“Yes.”
“Have you talked to your mother about that?”
“Not exactly. Well, sort of. But I know she’d agree.”
“She’d agree to leave Eddie?” A smile teased his lips.
“Yes.” I had to be strong about this. No doubts.
“Another tough call for ol’ Eddie, huh?” He snorted, amused at the thought. I didn’t say anything. He sat up and put his elbows on the desk. “That’s a pretty strange idea of justice, Martha—that you can just promise to be good and leave town and the whole thing will go away. You don’t think things really work like that, do you?”
“I thought, if we talked it out—”
“Have you been reading the paper? Did you see that letter in there about witches? That’s you and your mother they’re talking about, you know. And there’s a petition going around, something they’ve given Judge Horner.” He stood up. “I mean, people are worried about this town, about the way things are developing. They think examples need to be set.” He walked around and sat on the edge of the desk, in front of me. “Let’s face it, a lot of it’s not your fault. It’s your mother. Tom, too, but a lot of it’s your mother. People don’t like the way she acts.”
“She’s all right,” I said softly, staring at the floor.
“A little man-crazy, wouldn’t you say? I mean, if my daughter ran around like that, I’d strap her within an inch of her life.” His daughter is a fat, pigtailed infant, barely out of diapers. He crossed his arms. When he spoke again, his manner had softened. “You know, I knew your father.”
“You did?”
“Yeah, sure. Not well, but I knew him. I used to run into him at the Buffalo—though not the Buffalo so much, actually, that was a little top-drawer for him. More like the Doghouse, the Spa, places like that. He liked to drink.” Sergeant Tony rubbed his chin, pulling on his face. “Yeah, sure, I remember him. He grew a mustache once. A funny little thing, real scraggly, hardly any hairs in it at all. You had to wonder what he was thinking of.” He tickled his upper lip with his index finger. “And then he went away.” He shook his head. “You didn’t know him, did you?”
“No.”
“Neither did Tom, at least not that he could remember.” It pained me to hear Sergeant Tony talk like that, pretending that he was close to our family, that he knew us and knew about us. “A funny guy, your father. I wouldn’t have figured him and Bunny, but you never know. I wouldn’t have figured a lot of Bunny’s men.” He watched me for a reaction, and I tried to make my face go dead. I was breathing through my mouth, drying out my lips.
“Does your mother talk to you about her dates, about what goes on?” His voice was low, but prickly.
“No.”
“What’s she see in those guys? Eddie, Lester, Wayne. Doesn’t she talk about ’em?”
“No.”
“Don’t get upset. I’m just asking. You came here to talk, right?”
“Yes.”
He straightened up and walked over to the file cabinet and took something out of a drawer. Metal flashed and jangled in his hand. “Look at this,” he said, dangling a pair of handcuffs toward me, holding them with his thumb and finger, the way someone might hold a dead mouse by the tail. “Did you ever see a pair of these before? Do you want to try them on?”
“No!” I pulled back.
He laughed. “They’re not so scary. I’ve put them on some bad people in my time, though. Some real bad characters. Remember that guy who shot up the motel a couple of years ago?” I shook my head. “I collared him. A real bad guy. Look.” Sergeant Tony took the key out of the lock on the handcuffs and then clipped the cuffs over his left wrist and his right. He dropped the key in the right-front pocket of his shorts. Holding his hands out, he strained against the metal. “See? The real thing.” He thrust his hands at me. “Feel it. Go on, feel it.”
I guessed he was talking about the chain between the handcuffs, so I touched it lightly.
“Tough, huh? Nobody’s gonna break out of these. That metal’s so strong you can’t even saw through it. You see all these things in the movies where they take an ax and chop through handcuffs, but that stuff’s a bunch of bull.”
He came over and stood close to me. “Now, give me a hand here. Reach in this pocket and get out the key.” He pushed his hip toward me, indicating the right-front pocket of his shorts. I didn’t really think he meant it, so I smiled.
“Come on, come on,” he said impatiently. “Help me get out of these. Reach in and get it.” He pushed his hip closer, until he was almost leaning over me. My face was just at the level of his stomach; his gray, knit shirt gave off a strong, sharp odor. I turned my head away and put my hands behind the chair.
