Larque on the Wing (14 page)

“Sorry!” she exclaimed.

The ceiling light blazed on. Someone said in quite an authoritative voice, “Don't move.”

It was impressive, actually. There stood Florrie in footed bunny-print pajamas, her short legs spraddled and both arms braced in front of her, aiming her handgun straight at the intruder just the way they had taught her in self-defense class down at the Senior Center.

“For Pete's sake, Mom, it's me,” Lark said.

“I am not a fool, young man.”

In that moment Lark learned physical fear. She also learned the limitations of being a young man. No matter how good a fighter she was, the person with the gun would always win.

The person with the gun was four feet tall, round, and dressed in flannelette, yet exuded absolute command of all that she surveyed. Lark started to talk, fast.

“Look, Mom, it really is me, Larque. I changed my appearance, I know I look like a boy but that's just temporary, I need to change it back, and then Sky ran away again, that's why I'm here in the middle of the night, I was looking for her and I didn't want to wake you. She—” About to say that Sky would vouch for her, Lark glanced toward the girl and broke off. Still on the floor, in a corner out of Florrie's sight, Sky cowered, clutching her own knees, her face pinched and gray with fear.

Sky hadn't been afraid to fight four tough guys in front of a bar—why was the kid so terrified now?

But, then again, why not? This was Mom they were facing here.

Treading verbal water, Lark jabbered, “Hail to me blithe spirit, bird I never wert, you should have just named me Shelley, Mom, you named Byron Byron and then he went and got his stupid dog, Childe Harold was he hight, and whence his name and lineage long, it suits me not to say, because he eats mail which is how we ended up with him but hey that's okay, um, listen, the child is father of the man and when I have fears that I may cease to be—”

“The devil can quote scripture,” Florrie said sternly. She twitched her gun. “Don't move. Get your hands up.”

Contradictory commands. Typical. Lark sighed and said, “Mom, just go ahead and call the cops. You were always threatening to call them on me anyway.”

“I was not.”

“You were too. That time when I was eight and stole Byron's Green Hornet ring you actually did call them. You made them take me down to the station and fingerprint me.”

Florrie was staring. Her weapon sagged. “Skylark?” she said uncertainly.

“Yeah, Mom, it's really me.”

Still crouching in her corner, “Don't let her see you!” Sky whispered frantically to Lark.

This made no sense. Of course her mother saw her already. “Skylark?” Florrie inquired again. She held her gun at her side and came forward a few baby steps. Then she smiled, a wide, sweet smile. “Of course it's Skylark,” she said. She blinked, like a flirt she set her old-lady eyelashes aflutter with blinking. “There you are,” she said kindly to Lark. “I see you now.”

It took only that eyeblinking instant, and it did not hurt, yet being shot would have been less painful. Nothing had ever before felt so horrible, like being a rag doll in a pair of cosmic hands, being reworked, resewn, restuffed, reembroidered, all the while helpless to say
but this is not me, not my face, not my body, this is not what I want to be
. Lark felt herself being fluffed like a pillow, plumped and smoothed, patted into place, rearranged. All her strong hard muscle, gone. Her new sexual equipment, gone. Her breasts, back again, bigger than ever and even more in the way. Larque looked down at herself, saw them like two soft cushions under a frilly blouse, saw her wide-load hips and potbelly under a flounced skirt, saw pantyhose on her bare shaved legs, flimsy canvas espadrilles on her feet.

“No,” someone whispered. Perhaps it was her whispering. Or Sky, her younger self, there on the floor, staring up at her in utter horror. In the next instant the doppelganger child put up her grubby hands as if to block a blow, then simply vanished. Gone. As if she never was. Where she had been was nothing but air.

“No,” Larque begged, either for Sky or for herself, perhaps for both. But no deity heard. Her voice came out high and girlish, all its resonance gone. Dear God, she had been blinked into her mother's ideal, the Virtuous Woman, whose worth is as rubies and whose head is stuffed with fluff like Winnie the Pooh. Larque lifted plump manicured hands and felt at her hair. It was permed into poodle curls.

“Don't you look nice, dear!” Her mother set down the gun on the dining room table and toddled toward her, beaming. “What a pretty outfit. So feminine.”

