“Maybe. But in the meantime, maybe we can do it ourselves. We’re not big-time yet. We can open accounts in banks around here using various names and disguises.” A frown came over her face. “Let’s leave things alone for now. The more people, the more worries.”
“You’re thinking too small, Eve. Leave it to me. I’ll work it out.” He jerked the wheel suddenly as they almost missed Roosevelt Boulevard.
“Geez, I hate this drive. Let’s shop in New Jersey next time.”
I got to Box#74 before I came on something interesting. Woolworth’s Five and Dime had sent my grandfather, Herbert Hobart, a letter in 1954, outlining certain conditions to be met to avoid the prosecution of his daughter for theft of several objects. This was a duplicate of the original, which he’d apparently signed and returned. My mother would’ve been sixteen. It was not one of Mother’s boxes, I noticed, looking at the top where it read Hobart. It was my grandfather’s records and included mostly tax information, social security paperwork. It was a miracle I went through it.
So Mother’s thieving had begun in high school. Not so unusual. Had she told me this story? Over the years, I had heard many tales but perhaps not this one. Did my grandfather’s antipathy for her begin with this?
The most unusual thing about her behavior was that it continued, unabated, for the next twenty-seven years.
More than a dozen boxes held the records of the return business, much of it in my childish handwriting. Along with the records, I found copies of letters various businesses had sent to Mother, some threatening her with prosecution for attempting to extort goods and/or money, some shaking a finger at her but nothing more.
I found the remnants of other endeavors, too: things I’d never heard about. Dummy receipts for items customers purchased at Morans Stationery Store in Hatboro in the early seventies. Receipts for more recent purchases of expensive items. I had only the faintest memory of Mother working at Daddy’s store. I found box after box of cheap jewelry, the tags still on them, things that looked like gold but weren’t. And finally, I found the box of transactions for the cars. Mr. Kowlaski’s antique cars. I assembled my own box of things and managed to get out of the house without too many questions from my grandmother.
“Find what you need?” my grandmother asked me, looking over the top of her glasses as she sewed a small tear in a terrycloth dishtowel. I nodded. “Hope your report gets a good mark,” she said as I left. “You’re a much better student than your mother. Can’t remember her once writing a report.”
“Oh, Christine,” she said as I headed for the door. I turned around. “You did leave it tidy, right? Just like you found it?”
Nodding, I left, wondering what her reaction would be if she knew what was really in my red-striped cardboard box.
I had no precise plan for these records, but knew they weren’t safe at home. A stray box would immediately attract Mother’s attention. Keeping an eye on things that entered our apartment came naturally to her. So I rented my own small storage box—finding a place she hadn’t used in the phonebook. I knew all the ins and outs of storage rental and my unit was hardly bigger than the size of a foot locker. But it was large enough for now. I badly wanted to talk with someone. Daddy? Grandmother? Aunt Linda? None of these possibilities felt right. These people had all jumped headlong into the murky waters Eve stirred years ago. Each had sins to cover, their own guilt or innocence to protect. None would want to admit they’d aided and abetted Mother in her crimes.
Of course, I’d played a bigger role than most of them. It was my childish handwriting on the returns; I claimed to have murdered her lover; I sat home with Ryan while she bilked Charlie Kowalski out of tens of thousands of dollars.
So Jason became my confidante. We sat in his car with the box between us. Where else could we go? I passed him documents, one after the other, watching the expression on his face. Every so often he exhaled his disbelief, but he didn’t say much. Just asked a sporadic question.
“Who’s this guy?” he asked when he got to the antique cars. I told him what I knew—which was little. We knew his name from the signatures and an address. I could only remember a few words here and there about “poor Charlie.” I hadn’t paid enough attention to her since I had begun to acquire a life of my own.
“My grandmother will fill me in. Mom kept house for him for a while.”
Although I’d never called my mother anything but Mother, my use of the word always raised Jason’s eyebrows. So I began to amend it. Mom. Somehow it put a larger distance between us. Me and this “mom” had less history.
