by Rona Jaffe
“Is what?”
“That he’s here so late.”
“No,” Billie said.
“Is he often here?”
“Whenever I am.”
“Oh. Well.” Her smile seemed a little forced.
“Enjoy your dinner,” Billie said, and moved on.
Later, when they had finished eating, she saw Lola Gribetz making her way over to Little Billie’s booth, and she felt a twitching of something that was very like alarm. This had never been anyone’s idea of a family restaurant, although she thought of it that way. It was just a different kind of family. Stodgy as they liked to appear, the Larchmont Ladies looked like what they were—men in drag—and she was sure Little Billie’s former kindergarten teacher would notice. She would probably be shocked.
When Lola Gribetz came back to her table she looked more bewildered than shocked, which Billie took as a good sign. “Excuse me,” she said, lowering her voice to a whisper, “Ms. Redmond . . . aren’t those transvestites?”
“Well, yes they are. One of them is a whiz at math. Billie has been getting A’s since he started getting tutored.”
“Well, surely . . .”
“Surely what?”
“Well, you, I’m sure you . . . well, you . . .”
“I what?” Billie said.
“Nothing.”
“Little Billie has grown into quite a little person since you saw him last,” Billie said. “He’s started writing stories. They’re very good. I think he’s going to be a writer someday.”
“I’m sure he finds plenty of material here,” the Norris man said, with a laugh that wasn’t entirely pleasant.
“If he does,” Billie said, “it will give him a good start.”
She moved on, and when she caught the waiter’s eye she motioned to him to give them their check. She didn’t like their attitude, she didn’t like their vibes, and she didn’t like being criticized. She didn’t want them hanging around drinking coffee half the night; she would rather have the table empty. She felt disquieted, and she wanted them out of her sight. She was relieved when they left.
“Miss Gribetz acted weird,” Little Billie said when she was putting him to bed.
“How so?”
He shrugged. “She asked me questions.”
“What kind of questions?”
“Like she was still my teacher.”
“School questions?”
“No. About my life.”
“Did she do that when she was your teacher?” Billie asked.
“You remember, when we had our afternoon conversations back in kindergarten? She would ask us what we ate, what we did for fun, when we went to bed. That kind of stuff.”
“Well, it’s probably just her way of making conversation now,” Billie said. “It’s polite to answer people, but you have a right not to tell them anything you don’t want to. You could ask them a question instead.”
“I should have asked her if she liked her dinner,” Little Billie said with a grin.
Billie kissed him goodnight. “Sleep well, my love.”
What an unpleasant coincidence, she thought, having that woman walk into my restaurant. I hope she never comes back.
The next evening, when Yellowbird was full and noisy, and Little Billie had eaten his dinner and done his homework and was playing a computer game, a middle-aged gray-haired cop walked in, wearing a blue uniform with a big gun in a holster at his belt, and a mean look on his face. He meandered around the room, looking at everything, and then he strode purposefully to Little Billie’s booth and started to talk to him. Billie naturally went right over there as fast as she could.
“What’s the problem, officer?” she asked. She didn’t like the idea of a cop scaring her son.
“Are you Mrs. Redmond?” he asked.
“Yes,” Billie said.
“Officer Peoples,” he said, showing her his badge. “We’ve had a complaint about the minor child Billie Redmond, and the conditions he’s living in, and I’m here to see if we should take the child.”
“Take him where?” Billie rasped. If she could have shrieked, she would have. Little Billie looked terrified, as if he was going to be arrested, and she wasn’t entirely sure he wasn’t.
“Away from the home, ma’am.”
Immediately every nerve in her body was at attention. “What’s wrong with his home?”
“That’s what we’re going to find out. The complaint was about here.”
“What’s wrong with here?”
“It’s a bar. It’s late at night. People are drinking.”
“People drink in their homes too,” Billie said, keeping her tone respectful. Except for the all-too visible gun, bulging there in its holder like an iron phallus, she would have told him to get the hell out. “This is where I work. I own this place. I have my child with me in my workplace.” Where had she heard that line? Eve! “So I can keep an eye on him and be sure he’s okay.”
“A child his age needs his sleep,” the cop said. He was writing in a little pad and Billie didn’t know if she was going to cry or throw up.
“Look here,” she said, showing him her office with Little Billie’s cot in it. “When he’s tired he sleeps here, and then I take him home.”
Officer Peoples wrote some more. Little Billie hadn’t said a word, and the look on his frightened face wrung her heart. Then the cop looked up from his note pad and glanced at her. “What happened to your voice?” he asked. “And that scar on your neck—your husband cut you?”
“There is no husband,” Billie said. “I was mugged. That’s why I want to be sure my son is safe. You never know, these days, with violence everywhere.”
“That’s true. But you could get a baby-sitter.”
“Oh, right, some lunatic or some irresponsible thirteen-year-old.”
The cop looked around. “I was told this was a gay bar.”
“Are you out of your mind?” Billie said. She was glad the Larchmont Ladies didn’t come every night, and weren’t there now. “Does this look like a gay bar in any way, shape, or form? This is a neighborhood family restaurant.”