“Don't do this,” Larque cried at her. “Please, I'm your daughter, and I'm not like this, I never was like this!”

Because Larque's voice had gone shrill, her mother heard nothing it said. Florrie's soft old face kept smiling in beatitude. “I can't understand why I didn't recognize you, honey,” Florrie said, heading past her toward the kitchen to make some coffee. “How silly of me.”

“God help me,” Larque whispered. “Don't leave your gun lying around like that. It makes me want to just pick it up and off you.”

A coffee mug in each bent old hand, Florrie turned toward her with a slight puzzled frown. “Did you say something, sweetie?”

“I hate you.” Larque wanted to shout the words with karate fierceness, but a sob almost choked them. She turned and bolted, running out of her mother's house in the flapping shoes that made her wobble like a duck. She kicked them off outside the door, stepped on something sharp, wanted to swear but found she couldn't anymore. All she could do was limp over and bang her way into the Toyota. Doris was dozing on the steering wheel, oblivious to everything.

“Get me
out of here
!” Larque wailed at her.

Doris sat bolt upright and gawked at her, nonfunctional.

“Please
drive
,” Larque begged sweetly. “Before she comes out and—” And takes my cunt away, too, she wanted to say. But she couldn't. It seemed the Virtuous Woman was incapable of saying such a coarse thing.

Getting her slack jaw moving, Doris managed to whisper, “Is that you?”

“Of course it's me. I've been blinked.” Larque's voice shook. “Doris, please get a move on.”

“All right! I'm not a taxi service.” Doris started the Toyota, turned around and headed out the dirt driveway. “Where to this time?” she asked.

Lark's mind felt ready to explode.
Jesus jumping Christ, I don't know
!

“Lordy,” said Larque the Virtuous Woman meekly, “I'm not really sure.”

Hoot told himself he had slept some and just not noticed. He would have slept more if there had been any blankets. Getting dressed in the morning, he decided he would avoid any further shouting at Larque but remain firm regarding his ultimatum: he wasn't going to get kissy-face with any person who looked so much like a boy. He couldn't. If she wanted to do the conjugal thing with him, she had to get herself put back the way she belonged.

Going down to the kitchen, he wore a carefully maintained neutral expression—but Larque wasn't there to see it.

“Yo!” Hoot abandoned neutrality. “Larque, you home?” No answer. Maybe she had gone early to take care of herself the way he had told her? But without a car? And, he realized a moment later, looking around, without purse or wallet or jacket or—or shoes?

Had she run off? Now he was worried. Bullshit—he'd been worried all along. Damn it, women were so smart about some things, why did they have to be so stupid and always take yelling the wrong way? When a guy's angry he yells, when he's scared he yells, when he's worried he yells, when he's sorry he yells, when he's hurt he yells, what the hell else is he supposed to do? Send a card or something?

“She'll be back, Dad,” Jeremy said, startling the crap out of him. He hadn't heard the kid sockfooting up behind him.

“Yeah, I know.” Hoot knew no such thing, but the three boys were lined up on the stairs, half-dressed for school, watching him hunt for Larque, so he had to say it. “She'll probably be home to make us spaghetti for supper.” He fervidly hoped so—and Larque's spaghetti was the worst stuff he had ever tasted. She bought it in microwave trays. It was terrible.

“Really back, I mean,” Jeremy said.

“Yeah.” Jason nodded, somber. “She'll be Mom again, not some bimboy, right?”

“She still is your mother,” Hoot said loyally. And though he couldn't feel much enthusiasm for the concept, he knew in a way it was true. The fun and defiance and intelligence chasing across the face of that bimboy had been pure Larque. Her off-the-wall ideas were more her than—he didn't want to think about the missing parts—more her than anything else. But he didn't say it that way to the boys; he'd never been real good with words. “Who the hell else would it be?” he grumped. “Only your mother would do such a crazy thing.”

“Yeah,” the boys agreed.

And if it still was Larque, even though she looked different—what if she chose to stay different? Logically he should still be able to live with her, love her … to hell with logic. He would still love her, yes, damn it, but never in a thousand years would he be able to sleep with her if she was going to be a sex-change case. He just couldn't do it. He wouldn't be able to get it up.