Jason shook his head. “She kept more than that. I don’t know much about the price of antique cars, but it sure looks like they took him for a bundle.”
“Do you see why killing her might be the easiest thing? Do you see why I want to?” I didn’t know if or how I would, but the thought was still there. Always there.
“If getting Ryan out of her clutches and into yours is your primary goal, you can’t do it from a jail cell.” It always came back to Ryan. I’d gone from saving my mother to saving my brother without a beat in between.
When Jason was finished looking through the documents and papers, he looked up. “So what are you going to do about this? Go to your father? The cops?” He swallowed hard. “Or her?”
By now, I think he was as scared of my mother as the rest of us.
“My father knows about a lot of it. Certainly about the Wanamaker’s thefts. Probably about all of the return business since he had to pay people off.” I thought for a minute, trying to put it together. “I know he bailed her out once or twice for small things. Greased some wheels, filled a few pockets. Probably not about the cars though. And whatever’s going on now. Did you see the new TV?”
“So she’s done some time?” he asked.
I nodded. “And done some time in hospitals.” I sounded breathless—I’d been trained so well that saying this aloud was hard.
But I’d already told him most of it after all. “Your father probably doesn’t know about her record as a teenage shoplifter. Can’t imagine your grandparents sharing that information with the prospective groom.” I shook my head. “So you really think she’s up to something now? Something with Bud.”
“Yes.”
It was going to be harder than I thought to betray my mother. I already had a sick feeling in my stomach. Telling Jason was the first step on my road toward disclosure to someone official. I was practicing for what would be my ultimate act of disloyalty. It was coming and coming quickly. I wasn’t sure what would trigger it. What would push me over the line? And what would happen to Ryan? Would I be able to take care of him? Would I be allowed to keep him? Would I have to prove I didn’t really murder anyone—that I was her original puppet? Or a ventriloquists’ dummy perhaps, only speaking the words I was primed to say. I wondered if Cy Granholm was still around. Was it possible he’d admit to the truth? Not unless he was willing to hand over his license, be disbarred.
“One thing,” Jason said, closing the lid. “You have to be sure you’re out of harm’s way. You know from experience she’ll try to pin it on you. Make like it was your math skills that helped her—that are helping her now.” He squinted as the sun broke through the clouds.
I had told him about Jerry Santini too. It was the first time I had said the words aloud to anyone other than that fruitcake doctor. Six years of silence.
I don’t think he quite believed it, coming from a normal family as he did. I don’t think he believed a mother would pin a murder on her twelve-year old. He reached out and put an arm around me.
“I think you should go to your father. He’s dealt with her in the past, right?”
“But only to paper things over usually. He was her husband during most of it and maybe didn’t have much choice. But he hasn’t been her husband for a long time. I’m in college now and Ryan’s not his kid to worry about. Or probably isn’t. Why would he get involved with her again?”
“He won’t want
you to get into trouble whether you’re eight or eighteen”
Jason didn’t know Daddy at all. Had never met him. Coming from his family, he couldn’t begin to understand mine. Didn’t know about the years when Daddy was quite content to have me raised by whoever came along. I couldn’t see Daddy saving me, and most of all, Ryan. Things between us were better now, but it didn’t rewrite the past.
“So you think you should go to the police?”
“If it comes to that,” I said.
I’d go immediately if I knew what would happen with Ryan. I couldn’t take a chance that ratting her out would make his life worse. I had to figure out how to avoid it.
I could see Jason thought I was being too hard on my father. “I’m going to tell you something,” I said, swallowing hard. Thinking about all of it had a way of making bile creep up my throat. “Daddy never once asked me what happened the night Jerry Santini died. Never asked if the story I told the police was true though he knew what Mother was capable of.” Jason shook his head. “Now does that sound like a father to take this tale to?”
The edge I’d be pushed over was still a few days away. I came in unexpectedly and found Ryan dressed in a sailor outfit.
