

  “Let’s do the beach,” Pete said. “We’ll go to Kelly’s and have some fat burgers and onion rings and fried clams and ice cream, and we’ll throw the wrappers on the ground and sit in the car and listen to the waves and maybe we’ll puke.”

  Lois slapped Pete on the arm and laughed uncontrollably. “I can’t wait. Let’s go right now. I’ll go just like I am.” She ran to the front door.

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Pete said. “Lois, come back here. Honey, if I’m gonna be here, you can’t go around looking like that. The beach’ll wait. Get yourself a shower. Burn the bathrobe. Slap on some makeup. Put on some heels and some shorts. I’ll be waiting.”

  “I’ll be five minutes,” Lois said.

  “Take twenty,” Pete said as he headed for the kitchen. “Got a beer, Lo?”

  She called from the bathroom. “There might be one in the vegetable drawer.”

  Pete found the beer, cracked it open, and when he turned around Davey was right there.

  “So, guy,” Pete said, much less confident than the tone he used with Lois. He still knew who was who. “You happy to see me?”

  “I am, Dad.”

  “I didn’t bring you nothin’ this time.”

  “I don’t want nothin’.”

  “Pretty soon, though, I’ll have myself established up here again, I’ll have something to give ya.”

  Davey leaned very close to Pete, closer than Davey usually got with people. “You just give my something to Ma, okay? Give all my somethings to Ma.”

  Pete shied a bit, nodded, squinted that he received the message clearly.

  “Davey,” Pete said after a long suck on the Pabst Blue Ribbon can, “you believe me? About everything?”

  “Ya. I believe you. You’re my dad.”

  Pete smiled, more tentatively this time. He couldn’t quite read his boy this time the way he would have liked, so he couldn’t produce the home-run smile.

  “Davey, you gonna come for a ride to the beach with us?”

  “Sure. Can my bike fit in the trunk?”

  Lois sang in the shower.

  “When I was twenty-one

  It was a very good year . . .”

  Pete flipped Davey the keys to the El Dorado, and Davey brought his bike down as Pete drank his beer.

  HYSTERICAL

  There are things I know. There aren’t a million things I know but there are a few more than people think I know. I know that when Pete lives with us there is music in the house all the time which is a good thing and my mother is laughing all the time when she’s not crying which is of course some of the time a good thing because even if he’s sneaky Sneaky Pete sure is funny. Hysterical is what Ma says to almost anything he says when the good stuff is happening and there’s some money and the fridge is full and the glasses are all full including mine. High-sterical is how she says it.

  I know that when Pete is not here it’s a different place Ma says she doesn’t give a rat’s ass and well fuck you anyway and she’s not here herself a lot of the time sometimes for a lot of straight days and when she is she hugs her knees and looks out the windows and doesn’t take any showers and stares and stares and stares and only eats when I make macaroni and cheese and put it right in her mouth for her. Dual citizenship is what she says Pete has living in Florida whenever it’s cold up here which means he’s never here after November or before May which means I still never seen the guy on a Christmas even though he sends me stuff great stuff stuff you wouldn’t believe stuff like cameras and radios Walkmans and Watchmans that go with me so I can see TV if I want anywhere even on my bike which made me crash bounce off a car and crack my brains open onto the street and so I don’t do anymore. I got home all right walking instead of riding ’cause I couldn’t y’know ride sat in front of the TV sometimes awake sometimes asleep for I guess a couple of hours and really soaking up a whole bath towel with my blood and brains all over it before Ma came home and made me figure that I should have got myself to the damn hospital instead of sitting in front of the tube like a damn lame-o and she supposes that maybe I did leave some of my brains on the curbstone.

  The thing about that is I get things lots of things when Sneaky Pete isn’t there and I don’t get a whole lot of anything when he is there.

  I know that when it rains out I have to bring something into the bedroom coffee and English muffin into the bedroom and juice and turn on the music or Ma will not get out of the bed for the cryin’ and that once I do that I have to ride direct over Jo’s house and do a kind of the same thing only it’s bring her a coffee and six different donuts from Dunkies that she eats all by herself and a Bavarian crème for the baby Dennis which when you see him eat it at least when I do is maybe probably the cutest thing you ever saw with the yellow inside and the chocolate outside smeared all over his mouth his eyes his forehead his hair and I almost cry at it which is about the stupidest thing ever because good things don’t make you cry so instead I laugh because that’s a better thing. I wash his face with a dishcloth that I wet at the sink with warm not hot or cold water and I take my good long time doing the washing because he turns his little face up and closes his eyes tight and he lets me.

  I know that I don’t tell Jo or Ma that the rain makes Jo look a lot like Ma and Ma look a lot like Jo I don’t say it because I don’t like screams I don’t like slaps and most of all I don’t like spitting.

  I know that it doesn’t matter to anyone even a little bit that I’m the biggest one around here now.

  I know that every time I see the baby Dennis I think more and more. I think things people would probably think I shouldn’t be thinking but I think I don’t care. I think I’m his best friend and we are supposed to be together. I think that the pile of mail that stacks up on the floor by Jo’s front door without her opening it that I look at that says Department of Social Services and Urgent and Please Respond Immediately that Jo snatches from me and says cut the shit Davey I know that stuff means something and the something doesn’t feel good. I know Jo doesn’t answer her phone anymore and that it rings all the time when I’m there and who could it be after all when she was always saying call me call me because nobody was ever calling her. I know that if I come by two days in a row Dennis is wearing the same stuff and smelling the same as he did the day before and that Jo used to let me do all the stuff but now she tells me it’s my kid you know Davey who the hell do you think you are Davey you think a puny fucking donut every few days makes you the kid’s fucking father Davey and if I say there’s no shit i
n his diaper there’s no shit in his diaper so get on your silly little bike which by the way looks really stupid now that you’re nine feet tall and too big for it just hop on it and pedal to hell trying to tell me I’m not a good fuckin’ mother is what she says.

  But I know things. I know there’s shit in my baby Dennis’s diaper I know I’m not going to let it stay there and hurt him I know I can’t just keep away and let something bad happen to him I know he needs I know I’m the one.

  UNTIL HE COULDN’T SEE IT ANYMORE

  Davey was just wheeling around the corner when he saw the big man loading the suitcase into the trunk of his dark-blue retired police car LTD. The car was parked in front of Jo’s house, sandwiched tight between two other cars, beside the hydrant. When he recognized the head in the passenger seat of the car as his sister’s, he sped up.

  The rain was just starting, but it was heavy the way it is early on a summer morning when the sun’s trying to heat it up. Davey jumped off the bike while it was still rolling, letting it crash on into the next car without him.

  “Who’s that?” Davey said evenly, talking to Joanne though the glass, pointing at the man now starting up the LTD. Joanne didn’t answer, didn’t roll down the window, didn’t turn to look at Davey. She held the baby Dennis tight to her and sat stone-faced while he slept in her arms.

  “Jo?” Davey said. He held up the bag of donuts. The LTD’s muscly engine raced. “Jo?” Davey stood his ground as the car moved slightly up, then back, then up again to try and maneuver out of the space. Davey looked down at the top of the baby’s head. “Jo? Jo, you want to leave the baby Dennis here with me while you go out? Open the door. I’ll watch the baby.”

  The car was out of the space and pulling slowly away when Joanne half turned her eyes on Davey.

  “Jo? Open the window, huh? Let the baby Dennis just have his Bavarian crème donut. Can he? He likes a Bavarian crème, you know that.” Davey trotted alongside the car as it picked up speed, his palm flat on the glass as close to the baby’s head as he could get it. “Dennis? Dennis?”