The Bad Lady (Novel)

by Meany, John

  “Just be quiet,” the bad lady argued, now taking the keys out of the ignition. She had parked the car two houses away from Nancy’s property.

  “No! I want to know why you drove to Nancy’s house?”

  “Billy, this doesn’t concern you.”

  How could it not concern me? I was at the heart of the conflict.

  “What are you gonna do?” I did not like the vibes she put out.

  “I’m going to go over there and have a word with her.”

  “But why? You know she doesn’t want to talk to you.”

  The bad lady scowled, as she continued to stare fiercely through the windshield at Nancy, who wore Daisy Duke Shorts and a measly half-shirt that showed off her stupendous knockers. “She’ll have to talk to me. She’ll have no choice.”

  “What am I supposed to do?” I asked. I sat in the backseat with my seatbelt on. The sun shone through the window onto my bare legs. It seemed as if it was a thousand degrees in the car. The seats felt as if they were on fire.

  “You stay in the car,” the bad lady warned, peering at me over shoulder. With her dark shades on, her eyes were concealed.

  “How long are you gonna be?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Five minutes, ten?”

  “Billy, I said I don’t know how long I’m going to speak to Nancy Sutcliffe. But when I get out there and start engaging in a conversation with her, under no circumstances are you to get out of this car. In fact, I don‘t even want you to take your seatbelt off. Just stay put. And don‘t holler anything from the window either. Not a peep. Ya hear me?”

  I frowned, while distractedly fidgeting with my seatbelt. “What would I holler from the window?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “I’m not gonna holler anything.”

  “You’d better not,” the bad lady advised strictly. “Because you see, I can tell there’s a part of you, son, a very misguided part of you that still believes in some way that this woman is your friend, which she is clearly not. Not even, close. What you need to understand is that that corrupt person over there sweeping the sidewalk used you for her own malicious purpose.”

  “So there’s no way you and Nancy won’t get along?” Yes, you’re correct; I was undoubtedly unwise to the ways of the world.

  The bad lady gave me the ‘how can you be so stupid’ look. “No. I don’t think so.”

  Suddenly I glanced out the car window at Nancy. She had stopped sweeping and had turned her gaze in our direction. She knew my mom’s blue Toyota, and I could tell by the way she had begun to stare over this way that she had spotted us.

  Nancy appeared to be exhausted, I presume from doing the yard work. Her long raven-dark hair was wind-blown and she looked pretty sweaty. She had white work gloves on, probably, I assumed because she had also worked on her garden, pulled weeds, that sort of thing. I know she did a lot of gardening because she frequently mentioned it.

  “She knows we’re here now,” I declared softly, not sure, why the bad lady was rummaging through the glove compartment. I had no clue what she wanted to get from out of there. My mother didn’t normally have anything in the glove box other than her license, insurance, and registration card, and a bunch of CD’s, a lot of Lionel Richie and Celine Dion.

  The bad lady looked up. “Good,” she says, closing the creaky glove compartment. “It looks like you’re right. I think the pedophile does see us parked over here.”

  “She definitely does,” I affirmed.

  “Why you little whore,” the bad lady whispered ominously, reaching for the handle that opened the car door. “Remember what I said, Billy. Stay put and don’t make a sound.”

  ***

  With my nerves on edge, I watched the bad lady get out of the blue Toyota and then angrily slam the door to the vehicle shut.

  I did not know what to expect from the confrontation. I mean, I crossed my fingers (and my toes), and hoped for the best.

  Somehow, I felt I should be held accountable for this situation, or at least partially.

  I did not have to lay my hands on Nancy Sutcliffe’s soft naked body, and I did not have to let her touch me. Just like, I did not have to kiss her on the mouth, and kiss her nipples, and do those other weird sexual things that people, in lust do. If I had wanted, I could have stopped her at any time. Except as I hope I’ve already made abundantly clear, I did not want to stop.

