"I'd still like to give you your present..
I
was going to hide it in the car and go out and get it while we were eating at the restaurant."
She swung her eyes, and then her shoulders relaxed. "Okay, give it to me if you want."
"I'll be right back." I said, and ran out to the garage where I had it hidden. Then I returned to her room and handed it to her.
She sat on her bed and opened the box. With Mama's help. I had bought her a beautiful athletic suit. It had black with spice trim boot-bottom pants, a black cap-sleeve sport top, and a matching jacket.
"This is great, April," she said, holding up the jacket. "It's beautiful."
"I picked it out myself." I said proudly.
"You did great, April," she said. She looked at me a moment and then reached out, pulled me to her. and hugged me harder and closer than she had ever done. She held me longer, too. I had the feeling she wanted to keep me from seeing any tears in her eyes.
Mama called to us.
"I don't feel very hungry," Brenda muttered. She rose and put the athletic suit on her dresser.
"Mama will cry if you don't come to dinner," I said.
"I know."
We left her room and went to the dining room. I helped Mama bring out the vegetables, the bread, and the steak she had prepared. Brenda got the jug of cold water, the butter, and some steak sauce Daddy liked. He still had not appeared.
"Matt," she called to him. "Dinner's ready."
"I'm on the phone." we heard.
Mama sat, and we all stared at the food on the table.. It was nearly a good five minutes before Daddy appeared, hurrying to the table. He stabbed a steak, put it on his plate without speaking, and then cut it and grimaced.
"It's overdone. Nora." he moaned.
"No, it's not. Matt. It's just how you always eat it and how I always prepare it."
"I know when it's overdone." he insisted. He started to serve himself the vegetables.
I reached for a steak and then some bread, and when he put down the vegetable dish. I scooped out some of the mixed vegetables. Brenda just sat staring across the table at Daddy, who looked very distracted and in deep thought. Mama hadn't put anything on her plate, either. Daddy looked at her.
"What now Nora?"
Her lips quivered. "We don't even have a birthday cake for her," she said.
He looked at Brenda as if he once again had just remembered it was her birthday. "We'll have one tomorrow," he said. Then he glanced at me. "Not that everyone needs it."
"I don't need it." Brenda said. "I don't need anything from you," she added.
"Brenda," Mama said.
"Don't get smart," Daddy warned.
Brenda looked away, and then she suddenly changed her whole demeanor, reached for a steak, and began serving herself as if she were famished. I knew she was doing it just to annoy Daddy and show him nothing he could do would change her. Mama held her breath.
We ate in silence. Daddy ate very fast, his eyes avoiding us. When he was finished, he literally jumped to his feet and mumbled about having to return to the offices in downtown Hickory.
"Do you really have to go back. Matt?" Mama asked him softly.
"What?" he asked her, acting as if he hadn't heard or had already forgotten the question.
"I'm just wondering if there isn't a way for you to postpone the work one night. We can still go somewhere to have dessert and celebrate."
"Of course
I
really do. What do you think? I'd go back if I didn't?"
Mama said nothing. I could see she was having trouble swallowing. "Don't you want to give her our present first, Matt?" she managed,
"Our present?"
"You know," she said. nodding. "In the back of the garage."
"Oh. Well, you take care of it," he said.
Before she could argue. Daddy left the room, and then we heard the door open and close to the garage.
I looked at Brenda, who looked at me. We both realized it at the same time.
He hadn't even said happy birthday. Not once.
2
Mr. Hyde Days
.
I suppose the thing that made Daddy's new
behavior at home and toward us scary was the fact that we had very little immediate family anymore. Both Mama and Daddy came from families that had only two children. Mama had an unmarried brother, who was now an entertainer, a traveling magician who called himself the Amazing Palaver. Although he was unmarried, he had a female assistant we simply knew as Destiny, and we all assumed she was his love interest. Destiny was one of the most unusual names we had ever heard, but Mama imagined it was because she was an entertainer, too. We had never met her, and we didn't see Uncle Palaver often, but when we did visit, we enjoyed seeing him and spending time with him. Whenever he visited us, he said Destiny was taking advantage of the down time to visit her family as well. Up until Daddy's Mr. Hyde days. he enjoyed Uncle Palaver, too. Even though he didn't approve of Uncle Palaver's lifestyle and career, he always found him amusing and sweet, and at times Daddy even had helped him financially.
Mama was very appreciative of that. Uncle Palaver was three years younger than she was, but they always had been close while they were 'owing up and remained in close contact even when she was in college and he was on the road trying to be an actor, a comedian, or whatever. Mama and Uncle Palaver had lost their father in a car accident when Mama was twenty-two and Uncle Palaver was nineteen. For a while, he remained at home with their mother, caring for her. She was the only grandparent Brenda and I had ever gotten to know. However, four years ago, she suffered a serious stroke and was now living in a nursing home that catered to people her age with her sort of maladies. We visited her whenever we could, but over the last six months. Brenda and I had gone to see her only once. She had reached a point where she didn't know whether or not we were actually there. We heard that from time to time. Uncle Palaver had visited her and put on shows for all the patients at the facility.