“What time are you going to take him home?”
“Soon. He gets very good marks in school. Obviously he isn’t tired.”
For the first time Billie realized the room had gone quiet, and everybody was looking at them. That bitch Gribetz had done this, turned her in as an unfit mother, threatening her child, and as a nice little bonus ruining her business. The customers didn’t know what was going on, but they knew it wasn’t good.
“I’m fine,” Little Billie suddenly said, finding his voice. He peered up at the cop. “Do you want me to show you how I surf the Internet? Ask me a question, anything you want to know, and I’ll look it up for you.”
“You’re a bright kid,” the cop said, looking pleasant for the first time. Billie knew it wasn’t the child he was angry at but her, although he could have fooled them both. “You’re nine?”
“Yes, sir. Almost ten.”
He closed his note pad and put it into his pocket. “I’m not taking the child tonight,” he said, “but I have to file a report and then you’ll be hearing from Child Services.”
“About what?”
“They’ll need to see the apartment and see the mother.”
“Oh my God,” Billie said, appalled. What was this anyway, a police state? People turning her in, coming into her home, invading her privacy, investigating her life? She wished, for one surprised, angry, unsettled moment, that her parents were there to defend her character, and that she were not so alone. “We live in a wonderful apartment,” she said. “I hope so.”
He left, and she saw that Little Billie had tears in his eyes. He had been trying not to cry. Billie put her arms around him and took him into the office, and then she held him and tri
ed not to cry herself. If she had, they would have been tears of frustration and rage . . . and also fear.
“Are they going to take me away?” he said.
“No,” she said, because that was what you told a child, you protected him from everything that was unreasonable and insane, as best you could, but how did she know?
Twenty-four hours later someone from Child Services called. Billie was stunned at the alacrity with which they had pounced on her, since she had always thought that they were overloaded investigating real cases. Since the cop had seen with his own eyes that the child’s life and health were not in immediate danger Billie managed to put off their appointment to see her apartment for a week by saying she was going to be on jury duty. That sounded respectable.
“You may need to get me a lawyer,” Billie said to Felicity Johnson the next time she came in, since she knew Felicity was a lawyer herself. Then she had to tell Felicity what she needed the lawyer for, since they were specialists, and naturally the four women were appalled at what had happened.
“You have a right to take your child to work,” Eve said. “I took Nicole to work with me when I was on Brilliant Days, when she was little.”
“That wasn’t a bar,” Felicity said.
“Neither is this,” Billie said, but they all knew Yellowbird wasn’t a tea room either.
“This is disgusting,” Eve said. “It’s a feminist issue: The child in the workplace. I’m going to do something about it.”
“Don’t do anything,” Felicity said. “Let Billie handle it. She’s doing fine.”
“Yellowbird is the same as day care, you know,” Eve went on. “Except it’s night care.” She laughed. “Night care, get it?”
“Leave her alone,” Gara said.
“You know, she’s kind of right,” Billie said. “Everybody here loves him.”
“They’ll see that,” Felicity said. “And if they don’t agree you’ll call the lawyer.”
Billie talked to the Larchmont Ladies about her dilemma, of course. Although several people suspected it, few people actually knew that Gladys, aka Ralph, was a cop in his other life. He didn’t know Officer Peoples, though, because this was a matter for Billie’s local precinct, and Gladys, who did not want to be recognized, strayed far away from his own workplace to come here.
“Maybe we shouldn’t come back,” he said, and there was such concern and regret in his voice that Billie felt a rush of kindness toward him. “No,” she said. “This is a free country. You didn’t do anything wrong. Just don’t come in next Wednesday, because the social worker will be here.”
She got a little paranoid about telling them that. She hoped they wouldn’t tell their friends they had been requested not to come, and have someone decide to turn this into a gay issue in which she was the villain. She had enough troubles with issues already, and she had never been a political animal of any kind.
The social worker, Ms. Lambert, arrived at their apartment at ten o’clock in the morning. Little Billie was at school, and Mamacita had cleaned the apartment so carefully it looked like a model for a home magazine. Billie had already changed her clothes three times and finally decided she would wear jeans like she and everyone else always did; this wasn’t supposed to be the Brady Bunch. When the doorbell rang she stood still for a moment to quiet the pounding of her heart, and then she opened the door.
The woman had smooth dark hair and a scrubbed face with no makeup on it, she was wearing a suit, and she looked about nineteen. Billie’s heart sank. Was she supposed to be judged on the most important event of her life by a teenager?
“Come in,” she said.
Ms. Lambert got right to work. She, like the cop, had a note pad, and she also had a tape measure. “Is this Billie’s room?”
“Yes.”
She measured it, and wrote in her pad. Billie held her tongue. What did those people think, that she would make her son sleep in a closet? His bedroom was almost as big as hers, and he was a lot smaller.
“How many other people live here?”
“Just me and my son.”
“This is his bathroom?”
“Yes. It’s a two-bedroom, two-bathroom apartment, as you see. We also have a doorman, I’m sure you noticed.”
