The only problem was the navy blue panty hose. They must have been too big, because they kept bagging around her knees and Primrose had to keep hiking them up.
Well, maybe there was one other problem: the high heels. They were murder. She had just bought them today to top off the outfit — ninety-five cents at the thrift shop — and halfway to the library her ankles were sore from all the wobbling. She wished mothers wore skates.
The rest was fine: the powder blue mid-length skirt, white ruffled blouse, navy blazer, pearl necklace, pearl earrings, navy shoulder strap pocketbook, makeup. She had brought the wild blonde wig under control with hair gel. But more than anything else, it was the boy walking beside her, her “son,” that completed the outfit.
It surprised Primrose to discover how easy it was to play mother. The
thok-thok
of her high heels upon the sidewalk, the pocketbook brushing her side declared she was a lady, maybe twenty-five, twenty-six. Two blocks from the library, crossing the street, she took David’s hand. One block away she said to him with a touch of warning in her voice, as she imagined a mother would do, “Now, you behave tonight. Hear?”
He scowled at her.
Outside the door, she stopped and pulled him around to face her. She cupped his chin in her hand and tilted his face upward. His face was clean, but she rubbed his cheek anyway and clucked her tongue. “I’ll bet you didn’t brush your teeth either, did you?”
He swatted her hand away. “Knock it off.”
She hiked up her panty hose and took him inside.
An arrow pointed downstairs to the community room. Hanging over the doorway were fake cobwebs that had to be pushed aside like curtains. Nothing especially scary seemed to be going on. A few little kids were going nuts, otherwise people were standing around munching cookies.
The main thing that struck Primrose was that, except for size, you could hardly tell the mothers from the kids. They were all wearing jeans or shorts, sneakers or sandals. What was the point of being a mother if you didn’t look like one? Disgraceful.
As near as she could tell, two fathers were there. They weren’t dressed any better, but with them it didn’t seem to matter. It hurt to look at them. She turned away.
Somebody approached in an ugly old-hag costume. “Welcome, welcome,” said the hag. “As you can see, I am Miss Viola Swamp. And who might you be?”
Primrose cleared her throat and set her voice on low. She put her arm around David. “This is David Limpert. My son.”
For an instant Miss Swamp seemed about to cackle hideously, but instead she said, “Good, good. Well, the program will begin shortly. In the meantime” — she waved a bony hand — “help yourself to bug juice and spider cookies. Hee-hee.” And off she went.
“This isn’t scary,” grumbled David. “It sucks.”
Primrose grabbed his shoulders. “One more word like that, young man, and you’ll get your mouth washed out with soap.”
“Yeah?” he sneered. “Who’s gonna do it?”
She shook him and whispered hard into his face. “Don’t you
ever
talk to your mother like that.”
His eyes locked on hers. To break the tension she gave his nose a motherly tweak and whispered, “Don’t have a cow. We’re just pretending.” When he walked off, she let him go.
She caught a mother looking at her. She shrugged and rolled her eyes and gave a weary smile that said,
These kids, what are we going to do with them?
She found him at the refreshment table. He had one cookie in his mouth and one in each hand. “Put them down.”
“No,” he said, spewing crumbs.
She smacked a hand, the cookie fell. “Pick it up.”
“No.”
No respect, these kids today. Well, they weren’t going to walk all over her.
“I said pick it up.”
“No.”
She smacked the other hand, and the second cookie fell.
“Pick.”
“No.”
She wanted to scream. She wanted to pour the bowl of bug juice over his head. She wanted to ram the cookies down his throat. Everything that came to mind, a mother wasn’t allowed to do. So she pinched him.
He howled: “Owwwww!”
He pushed her.
She pushed him.
He screamed, “Don’t touch me!”
“I’ll touch you all I want!” To prove it, she grabbed him.
“You’re not my mother!”
“Yes I am!”
He kicked her in her sore ankle, freeing himself. “No you’re not!” he yelled and yanked the wig from her head. He flung it into the gallery of eyes and dashed out through the cobweb curtains.
Minutes later, walking home, Primrose noticed that her steps were getting shorter and shorter. The crotch of her panty hose, she discovered, had come down to her knees. While voices catcalled from passing cars, she tore off her high heels and stockings and left them on someone’s front steps.
She walked. She did not know where. She just walked. Only dimly was she aware of the darkening sunset, the streetlights buzzing on, the sidewalks cooling under her bare feet.
Once, at a deserted corner well after dark, she stopped and waved at an imaginary car going by. Not liking the imaginary driver’s imaginary response, she yelled, “Oh yeah? You too!” and spit after it.