Would he want a divorce?

The thought jolted him like a cattle prod. And Rodd, the youngest, chose that moment to voice his own worst-case fear.

“Did she run away, Dad?”

“Of course not!” Hoot bellowed. “For Christ's sake, would you twerps get ready for school? You'll be late!”

Actually they had tons of time to get ready for school. Everybody was up at the crack of dawn today, but even though it was obscenely early, Hoot found he couldn't sit still. Couldn't enjoy his coffee, couldn't understand the newspaper headlines or even the Doonesbury, couldn't concentrate on anything. Couldn't even get himself together enough to go look for a job, although he wanted to, having admitted to himself that maybe Larque would feel better if he did. He wanted to do something for her—the dishes? Run a month's accumulation of beer and soda cans down to the recycling center? Some damn thing to make her theoretically happy even though, in practical terms, he knew she would not give a shit at this point even if she was there to react, which she was not, might never be there—

Christ, that was no way to think. Of course she'd be there. In time for lunch, probably.

Maybe he ought to go downtown. The Farmers' Market would be open this early. He could pick up a door wreath or something for a peace offering.

No. That was lame. He should have done it before it was needed.

“Fuck all,” Hoot whispered. He felt desolate. Why hadn't he gotten her a gift while he still could? But it was stupid, to think it would have made much difference if he had brought home the silly heart-shaped thing. It wasn't like Larque could be bought. Face it, she had her own mind, her own agenda, her own reasons for doing things. How much did she really care about his agenda? About him?

“Let me dream,” Hoot protested to the air of the messy house. He just wanted to feel like something he did could make a difference.

She had to come back. In whatever form, she had to come back.

Did she have her key?

He hoped so. Yelling up the stairs, he told the boys, “I'm going downtown!”

They chorused, “Okay!”

“Listen for the phone in case your mom calls!”

“Okay!”

“Leave the back door unlocked in case she doesn't have her key!” He knew damn well she didn't.

“Okay!”

“Listen, I'm putting your lunch money on the kitchen table.”

“
Okay
, Dad!” They would tell him where to put it next.

“Don't forget it!” he hollered just to make them mad, and then he went. “Should have got the goddamn wreath,” he muttered as he headed out.

EIGHT

O
N THE WAY BACK TO TOWN IN
D
ORIS'S
T
OYOTA,
Larque sorted it out more or less. There were two options that she could see: fight back, maybe with some help from Shadow—or return to Hoot and live with the cushy body, mild manners, and ultrafeminine taste in clothing her mother had just given her. Hoot would probably like all of the above.

The Soudersburg streets ran past cramped, exceedingly vertical row houses with doors no more than two feet across. Pennsylvania Dutch stock, Larque knew, tended to breed women who matured to be about three feet wide. Wide women, narrow doors. It made no sense. What did they do, go in as brides and never come out again?

That was what Hoot's mother had done, just about. She never went anywhere except to church and the grocery store. And she was only two and a half feet wide.

I can't just go back. No way am I going to be just another housebound broad. I have to fight
.

The die was cast. The guy was fast. The pie was … whatever. “Drop me off, Doris,” Larque commanded, momentarily in Lark mode.

“You're welcome,” hinted Doris, who had to go home, get her shower, get dressed, and go to work.

“Thank you oh thank you oh thank you.”

It was daylight now. There were people around, sleepy and unsmiling, on their way to scutwork jobs. Larque had no patience for them, the rules of their world, the wreaths competing for approval on the narrow doors of their narrow houses, or with her own slow, soft, puffing body. She should have had Doris drive her closer to the Poplar Street sign she needed to change if she was going to get back to Popular Street and Shadow, who might help her. But what was she going to change it with, anyway? The chalk was in her jeans pocket, and her jeans were on Lark, wherever he was.

In her, that was where he was. She could feel him grappling with Larque the Virtuous Woman every step of the way. The Virtuous Woman wanted to go home. If Hoot was not there waiting, the V.W. would sit on the front steps and cry until he showed up to comfort her. Lark, however, wanted to kick butt.