“Now I’ll tell you why you must not send money to Joe’s mother. But wait a sec—he’s done it again. Joe! Joe! Put on your shorts and quit wiping pigment on your skin.” Joe did not answer but did so. “Joan, if you’ve got money to throw away, flush it down the pot but don’t send it to Joe’s mother. She’s a wino.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah. Joe knows it, her Welfare Visitor knows it; they don’t let her have her family allowance in cash—she gets one of the pink checks, not a green one. Just the same she’ll take groceries around the corner and trade ‘em for muscatel. That stomach trouble—forget it. Unless you want to help her drink herself to death. No loss if you did. The kids might be better off.”
Joan sighed. “I never will learn. Gigi, all my life I’ve given money away. Can’t say I did any good with it and I know I’ve done lots of harm. Me and my big mouth!”
“Your big heart, dear. This is one time not to give it away. I know, I’ve had a lot of her letters read to me. You trimmed that one, didn’t you?”
“Did it show?”
“To me it did—because I know what they sound like. I learned from the first one never again to have somebody just read them aloud to Joe; he gets upset. So I listen—I’m a quick study, used to learn my sides and cues just from two readings aloud when I was finding, out I wasn’t an actress—and then I trim it to what Joe needs to hear. Figured you were smart enough to do it without being told and I was right—except that you could have trimmed it still more and Joe would have been satisfied.”
“Gigi, how did such a nice person as Joe—and so talented—come from such a family?”
“How does any of us happen to be what we are? It just happens. But—look, it’s never polite to play the dozens, is it?”
“I shouldn’t have asked.”
“I meant it isn’t polite for me to. But I’m going to. I’ve often wondered if Joe was any relation to his mother. He doesn’t look like her; Joe has a picture taken when she was about the age he is nose. No resemblance.”
“Maybe he takes after his father.”
“Well, maybe. But Paw Branca I’m not sure about; he left her years back. If Paw Branca is his Pop. If she has any idea who his father is.”
“I guess that’s often the case. Look at me—pregnant and not married; I can’t criticize.”
“You don’t know who did it, dear?”
“Well.. . yes, I do. But I’m never, never, never going to tell. It suits me to keep it to myself and I can afford to do it that way.”
“Well—none of my business and you seem happy. But about Joe—I think he’s an orphan. Somebody’s little bastard who wound up with this bitch though I can’t guess how. Joe doesn’t say so. Although he never talks much—unless he has to explain things to a model. But his mother has had one good influence on him. Guess.”
“I can’t.”
“Joe won’t drink. Oh, we keep beer for friends, when we can, but Joe never drinks it. He won’t touch pot. He won’t join a Circle if it calls for a high. You know how it is with drugs—all of them against the law but as easy to buy as chewing gum. I could show you three connections in this one complex where you can buy you-name-it. But Joe won’t touch any of it.” Gigi looked sheepish. “I thought he was some kind o( a freak. Oh, I was never hooked but I couldn’t see any harm in an occasional trip with friends.
“Then I shacked with him and he was broke and I was, too, and groceries were our only luxury and—well, I haven’t touched anything since he married me. And don’t want to; I feel grand. New woman.”
“You certainly look happy and healthy. Uh, this ‘Big Sam,’ did he have a habit?”
“Not a habit. But Sam would eat, drink, or smoke anything somebody else paid for. Oh, he didn’t mainline—doesn’t fit the image for a guru and needle marks show—and he was proud of his body.”