Larque on the Wing (29 page)

Sky was not there, was not the cause of the uproar after all. It was a Hoot-versus-Hoot confrontation.

Hoot had seized his startled double by, of all things, the foot. “I would
never
wear tassel loafers!” Hoot was roaring, trying to pull the offending shoe off. Candy Ass appeared to have some good and proper Germanic character in him after all; white-faced and speechless yet stubborn, he resisted, stayed upright, yanked his ankle out of Hoot's grasp, and refused to show much reaction to the latter's loud invasion of his personal space. All of this made Hoot even more enraged. He invoked the third person mode of address. “Hoot Harootunian would not be caught dead in pansies!” This referred, evidently, to Candy Ass's flowered tie, which Lark found rather attractive along with his lavender shirt, though his pearl gray polyester suit was a turn-off. Hoot lunged, ripped at the tie unsuccessfully, and then tried to tear Candy Ass's suit jacket off his shoulders.

“You show him, Dad!” Jason yelled, ripping off his own bow tie. All three boys had dumped their trays with silvery clangs to the floor and were jumping and cheering like spectators at a sports event. The other onlookers were not nearly so favorably impressed.

“Is somebody calling the police?” one of the matrons standing near Lark exclaimed in lieu of screaming.

“It's one of those in-the-family things,” another replied knowledgeably between shrieks. “The police won't want to come.”

“This is
my
place!” Hoot bellowed at his apparent twin. “Get the hell out!” Not a logical command, as he had taken a stranglehold on his double. But that was Hoot. When he got this angry he didn't think. Next thing he would be pounding on—on himself, in effect.

Lark inhaled a deep breath, let it out in a long sigh, and focused. She knew she had to do it.

Concentrating, she stared, and the Hoot who was doing all the yelling slipped back into the other one like a drawer into a chest, as neatly as if he had never been away.

For Lark, it was a moment of personal epiphany. God must have felt somewhat the same way when he tidily tucked Jesus into Mary or pulled Eve out of sleeping Adam. And she knew she had done it perfectly, because Hoot kept right on yelling.

“Christ!” he screamed, looking down at his clothes as if they were poisoned. “My God, I wouldn't be caught dead!” He rushed out of the room, blundering into people and spraying buttons like bullets as he pulled his suit coat off.

“Dad! Yo, Dad-dude!” The boys took off after him. Smiling, Lark watched all four of them disappear upstairs.

“Lark!” A familiar voice, Shadow's, shouted a warning from across the room. At the same time, out of the corner of her eye, Lark saw it herself: the short white sequined figure, her mother's, was turning to peer at her.

It was the most frightening caught-off-guard moment in Lark's life except maybe the childhood time she was playing with matches and set her own hair on fire. A jolt of adrenaline jarred her like a cattle prod. She took off so fast she lost her hard-won cowboy hat and never noticed. Next thing she knew she was in the dining room, and she didn't even remember starting to run, or knocking over so many respectable people on her way. This was turning into what would be quite a memorable event for many of Mom's friends. How nice. The chaos was keeping Florrie in the living room for the time being, but Lark knew her mother would be on her trail soon. Where could she hide?

“Under here,” somebody offered in a loud whisper, lifting the long white skirt of the dining room table.

It seemed as good an option as any. Lark dived into concealment directly beneath the megacake, and Sky moved aside to make room for her.

FIFTEEN

U
NDER THE TABLE'S MODESTLY ALL-CONCEALING SKIRTS,
in the dimness of its woody womb, Lark stared wide-eyed at her own embodied childhood.

“What the hell are you trying to prove?” she hissed at Sky.

“I wanted cake,” Sky said.

“For crying out loud, I could give you cake! Didn't you know Mom was in here?”

“I knew. I wanted her to feed me.”

The sugar-decked heaven overhead might as well be made of Styrofoam, Lark realized, for all the good it would ever do Sky and her. Mom would never slice it and share it with them. In fact it probably was made of plastic, to be kept forever under wraps in Mom's virginal white freezer.

Lark told Sky, “Baby, it ain't never going to happen. You just let me feed you. Mom wants that cake all to herself.”

She felt bitterness edging her voice. She saw how Sky gazed back at her, hard-jawed, hollow-cheeked, eyes huge in the shadows.

