Tiger Eyes (2 page)

My aunt pokes her head into my room and says, “Lunch time, girls.”

“I’m not hungry,” I tell her.

“It’s just soup and sandwiches,” she says. “Lenaya … would you like to stay for lunch?”

“Sure,” Lenaya says. “Thanks.”

“I don’t want anything,” I say.

“You’ve got to eat, Davey. At a time like this it’s important to keep up your strength. I’ll fix you a tray. You and Lenaya can eat in your room. How about that?”

I nod. It is easier than arguing.

When she is gone I turn to Lenaya and say, “Her real name is Elizabeth but everyone calls her Bitsy. Isn’t that a dumb name for a forty-seven-year-old woman? She’s my father’s sister.
I mean
was
. That’s the way you put it when somebody dies, isn’t it? You say
was
.”

“I guess,” Lenaya says.

“She’s from New Mexico.”

“I know. She seems nice.”

“My uncle, Walter, is a physicist at the Lab in Los Alamos. That’s where the first atom bomb was built.”

“I know,” Lenaya says again. “I was talking to him before, while you were asleep. I can’t wait to take physics, but I think you have to be a junior.”

Bitsy carries a lunch tray to my room. Lipton Country Vegetable soup, tuna fish sandwiches and iced tea, with lemon slices floating on top.

I watch as Lenaya begins to eat.

I take a sip of iced tea. Then I try a bite of tuna fish sandwich. I chew and chew until I feel myself gagging. I jump off the bed and race down the hall to the bathroom, where I spit the food into the toilet.

But this time I don’t throw up.

THREE

On the night that my father was killed, after the police and the neighbors had left, Jason and I got into bed with Mom. We’d left a light on in every room. The house was very quiet and I thought about how strange it is that sometimes quiet can be comforting, while other times, it becomes frightening.

“What’s it like to be dead?” Jason asked Mom.

“Peaceful,” Mom told him.

“How do you know?” Jason said.

“I don’t really,” Mom said. “But it’s what I believe.”

“Suppose they come back?” Jason asked.

“Who?” Mom said.

“The guys who shot Daddy. Suppose they come back and shoot us, too?”

“They won’t,” Mom said.

“How do you know?” Jason asked.

“I just do, that’s all,” Mom said.

“Do you think it hurt?” Jason said.

“What?” Mom asked.

“When Daddy got shot. Do you think it hurt him?”

“No,” Mom said. “I think it happened so fast he didn’t feel a thing.”

“That’s good,” Jason said. “Isn’t that good?”

“Yes,” Mom said, “that’s good. Now let’s try to get some sleep, okay?”

“Okay,” Jason said, yawning, as he snuggled up against Mom and closed his eyes.

Mom looked at me. I didn’t say a word. I couldn’t. I reached for her hand and held it tightly. I rested my head on her shoulder.

FOUR

Walter and Bitsy stay with us for ten days and Bitsy offers to stay longer, to help my mother. But Mom says, “No, you’ve done enough already.”

“There’s no such thing as enough,” Bitsy says. “We’re family. Maybe we haven’t seen much of each other over the years …” Her voice trails off.

“We kept planning a trip to New Mexico,” Mom says, “but somehow …” She shakes her head. Neither one of them seems able to finish a sentence.

“Come with us now,” Bitsy says. “The change would do you good.”

“I can’t,” Mom says. “I’ve got to pick up the pieces by myself.”

“All right … but we don’t want you to worry about money, Gwen. We can help. We
want
to help … until you get back on your feet.”

My mother presses her lips together and shakes her head again. “I think we can manage.”

Bitsy gets up from the table and walks into the kitchen where she pours herself a third cup of
coffee. I am standing by the stove, stirring honey into a cup of tea that I am not going to drink.

“I remember when he was born,” Bitsy says. “He was such an adorable baby.” At first I think she is talking about Jason. But when she says, “Always drawing … right from the beginning … and such a good student … such a fine athlete …” I realize that she means my father. “I still can’t believe it …” Bitsy continues, her voice breaking.

I don’t want her to cry. Not now. She takes a few deep breaths, blows her nose and the moment passes. She carries her coffee cup back to the dining area and sits down again. “No will, no insurance, no savings,” she says to Mom. “What were you living on, anyway … love?”

“More or less,” my mother answers.

