Concrete Angel

by Patricia Abbott

  “She’s a kid and I’m not around kids much—I probably don’t know how to compliment them. What to say to their mothers.”

  Eve could think of a lot of things, but none of them were the sentiments she just heard expressed. Roy stood in front of her, slumping and damp. He’d never appeared so unattractive. Maybe she should check the tray on Adele’s bureau, but she had the sense it wasn’t jewelry that interested Roy. A sharp needle pierced her brain with little stabbing pricks. He’d hardly laid a hand on her in the three weeks they dated. Only the preliminary and impressive kiss each time. Not a finger on her breast, a hand on her thigh. Not once. Had he asked about Christine before? Had he tried to get inside the house?

  “Roy, I was about to tell you. Our oven’s broken so I won’t be able to cook dinner after all.” The words came out of her mouth fluidly. “I was hoping the oven could be fixed but…”

  “We can go out, Eve” he offered. “I know a great spot—”

  “I don’t have a babysitter tonight. You know—I thought we were staying in and wouldn’t need one.” Her voice had grown narrow, constricted. It was hard to get the words out.

  “Well, let’s take the little doll with us. She’s wide awake.”

  He was trying hard for the charm and confidence of ten minutes ago, but it was gone—for her at least. Did she imagine it or did he perk up, looking eagerly toward the bedroom door? His hands clenched and unclenched. Hers did too. He also had the slightly unfocused look men got after several drinks. Had he been drinking? He only smelled of cologne. And a little like some sort of animal—musky and wet-furred.

  He leaned in for a kiss at the door, but she nudged him away. His face registering the brush-off as he turned to go.

  “I think I hear Christine,” she said easing the door closed. “Coming, Honey.”

  She pressed her back against the door until she heard his car start.

  “I like your new boyfriend, Mommy,” I said as soon as the door opened. “He laughed at the show—like Daddy used to. He’s got a funny laugh.”

  I was still trying to stick my landing, as perky as I could pull off. I wasn’t the least bit tired, probably too old to be put to bed so early. Eight o’clock had been my grandmother’s idea of a suitable bedtime.

  “Christine, you know better than to sit on a strange man’s lap. Whose idea was that?”

  Did I know better? I didn’t remember being given this information. “Mine, I guess.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Sort of. He was sitting on the sofa where I usually sit. I think he might have patted his knee,” I added suddenly. “Like with a horsy ride.” I was sweating now myself. I shouldn’t have tried this stunt. I was in way over my head.

  Mother swallowed visibly. “A horsy ride? What did he do when you were sitting on his lap?”

  “We watched the show.” I frowned, working hard to give Mother the right answer—the one that would end the questioning and make the tight look on her face go away.

  “Nothing else?”

  “Well, he bumped me up and down a couple times, like his leg was a bucking bronco. I’m too old for that, but I didn’t say it.” I paused, remembering. “It kind of hurt.” I pointed to the place it had hurt, and Mother’s face fell. I wasn’t sure whose fault this all was, but I wasn’t gonna take the blame. I’d tried my best.

  “Do you want me to read to you?” she asked a few seconds later, either not willing or not able to ask the next question: the questions she’d raise with me a few years later, ask me when I was long past remembering.

  Did you tell him it hurt? What did he do after that? Did he do it more? Did he offer to rub the sore place? Instead, that night my mother thought this: Roy may not have known nine-year olds don’t play horsy. It was possible.

  “I’m too old to be read to. I like hearing the story in my head. Telling it to myself. I’m used to it now.”

  “You are growing up, aren’t you? Well, don’t read too long. You’re up way past your bedtime already.”

  “Mother?” Eve said softly into the receiver a minute later.

  “Oven still won’t light?” Adele sounded tired.

  “What? No, no, it’s not the oven. I sent him home anyway.”

  Adele sighed. “He did do something awful, didn’t he? Grabbed you? Broke something?” Her voice was growing shrill. “If you’d let me find…”

  Eve could picture her mother shaking her head, the downward turn of her mouth, the droop of her shoulders.

