Robert Wilson - Gypsies

“If we wait for her to like,” Laura said, “we’ll be here another twenty years.” It was undeniable.

“Now,” Laura said. “We should talk to her now.”

Karen hesitated and then wondered at her own reluctance. “Doesn’t it scare you at all—what she might say? Don’t you think about what it might mean —knowing?”

Laura walked with her to the stairs. They were sisters now for certain. No time had passed; they were altogether children. Laura said, “I’m more scared of what might happen if we don’t.” The house felt suddenly colder.

Mama was in the kitchen drying dishes.

How full of memories this house is, Karen thought. But it was not so much the house as the furnishing of it, the lay of things. The kitchen was like the kitchen in every other house they had lived in. The tile was peeling up, the cupboards were painted a dingy flat yellow color. Dish towels hung on a wooden rack; the dishes were stacked in a white Kresge’s drainer. Cups on cup hooks, pot holders in the shape of roosters tucked behind the toaster, a hand-stitched sampler on the wall bearing a passage from Proverbs. It was late afternoon and the kitchen window showed a dismal backyard terrain of powder snow and hillside and empty sky. Daddy would be home in an hour or two… longer if he stopped to have a drink.

It was Laura who had the courage to say, “Mama, we need to talk.”

Jeanne Fauve looked up briefly. “Talk about what?”

“Old times.”

Mama stood still for a few moments, then set down the dish she’d been drying and turned to face Laura. Her expression was hooded, unreadable. “Wait here,” she said finally, and bustled out of the room.

Karen sat with her sister at the kitchen table, tracing patterns with her finger in the chipped Formica. How old was this table? As old as herself? My God, she thought, we don’t need to dig up the past: it’s here, it’s all around us.

Mama came back with a shoe box under her arm. She sat down at the table and pried up the lid.

Inside the box there were pictures.

Mama said, “These are the old days. All these photos.” She emptied them onto the table.

Karen sifted through the pile. The photographs had aged badly. She remembered the various cameras Mama used to own: a Kodak Brownie, which had produced most of these mirror-finished black-and-white pictures; and later a big plastic Polaroid camera, the kind where the photograph rolled out by itself and then you had to wipe it down with some evil-smelling preservative.

“Here,” Mama said. “The house on Constantinople… you remember?”

Karen inspected the picture. Daddy must have taken it: it showed Mama standing by their new car, a steely blue Rambler parked in front of the house. Karen and Laura and Tim stood listlessly in the background leaning against the porch railing. How bored we look, Karen thought. It must have been a church day: everyone was dressed up, Mama in her pillbox hat with the preposterous black mesh veil, Karen and Laura in white starched dresses. Tim wore a black suit and collar. How Tim had always hated those collars. It made his child face seem piggish, baby fat pushed up into his chin.

Briefly, dizzyingly, she remembered her dream, the ravine behind the house, the night they had passed into a grim world of Tim’s devising. And not just a dream. It was a memory. It was as real as this photograph.

She thought, If we had taken Mama’s Kodak Brownie through that Door we might have a picture now—a picture of that strange night city, a picture of the Gray Man.

In her mind the Gray Man said, Your firstborn son.

“Those were good days by and large,” Mama was saying. “Your father had steady work. And I think I loved that old house on Constantinople more than any place I’ve lived since. More even than this place.”

Laura said, “Then why did you leave?”

Laura was focused, alert: Laura had not been seduced by the photographs.

Mama said, “Well, you know. You remember what I used to tell you kids? We’re gypsies. We move around …”

Laura said, “That’s not a reason.”

Mama hesitated, then turned back resolutely to the photographs. “Here’s the apartment in the West End. Karen, you were in fifth grade that year. That was your birthday party—you remember that? Here’s where we moved in Bethel. That’s Tim on the streetcar going downtown. Here we are with Mama Lucille taking the boat tour around the Point, I guess it was 1965 or ’66, the summer we had so many fireflies. Oh, and here I am—I was skinny in those days—riding up the Incline with your father. Here—”

Laura said, “There aren’t any baby pictures.”

Mama remained silent, her eyes on the pile of photographs.

Laura went on, “It just seems strange. No baby pictures. And the way we moved. I mean, there was Constantinople Street, there was Bethel; there was the West End, there was Duquesne. And we could have stayed on. Daddy wasn’t drinking so bad in those days. And I remember how we moved. Pack up and leave overnight. Like we were skipping out. But I remember how you always left the rent in a white envelope taped inside the door. So we were running, but not because of money.”

Mama said sullenly, “Is that why you came back here—to stir up all that old trouble?”

“Is it so wrong to want to understand?”

“Maybe. Maybe there was a good reason we left those places.”

“We’re all grown up now,” Laura said. “We have a right to know.”

“If it would help you,” Mama said vehemently, “you think I wouldn’t have told you? It was only ever to protect you … it was only so you could lead normal lives.”

Normal lives, Karen thought. She was passive now, a spectator in this exchange between her mother and her sister, thinking, A normal life is all I ever wanted. A normal life is what I wanted for Michael.

Laura said, “But we don’t lead normal lives.”

“But you could!”

“No. We can’t. Maybe for the same reason you couldn’t.” Laura held up a handful of the flimsy old photos. They looked, Karen thought, like so many brittle leaves. “Is he in here?”

Mama looked fearful. “Who?”

“You know who. Is he in here? Is he looking over somebody’s shoulder? Is he watching from the window across the street while Daddy waxes the Rambler? Is that why we moved all the time, because he found us on Constantinople Street and he found us in Bethel and he found us in Duquesne?”

Karen was holding her breath now. She thought of what Michael had said about the Gray Man on the beach, the way he had flicked that little girl out of the world with a gesture. With his eyes.

Mama said breathlessly, “You shouldn’t even talk about him. It could bring him back. It’s bad luck.”

“It doesn’t matter now,” Laura said firmly. “He doesn’t need luck.”

“God help us,” Mama said. The kitchen clock ticked; a wind rattled the windowpane. Mama added faintly, “He found you?”

“He found Michael in Toronto,” Laura said. “He found all three of us in California. There’s no reason to believe he can’t find us here.”

“So much time passed… we thought you were safe.”

“Did you? What about Tim—is Tim safe?”

“I pray for Tim.” Mama lowered her head. “I pray for him the way I prayed for you all these years.”

Laura looked startled. She opened her mouth, closed it again.

Karen found herself speaking. “We need to know all there is to know.” The words spilled out. “Not just for us. For Michael’s sake.”

“It almost wrecked us,” Mama said quietly. “Do you understand? It could wreck us again… There’s nothing I can say to help you.”

“Please,” Karen said.