The only other relatives with whom we had any contact were second and third cousins who were children and grandchildren of our grandparents' brothers and sisters. We would see one another at weddings and funerals, and everyone would always exchange telephone numbers and addresses and promise to stay in touch. Few actually made any effort to do so.
In the end, we had only each other, and with Daddy acting as he was acting, the three of us felt like some poor Eskimos left floating on a laver of ice. The winds were cold: the days were bleak. Happiness and joy became like air seeping out of a tire, leaving us flat and lost in confusion and sadness.
With that as our setting, all three of us were overjoyed to hear from Uncle Palaver and learn that he was stopping by for a day or two on his way to what he called a "gig
.
' in Raleigh, North Carolina, where he was going to meet up with Destiny after she had visited her family. Mama had had little to smile about during the past few weeks, and just talking to her brother on the phone was enough to restore some of the familiar and cherished gleam in her eyes and blush in her cheeks. She began immediately to plan a wonderful dinner for the day Uncle Palaver arrived.
In my heart of hearts. I hoped and prayed that Uncle Palaver's visit would soften Daddy and perhaps restore him to how he had been before all this meanness and avoidance had begun. Surely, he wouldn't be unpleasant while Uncle Palaver was here. No matter what was bothering him, he was never one to wear his heart on his sleeve, as Mama would say. He hated watching all those television shows on which people would reveal their most intimate and private information.
"The next thing we'll see is a show with a camera and microphones in Catholic confessional booths," he said. "The priest will turn to the audience and get a consensus about what punishment or acts of contrition the sinner should perform."
If anything bothered Daddy, he would never show it in front of other people, and on those rare occasions when we had private family problems, he would die before revealing the slightest hint of it at a dinner party Mama prepared or any other sort of social gathering.
"We're giving up so much of ourselves when we give up our privacy issues," he told us all at dinner once. "People don't even know what self-respect is anymore. They should feel shame and keep their problems to themselves. Being ashamed about something isn't all that terrible. It has some purpose. It works as a deterrent. Nowadays, kids aren't ashamed about poor grades or misbehavior. Their parents aren't ashamed about being caught in adultery, getting divorced, going bankrupt. They just visit one of these talk shows and spill their guts in front of millions of psychological and emotional voyeurs. I'd rather be caught dead," he muttered.
Mama agreed but had to admit she watched some of those shows. Brenda was more like Daddy and thought he was one-hundred-percent correct.
"People lay their troubles on you all the time in school," she said. "The locker-room gossip about parents, boyfriends, and brothers and sisters sickens me."
"Hey, there's a new show." Daddy piped up, laughing. 'The Locker Room."
Brenda laughed. too.
Those dinners and days were beginning to feel like distant dreams.
In any case, we all felt confident that Daddy would behave more like the old Daddy we knew and loved when Uncle Palaver was visiting. Brenda said it would be like a prison camp being spruced up for an inspection by some international human rights agency.
"Maybe he'll smile again, but it will be like a mask. I'm afraid," she predicted.
As it turned out. I wished he had worn any sort of smile, mask or not. When he heard Uncle Palaver was coming, he muttered. "That's all we need now," and stormed off to his home office, closing the door as he had done so many nights recently. He would remain in there until bedtime. Because Brenda and I were in our rooms doing homework or Brenda was at an away game. Mama ended up sitting and watching television for hours alone. A number of times. I pretended to have completed my homework when I hadn't, just so I could keep her company. It broke my heart knowing she was sitting by herself, trying to knit or do some needlepoint project, the light of the television flashing over her. I failed a math exam and a history exam because I didn't study.
Actually, my grades, though not anything to rave about before, took a real nosedive during these days. I couldn't help being distracted in class, missing notes, not listening to the teachers. Something Daddy had said or done the night before usually haunted me all the following day. My best friend in all the world. Jamie Stanley, thought I had gown bored with her because nothing she said got me very excited or interested. Finally, one day when she asked me a question and I didn't respond, she slapped her books on the cafeteria table where we were sitting and told me she wasn't going to bother talking to me or calling me anymore. She picked herself up and moved to sit with some other students, and suddenly. I felt more alone than I thought possible.
Uncle Palaver's arrival loomed larger and larger on my hope and wish meter. I couldn't wait for him to come. He always brought Brenda and me some special and unique present he had found on his travels. I had an elephant that raised its trunk and roared when I pressed a button on its leg, a lobster that sang "Sea of Love", and a canary that chirped every time I was a half foot in front of it. Brenda had a bubble machine, a handheld massage machine that relaxed aching and stiff muscles, and, most cherished of all, a volleyball signed by the women's volleyball team from the last Olympics. Daddy expressed doubts about its authenticity.