  “Could you please come home?” she asked, breaking off a piece of the French bread on the counter and sticking it in her mouth. “I don’t want to be alone.”

  “Is Christine okay?” The annoyance in her mother’s voice gave way to edginess.

  “Fine. It’s me. I got the heebie-jeebies.”

  “The heebie-jeebies! For Pete’s sake, Evelyn. You’re supposed to be an adult.” Adele sighed. “Heebie-jeebies. I’ll be along when we’re done this hand of rummy. I don’t like to disappoint Dottie. She planned her evening around me. I thought you could get along without me for a few hours. I guess you need a babysitter as much as your daughter.”

  Eve couldn’t dispute this charge. “Come as soon as you can.”

  She hung up and sat there quietly. The light under the bedroom door had gone out and the house was completely silent. Outside she could hear the sound of someone walking down the street. Someone with cleats on his shoes. Despite knowing in her heart it wasn’t Roy, she rose, pushed the heaviest chair in the room in front of the door and sat down on it. The cleats had receded before she was seated.

  The next morning, she called Hank and they made a deal.

  My parents had split more over mother’s refusal to agree to twice-weekly sessions with a therapist than the extortion money Daddy paid to the mailman. He went to considerable trouble to find a psychiatrist specializing in “acquisitive women.”

  That’s what the mental health professionals labeled women like Mother back in the early seventies. Bored, rich women who compulsively shopped and shoplifted were endemic. And as stores began to step up their specialization in apprehending shoplifters, the psychiatric profession embraced sufferers of the newly named disorder. Mother’s “hoarding” obsession, her most basic problem, would not be recognized for years. And after it was labeled, unlike other obsessive-compulsive disorders, it was difficult to treat, being more tied to childhood trauma and less to brain chemistry malfunctions. Like the yo-yo I would be for several more years, I followed her home, brown plastic horse in hand.

  “Haven’t we been down this rabbit hole enough times?” Eve asked her first morning back. She’d already agreed to his demands in principle but for the moment, no plans had been made. “No one can cure me because there’s nothing to cure. I just like my junk.”

  She stretched lazily, taking her first and only bite of egg. It’d been good to sleep in her own bed last night—no springs prodding her in the back, no odor of detergent, enough space in the bed to turn over. Another smell had greeted her in the bedroom, however—one she’d yet to identify. She decided to let the matter rest for the present.

  Seeing me tucked into my own canopied bed also reassured her that things would quickly return to normal—even if her definition of normal was skewed.

  Daddy read me a story—the first time I’d allowed it in months. The story was far too young for a nine-year old, but what did he know?

  “Some of your junk’s pretty costly, Eve. Few would call Delftware junk.” Eve was jolted back to the present and the examination of her “problems” once again. Hank motioned toward a cabinet of shepherdesses and dogs. “This fellow at the club says this doctor’s been successful with other…collectors.”

  “Clever word choice, Hank. I’m sure it’s a lucrative specialty. Avaricious women often have rich husbands—ones who can afford to pay the bills.” She looked at him smugly. “Acquisitive women must rank at the top of the list of faddish psychiatric disorders.” She blinked her eyes twice. �
��You only have to think of how many synonyms there are for greedy to get the gist.”

  “You’re one sharp tack for a college dropout, Eve. Your insight into your condition is especially impressive. Except you don’t know how to stop wanting things—or taking them if the checkbook balance is low or you left your pocketbook at home. As long as you have to bring home every shiny thing your eyes light on, you need help.”

  His fingers played obsessively with the crease in his slacks. He could step out of the house and into a magazine shoot, Eve thought with annoyance. Once, this attention to his appearance was a good thing. Now Eve wondered who it was requiring it.

  The sharp crease especially irked her. Did he steam it in again at midday, perhaps hopping over to the drycleaners to revive it at lunch time? Because the crease never disappeared despite the soft material of the slacks.

  “You need to lay every shiny woman your eyes light on, and nobody sends you off to the loony bin, Hank. Let’s compare notes on the costs of our activities. I’m sure the women you court don’t come cheap.”

  Hank shook his head, but he didn’t deny it.

