Cheat and Charmer (59 page)

A good guy rode into town, tied up his horse, and walked down the middle of the street with his hands poised just above his two holstered guns. Suddenly the children heard a choking laugh and turned toward Veevi. “My God, look!” she said. “That’s the western set at Marathon. It’s been there forever. It was there when I worked on the lot a thousand years ago. Look! Do you recognize that saloon? Your father’s office is right across the street from it.”

The children scrambled up closer to the set. Lorna claimed to recognize the western street; Peter wasn’t so sure. “It might be the western town they have out at that ranch in Santa Barbara.”

“Well, I can’t prove it right now, because they’ve just switched to an interior, but if they go back to an exterior, check and see if it says ‘Hicks’s Dry
Goods’ next to the saloon. If it does, then it’s the Marathon set. Meanwhile, I’m going to make popcorn.”

She went out to the kitchen, and soon the children could hear the bursts of popcorn popping on the stove, but after it finished she stayed in there for a long time. Peter vaguely remembered his mother’s telling him earlier in the day to help his aunt with the Easter eggs that night, but Veevi hadn’t asked him yet and he didn’t want to get up. When she came back, holding a big steaming bowl of buttered and salted popcorn, her face was flushed and the children grabbed fistfuls even as she was setting it down on the floor for them. “Heavens!” she exclaimed. “I forgot the Cokes. You guys want Cokes? You can’t have popcorn without Cokes!”

Her heartiness struck Peter as odd; he had never heard her take that tone before, but he was beginning to have fun and to forget his shame at being too scared to go for a walk in the desert with her. He was getting caught up in the movie, caught up in waiting to see if the western set really and truly was Marathon’s, as she had claimed. Once again, she was gone for a long time, but when she came back she was carrying a tray with a plate of chocolate chip cookies and four ice-filled glasses of Coca-Cola.

“We saw ‘Hicks’s,’ ” he said, grabbing a cookie. “You were right. It’s the western set at Marathon.”

“Process shot!” Lorna called out as a gang of villains raced alongside a speeding train.

Veevi laughed. “You Hollywood brats don’t miss a thing, do you? Every other kid in the world thinks it’s real cowboys and a real train. Not you guys. Nobody can fool you,” Veevi said. Peter found her speech different and odd. It sounded lazy. And he wasn’t used to her making cracks; that wasn’t like her, though it was something his mother always did.

Veevi resumed her place on the sofa, watching the movie with them, smoking cigarettes, and reaching over now and then for a handful of popcorn. When the bowl was empty, she took it back to the kitchen and again stayed a long time and brought back another full bowl; but this time the kids had had their fill and barely touched it.

After the movie ended,
Have Gun, Will Travel
came on, followed by
Gunsmoke
, both of which were favorites with the Lasker kids. At ten o’clock, Lorna simply picked up Coco, who was nearly comatose after swimming all day, and put her to bed in the alcove off the living room.

When she returned, she and Peter and Veevi watched television together for another hour or so, until
The Fabulous 52
came on. That week’s
movie opened with a murder in which a man was thrown screaming off a building, and Lorna, who was frightened of violent deaths in movies, decided she didn’t want to see any more and asked Peter to change channels.

“But, dear,
we’re
not frightened and we want to see it,” Veevi said.

“Yeah,” said Peter. “It’s two against one.”

Lorna stood up, put her dolls away, and went to her cot in the alcove next to Coco’s.

Peter and Veevi watched a little more of the movie alone, with the sound turned down low. But Peter felt himself growing sleepy, and he went into the bathroom to change into his pj’s. When he turned out the bathroom light and came back into the living room, he saw that the television was off and that Veevi had disappeared into the kitchen. He heard running water, and he thought, Oh, she’s going to dye the Easter eggs. He knew he was supposed to help, but he was tired. He, too, had had a long day of swimming, and he went into his room and got into bed.

