Gypsy Davey Read online

  Jo seemed almost anxious to get home. Davey was terrified.

  “Maybe we should go for a walk, huh, Jo?”

  “What for? She’s probably not home yet anyway. Y’know, gotta do a little somethin’ for ol’ Leo for buyin’ the meal.”

  Davey put his hands over his ears, shook his head no ten, twenty, forty times, and started trotting ahead, away from Jo. Still covering his ears, still shaking his head.

  Joanne caught up to him, ran in front of him, and made him stop. She faced him squarely and pulled his hands down from his ears. As he continued to shake his head no, she nodded her head yes. More, he shook. She nodded just as insistently.

  “You gotta grow up, Davey. You gotta grow up.”

  He pulled away from her, she pulled him back with a yank.

  “You gotta . . . grow . . . up. And you gotta do it right now. Davey, I been thinkin’ about it and I don’t think I can take care of you no more. I’m havin’ a whole shitload of trouble takin’ care of me, if you want to know the truth. You’re big now, Davey, look at ya.”

  Davey did. He looked down at himself, mostly at the long legs that were growing up out the sidewalk like a pair of knobby blue jean beanstalks. Then he looked back at his sister. Down at her. Still, there was littleness in those big round sad eyes that Joanne couldn’t look at anymore.

  “Come on, Davey.” She turned away and started walking quickly.

  When they walked through the door, Lois stood straight ahead about eight feet away. Her feet were planted wide apart, and hanging from her left hand was a long three-inch-wide tooled leather belt with a fist-sized pewter skull buckle. A Sneaky Pete artifact.

  “Do you know how hard I have to work to get a man to—”

  “Uh-uh, no way,” Joanne cut her off, pointing at the strap.

  “Get out of here, Davey,” Lois said in a gravelly voice. Davey stood petrified. Lois took a step toward Joanne. Then stopped abruptly when Joanne took a step toward her.

  “We’re through with that, shit, Lois,” Joanne said, more of a warning, a final negotiation, than a threat.

  “Oh, Lois, am I now? I don’t know who you think you are these days, Joanne, but you better think again. Is it the drugs, perhaps, talking for you? Honey? Darling? Sweetheart?”

  Those were the words. The words that were never heard in this house, spoken now with such furious, mocking insincerity. Joanne still cared, a little bit, about what her next action would be. Until those words.

  “Davey, get the hell out of here.” It was Joanne who said it this time. The result however, was the same; he stood.

  Without warning Lois advanced, drew back the belt and snapped it like a cowboy. It cracked across Jo’s leg, leaving a long red wasp sting on her thigh where the jeans were already ripped wide open. As Joanne coolly walked toward her mother, Lois lashed out the belt again, this time whipping her across the cheek.

  Joanne stopped walking momentarily, covered her face with both hands. She made not a sound and resumed marching toward Lois. “Joanne, go to your room,” Lois said in a final lame attempt to control Jo. As she spoke, she backpedaled, fear coming in a red wave over her face.

  It had to happen. The time had come. If anyone had taught Joanne to be tough, even if she had done it accidentally, it was Lois. But Lois was getting weaker now, and Jo had become at fifteen a hard-assed, snaggletooth little sonofabitch. A lot tougher, really, than Lois ever was.

  It was basically already over when Lois tried, half-heartedly, to raise the strap to her daughter one more time. Joanne’s fist shot out like a baseball from a pitching machine, hitting her mother with a punch in the mouth at about ninety miles an hour, dropping her.

  Joanne stood over Lois for a second as her mother writhed on the floor, covering up and crying. Then she reached down and picked up the belt.

  Before she’d even straightened all the way up, Jo felt a grip on her wrist. Davey had finally moved. She didn’t acknowledge him, continued looking down on her mother, until he jerked the belt out of her hand. Joanne stalked out of the house, paused in the doorway, slammed the door as hard as she could.

  Davey picked his mother up off the floor and carried her to the couch.