“Why’s he dressed like that?” I asked, finding Mother in the bathroom applying makeup. “Did you enlist him while I was out?”
Her hand moved expertly—the line across her lid was perfect. My brother was wearing a particularly elaborate suit with a matching coat and hat. It boasted epaulets on the shoulders and anchors on the socks. Ryan outgrew clothes in a few months at his age, and I thought he looked ridiculous—like one of those miniature poodles old ladies dress. He was sitting on the floor like a nineteenth-century doll, getting more agitated by the minute.
“I’m hot,” he told me. He began struggling to undo the buttons. “Mommy!”
“Wait a sec, baby. Doesn’t he look darling?” she asked me through the mirror. “Everyone raves about him.”
“Who’s everyone?” I was close enough to hear her breathe. There was no everyone in our lives. Or no one I knew anyway.
She took a long pause as she capped the eyeliner. “Oh, you know. People at the businesses where I go.” She saw it wasn’t enough information to satisfy me. “Bud’s patients mostly.”
Now it was me who caught my breath. “You’re pimping him, aren’t you?
“Bud?” she said, not getting my meaning. “Bud’s no pimp.” She turned around when I didn’t respond. “What the hell are you’re talking about.” The menace in her eyes was palpable as she began to get my meaning.
“Ryan,” I said. “You’re pimping Ryan.”
In a flash, she raised a hand and slapped me. It wasn’t a hard slap—I was too close to her for her to get much arm into it—but it still stung. I think it may have been the first time she ever hit me, not that she hadn’t done far worse. We both stood there silently. I fought back a strong desire to grab a razor blade from the medicine chest and slit her throat. It was mere inches away. The image of the blood running down her neck was mesmerizing.
Finally, she said, “Sorry, Baby. I shouldn’t have done that. I don’t think you realize what the word means. But when you put it together with Ryan’s name like you did, well, it made me see red. Do you know what a pimp is?”
For years she’d treated me like I was years older than I was. Now the pendulum had swung. I was too immature to understand anything.
I groaned. “Certainly, I know what it means. You’re using Ryan in whatever it is you’re doing to get money. Whatever scheme you and your boyfriend have put into motion. You’re taking him along to divert people. Curry favor. Something like that. That’s what pimping is. It’s not always sexual.” I put my hand to my stinging cheek. “Or perhaps you’re too immature to understand that. Too uneducated.”
Sighing, she closed the medicine chest door and stepped back, taking a last look at her face. She hadn’t broken a bead of sweat over my accusation.
“Look, I need to earn a living and I can’t leave him with your grandmother all the time. So I take him along. It doesn’t hurt things if he looks cute. You’re right about that part.” She stepped out of the bathroom and I followed her. “It’s not like you’re Johnny-on-the-spot. Not since Joseph came along.”
“I’m here now,” I told her. “Professor Meek canceled class. I can watch him today.”
“Oh, he’s all ready to go now. Look at him.” She walked into the living room with me one step behind her. “I hate to disappoint him.” She swept him off the floor and carrying him under her arm like a football, headed for the door. “We enjoy our little mother and son outings. Don’t we?” She was practically cooing.
I felt faint, but kept up with her. “Wouldn’t you rather stay with me,” I asked Ryan. This was the clincher: this was the moment of decision.
“No. I wanna go with Mama.” He hadn’t even hesitated.
It was Ryan’s Jerry Santini day; he’d fallen for Mother Love too. Mother was the glamorous one, the one to be courted. I remembered that special feeling well—the heart swell I felt when Mother returned from wherever she was, replacing Mrs. Murphy or Aunt Linda in my life. Now it was Ryan’s turn to feel it.
I didn’t know where they were going or what they were up to, but Ryan was being used like I was, time and time again. I’d thought our bond—Ryan’s and mine—was the more important one, but I’d fooled myself. I could never match Mother’s ability to seduce. She had honed it for forty years. Her electricity may have dimmed a bit but mine was no competition. And never would be.