“Come on,” he snapped. “What’s the matter? Get me out of here. Nothin’s gonna happen.”
I buried my face in my shoulder. He wasn’t touching me, but he was standing so close that I felt crushed by the weight of him. For a few seconds, he stayed there without saying anything, and then he walked back behind his desk.
“I don’t know what you’re scared of,” he said. “It’s just a toy.” He held up his hands again and pushed a rivet on the left cuff. The clamp popped open, freeing his hand. “Trick, see,” he said. Then he did the same thing with the other cuff. “Nothin’ to be scared of.”
I stood up quickly. All the energy had drained out of me, but I stepped to the door and started fiddling with the lock. I couldn’t get it to work.
“I thought you wanted to talk,” he said.
I kept working on the lock and pulling on the metal door, which banged in its frame. “Stop!” he barked. He walked over to me slowly. I turned, and my back was against the door. It was hot in the room and the door felt hot. He stopped right in front of me. Just below his flattop, his forehead bristled with fresh beads of sweat. “I feel sorry for you, Martha,” he said evenly. “You don’t know what you want.”
He reached past me and flicked the lock, then pulled the door open an inch or two. “Go on,” he said. For a moment, I hesitated. Was it possible I’d misunderstood? Then I hurried out the door and down the hall.
TWENTY-THREE
Bunny came in the middle of the afternoon, parking the Pontiac at the curb and honking until I ran out. She told me she refused to go in the Vernons’ house again, so I climbed into the front seat beside her. Her uniform was rumpled and stained in spots, as if she’d got two or three days’ work out of it. When I told her about my call to the lawyer, she didn’t say anything. She stared out through the streaky windshield and picked at the plastic covering on the steering wheel. Over the years, she’d dug a small hole there, and the nail on her right index finger had a permanent black crown to show for it, a tiny marring of her natural beauty.
“Beach is undependable,” she murmured after a while, as if it were just another unimportant fact about the lawyer, a detail that she’d known all along but hadn’t bothered to mention.
I didn’t tell her about my visit to Sergeant Tony.
Though the car was parked in the shade of an oak, and the windows were open, the front seat was suffocatingly hot. I slouched down, my knees pushing against the dashboard. Occasionally, someone walked along the sidewalk and looked down at us in mild curiosity.
Bunny rambled on about the country club, about the bickering between Beatrice and Millie, the other two waitresses, about how someone had stolen $42 from the pro shop, about Shorty’s latest unhappiness. But it was imitation conversation. She was just following the routine, and there was no spirit in it for either of us.
Finally, I sat up and said, “Can we talk about Eddie for a minute?”
“Now?”
“Time’s running out.”
“I’m so tired,” Bunny said. “I’m bone tired.”
“I know.”
“I can’t sleep. I just can’t fall asleep.”
“Me, too.”
“So tired.”
“But Eddie—”
“I sleep when I’m with
Eddie. I can fall asleep with him.”
“He’s the problem, Bunny. If you could get rid of him, I could get out of this.”
Bunny rested her head on the steering wheel, facing away from me. “It’s that simple?” she asked.
“Yes. At least, I think so from the way Mrs. O’Brien talks.”
She waited. Seconds passed. Her head was turned away, but I could see how tired she was by the curve of her back and the slope of her shoulders. “But where’ll I be?” she asked finally. “You’ll go off, and then I’ll be absolutely alone.”
“Bunny, I’ll never leave you,” I said, though I knew I was lying. I told myself it didn’t really matter. Things will change. I’ll make it up to her. When she fell silent again, though, I grew frightened.
At last, Bunny straightened up. “Why’s Dwayne always hanging around here?” she asked. He’d ridden past on his bike, and now, circling back, he was watching us as he passed on the other side of the street.
“I think he’s looking out for me. Ever since that day on the square, he thinks he’s been protecting me.”
“I wish someone would protect me,” Bunny said glumly.