  US ALONE HAPPY

  Gypsies always steal babies anyway right so it wouldn’t be like no big surprise and they’ll stop looking after only a little while I know because it’ll just be like the big stupid one just run off with the little stupid one is what they all will say and then after everybody who’s supposed to has done the right thing and made a nice show and sort of stood on all the porches whispering Davey oh Davey yoo-hoo are you out there and hello baby Dennis are you out there too then everybody can relax and stop pretending to look.

  Then they can leave us alone happy. We’ll be happy they’ll be happy because nobody wants the baby Dennis but I do and nobody wants the maybe Davey but he does and so then I can be a hero for all of us am I right?

  They’d probably want to give me some kind of medal is what would probably happen if they wanted to tell the truth and if they could find me. Which they won’t ’cause like I said they can’t have him and like I said I would want to take him little baby Dennis to our star away like E.T. but I’m not stupid not a kid not a gimp I know I can’t really do that but what I can be is somebody who could find a place that was just as far away and just as secret and just as quiet and not angry that the baby Dennis and me could go to. Better than a star even. I will get him there.

  Gary says Florida is a place like that. Wrote me a letter from prison Gary did said I should get myself down there with him and Dad even though him and Dad aren’t really together since Gary put that big hole in that little lady’s head with the golf club. It could be the best he said ’cause these messed-up women won’t be there to mess us up like they already done and Florida is a man’s place and that as far as he was concerned our mother could just well do something to him that a guy shouldn’t ought to say about his mother and while she’s at it Joanne could just do it to him too.

  I could go if it was such a good place for boys to go in Florida when they wanted to run off I could do it pedal all the way there with the baby Dennis in the milk crate on the handlebars and I would never get tired. That’s what I would do if Florida was the right place for us except I won’t be going there and sure won’t be taking the baby Dennis there as long as Gary is there whether he’s in a cell or not.

  COME DANCING

  Joanne was sixteen and a half and fat as a balloon when she married Gus the fruit truck driver. She said she loved him right away because he smelled delicious. The scent of bananas and melons and almost-turned peaches hung on him all the time, allowing her to somehow ignore Gus’s droopy eyelids, the pants crotch that hung to his knees, and the stump of a ring finger on each hand that got ripped off in separate accidents with the heavy truck door and that probably said more about who Gus was than his aroma did.

  But Gus was a hardworking man and, more importantly, a steady-working man. He had been driving that same fruit truck for Kassab Brothers’ fruit market since he was Joanne’s age, which was twelve years ago. That fact alone made him a good man, a good catch.

  So even though it was obvious to the neighbors and the altar boys and Gus’s legally blind grandmother that Joanne was no more than a month away from motherhood, the wedding was greeted as an unqualified joyous event. All it took was a minor piece of alteration for Jo to fit into Lois’s old white satin wedding gown, a proper bride, train trailing a block behind, since Lois of course was carrying a lot more than a second slice of carrot cake in her own belly when she wore it.

  Sneaky Pete paid for the Sons of Italy hall. And for the church and the priest in a way. The local parish wouldn’t do it, let the pregnant sixteen-year-old get married in the church, so Pete had to track down good old Father Waller who happened to owe Pete his life due to a little happening in a little room behind a little restaurant in the North End a few years back. Pete happened to be playing in a friendly card game in
which the father—snazzy as hell in his Hawaiian shirt and huaraches, but a bit sweaty and red—made the mistake of playing too long after he had no money. Pete sponsored him to the people running the game, allowing Father Waller to keep his thumbs.

  Which in the end meant Joanne and Gus could spend nine hours one Saturday before the wedding in pre Cana, answering questions about themselves and the sacraments and procreation. “Have you ever engaged in sexual activity?” the young priest asked, loosening his collar and looking away whenever he could.

  “No sir,” Joanne said proudly, happily, indestructibly, knowing her date in the church had been paid for and that her knight was, sleepily, at her side. “I’m just another local chubby chick made good.”

  Gus paid for the limousines. Limousines, more important than the church. More important than the white gown. More important than the tallest cake or the presence of all the favorite relatives or the Al Jolson Tan-o-Rama-skin-with-beige-lipstick wedding announcement picture on the back page of the travel section in the Sunday paper. Limos meant something.