  No! I liked what Nancy and I had done, even though it had also seemed kind of creepy, deviant, and wrong. Especially what she had me do with my tongue. That might have been the only thing that I did not enjoy. Because I did not really know what to do with my tiring tongue and I did not like the way, Nancy smelled down there, like sour bass. Furthermore, I did not like how she had kept pushing my head down, and had kept insisting, while panting and grunting, that I not stop.

  Anyway, as the bad lady slowly approached the sidewalk, Nancy stood there with the yellow broom in her hand looking puzzled. For a second, it seemed as if she planned to go in her house, to try to avoid having to face my mom. Well, she wouldn’t be dealing with my mother, you know that and I know that. However, Nancy certainly did not have any knowledge that she would be dealing with my mom’s sinister alter ego.

  From the car window, I watched and listened.

  “No, no,” I heard Nancy say forcefully, as the bad lady stopped near the cement footpath. “Miss Hall, get back in your car and leave. Immediately! You’re not welcome here.”

  “You shut your mouth,” the bad lady warned, waving her finger.

  “What?”

  “I said, shut your mouth.”

  Nancy, who had been rendered momentarily speechless by that aggressive comment, held the wooden broomstick in front of her body, seemingly for protection, as if she were a ninja warrior. I could also tell by the expression on her face that she was stunned by my mother’s new Gothic appearance. The makeup was still melting, now particularly the mascara. That’s when it had occurred to me that the bad lady must have been the one who had chosen to paint my mother’s face. I should have come to that conclusion earlier.

  “Nancy Sutcliffe,” the bad lady added, almost snarling. “Since you wouldn’t address this matter on the phone. You gave me no other alternative, I had to come here.”

  “I said all I have to say.” Although Nancy had the broomstick in her hand, she appeared to be genuinely frightened.

  The bad lady sized up the object that might possibly be used as a weapon against her. “What are you talking about, you sick, ice cream truck pedophile, you didn’t say anything. Do you know why Nancy, because you’re afraid that if you address this matter you’ll incriminate yourself. That’s why you hung up on me.”

  “You’re wrong,” Nancy flatly denies the accusation. “I hung up on you, Miss Hall, because you’re accusing me of something that never happened. Clearly your son Billy has a boyhood crush on me, and is making things up, and doesn‘t realize the ramifications of his wild sexual claims. Don‘t you get it, he‘s fantasizing. I never touched the child. Never! This is outrageous. What kind of person do you think I am?”

  The bad lady hissed. “I think you’re a very sexually disturbed individual. That’s what kind of person I think you are.”

  “How dare you speak to me like that.”

  “I’ll speak to you how ever I please pedophile. What do you plan on doing with that broom?”

  Nancy clutched the yellow broomstick tighter, and then hesitantly backed up against the trunk of a gargantuan maple tree, which was so ancient that the roots had protruded through the sidewalk. Nearby, on the concrete driveway, perched beside the gas-powered lawn mower, was a garbage can where Nancy had been dumping the grass clippings.

  “Stop calling me a pedophile,” she urged.

  “Why, that’s what you are, isn’t it?”

  “No it is not.”

  “Pedophile,” the bad lady harassed, elevating her voice.

  “
Oh. That’s just great. Why don’t you just announce that to all of my neighbors.”

  All of a sudden, in the street, a couple of cars passed the sunny green yard. Both the bad lady and Nancy watched the vehicles go by with distracted expressions. When the two cars had traveled far enough down the road, their conversation resumed.

  “Maybe your neighbors need to be warned,” the bad lady says, now stepping onto the cracked, uneven sidewalk, forcing Nancy to back up even more.

  “Look,” Nancy utters defensively. “I’m sorry that your little boy has you believing this wild tale, but I am not going to stand here and listen to you accuse me of being a child molester. That’s not who I am. Women don‘t take advantage of children. We‘re nurturers.”

  “Some women are nurturers, not all.”

  “Whatever.”

  “Let me ask you something, Sutcliffe.”

  “What?”

  “Do you have children of your own?”