Mother smiled, saying, “Of course you do, Ryan. Christine can stay here and work on her schoolwork. That’s the most important thing to her. Getting those A’s her Daddy likes. Getting educated.”
Speechless, I watched her bundle him into a stroller and head out the door. At the window, I saw Bud Pelgrave waiting for them in his flashy new car. I picked up the phone and called Jason. “They’re leaving right now.”
“What?”
“Ryan was dressed like a Victorian doll. I’ve got to find out what she’s up to.”
“If I’m going to follow them, Christine, I’ll need some notice,” he said. “It’s not like I live around the corner.”
I thought about this. “You’re right,” I said. “It’ll have to be me.” I paused. “Could I borrow your car for a day or two?”
It was a week later. I watched them enter and exit four department stores out on the Main Line. Packages under an arm or in the stroller coming out, packages hauled back into another store fifteen or twenty minutes later. It didn’t take a criminal mind to figure it out. That night when I returned his car, I told Jason, “She must be using Ryan as a diversion. And there’s probably more going on—stuff I can’t spot. I wonder if we could get into his office.”
“Whose office?”
“Guess?”
“Now how are we going to do that?”
“I bet anything she’s got copy of his office keys. She’s a key junkie—you should see the ring she carries. She can probably let herself into houses and offices up and down the coast.”
It was easy to eliminate some of the keys on her chain—our door, the car keys, Grandmother’s house, the key to her safes and storage units. I was shocked to see there were almost a dozen. Some looked old, but others were shiny new. While she was taking a nap one afternoon, I made copies of the remaining ones. The storage keys were easy to ID, tagged with the unit’s location.
It only took a few tries before I got the knob on Bud’s office door to turn. Bud and Mom were out for the evening so Jason and I brought Ryan with us. “What are we looking for,” Jason asked. “Any specific ideas?”
“Some proof of—of whatever the deal is,” I said, making a play area for Ryan by moving some chairs and cushions around. I handed him a bag of his plastic animals, which he immediately began to set up in this exciting new environment. Smiling encouragingly, I said, “Whatever she’s up to now ‘cause I know it’s the biggest sca
m yet. So let’s hunker down and find something to turn over to the cops. Or to my Dad before she brings the roof down on us.”
We began going through drawers. Bud had a lot of them—half of his back room was filled with file cabinets. It was nearly all patient records inside.
“Old Bud certainly has a thriving business,” I said. “Hard to believe such a sleazy guy could attract so many patients. I’ve never been sure what it is he does either. Is he masseuse to the stars?” Suddenly my hand froze. The name on the top of the file in my hand read Adele Hobart. “Grandmother,” I said uneasily. “Jason, look. This is my grandmother’s file. I can’t believe she came to this guy ‘cause she hates him as much as I do. Is he billing her for treatments she didn’t have?”
Jason came over and took the file from my hand. A few seconds later, he whistled. “Not her, Christine. Medicare. He’s billing Medicare for treatment. He’s billed them for nearly a year’s worth of visits from her. Twice a month. For her spine problems.” He started shuffling through the file. “I wonder how many of these other so-called patients are on Medicare.” He whipped around. “All of them. Look at their dates of birth. Somehow he’s gotten hold of their Medicare numbers and billed treatment.” At the back of the drawer, he found a long list of names and Medicare numbers. “I think Bud’s managed to get his hands on their social security numbers. He could be stealing from them too.”
“How’d he get them?” I asked. “Maybe my mother gave him my grandmother’s information, but what about the rest.”
There had to be a hundred files like my grandmother’s.
He flopped into the chair, thought for a minute or two, and pretended to pick up a phone. “Mrs. Brown,” he said. “This is the Medicare office in Harrisburg. We’re issuing you a new card next month and want to verify your social security number, address, and other relevant information. Can you read it from your current card to me? Certainly. I’ll be happy to wait while you go get it.”
I gagged, sinking onto a stool. “Do people fall for it?”
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