Right outside her hiding place she heard an unmistakable voice say, “Where is he? I hear him.”

She froze. Sky's eyes widened even more enormously, and her bony hands darted out to cover Lark's mouth. Lark's voice had risen too loud, and now Florrie stood so close to them that the square toes of her little white sneakers were poking under the table skirt, nearly touching Sky's black hat lying on the floor.

“He is a deviant,” Florrie declared. “I know he is a deviant. Where did he go?”

“Um, through there. Out that way.”

God bless Doris; did her carotene-stained brain really understand what was going on? Evidently so. After Mom padded off toward the back door, Doris giggled—inversely, like the nerd she was. Lark would know that giggle anywhere.

“Thanks,” she called softly, removing Sky's hands from her mouth.

“Shhhh.” Doris's amused warning floated down from on high. Easy for her to laugh; she was just an onlooker. Probably God watched the human condition with the same sort of merriment a lot of days. “She'll be back. You know that manic gleam she gets in her sweet little baby blue eyes?”

Lark and Sky both knew that gleam, and the thought of it panicked them. It meant doom: it meant that in a few moments one of them would be blinked, or both of them, or Sky would run away to starve on a lonesome prairie again … no. Lark couldn't let it happen. Her frightened gaze met Sky's, and her hand reached out, but at the same time the little girl's hand wavered forward to meet hers.

“Here she comes,” Doris sang.

“Call out the National Guard,” Lark snapped in reply to Doris. “Don't run away,” she said to Sky.

And of all the questions, “Do you love me?” Sky whispered to her.

In the palm of Sky's hand nestled a little metal star. Lark's fingertips touched it as she answered without hesitation, “Yes.”

“Really?” Sky's voice rose till it squeaked. “You sure?”

“Shhh! Yes. I really do.” Why was the kid bringing this up at such a crazy time? Yet Lark had to answer. The duck-toed sneakers of doom were waddling closer, Lark could feel their deadly approach in the floorboards, she could hear their tread even above the thumping of her heart, but what Sky wanted to know was as important as survival. Maybe it
was
survival.

“I know he's around here somewhere.” Florrie's flutelike voice sounded right overhead.

Sky looked sick with fear, yet rapt. Lark spread her arms, offering a hug, but the little girl sat back, making herself tall, and faced Lark eye to eye.

“Will you take care of me always?” Sky breathed. “Promise?”

“Yes. I promise.”

It was a sacred vow. Somehow Lark knew that even before it all happened, even before Sky snuggled into her arms, pressing against her chest. That same moment a bent old finger clawed its way under the table skirt and started to lift, but Lark barely noticed, for something was happening that was more holy and intimate than sex, sweeter than Godiva chocolates; with a hushed translucent face and lidded eyes Sky was coming back to her. The child's form etherealized, impregnating her male body, melting into her heart, and it was a feeling like daybreak, like birdsong, like winging to the sky, chest bursting with song. Everything Lark had ever lost, all the innocence, the gusto, the wise wondering eyes and hiccups and shouting mouth and size-five sneakered feet that could run forever, it all sunrose back into her and blazed into a wildfire of joy. Sky was giving it all back.

It did not matter that her mother had lifted the table skirt and was peering under it at her, with her round bottom in the air and her round face upside down and that look on it, the oh-dear-this-is-not-right look that meant in a moment she would blink. It did not matter, because no longer did two fugitives cower there. Instead, there was one person, Skylark, more or less complete again, and this forty-year-old kid knew what to do. With a yell of sheer glee, with an exultation of her muscular body such as Samson must have felt knocking the props out from under the temple, she stood up, bringing down the table and its god-awful cake.

People screamed, somewhere nearby Doris laughed hysterically, and the towering dessert toppled right onto Florrie's butt. It flattened her momentarily, almost buried her. And it was not just Styrofoam after all. Fighting her way clear of the tablecloth, Skylark saw the top two tiers breaking into edible bits. Angel food, of course. That was all right. She grabbed a greedy handful, covering herself with icing and crumbs, and stuffed her mouth. Feeding Sky.