Outside it was quiet, much quieter than it was at home, where from his room every night Peter could hear cars whooshing by on Sunset Boulevard, sirens screaming through the canyons, dogs howling from their chained posts outside kitchen doors. Sometimes the sounds of outdoor parties drifted by, with vibrant waves of band music, the splashing of pool water, and laughter. Here in Palm Springs, though, the house was a half mile from the new freeway, much too far for the sounds of cars to reach his ears. Just across the street lay the desert, where small animals huddled under dry shrubs at night. Where, he wondered, did the lizards go? Surely, being coldblooded creatures, they had to find someplace warm. Maybe they came into people’s houses. The desert temperatures could drop to almost freezing, couldn’t they? Then where did the snakes and lizards go? Wouldn’t they want to come in and warm themselves?

He knew this didn’t happen, but it didn’t matter. With the thought that lizards and snakes might be crawling across the street and into the house, his breathing, which until that moment had been peaceful, came hard. In his mind’s eye, he saw hordes of fierce scaly lizards, their eyes red and their claws extended, scrambling across the cold night sand and finding their way through cracks in the walls into the small, unprotected house, where an army of them would march over his feet and under his blanket.

He bolted upright, sweaty and gasping, the way he sometimes did when he thought about death. His heart pounded in his chest; the back of his throat was dry. He needed a drink of water, but was too scared to get up: what if he stepped on a lizard? This is
stupid
, he said to himself. This is
dumb
. He got out of bed and walked toward the bathroom. On the way, he glanced at the living room and saw Veevi sitting back on the sofa, staring dreamily out the sliding glass doors at nothing at all, a cigarette dangling from her fingers. A book lay facedown on the rug at a funny angle, as if it had slipped from her hand. He hoped she wouldn’t hear or see him, but she did.

“Are you all right, dear?” she said. Her voice sounded high, childlike—strange.

“I’m just getting a glass of water.”

“Go back to bed, darling. I’ll get it for you.”

“That’s okay. You don’t have to.”

He didn’t want her to see him hot and trembling with fear, so he quickly went into the bathroom, drank the water, and went back to bed without looking in her direction. But in a minute she was leaning over him, whispering, “Here, dear. Here’s a glass of water.”

“Thanks.” He took a sip and handed the glass back to her.

She took it, but her hand was wobbly and a little of the water spilled onto his blanket. “Oops,” she whispered, with her other hand rubbing the wetness into the blanket. “All right, dear, try to sleep now,” she said.

Her speech was strange. The words were all slurred together, and her breath stank. As she leaned over and with her free hand fumbled with the blanket and sheets, trying to pull them up over his shoulder, her breath hit him again square in the face. Suddenly he understood what was wrong with her. She was drunk! The terrible smell was liquor. He had seen the bottle on the kitchen counter. Every night, before dinner, his mother poured herself a drink from it—one for herself and one for Veevi. The stuff that came out had an orange-brown color that became lighter when it was splashed over ice cubes.

But he hadn’t seen her drinking; how, then, had she gotten drunk? Then he remembered that each time she’d gone into the kitchen, she’d stayed for a long time. His deduction impressed him. He had never seen a drunk person before, although Lorna had told him that one night when she and Coco were brushing their teeth, Veevi had crawled into the bathroom on all fours. He had already gone to bed and was listening to Benny Goodman
when Lorna rushed in and described in great detail the way Veevi had swayed on her hands and knees and spoken in a weird high voice. Lorna had run downstairs for Gussie, who had picked Veevi up off the bathroom floor and carried her back to bed.

Go away! Go away! Peter said to himself. He shut his eyes tight and pretended to be suddenly and deeply asleep, which any sober person would know was impossible, since he had just thanked her for the water. But Veevi was too drunk, he saw, to tell. To his relief, she finally left and he heard her grunting and lurching her way back to the living room.