  The smell in their bedroom: whose was it? Faint but not stale. Definitely expensive.

  Those long months of exile at my grandmother’s house came about when my father found out how extensive the “return” business was too. He must’ve had an inkling of what was going on before the lid blew, but chose to look the other way—as he so often did. He wasn’t able to adhere to the notion that early intervention was important with his wife. Daddy was mostly relieved for a few months’ grace from time to time—more than happy to look the other way, hoping the problem would resolve itself.

  It all came to a head when a new postman on our route proved unreasonably greedy on what his share of the take should be and blew the whistle—in Hank’s direction.

  “I’ve found it necessary to see a chiropractor and get special arch supports,” he told Hank prissily in a registered letter—a doctor’s bill and a picture of the supports in question from the Sears Catalog enclosed. “I haven’t looked into the cost of spinal surgery, but it’s a definite possibility.” He made no specific demands in his first letter. Later he tossed out some pretty hefty numbers.

  It would’ve been difficult to prosecute Mother though. Meticulous in her record-keeping (thanks to me) no single company had been badly scammed by her scheme. Who’d hire an attorney to seek a legal settlement for the return of twelve boxes of Rice-A-Roni? Only a class action suit from a large number of retailers would merit the legal fees necessary to claim a court’s time.

  The eventual “homecoming” after the debacle with Roy, the pedophile (if that’s what he was), came with the proviso that Mother see a Dr. Richard Cox on Tuesdays and Fridays. Friday’s visit, in particular, tuned her up for the weekend. Maybe with Dr. Cox’s help, it’d be possible for her to attend some club functions or entertain Hank’s clients as she had a few years’ before. Maybe there was a way to find a way back to the time of my birth—the days of the gay and perfect wife and mother. The hostess with the mostest as was said of women like my mother.

  “People still ask for you,” Hank said. “You were a favorite at the Christmas Cotillion in ‘64.”

  Eve didn’t remind him 1964 was many years ago now. She had little memory of that person, doubted she’d really existed.

  “If that’s true, it was a side effect of the increased (or was it decreased?) estrogen levels after birth,” she told me.

  Gynecological research, always a backwater science, was at a standstill on which.

  Whereas a few years later, a more psychiatrically wised up, Eve would accompany me on trips to Dr. B, manipulating my treatment with great finesse, she went to these sessions alone—Hank insisting family counseling wasn’t required.

  “His surname fits him to a tee,” she told Hank after her first visit. “Hell, his first name too. His parents must have been imbeciles, which brings his intelligence into question. Dick Cox, really. At least he could use the name Rick.” She was pacing the room.

  “Unfortunate choice,” Hank agreed. “Perhaps in his day…”

  “Well, it certainly suits him. He rarely gets off the subject of sex.” Eve lowered her voice slightly. “Gets off on it, I should say.”

  “Shun the pun,” her husband reminded her.

  I sat in the backseat of the car, listening to their back and forth for several minutes before we pulled into the driveway. When Mother said something lewd, Daddy threatened to send me upstairs.

  “I’m almost ten,” I reminded them as we entered the foyer, and they briefly relented, although no conversation between my parents was PG-rated for long.

  In my grandmother’s house, I’d been treated like an infant and acted accordingly by sitting on strange men’s laps to win Mother a beau. But back home now, I was nearly an adult—or as much of one as necessary to hold onto my father. I’d pulled up my socks, as Daddy often suggested, and taken on the role of caretaker again. Who else would do it?

  “What does sex have to do with you being a thief?” Daddy asked, pulling the New York Times out of his briefcase and tossing it on his favorite chair. “You’re in therapy to discuss your stealing, not your libido.”

  Mother shrugged. “Haven’t you heard therapists believe all problems stem from harm done in childhood and its effect on future sexuality? There’s an article in some magazine about it every month. Subscribing to Psychology Today keeps me abreast of such things.” She spun around the room, looking for a recent copy. “You’re the one who heard about this dope— at your club.” She said the word derisively. “Don’t blame me if he’s more interested in what’s between my legs than what’s between my ears.”

  “You were stealing things long before that flower bloomed.”