"So much of what your uncle does and says is based on illusion,'" he remarked, but Brenda never showed any doubt about it and exhibited it proudly in her room.
But lately, it wasn't the gifts we welcomed as much as Uncle Palaver's cheerful, childlike demeanor. He had become a very good magician and could do wonders with a deck of cards and sleight of hand. Like a true magician, he said he would take the secret of how he did his tricks to his grave. Most exciting was to hear his stories from his travels. There didn't appear to be a state he hadn't visited. He had even gone to Alaska and entertained soldiers on some army base.
Uncle Palaver wasn't making a lot of money, but he was no longer in any financial trouble and actually had come to repay Daddy for a loan he had given him two years ago. From time to time, he sent Mama newspaper clippings about his Amazing Palaver show, and she had pasted them all in an album. At last, we finally had some pictures of Destiny, too. All of us were surprised to learn that she was African American, Uncle Palaver had never mentioned that fact. In all the pictures, she looked as tall as Uncle Palaver and very sexy, usually in a tight outfit or even a bathing suit.
"No wonder he's doing better on the road." Daddy quipped when he saw pictures that included Destiny. "In some of those boondock towns, that's pornographic. I guess your parents would be surprised."
Mama hushed him and told him never to say such things in front of Uncle Palaver or anyone, for that matter. Whenever she could take out her album to show one of her friends, she would. She never mentioned that Destiny might be Uncle Palaver's girlfriend, although it was easy to see people thought it. Whatever, it made him more interesting. I never imagined Daddy would be in the slightest way jealous of that. He was so accomplished and successful, how could he ever be threatened by the small
accomplishments and attention Uncle Palaver had achieved? Lately, though, he was beginning to sound that sort of a discordant note whenever he referred to Uncle Palaver.
"You blow him up too much. Nora," he warned. "People will
expect to see him on television or something."
"Well, that could happen someday, couldn't it. Matt?" she asked hopefully.
"Yeah. If he stands on one, it could happen," Daddy said dryly.
I
didn't think that was at all fair.
I
could see Uncle Palaver appearing on television someday. First, he was a very handsome, charismatic man with wavy dark brown hair that was Mama's shade and hazel eyes with green specks. He had her small nose and was lean and tall like Brenda. The childish gleam in his eyes gave him a charm that brought a smile to the faces of many people as soon as they saw him, onstage or otherwise. He had a way of reminding everyone of their childhood faiths, their own imaginings and wonder. Sleeve-less, his hands empty, he would reach up and pluck a coin out of the air as effortlessly as someone plucking a berry from a bush.
"If
you can do that all day, you'll be rich in no time," Daddy once remarked in jovial tones.
"I'm
rich already. Matt," Uncle Palaver had said.
Daddy had raised his eyes and smiled skeptically. but
I
knew in my heart what Uncle Palaver meant. He had his freedom, his love of what he was finally doing, his joy in pleasing and bringing smiles to the faces of the people he met. Yes, his life was very different from Daddy's now, He didn't have many
responsibilities, no responsibility to anyone but himself since he wasn't married to Destiny. However, he had taken on a different sort of burden. He had become a happy daddy for thousands of children, a loving brother to thousands of women and men. His audiences had become his extended family, and when he performed, he bathed in their laughter and wonder. That made him feel very wealthy.
He had no home as such, just a mailbox. Instead, he and Destiny lived in a motor home with "The Amazing Palaver" written in bold red on both sides, the image of a top hat and a rabbit peeking out just under the words. The motor home was his most expensive possession.
It
was about twenty-eight feet long, built on a van frame with an attached cab section. It had a sleeping bunk atop the cab in addition to the bedroom in the rear. Last year. Mama and Daddy let me sleep in the bunk.
It
was like camping out, even though it was only in our driveway.
When
I
was alone in there.
I did
peek into the closet and saw Destiny's dresses, shoes, even the bathing suit that she was in when the pictures were taken.
I
saw her makeup and a collection of wigs. She seemed to have twice the amount of clothing and shoes that Uncle Palaver had. There was a good picture of the two of them on the dresser in his bedroom.
It
was a closer shot and clearer than the newspaper clippings. I hated to say anything, but when
I
looked at her in the picture.
I
didn't think she was as attractive as she was in the newspaper.
I enjoyed being in the motor home. There was a kitchen and a
little dining area. but Uncle Palaver could push a button and one side of the motor home slid out and expanded to the size of the living room and dining room. More magic.
I
thought. Of course, it had its own bathroom equipped with a small shower stall and a small tub. He had a television set that worked off an antenna on the roof.