  Joanne had to have the biggest, ugliest, most beautiful white Lincoln Continental limousine that couldn’t make half the turns on the little streets around her place and the church. Every time the car would stop, an inch from a parked car on either side of a tight street corner, and the driver had to back out of the street again, waving the guy in the car behind him and the one behind him to move out, Joanne squealed in ecstasy and dug her long artificial fingernails into her father’s upper arm.

  She had to have the car early, had to loop the city in it. Keep the smoked-glass windows up so that people would wonder and try to peer in and guess at the big mucky-muck inside and so what if it didn’t happen at that stoplight or the last one or the next one, it’ll happen eventually, she thought. She thought it all through the uneventful ride, paying less and less attention however to the world outside and more to the bar, the TV, the air-conditioning, and the butter-soft white leather upholstery, because it had not, and would not, occur to her that maybe the White Limo didn’t mean that anymore.

  “Do you feel that, Daddy? Feel it, go on. Like you could just poke your little finger right through that seat. That’s beauty. That’s class. Isn’t that class, Daddy?”

  Sneaky Pete turned away from The Skins Game on the little TV, leaned, and kissed Joanne’s cheek. Pete, himself a very White Limo kind of guy. “It sure is, sweetheart.”

  “There they are, there they are. Slow down now,” Joanne shouted at the driver. They were approaching Celeste’s house, Joanne’s hangout starting when she was eleven years old, and ending today.

  Jo pressed the button and lowered the window, letting out a long, joyous whoop for The Dogs. In unison, or as close to it as they could manage, Jo’s Pack of Dogs all raised their paws limply, casually, coolly, like a lazy group Boy Scout salute. Hell no, they wouldn’t be going to no boring stupid church ceremony. Hell yes, they would be going to the reception. And hell right, they were going dressed like that.

  Joanne plunked back into her seat, beaming as if she’d just received an ovation, flowers flying, kisses blowing, we love you so, Jo, you are so special. Pete on her one side and The Dogs on her other still slouched away, mindless of any such moment.

  Lois, swollen with the heat, sweat spots blossoming under the arms of her pale-orange dress, was a queen nonetheless. She had seen to that during the arduous week before The Day. Electrolysis to tame the wispy mustache and downy sideburns that really didn’t offend anyone but herself. Mud treatment and collagen cream to try and fill the crevices that had been lately cutting like the Colorado River through her tired face. And a fresh perm even though she’d gotten one only two weeks before. “Look at me, Jo,” she said on Thursday when she came home from the hairdresser. She balanced a thick Danielle Steel paperback way up high on top of her head, the hair so tight it didn’t give at all. Joanne laughed silly and Lois laughed sillier, the first time they did that together, or separately either, in a long time. If they had ever done it all.

  Actually, the heat and ungodly humidity were kind to Lois, puffing her face just enough to soften those lines naturally, giving her cheeks a fresh pink that made her look like a happy girl under her new curls. A big colorized Shirley Temple was who she looked like, and Sneaky Pete told her so.

  “You look like Shirley Temple, babe,” he said into her ear as he whirled her, mid tempo and graceful, from one corner of the dance floor to another. Somewhere, Pete had picked up ballroom dancing.

  Lois pulled away from him. He pulled her back. “It’s a compliment, Lois, Jesus. I tell ya, every time I laid eyes on that Temple chick, dancing so sassy with that big ol’ Bill Robinson, I tell ya, she made me wild.”

  Lois slapped him on the shoulder and giggled, finding the compliment buried in Pete’s words the way she always could. “And you look like one of the Beach Boys,” she said, referring to Pete’s third-degree Florida tan, his floral shirt open to the sternum to display a bouquet of silver hairs, and his white pants. He beamed. He didn’t have to look too hard to find the compliment in the words. To Pete that was a big compliment.

  “You make a great bride muthuh, Lois,” he said quietly into her ear. He started singing along with the music.

  “Waltzing Matilda, Waltzing Matilda

  You’ll come a-waltzing Matilda, with me.”