  Looking longingly at the newspaper on his chair, Daddy stroked his chin where an early seventies beard was making its first appearance. It would be a short-lived experiment since the beard turned gray within months. He wasn’t even forty.

  “Did you fill him in on your early career? The juicy stuff from elementary school?”

  “Elementary school? I never stole…” Mother blushed. “Look, I don’t volunteer anything with shrinks. I let them take the lead. If I learned anything at those last two snake pits, it was that. Otherwise, you get sent for a little electric pick-me-up or a sugar boost.” She waved the latest issue of the Psychology Today in the air and then tossed it to him. “A conversation can get tragically sidetracked by some silly thing you only said to lighten the mood, to be entertaining when the silence lasted too long. Words they’ll throw back at you when you least expect it. Oh, it’s quite a juggling act.”

  Mother’s knowledge of the psychiatric process, its ins and outs, would prove invaluable when my turn came, and that night was growing closer.

  “So you’re manipulating him,” Daddy said, his eyes blazing. “It’s always a game for you, isn’t it?” He flopped down, opened the magazine, and pretended to read the table of contents page.

  “Shouldn’t the good doctor be used to it by now? Know how to get past it? Isn’t it typical patient behavior? The guy must be sixty—at least. He graduated from the best schools. I saw a degree from University of Pennsylvania Medical School hanging on his wall. He should have learned some useful techniques for probing the reluctant or stage-managing patient during his studies.”

  Mother was busy mixing a drink though it wasn’t close to cocktail hour. Mrs. Murphy had become adept at always having ice in the bucket, clean glasses on hand, a variety of whiskeys.

  “Give him a chance, Eve. Stop trying to outfox him. Answer his questions.” Daddy sighed and flung the magazine aside. “Have you ever understood you really need help? Do you think other women—other people—spend their days acquiring so much stuff that no house can contain it. Things not even removed from their packaging on occasion. I recently found a—”

  “Oh, give it a rest.” Mother took a long swallow. “I agree my troubles don’t ste
m from my libido. Or, lack thereof, to hear him tell it.”

  “That’ll be the day.”

  They both laughed suddenly, explosively. It was one of the few areas of their marriage that didn’t dog them apparently.

  Daddy grew serious. “But maybe the two things are related, Eve. Maybe my penis is a glitter stick to you. One more toy in your box.” They both burst into laughter again at his inadvertent pun.

  Mother looked over at me quickly, batting her eyes. I climbed the stairs reluctantly.

  “Most shrinks think there’s a connection,” Eve continued as soon as they heard me climbing the stairs. I stopped midway up, hoping to overhear what I could.

  “Perhaps women shoplift more than men because they don’t have the gold between their legs.” She breathed deeply. “Want a drink?’

  “It’s not four.” He shrugged. “Yes.”

  She mixed him a Scotch and water. “Oh, I’ve heard all the theories. ‘My father didn’t love me so I am trying to get attention through glitzy purchases, through sex.’ Trouble is he’s dead now, so I’ll never get his attention.”

  The memory of Herbert Hobart making his way down the narrow aisle at Woolworth’s Dime Store would never fade. She could still remember the smell of parakeets and pet food as they marched through the store. Still remember eyes following them from behind every counter. Had some alarm gone off alerting them to the procession? She never sought her father’s attention—before or after. There may have been triumph on his face. He’d been proven right about his daughter.”

  “Doesn’t matter to your ID, Eve. Or ego—whatever it is. Part of you is still trying to please your father. Even if he is dead.” Hank was stroking his chin again. Or what must have been his chin under that fuzz.

  “Watching you play with the hair on your chin is making me itch,” Eve made a face and wiggled. “I wonder if they had sex at all. My parents. Can you imagine them doing it as uptight as they were? I never saw either of them naked, was never permitted to be undressed outside of my bedroom. The sight of me naked today is more than my mother can bear. My father’s only interest in my bath, for instance, was the amount of water in the bathtub, and my mother didn’t bathe me after age four, only inspecting me for missed areas when I was fully dressed. And mostly it was my ears—as if they harbored truckloads of dirt.”