Her body, she noticed, was still slim and hard, still flat-chested, still boyish in boots and jeans. But her shoulders had narrowed, and her crotch felt different. Her spare part was painlessly gone. Okay. That was okay, dear God, just as long as she still felt strong.

Short, besplattered, rather like a white maggot rearing up out of the garbage yet somehow majestic in wrath, Florrie arose from the cake crumbs. It was showdown time.

Lark did not even consider running. Sky had not come back to her for nothing, and she was not going to let the kid down ever again. She spraddled her booted feet, kicking an angel on a stick to one side, and waited.

“
You
,” Florrie gasped at her.

What did Florrie want a confectionery heaven for, anyway, when everything in the real world was so spicy-bright? Lark saw it all as if never before, as if the camera behind her eyes were a tourist in a new world clicking slide after slide, transparencies more lucent than stained glass. There stood Doris in her fluorescent orange dress, talking excitedly to—Byron?
My brother?
In an African print shirt? Of course he was there, Florrie would have summoned him for the occasion, but he looked back at Lark without recognition. It was okay. Maybe Doris was filling him in. And that woman who had been tending the guest book—wasn't it one of the Wiccan women, the witches who had seen Hoot in young Skylark's future? All the others, all the guests with their yarn-dyed clothing and their ineffable skin tones—those rose and china blue undertones, the delicate mint green shadows beneath their chins—they all stood aside as if lining some cow town street, watching the gunfighters face off. Someday soon she would put them all in a huge painting, all the amazing people, her mother and her brother and her orange best friend and the Popular Street people and the poodle-haired Wiccan and the turbaned one and other people Lark remembered, her naked date and Uncle Ralph and her college roommate and the creepy kid next door, all, everyone, and in the painting they would be dancing in the fields on the far side of Cowshit Creek; with teasel sticks in their hands they would dance around the great rock of truth, the monolith with petroglyphs of dancing animals and their wands of witness upstanding.

All this Lark saw in a single heartbeat. And she saw her father, Argent, resplendent in white linen, skulking near the front door, staying away from Florrie. Even from the distance and with danger crowding her mind Lark saw the silver sparks that were his cuff links. She saw the golden lights in the Virtuous Woman's hair like a halo. She saw the black lights dancing like little devils on Shadow's battered hat.

He was struggling to get across the room to her, but there were too many people in his way. Lark saw a tableau: the Virtuous Woman, in shock, standing salt white and motionless like Lot's wife, with Shadow dark and not yet acknowledged behind her, a premonition coming to the fore.

“
You
,” Florrie intoned, drawn up to her full four-feet-ten-inches of rotund, sugar-frosted dignity.

“Yes, ME!” The retort went up from Lark like a clenched fist. ME, the one you never let talk back. ME, the one you've never yet seen truly. ME, the rebel against your ideas of femininity. ME, the misguided woman with boots and dreams. “ME, Skylark, your daughter, remember?”

“Pervert,” Florrie averred, “you're ruining my party.”

Did her mother see her? Did her mother comprehend who she was? Probably not. She never had before, not once in Skylark's entire life. Why should she now?

“Go ahead,” Lark challenged. “Blink me if you can.”

It was crazy. But something in her would have gone crazy if she hadn't done it. It was time.

“Go away.” Confronted by unpleasantness, Florrie blinked.

Lark felt the effect like a spasm of sickness passing through her. She threw up her hands in protest and saw them fading before her eyes.

“No!” The yell was partly hers, partly Shadow's. She saw him struggling toward her, towing the Virtuous Woman by her wrist.

“Lark, fight it!” he called. “Fight it!”

From inside her she felt Sky answer. A fierce, wordless cry of defiance tore out of her; it was Sky's. Her pain was Sky's, and her fear, and her—anger, searing anger, rage at being violated again; she would not let it happen. The rage buzzed through her like electricity, shaking her hands but making them return to solid form. “I am ME!” Lark shouted. Every light bulb in the room popped, sending glass flying with an ethereal tinkling sound, angel-wing slivers of it lodging in the white ceiling tile. Electrical appliances thudded to silence, and outlets sparked and smoked as the wiring blew.

Inside Lark as if inside a dark closet a child was crying, I am
me
I am
not
going to be blinked I am
not
I am
not. I love me
.