Later that evening, I tried to call her. I didn’t have anything particular to say, but I had the idea that the sound of her voice would still the jabberings that were filling my head. I tried all the numbers several times, but I couldn’t find her. Finally, just to keep busy, I called Reverend Vaughn’s number at the Congo. I knew it was hopeless, but I let the phone ring for five minutes, not giving up until the operator came on a second time to insist that no one was home.
The next morning, Mrs. Vernon was unusually perky. She’d been out to buy milk and had detoured past the fairgrounds. “People are already starting to go in,” she said, as she set toast and tea in front of me at the kitchen table. “And the Ferris wheel was running. Can you imagine? Nine o’clock the first day. This is the biggest fair ever. They’ve got tents almost all the way out to Banyon’s Woods, and lots more exhibits. Plus, the farm news is so good.” She dropped a copy of the day’s Exponent next to my plate. I glanced over the front page just long enough to notice an article about Percy Granville’s former assistant. He’d been found in his home with a bullet in his head, a presumed suicide. I quickly turned the paper over and pushed it away.
“An article there says the corn grew eleven inches last week,” Mrs. Vernon said. “That’s almost fast enough to see!” She pinched out one of her dry, formless laughs. “It’s the same in my garden. Plants are just charging out of the ground. Green things love that warm rain—the rain and then the hot, sunny days.”
Mrs. Vernon puttered while she talked, consolidating two opened jars of peanut butter, rinsing off the cutting board, picking the bad strawberries out of a basket that had been sitting in the refrigerator for three days. From years of housework and neglect, the fingers on her hands were dried and cracked—gaunt, ruddy twigs of skin and bone. Yet her fingers and hands never rested, they darted around in movements unconnected to her conversation. Watching them, I couldn’t help feeling that I was being reproached.
At about four that afternoon, Mrs. O’Brien showed up. I was in Sissy’s room and didn’t bother to come down. Mrs. Vernon let her in, and I heard their low, muffled talk in the hallway. Soon, the social worker climbed the stairs, and her footsteps thudded sadly toward Sissy’s room. She knocked and entered before I could say anything. Her face was slightly flushed, and perspiration made dark stains under her arms. She came over and sat in Sissy’s small, armless desk chair, sitting with her legs apart, in a faintly masculine way, and leaning forward, panting softly. I just lay there.
“Well, I think we’ve worked something out,” she said. “I’ve been back and forth between your mother and Mr. Moon all day, and I think we’ve finally worked something out.”
I rose on my elbows, like a patient in a hospital bed. Didn’t she realize what she was saying?
“Judge Horner doesn’t always follow my recommendations, but he usually does, and now we’ve got Mr. Moon along, too. The judge doesn’t have to agree, though, so be prepared.” She set one elbow on her thigh and rested the weight of her upper body against it. The desk chair looked like a milking stool beneath her. “In any case, I’m going to recommend that you go back to live with your mother, as long as the three of us—you, your mother, and me—keep up regular counseling sessions. We’ll ask the judge to put an unlimited time frame on it, and just see how it goes. Is that agreeable to you?”
“Yes.” I nodded frantically.
“Good. I must tell you, Martha, that your mother is a very stubborn woman. Very stubborn and, at times, disagreeable. She makes things hard for herself. I don’t tell you this to make you feel bad, but to help you understand. She’s agreed to change certain things in her life because she sees now that her family is at stake. But her agreement is a fragile thing, I can see that, and it’s going to take work from all of us to keep her on track. To be frank, I’ve felt all along that the problem here was much more your mother than you. And I told your mother that. I told her that today in exactly those words.”
She watched me for a reaction and I kept smiling. “We really haven’t talked much about your problems, have we? About what got you into this,” she said.
“No.”
“It was a bad thing for a young girl like you. That little boy.” Her eyes were dark and solemn. “You are ashamed, aren’t you?”
I hesitated. I’d felt a lot of things since this all started. Confusion, fear, embarrassment, hope, fury, despair. But shame? There hadn’t been time for it. I’d been too overwhelmed by emotions that were more real. No, I really hadn’t felt any shame at all.
“Yes,” I said.