Bitsy sighs. “Adam always was a dreamer.”

“Yes,” Mom says. “That’s one of the reasons I loved him.”

But we’re all dreamers, I think. If you don’t have dreams, what do you have?

Later, as Bitsy and Walter kiss each of us goodbye, Bitsy says, “We have a big house … and you’ll always be welcome.”

“We’re only as far away as the phone,” Walter adds.

“Thank you,” Mom says. “I’m glad you were here. You were a real help.”

I have mixed feelings when Walter and Bitsy leave. It’s good to be by ourselves again. Just us.
Just the family. But it’s also a reminder that my father isn’t here anymore. That he won’t be back. That from now on it will be
only
the three of us.

At night, I lie in my bed, frightened. I hear noises I’ve never heard before. With Bitsy and Walter sleeping on the sofa, in the living room, I wasn’t so scared. None of us was. Now it’s back to a light on in every room and Jason creeping into Mom’s bed in the middle of the night.

I feel like going into Mom’s room, too. With the three of us close together I don’t feel so alone.
But I’m fifteen
, I keep reminding myself.
I can’t sleep in my mother’s bed forever
.

The worst times are when I start to think about the brown paper bag on my closet shelf. Then my heart beats very fast and I have trouble breathing. So I squeeze my eyes shut to erase the picture in my mind.

We live above the store and I listen for footsteps on the outside stairs. I’ll have plenty of warning if anyone tries to get up here, I tell myself, touching the breadknife that I’ve hidden under my pillow.

And I’m not the only one who’s prepared. My mother keeps the gun under her bed. She doesn’t know that I know. But I do. I’ve seen her holding it. It’s loaded. She’s ready to use it, if she has to.

Not like Dad.

He kept the gun in the store, on a shelf right
under the cash register. But it wasn’t loaded. He was afraid Jason would get hold of it or something. So the bullets were in a locked drawer and only my father had the key. We’d been robbed two other times, but the second time my father waved the gun at the guy and he took off with just a six pack.

My father’s dream was to sell the store and open a small gallery with sculpture and paintings. My father could have been another Van Gogh. Or, at least, a portrait artist. He was really good with faces, especially eyes. He kept his easel in the store, right by the register, and when business was slow he sketched. There are charcoal drawings, most of them of our customers, hanging on a wire around the perimeter of the store. And upstairs, in my parents’ bedroom, the walls are covered with portraits of us. Mom, Jason and me. A family history.

Hugh had been working in the store all summer. That’s how we met. We didn’t start going out right away, though. At first it was just me saying, “You want help stacking the bread?”

And Hugh answering, “Sure, why not?”

Hugh didn’t say much. All I knew about him was that he was going to be a senior and that he liked his pizza with pepperoni. And I knew how I felt when I stood close to him. Or when he looked at me. Or when his hand brushed against my arm.

FIVE

One afternoon I am sitting in the living room, leafing through a magazine. I can’t read anymore. I try, but the words blur together, or I find myself reading the same sentence over and over and still don’t know what I have read. My mother and Jason are in their rooms, napping. We are getting to be experts at sleeping during the day. So when the doorbell rings, there is no one to answer it but me. And it is Hugh.

“How’s it going, Davey?” he asks, as he hugs me.

Before I can answer, before I can lie and say,
okay
, Hugh begins to cry. I feel his body shaking and I back away, looking anyplace but at him.

I hear him sniffle and take a breath. “How about a walk on the beach?”

“No,” I tell him.

“Your mother says you haven’t been out of the house since the funeral.”

“So?”

“So … it would be good for you to get outside.”

My mother comes into the room then, pulling her robe around her. “That’s what I’ve been trying
to tell her,” Mom says. “She needs some fresh air.”

“Oh, all right,” I say, seeing the pained look on Mom’s face. I go into the bathroom and splash my face with cold water. I have dark circles under my eyes and my suntan has faded to a yellowish color. I pull my rope belt through my jeans, which are falling off because of all the weight I’ve lost since that night. I look like hell. But I don’t care.

Outside, the bright sunshine hurts my eyes and I have to shade them with my hand. I follow Hugh down the stairs but I don’t look at the store. I know there is a C
LOSED
sign on the door. I saw Walter printing it the day after the funeral.