Daddy had helped him with the down payment for the motor home, and it was that money that Uncle Palaver was returning on this trip. He had told Mama, and she had told Daddy, hoping that would please him about Uncle Palaver's visit.
"He didn't have to come here to hand me the money," Daddy said instead. "Why didn't he wire it or send it as soon as he had it?"
"He just wants to thank you in person, Matt."
"I
can't even remember how much
I
gave him and how much interest
I
lost doing it," Daddy muttered, more to himself.
I
thought, He realized it immediately and snapped his head back.
"I
just hope he's not returning it and then asking for another loan," he declared.
Daddy's attitude made Mama very nervous.
"I
hope he doesn't say anything like that when your uncle is here," Mama told me later, "Entertainers are insecure as it is. They're so dependent on how people react to them and so sensitive to any negative looks or words. Warner was always a very sensitive child," she
said.
That was Uncle Palaver's real name. Warner. Warner Prescott. She told me he always had hated his real name because it made him sound too pretentious. When he became a magician and reinvented himself, he loved his new name. He signed everything Palaver and even had Daddy change his name legally for him.
"I guess he thinks he's competing with Kreskin," Daddy remarked, but gladly did it. Back then, he had no problem doing favors for Uncle Palaver-- or anyone, for that matter. Now, I was afraid to ask him to fix the leaking faucet in my bathroom, much less take me somewhere to meet a friend.
Mama's preparations for Uncle Palaver's arrival became more and more intense as the day drew closer. She bought foods she knew he liked and spruced up the guest bedroom. Even though he could sleep in his motor home when he visited, she insisted he sleep in the house,
"You're my family," she told him. "Our family. Warner. You don't sleep in the driveway when you come here,"
She was so proud of him that she contemplated having some of her friends over to see him while he was visiting. At dinner one night, she proposed the idea to Daddy. He sat there, looking confused and troubled, and for a moment. I considered the possibility that he had actually forgotten Uncle Palaver was arriving in two days.
"When would you do that?" he finally asked.
"We could do it Saturday night, Matt. We haven't done anything with anyone for nearly a month. We turned down three invitations because of your work commitments. People are beginning to think we don't like them anymore or we've become snobs."
"Who cares what they think? I don't live my life to please them," he snapped back at her. "Saturday is out of the question," he added. "I'm going to Memphis on Saturday to meet with Byron Philips of Philips. Lancaster, and Dunn on the Shelton Concrete matter. We're on the verge of a settlement that would bring us some important money. I told you that."
"No, you didn't," Mama said.
"I did, but you don't listen to anything I say when your little brother is coming. You're all in a dither about his visit, as if he was some dignitary or someone. He's just a wandering gypsy, a hobo on wheels, hardly anyone to make a fuss over. Nora, and certainly not anyone to spotlight at a party
-
here. What do you want him to do, amuse the Krongers, the Metzlers, the Dismukes, and the Renners by pulling dimes out of their ears or telling them what card they picked from his decks? These people fly to New York and go to Broadway shows or go to London. You'll make a fool of yourself and a bigger one of me for sponsoring such a stupid event."
Mama simply stared at him. Brenda and I looked down. but I raised my eyes and looked at Mama's. There wasn't anger in them as much as there was pain and disbelief. She was searching Daddy's face now with the scrutiny of a detective, looking for some clue to help her understand how the man she had given her life and soul, her identity and love, had suddenly turned away from her.
Brenda slapped her fork down on her plate so hard I was sure she had cracked it. Daddy's head snapped up.
"I don't think Uncle Palaver's tricks are stupid at all," she said. "I think you're stupid for saving such a mean thing, and I think we should have the party with or without you. I have some friends I'd like to have meet him. Maybe he'll be here in time to attend the volleyball game Friday afternoon," she added pointedly. "He could take your seat."
We all held our breath. Even Daddy looked as if he had frozen in place. The silence was deafening. It reminded me of the movie about tornados we had seen in science class. I felt as if we had moved into the eye of the storm and a deceptive calm was filling us with false hope.
"Maybe he will,' Daddy finally said. He said it in a soft, sedated manner with little or no emotion. Then he turned to Mama. "Do what you want on Saturday night." he added. "I'll try to be back before eleven."
Although it sounded like a concession. it had an empty, "I don't care" ring to it. and I knew Mama would do absolutely nothing about having a party for Uncle Palaver, Brenda and I would urge her to do it anyway, but she had never in all my young lifetime done anything like that without Daddy's full blessing and agreement. She was so in time with his thoughts and feelings that she could hear the slightest hesitation and drop an idea or a proposal, and it used to be that he was just like that with her. There had once been a time when each other's unhappiness, for whatever reason, was a burden neither could long endure.
I wondered if Uncle Palaver had a trick up his sleeve that could restore that bit of loving magic.
Before I went to sleep. I knelt by my bed and prayed that God would have mercy on us. We were