Mrs. O’Brien sighed. “Well, that’s a start, anyway.” She stood slowly. Outside of the swimming pool, her body seemed only a burden to her. She pushed the chair back under the desk, and I walked her downstairs. “I’ve still got one client to see today,” she said. “This case has thrown off my entire schedule. But don’t worry, we’ve taken care of that now.”
She stopped at the door. “Your mother will be around later. She’s taken the night off so you two can be together. Relax a little for tomorrow.” She put her hand on my arm and squeezed. Then she opened the door. “Goodbye, Mrs. Vernon,” she called out as she left, though she knew Mrs. Vernon was out in the garden and couldn’t possibly hear.
TWENTY-FOUR
After Mrs. O’Brien left, I went into the parlor. Copies of Life, The Saturday Evening Post, and National Geographic were stacked on the bottom bookshelves along the wall. Some of the magazines were very old, going back ten or fifteen years. I took a handful of National Geographics and sat in the middle of the sofa, looking at the pictures and reading the captions.
Leafing through the magazines, my movements were slow and limited to what was absolutely necessary. I was careful not to rustle pages. I hardly dared breathe deeply: I wasn’t going to do anything to disturb the world. I felt as if the least commotion from me, a sneeze, a shout, an angry thought, could upset the arrangement that would let me go back to Bunny.
After about an hour, Mrs. Vernon walked in. “Oh, there you are,” she said. “You startled me. Aren’t you warm in here?”
“Not really.”
She pushed the window up a few extra inches. “I thought I might try to get a little breeze flowing through the house. The air gets so stale in this heat.” She stood above me, looking forlorn. “Some kind of blight has hit the garden,” she blurted suddenly. “A whole batch of baby carrots is dead.”
“Oh, no.” I sat as still as I could.
“I hope it doesn’t spread. Some of the tomatoes haven’t come in yet.”
“I’m sure it won’t.”
“You didn’t notice anything yesterday when you were weeding, did you?”
“Not a thing.”
“I’m quite worried. These blights are so mysterious, so hard to explain.” She walked out, shaking her head.
&n
bsp; By dinner, I hadn’t heard from Bunny. Mrs. Vernon had a church meeting to attend, and Mr. Vernon was going to the VFW, so we ate in the kitchen: fish sticks, mashed potatoes, and peas from the garden. As soon as Mrs. Vernon set the plate in front of her husband, he got up and went to the refrigerator. He took out a jar of pickles and a jar of mayonnaise and chopped several pickles up in a bowl. Then he scooped two tablespoons of mayonnaise on top and mixed it all up. Mrs. Vernon watched him silently. When he sat down again, he arranged his fish sticks like logs on a bonfire and gobbed his pickle-and-mayonnaise mixture on top. He never looked up at his wife.
“I’m sorry, dear,” said Mrs. Vernon. “I guess I was so upset about the garden that I forgot all about your relish.”
He grunted.
“Walter loves fish sticks,” Mrs. Vernon said to me. “They’re practically his favorite meal.”
“I like them, too,” I said. “They’re much crisper than real fish.”
Mr. Vernon stopped eating for a moment and tilted his head to look at me. “They are real fish,” he said.
Mrs. Vernon smiled and shifted in her chair. “What Martha means, dear, is that they’re crisper than fresh fish.”
“I heard what she said. She don’t need you ’terpreting for her.”
“I was only—”
Bam! He slammed his hand on the Formica table top. “You ain’t no ’terpreter,” he said harshly. “Let the girl speak for herself.”
A smile flitted across Mrs. Vernon’s lips, then disappeared. As she turned away, her eyes caught mine for just a second. “There!” they seemed to say. “See?”
The Vernons had both left by the time I heard Bunny’s Pontiac rattle up outside. I ran down to the curb and hugged her and laughed, but her body felt weary.
“Isn’t it wonderful?” I gasped.
“I knew it would work out,” she said. She looked at me affectionately and stroked my hair. She was wearing a cotton housedress with a busy pink print, something she’d never normally wear out of the house.
“How did you do it?” I asked. “What did you have to promise Mrs. O’Brien?”
Martha Calhoun Page 22