He had to do something, he thought. She was dangerous. She might set the house on fire with her cigarettes! She might try to hurt someone. He turned over on his side, his eyes wide open. What was she doing in the living room, anyway? He didn’t want her to come back into their room, but she was too close to Lorna and Coco, and he had to figure out what to do. The passageway between his and Veevi’s room and his parents’ room was almost completely dark, and Veevi had turned off the living-room light and the television. If he could just call his parents! If he could just become invisible and go into his parents’ room and call them! But the number, he remembered, was in Veevi’s shirt pocket. He had seen that quick orange flash when his mother had rushed back into the house to leave it.

His heart tightened and he held his breath. The grunting got louder. She was coming again, coming to their room. What would happen now? Was he going to have to listen to her falling asleep in the bed across from him? He squeezed his eyelids until they were almost shut, then, through a sliver of light, saw her steady herself in the door frame, then stretch out her hands, like a blind person, in the darkness.

Frozen under the covers he heard her soft, uncertain footfalls on the carpet. She was in the room now, but she wasn’t going to her bed; she was coming toward his! She was leaning over, groping along the edge of his bed. He could smell her sour, fumy breath and feel her hands tugging at the covers, patting his back. “There, now. Cover ’oo. Lovely boy. Not idiot. Nice boy. Veevi make ’oo warm.” She giggled. He felt her patting him, tucking him in, or trying to, and he stiffened. If only he could disappear! She had leaned over so far that he thought she was going to collapse on top of him. Then what would he do? She would smother him! He lay petrified while she tried to pull the covers back. “Move over, baby. Veevi keep ’oo nice ’n warm.”

She was getting into bed with him! No! He remained rigid, but as she
slid a leg in beside him she pushed and shoved him, and he felt himself being squeezed against the wall.

He felt her entangling him like an octopus. Her feet, two cold fishes, rubbed up against his. Somewhere in the region of his ankles he felt her ankles, and the nylon of her pajamas. With horror, he felt her face pressing against his neck and the back of his head. Her lips made strange noises: kissing noises. “Veevi love ’oo. Give Veevi kissies,” she said, kissing the back of his neck. One hand was wrapped around his head; the other lay along the length of his back and hips. He felt her breasts through her pajamas, soft against his back. Then, suddenly, her whole body collapsed, with one leg under the bedclothes pushed up against his, and the other like a fallen log on top. He was pinned under the covers—he couldn’t move. Her head was a dead weight on his shoulder. Whisky fumes swirled around him.

She had passed out.

He waited, unable to move. The minutes passed slowly, and he had no idea when his parents were coming home. He had to get out from under the dead weight of his aunt’s drunken body, but he was afraid that if he moved she would wake up.

Sharply alert himself, he could not have felt more fear and revulsion at the body lying next to him if it had been a corpse. A maddening restlessness surged through his legs. If he could wait a little longer, he told himself, and not panic, he could start to disentangle himself and get out from under her. So he kept as still as he could, and waited. He wanted more than anything just to change the position of his legs, but he was afraid any movement at all would disturb her and give her a chance to start making those terrible kissing sounds again.

All of a sudden, she gave out a great sigh. A warm wetness began to seep into his pajama bottoms. It was pee! Warm pee! Veevi’s pee! She was peeing the bed, peeing all over him! The wetness grew and spread, soaking the sheets and himself—and he could smell it, too, acrid and inescapable.

In desperation, not caring whether he woke Veevi or not, he pulled himself back from under the sheets and managed to hoist himself up over his aunt. His pajama bottoms dripped pee onto the blanket, and he retched. She didn’t stir or make a sound. Moving quickly, he grabbed the jeans and the T-shirt he had been wearing earlier in the day and went into the bathroom.

Quickly, he scrambled out of his pajama bottoms and left them on the
floor. He wet a washcloth and wiped his skin where the pee had touched him, and dried himself, and then put on his jeans. Then he went into his parents’ room and closed the door. They would come home, eventually, and find him. Meanwhile, he would lie in their bed with his eyes open, waiting for them; he was the baby-sitter now.