  “No. Can’t say that I do. When I was married to my husband Arthur, we had thought about having kids. It just never happened. It turned out, Arthur and I weren’t right for each other. That‘s why we got divorced.”

  Although it seemed, to me, that the bad lady, based on her decreased tone of voice, might have been calming down, I doubted it would last. At this point, I think she was merely toying with Nancy, intending to bait her into some kind trap, which might cause Nancy to slip up and reveal something that would give her dirty secret away.

  “All right. Then hypothetically speaking,” the bad lady proposed, “what would you do if you did have a ten-year old son, and he came home and told you that he had been molested by the woman who drives the Good Humor truck, what would you do?” The bad lady placed her hands on her hips, impatiently awaiting the reaction.

  “I don’t know what I would do,” Nancy retorted. “Now let me ask you something, Miss Hall.”

  “Sure. I’m game.”

  “If you’re supposedly so concerned about your son’s well-being, then why did you allow him to drive around with me in the first place? He’s been driving around with me, off and on, all summer long.”

  “Well, let’s just say Sutcliffe, originally I thought I could trust you. When we met back at the end of May, I believe, you seemed like a nice enough individual. However, I don’t share that same opinion now. No ma’am, I don’t. In fact, now I am so disgusted having to look at you, face to face, that I don’t know whether I want to vomit, or shove that filthy broomstick up your sorry little ass!”

  Briefly, Nancy glanced toward my mother’s blue Toyota Corolla, possibly waiting for me to jump out of the car.

  “Don’t look toward my son,” the bad lady warned.

  “Why not?” Nancy inquires.

  “Because Billy doesn’t want anything to do with you anymore. That’s why.”

  “If he really said all this stuff about me, how I had allegedly touched him in an inappropriate manner, then I think your son should come over here right now and tell me himself.”

  That powerful remark, as I expected, did not sit well with the bad lady.

  “You must be out of your mind,” she snaps furiously. “I’m not bringing my little boy over here so that you can try to manipulate him again.”

  “Manipulate him, what a laugh.”

  The bad lady glared at Nancy. “What did you just say?”

  “I said what a laugh. Did you know, Miss Hall, that today, your son Billy told me that you whipped him with a belt?”

  “Oh. He told you that, huh?”

  “Yes he did.”

  “What exactly did he tell you?”

  Once again, Nancy gazed in my direction, at my worried face in the car window. Then she turned back toward the bad lady.

  “He said that he had accidentally broken a lamp this morning, something about kicking a Nerf football around inside the house, when he wasn’t supposed to. And that you whipped him with either a cord or a belt. Then he said that you had ordered him to get the hell out of the house. That you didn’t want to see him come back until you had calmed down . . . Miss Hall, your son was scared to death. He was shaking like a leaf. To try to get him to stop crying, I gave him a hug and an innocent kiss on the cheek. That’s all I did. He must have misconstrued that, I‘m sorry.”

  The bad lady did not believe that for a minute. I don’t blame her. I never said that my mother had whipped me with a belt or a cord. In fact, I don’t remember telling Nancy that she had whipped with the metal pancake spatula either, which was really the instrument my mom had used. All I remember saying is that she had hit me.

  Nancy was turning the tables, attempting to take the focus off her, and putting it onto my mom, making my mother sound like the one who had been abusive.

  I’ll admit that I had never liked to be spanked, what kid did? But to say that I had been scared to death that morning, crying, and shaking like a leaf, was utterly fictitious. A blatant exaggeration clearly meant to mislead. Just like it wasn’t true that Nancy had only given me a hug to try to comfort me, as well as a harmless peck on the cheek.

  “You’re full of shit!” the bad lady says, spitting in revulsion.

  “No I’m not,” Nancy insists emphatically. “Are you telling me that, this morning, you didn’t hit your kid?”

  “This isn’t about me, Sutcliffe, this is about you.”

  “So you did hit him?”

  “Whether I spanked my son or not is my fucking business, not yours.”

  “Hey, whatever. I’m just saying-” For a second, Nancy put the broom down. Then, probably feeling unsafe, she quickly raised the broomstick back up, positioned it in front of her swollen chest, in the same ninja warrior stance.