  Tink tink tink, klink klink klink klink went the spoons against the sides of the wineglasses, and the happy couple kissed. They tinked again, they kissed again. Seemed like it was going to happen a hundred thousand times, with Jo and Gus happy to oblige every time. Too happy, almost, obliging to the point of soft porn, exposing enough tongue and passion right up there on their little stage to embarrass everyone in the room who wasn’t fried. Which wasn’t too many.

  “Buy him a drink, Gus,” Joanne would say, pointing out someone who meant nothing to her. “And that one. Buy her a drink too.” Gus bought, rolling out the knot of money happily each time, fanning his bride with it first as she tipped her head back in not quite mock ecstasy. “The wad,” she called it. “Whip out the wad,” she laughed, in love.

  Davey lived the day of his sister’s wedding through the lens of a camera. “You’re the photographer, Davey,” Lois said as she draped the strap of the camera around his neck. “It’s self-winding, self-loading, auto flash, auto focus. I think you can handle it. Just aim and pull the trigger. Get everything.” She stuffed rolls of film in his jacket pockets and pants pockets, making him bulge as if he were wearing saddle bags.

  But Davey was happy there. He wasn’t happy when Jo told him she was getting married and leaving. Despite the fact that for almost two years now the cycle of month-long screaming matches alternating with super-charged silence between Jo and Lois had driven Davey longer and farther and more often on out of his house, onto his bike, he couldn’t bear her leaving. He wasn’t happy when the gambling priest spoke of a man shall leave his mother, a woman leave her home, read from Kahlil Gibran, tried to sing “The Wedding Song” a cappella which everyone politely clapped for but Davey didn’t because he knew it was stupid. He wasn’t happy to see Joanne being strapped into Lois’s old gown, sat there in his soaking undershirt as he watched Lois help her daughter with her gobs of makeup, helped her pull and spray her hair till it reached so high the ceiling fan nearly made a flat top out of it. He watched, Davey did, the whole unnatural scene of Lois gingerly, caringly smoothing Jo’s edges, packaging her up to deliver her out of there to Gus.

  As mother and daughter looked together into the big round mirror of Lois’s dresser—Lois crouched behind Jo, who sat and leaned back against her mother—Davey quietly, of course quietly, slipped out to the bathroom and vomited.

  He was still a bit jangly when he received the camera. But there, behind that camera, inside it, everyone else locked safely and manageably within the boundaries of the viewfinder, there Davey was happy.

  “Take lots and lots of pictures of my friends, Davey, will ya?” Joanne said as
she smiled glowingly, her new husband smiling likewise from behind her with his hands on her abdomen.

  “I’ll go take ’em right now, Jo,” Davey said. Gus walked up and stuck a five-dollar bill in his hand, which Davey stared at through the camera lens. He snapped the picture of Gus’s money.

  Joanne’s friends. The Pack of Dogs, all twelve of them, were the sum total of Joanne’s friends. Whether she actually had any friends in the group or not. Good old big stupid old Phil couldn’t make it, being in an army prison in Colorado. Davey went to the bar to take their pictures.

  “Gimp! Take my picture.”

  “Bring it here, Davey, take a shot of this,” Celeste said, raising her black stretch skirt, bending over and slapping herself on the rear. Davey took the picture.

  “Yo, Davey, get this,” a fat dog said as he dropped two full whiskey shot glasses into a pint of Guinness and drank the whole thing down. As he slammed the glass down, The Dogs cheered woo woo woo woo woo, and a trickle of regurgitated brown-black oil ran out of both corners of the guy’s mouth. Davey snapped the picture.

  Without talking and without ever pulling his eye from the viewfinder, Davey waved them all in close together for a group shot. The bartender, piling drinks behind them nonstop like a fire brigade, had to be part of the picture. When they were all pressed together in one sweaty, drooling blob, every Dog at once flipped the camera the bird, smiling cheese but saying, “Eat shit, Joaaaaanne.” As he snapped it, Davey already knew it was going to be her favorite.

  Davey stopped on the way to the dance floor to take a picture of the young waitress, who smiled carefully while balancing her full tray of empty glasses.

  He snapped Joanne dancing, for the fifth time already, with the gambling priest who talked like a machine gun in her ear, laughing hard every few seconds although Joanne only smiled.