She never did aim herself home, but eventually she smelled fresh paint and found that she was there. Even before she pulled the van door open she heard snoring. Refrigerator John had rigged up a battery powered lamp for her. She turned it on. Her mother was in her bedroll with Willy the bear, fast asleep.
Primrose cracked.
“Out of my room! This is my room! My place! Out! Out! Out!”
In a flapping flurry of nightgown, her mother fled.
It was not until later, as she was lying down, that Primrose noticed Willy was still there, his white button eyes gawking as if to say,
I don’t believe you did that
. She grabbed him by a leg and punched him. She flung him into the street. “Out!”
They lived in the same town, but only the sky was vast enough to measure the distance between them.
David rode his bike and spun his yo-yo and watched TV and read
Beetle Bailey.
Read, but did not laugh much.
He rode every day. He no longer rode in circles around town. He rode in straight lines out of town. He rode over the bridge and under the railroad trestle and past the salad-dressing factory and the river and the farm. It was a zoo kind of farm. You were allowed to walk around the pens and stalls and see the animals. Every day at the sheep pen David came upon the same sheep. Every day he felt like punching it in the face.
Thursday nights Primrose went “shopping.” On Saturday she peddled her goods at the flea market. The rest of the time she worked on her room.
In his dreams David saw two halves of a worm groping about for each other. One of the halves was bleating, “Davey, where are you?”
As she had long intended, Primrose fixed flower boxes to the side and back windows of her room. In the boxes she planted purple and yellow pansies. She loved the feel of their velvety petals between her fingers.
On one weekend David and his father played miniature golf. Afterward they had Dairy Queen milk shakes. Another weekend they went to a fair. There were warm donuts from a machine. David ate three. They watched goats and cows compete for blue ribbons. The straw on the ground smelled like Madame Dufee’s carpet-covered reading room.
August waved shimmering images above the roads he pedaled on. August thundered like falling chairs in a distant room.
Primrose surrounded the van with a one-foot-high white picket fence. The ground in the driveway was hard, so she used a spoon to dig holes for the fence posts.
David became more careful than ever about obeying rules. It was easier to do now that Primrose wasn’t around. Sometimes he even made up his own rules — the more to obey, the better. He crossed streets only at corners. He looked both ways. He carried candy wrappers in his pocket for hours until he found a trash can. He never took a shortcut across someone’s lawn. He never went in an OUT, out an IN, up a DOWN or down an UP. He never spat on a car. He never stepped on an ant, wiped his hands on his pants, picked his nose, blew bubbles in a drink, said a bad word, flicked earwax, sucked on a shoelace, played in mud, burped on purpose.
Sometimes in the night, when fireflies outside his bedroom window blinked and jiggled like stars on strings, when sleep curled furrily about him, sometimes then he thought he could feel his mother getting closer.
With the help of Refrigerator John, Primrose put a cement birdbath in her picket-fenced front yard. She filled it with water. She backed off a good twenty feet. She looked long at the van that had become her room that had become her home. She borrowed Refrigerator John’s camera. She took a picture.
One Saturday morning David’s yo-yo string broke. He fitted Spitfire with a new one. The old string he cut into several lengths, which he absently played with as he watched a Bugs Bunny cartoon. When the cartoon was over he looked down at his lap. The strings were braided.
The man on the TV screen had shiny black hair piled high and a blue glittery necktie. He sat on a porch, but even David could tell it was a fake porch on a stage somewhere. People were lined up. One person at a time walked up the steps and across the porch and stood before the high-haired, glittery man.
Every one of the people asked the man about somebody who had died, usually somebody in their family — a parent, a child, a grandparent, a wife, a husband. Someone even asked about a parrot. Each one had to tell the glittery man the name of their dead person — or parrot, whose name was Booger. The glittery man asked a few more questions, and then the person forked over something that had belonged to the dead one. Usually it was an item of clothing — a hat, a shoe. The glittery man held the item against his forehead and closed his eyes and swayed and hummed, and when he came out of his trance he told the person that he had been in contact with the “dearly beloved” and that the dearly beloved, even the parrot, had spoken to him. Usually he just heard a voice from beyond the grave — “the Other Side,” he called it — but one time he actually saw the dead person. It was someone’s wife. The glittery man told the husband what she looked like on the Other Side, and the husband was excited and saying “Yes! Yes! That’s her!” and he was crying and laughing at the same time and he practically knocked over the glittery man trying to thank him and hug him, and two bodyguards had to help him off the porch.
David chose a Thursday night because he knew Primrose would be out shopping. Even so, he didn’t want to risk parking his bike outside and having it seen, so he walked.
