Executioner's Song, The - Norman Mailer [72]
Chapter 10
IN-LAWS
April came to visit for a couple of days, and didn't stop talking. She was tired, she told Nicole, of their mother. "Man, she's the queen, and I am tired of her power games. She tries to make it look like I'm a rotten defiant child when all I'm trying to do is get away from threats. If I say one damn thing, she threatens me with the hospitals and the doctors. Whereas I," said April, "don't sit around and watch my mother's behavior. She's going to have to go. Queens and princesses don't get along."
Nicole said yes. She was never around April for more than a couple of days before she decided the whole family was crazy. It was just that April was in touch with the heavy strings on the fiddle.
April and Gary, however, really got along. April thought Gary was powerful, witty, and very intelligent. The first night, after a few beers, he began to teach her how to paint. April said he must love Sissy very much and certainly the kids.
Everything Gary painted was sharp as a razor. If he painted a bird, you could see every feather as though under a magnifying glass, but he didn't teach that way. "Just mix the color so it comes out the way you feel," he said. April was looking at Gary like he was her guru.
Nicole never knew what to make of April's looks. She was short and chunky whenever she didn't watch her diet, which was almost all the time, but she would have been beautiful if a girl needed no other features than eyes. April's eyes were purple blue and yet had green in them-a fabulous color. Like one of those transparent stones that change hue according to your mood.
April's hair, however, hung down like crooked spinach, and she had the damnedest mouth. Nicole had put enough time in the nuthouse to know the lips of a disturbed person. April could look in one direction, and her mouth start to quiver in the other, like the rear end of a car going off on its own. Sometimes, her lips would shiver as much as an old faucet just turned off, or her upper lip would relax and her lower lip get stiff. Her entire face could clamp like lockjaw. Most of the time she had a toothache in her expression.
Her voice really got to Nicole. April had an awful big voice for a 17-year-old. You never knew where it came from. She was so goddamn sure of herself. Her voice could grate on you with just how impressive she thought she was. Then she could whine like a brat.
April let them both know that she thought of Gary as a very distinguished person. He was kind of very humble, like a master to his slave. At the same time very tired and sad. He'd been through the same thing a slave'd been through. He was on a much higher level existence than anybody she knew. Just by focusing on his body, said, you could feel that.
Before they had been painting very long, April wanted to tell them about Hampton. As far as April was concerned, Hampton was everything. "My nearest past," she whispered. She wanted to hate him for all those nights he had her thinking he went home morning to his folks. He would get up at 5 A.M., and April thought he loved her because he didn't take off silently in the dark but woke her to say goodbye. Then she found out he was just returning to his steady chick. Had to get back before dawn, like.
There was a space in her stomach that got hungry if she didn't talk. "You've heard the song 'Backstabbers,' haven't you?" she sitting on their floor. "Well, backstabbers wouldn't be in my shoes if you paid them. That's because I have some super-freaky memories." When they did not reply, April said, "Do I sound like a robot tonight?"
"I," said April, "got up this morning and cooked me a two-egg omelet with cheese in the middle and pieces of thin toast, some Tang, and some strawberry milk with sliced banana. Too much. I never tasted anything like that food. Just made me sick. I stuffed myself.