  The bad lady spit again. This time she spit directly in Nancy’s face. “What kind of lewd creature are you anyway?” she says. “Having a little kid go down on you.”

  “Go down on me?”

  “Yeah. Go down on you.”

  “That’s insane,” Nancy argued, now abruptly turning around and heading back to her driveway. “Now I’ve definitely heard enough.”

  “What’s the matter, did I strike a nerve?”

  “You certainly did.”

  “Having a little kid give you a lick job,” the bad lady continued to hassle. “In exchange for ice cream. That’s about as desperate, low, and vile as putting peanut butter in your pussy and then having a dog lick it clean, wouldn’t you agree?”

  Infuriated, Nancy kicked the plastic trashcan that contained the cut grass. “Miss Hall, you’re asking for trouble.”

  “Yeah. I’m not the one walking away, am I?”

  As I told you earlier, my mom, when the bad lady was in control, had an extremely bad temper. She had once been arrested for punching a woman outside the local Walmart. Apparently the woman had said some nasty stuff to my mom, and, in the parking lot, had slammed her shopping cart into my mother‘s cart. I don’t know exactly what the woman had said, or why she had slammed her shopping cart into my mom’s cart. I had been too young. This was five years ago. Anyway, my mom (or really the bad lady I‘m sure), did not like what she had heard, so she had turned around and had knocked the woman at Walmart’s teeth down her throat. Later the judge would slap my mother with a fine and give her thirty days of community service.

  Therefore, although Nancy Sutcliffe stood several inches taller than the bad lady, and outweighed her by a good twenty pounds, I was confident that if they were to slug it out, it would be a close contest.

  “Miss Hall, you’re delusional.” Evidently thinking that the bad lady would leave, Nancy had now begun to sweep the driveway. She had even started to whistle a tune.

  “I‘m not delusional at all, Sutcliffe.”

  “Yes you are.”

  “Don’t . . . think . . . so.”

  “Well, I don’t care what you think.”

  “Tell me, how the hell do you live with yourself, knowing that you corrupted a child?” Th
e bad lady still stood on the sidewalk, next to the chubby maple tree. “Or do you not view your sexual fetish for children as morally wrong and despicable, the way the rest of us in society do, us normal people?” She stepped closer to the yard. “Initiating an erotic outing with a little kid by urging him to feel your tits, and then to kiss them, after showing him a bunch of sleazy naked pictures of yourself from your trip to Hawaii. You‘re a filthy person, Nancy Sutcliffe. Do you fucking realize that? You’re vulgar. An abomination against God.”

  “Oh,” said Nancy. “So now you’re going to preach the holy book to me, is that it?”

  “Yes. God frowns at sinners.”

  “Miss Hall, before you start shooting off your mouth, you ought to go back and read the Bible more closely, we’re all sinners. You, me, and everyone else in this world. Remember, that‘s why Jesus died. He died for our sins.”

  The bad lady inched closer to Nancy’s yard. Now her feet were practically standing on the grass. “You don’t have to tell me about Jesus,” she shouts.

  “No. That’s where you’re mistaken,” Nancy counters vehemently. “Its people like you, Miss, Hall, who cause most of the problems in this world, always preaching your religion.”

  “So what. Someone has to preach the good book to sinners like you. If you don‘t like it, Nancy, then maybe you ought to pack up your shit and move out of the Midwest. Get your sorry ass out of the Bible belt. We don‘t need your kind here. We don‘t need a pervert driving up and down our streets, delivering ice cream to our children.”

  Nancy scoffed. Used the broomstick to whack the garbage can, hard.

  “That‘s utterly ridiculous,” she says. “For someone who likes to preach the word of God, you don’t even know what the hell you’re talking about. For your information, Northern Ohio isn’t part of the Bible belt. The Bible belt is south of Ohio, in Arkansas, and Alabama. In conservative states down that way . . . And Texas, especially Texas.”