As he passed Refrigerator John’s abode he was drawn like a moth to the warm windows of light, but he forced himself to keep going. He wished he had brought a flashlight. He wished he ate carrots.
Here the chorus of crickets was loud and neverending. Every few steps he looked back at Refrigerator John’s, its golden windows receding like the portholes of a departing ship. He kept his hands in his pockets. He squeezed the memento.
The house gave no light; darkness seemed to have puddled here. He wanted to turn back, but he had come too far. He found the front door — or rather, the front space. The door was wide open. He reached over the threshold, waved his hand around. Nothing but the smell of sour flowers.
He felt queasy. He whispered, “Hello?”
No answer.
“Anybody home?”
Nothing.
Louder: “Madame Dufee?”
The darkness parted. Someone was coming, a face floating ghostly in candlelight. The face stopped before him. Was it her? He couldn’t tell. The wild hair caught in the light was dark, not blonde. Frayed old nightshirt. No flaming dragon tongues. Maybe he came to the wrong house, got mixed up in the dark. He took a step back.
At last she spoke: “Are you looking for my girl?”
“No,” he said. “I’m looking for Madame Dufee.” He looked down at her bare feet. No toe rings. “Are you Madame Dufee?”
She reached into the darkness with the candle. “Is she out there?”
“Who?”
“My girl.”
“You mean Primrose?”
She smiled. “Primrose Periwinkle Dufee.”
Periwinkle?
“I want to ask you a question,” he said.
“Do you know her? My girl?” She was still looking over his shoulder.
“Yes,” he told her.
“She lives out there.” She pointed with the candle.
“I know. Madame Dufee —”
“She doesn’t sleep with me anymore.”
“Madame Dufee!”
He flinched at his own voice, but she continued to gaze at the stars. “Yes?”
“I want to ask you about my mother.”
Slowly, for the first time, she turned her face to him. Candlelight glimmered in her eyes and the tips of her wild hair. She smiled. “I know.”
“You
do
?”
“Everyone wants to know about their mother. Everyone loves their mother. Do you love your mother?”
“Yes.”
“Good boy.” She laid her hand on his head. “Your mother will have a long and happy life.”
“My mother is dead.”
She tilted her head, as if testing the sight of him from a different angle. She closed her eyes. She nodded. “Ah.” She stepped aside. “Come in.”
He went in and followed instructions to sit opposite her on the floor. In the soft, dim light the room looked more like a tent than ever. She placed the candle between them. They sat like that for a long time. Her eyes were closed. There was a faint smile on her face. Was she making contact with the Other Side? Was his mother there? Here? Somewhere in the shadows beyond the candleglow?
She said, dreamily, “Your mother . . .” She was silent for a while, then said it again: “Your mother . . .”
The candle flame wavered. He felt a spike of excitement. “Do you see her?”
“Your mother . . .”
He clutched his knees. “Carolyn Sue Limpert! She was born in the state of Minnesota! She has brown hair and green eyes!”
She was staring at him. “Green eyes?”
“Yes! Green!”
“My Primrose has green eyes.”
He shouted: “My mother! Carolyn Sue Limpert! Is she here?”
Her eyes rolled to the ceiling, beyond the ceiling. “Your mother . . . is everywhere.”
Frantically he looked around. “Where?”
“Your mother loves you.”
“Where is she? I want to see her.”
The shadows, the soft walls were moving. He was standing, turning, reaching . . .
She said, “You were a pretty baby.”
He ran from one wall to the next, clutching at the wooly hanging carpets.
“Where is she?”
“My Primrose was a pretty baby.”
She was staring at the candle.
He fell to his knees. The candle flame seemed to fatten and grow. It seemed to invite him into the bright heart of itself. She was in here . . . she was close . . .
He pulled the memento from his pocket. It was a little purple plastic turtle. His mother loved turtles. He had bought it for her birthday with his own money. She had made it into a pin. She wore it every day. She was about to be buried with it, but he had reached into the casket and pulled it from her dress, so they wouldn’t bury all of her. No one had tried to stop him.
He held out the purple turtle. “This is from my mother.” He set it on the carpet.
She ran her fingertip over it. She picked it up. She cradled it in both her hands. She closed her eyes, smiled, sang softly: “Rock-a-bye baby on the treetop . . .”
Dumbfounded, watching her swaying and singing, he knew it was all wrong, he should never have come here. He snatched the turtle from her. “Crackpot!” he shouted. The force of the word blew the candle-point in her direction. “You’re a crackpot!”
He ran from the house.