Hugh takes my hand. He rubs his thumb along the bottom of mine, trying to soothe me. I know this is hard for him, too. I tighten my fingers around his, to let him know I understand. We walk to the Boardwalk, then across it, to the beach.

I take a deep breath and inhale the salt air which is mixed with the aroma of roasting peanuts, taffy and the musty smell of the amusement piers.

I was conceived on the beach, under the Million Dollar Pier. My parents used to call me their Million Dollar Baby. I’m the reason my father gave up his sports scholarship to Rutgers, and my mother went to work in a James’ Saltwater Taffy shop. In those days Atlantic City
was the pits. But not anymore. Now that gambling’s been voted in, Atlantic City is supposed to become the next Las Vegas. Hotels and casinos are sprouting up all over the place.

“What are you thinking?” Hugh asks, as we walk along the ocean’s edge.

“Nothing,” I say.

And then Hugh puts his arms around me and kisses me. I want to kiss him back but I can’t. I can’t because kissing him reminds me of that night. So I break away from him and run. I hear Hugh calling, “Davey … wait.”

But I don’t wait. I run and run, until I am home. Then I get into bed and stay there for five days.

SIX

I don’t want to start school. I don’t want to do anything but stay in bed. Stay in bed, with the covers over my head. All day. At night I prowl around, carrying my breadknife, and I check the lock on the door and listen for footsteps. I try not to remember. Not to remember that night. Not to remember the brown paper bag on my closet shelf. Not to remember anything.

“Take a shower, Davey,” my mother says, on the night before school starts. “Wash your hair. I’ll bet it’s been ten days. That’s not like you.”

It’s been thirteen days. Thirteen days since I’ve bathed. I know I smell. But I don’t care. I roll over and pull the bedsheet up over my ear. My bed smells too. I like it. A warm, salty, slightly sour smell. My own unwashed smell. Coming from the inside of me.

“Please, honey,” Mom says. “Don’t wait until tomorrow morning to get ready for school.”

As if I am planning to jump out of bed in the morning and head right for the shower.

She shakes me a little to make sure I am listening. “For me, Davey. Do it for me, okay?”

It is the
for me
that gets through. My mother
doesn’t pull guilt trips on me very often. And maybe she isn’t even trying, but it works. There is still a side of me that feels badly for behaving the way I am. After all, I’m not the only one who cares about my father.

So I get out of bed, feeling wobbly from lack of exercise and so little food. And I head for the bathroom.

Minka follows me. She jumps onto the toilet seat and laps up water from the bowl. She has her own bowl of fresh water in the kitchen but there’s something about drinking from the toilet that really appeals to her. I’ve given up on trying to get her to stop. Minka is a beautiful calico, with white paws. I got her for my twelfth birthday. She was the only female in the litter. Lenaya says Minka has an oral fixation. That she wasn’t suckled enough as a kitten, so she’s trying to make up for it now. It’s true that she’ll lick you. Fingers, toes, you name it. But that only makes her more lovable.

I wonder if Minka understands about my father. At times I think she does. That she senses something wrong. She’s lost a lot of her playfulness since that night and spends most of her time curled in a ball, sleeping on my bed, next to my legs. Or maybe she is just trying to comfort me. Who knows?

I stand under the hot shower, soaping myself all over. I shampoo my hair twice and let the suds drip down into my face, stinging my eyes.

I used to sing in the shower. I like the way my voice sounds with an echo chamber. I wonder if I’ll ever sing in the shower again? I wonder if I’ll ever want to?

I wrap myself in a towel and walk down the hall to my room. My mother has changed the sheets on my bed.

“You didn’t have to do that,” I tell her.

“I know. I wanted to,” she says. “You’ll sleep better.”

“I don’t feel very well,” I tell her. “I might be coming down with something.” I get into bed and lie back on the clean pillowcase.

Mom sits down on the edge of my bed. “I remember my first day of high school,” she says, tossing her hair away from her face. “I had violent stomach cramps. I didn’t want to go either.” She takes my hand in hers.

“It’s not that,” I say. “It’s …”

“I know, Davey.” Tears well up in her eyes. “Don’t you think I know?”

“Yes,” I tell her. “But having you know isn’t enough.”

T
he next morning, when I walk into the kitchen, Jason is wearing his Dracula cape and gobbling up his cereal. He can’t wait to go back to school. “And this year I’m going to read real books. No more baby books. Right, Mom?”