Ms. Lambert nodded. She was looking at Little Billie’s neat bathroom as if it were the natural right of every child to have something as nice as this for his very own, instead of thinking he was lucky to have a successful mother. The Brady Bunch used to share, as Billie remembered. Suddenly Billie was enraged at the whole thing.
“Why do you people waste your time with me?” she said angrily. “Think of all the mothers punching their kids, burning them with cigarettes, scalding them, shoving their heads down the toilet! Women living with crazy drug-addicted lovers who hate their kids, who torture them! Child molesters, sadists, lunatics! Kids who have no food because their mother is too stoned to get it or spends all her money on crack cocaine! You should be somewhere else, preventing some child from getting killed.”
“We know there are many tragedies in this city,” the woman said. “My caseload is much too heavy as it is. But I don’t know what kind of mother you are until I find out, and you don’t have to yell at me.”
“I have to yell at somebody,” Billie said. “This upsets me.”
“We have to be as sure as we can that no child falls through the cracks in the system. Billie was reported, Billie must be investigated.”
“What cracks in what system?” Billie said. “He goes to private school. He’s there every day.”
Ms. Lambert proceeded to the kitchen and looked in the larder and the refrigerator. She wrote in her pad again. What was she writing? Too much sugar?
“He gets a well-balanced dinner in the restaurant every night,” Billie said.
“I’ll see that this evening. And I’ll also get the chance to interview your son.”
That hurt. It was as if Little Billie had terrible secrets of neglect to tell them, that they still didn’t trust her. They were trying to turn him into a stranger.
“This is a very pleasant home,” Ms. Lambert said. “I don’t know why you would want to keep him out of it and make him stay in a bar all night.”
“Yellowbird is a restaurant that happens to have a bar in it, like all restaurants unless they don’t have a liquor license yet.”
“The more reason it’s inappropriate for a nine-year-old.”
“My father owned a roadhouse in Piano, Texas,” Billie said. “My Mama and my brother and I hardly ever saw him unless we went there. He worked very hard all the time, the way I do. Sometimes I really missed him. It was a thrill for us to have dinner at his place. When I was Little Billie’s age I was entering my Daddy’s contest nights for kids, singing. Later I sang there on a regular basis. It didn’t hurt me any growing up around a bar and restaurant; what hurt was wishing we could be together more.”
As soon as the words had come out of her mouth Billie was surprised. This was the first time she had realized how lonely she had been for Les Redmond as a child, for his laugh and his strength and his proud and tolerant smile. She remembered her mother having dinner there once a week, at her special table down front, just so she could see him for what should have been a regular family meal, and she also remembered that she and her brother had been there, too, and for the same reason.
“He did the best he could for his children,” Billie said. “So do I. I come to this from experience. You may think it’s bad, but I think it’s better than any alternative you could think up.”
“We’ll see,” Miss Lambert said. “I’ll be at Yellowbird tonight.”
Billie went to work with Little Billie and gave him his supper, waiting for the social worker. The restaurant started to fill. Then she heard a growing noise outside, a kind of chanting, and saw that the customers were coming in with curious looks on their fa
ces. She went to the door and looked out.
There was a line of women, marching in front of Yellowbird, and they were all holding up placards. The child should be in the workplace with his mother some of the signs read. Rights for working mothers read other signs. And one, in homage to the old Simon and Garfunkel song, read Mother and Child Reunion. Eve Bader was carrying it.
Just then Ms. Lambert arrived, trying to make her way through the protesters to get into the restaurant, and behind her came a camera crew from Fox TV News, and Penny Crone with her little crewcut and a mike in her hand.
“Billie,” Penny Crone said gruffly, shoving the mike in front of her face, “is it true you keep your nine-year-old child in your bar?”
“Who are these people?” Billie said to Eve, wildly.
“Why do you have your kid in a bar where drag queens go?” Penny Crone persisted.
“Who called the television?” Billie said in despair.
“I did,” Eve said. “I told you there was a way.” She pushed herself in front of Billie and held up her placard so the cameraman could get a shot of it, and also so it would not obscure her face. “I’m Eve Bader,” Eve said into Penny Crone’s mike. “I recently appeared in a CBS television movie about this same issue, and I have a statement to make on behalf of Billie Redmond. She is a caring, single, working mother who . . .”
“Oh, God,” Billie said. She ran into Yellowbird and slammed the door before she had to hear another word. Ms. Lambert followed her.
“My goodness,” Ms. Lambert said. She was scribbling.
“You don’t have to write it down,” Billie said. “We’ll all see it on television tonight and I’ll be a lot more famous than I want to be.”
“Where is Billie?”
“Come on.” She took the social worker to Little Billie’s booth to meet him. Billie had prepared him for this interview and told him just to be himself, but still she was nervous and angry that a little kid had to convince a bureaucrat that he belonged with the good mother he loved.
“Will you leave us alone, please?” Ms. Lambert said.
Like then he’ll feel free to tell you what a sadist I am, Billie thought. Somewhere a kid is probably dying this moment from being banged against the wall, and you’re here looking for drag queens. She went back to the bar to attend to her customers and the reservation book, but her eyes kept scanning the back of the room.