Liz poked the telephone’s cutoff buttons up and down. She stopped, listened, seemed satisfied. She began to dial. ‘We’re going to find out who you are,’ she said. She spoke in a strange, confiding tone. ‘That should be pretty interesting. And what you’ve done. That might be even more interesting.’
‘If you call the police, they’ll also find out who you are and what you’ve done,’ Ted said.
She stopped dialing and looked at him. It was a cunning sideways stare Bobby had never seen before. ‘What in God’s name are you talking about?’
‘A foolish woman who should have chosen better. A foolish woman who had seen enough of her boss to know better — who had overheard him and his cronies often enough to know better, to know that any “seminar” they attended mostly had to do with booze and sex-parties.
Maybe a little reefer, as well. A foolish woman who let her greed overwhelm her good sense
— ‘
‘What do you know about being alone?’ she cried. ‘I have a son to raise!’ She looked at Bobby, as if remembering the son she had to raise for the first time in a little while.
‘How much of this do you want him to hear?’ Ted asked.
‘You don’t know anything. You can’t.’
‘I know everything. The question is, how much do you want Bobby to know? How much do you want your neighbors to know? If the police come and take me, they’ll know what I know, that I promise you.’ He paused. His pupils remained steady but his eyes seemed to grow. ‘I know everything. Believe me — don’t put it to the test.’
‘Why would you hurt me that way?’
‘Given a choice I wouldn’t. You have been hurt enough, by yourself as well as by others.
Let me leave, that’s all I’m asking you to do. I was leaving anyway. Let me leave. I did nothing but try to help.’
‘Oh yes,’ she said, and laughed. ‘ Help. Her sitting on you practically naked. Help.’
‘I would help you if I — ‘
‘Oh yeah, and I know how.’ She laughed again.
Bobby started to speak and saw Ted’s eyes warning him not to. Behind the bathroom door, water was now running into the sink. Liz lowered her head, thinking. At last she raised it
again.
‘All right,’ she said, ‘here’s what I’m going to do. I’ll help Bobby’s little girlfriend get cleaned up. I’ll give her an aspirin and find something for her to wear home. While I’m doing those things, I’ll ask her a few questions. If the answers are the right answers, you can go.
Good riddance to bad rubbish.’
‘Mom — ‘
Liz held up a hand like a traffic cop, silencing him. She was staring at Ted, who was looking back at her.
‘I’ll walk her home, I’ll watch her go through her front door. What she decides to tell her mother is between the two of them. My job is to see her home safe, that’s all. When it’s done I’ll walk down to the park and sit in the shade for a little while. I had a rough night last night.’
She drew in breath and let it out in a dry and rueful sigh. ‘Very rough. So I’ll go to the park and sit in the shade and think about what comes next. How I’m going to keep him and me out of the poorhouse.
‘If I find you still here when I get back from the park, sweetheart, I will call the police . . .
and don’t you put that to the test. Say whatever you want. None of it’s going to matter much to anyone if I say I walked into my apartment a few hours sooner than you expected and found you with your hand inside an eleven-year-old girl’s shorts.’
Bobby stared at his mother in silent shock. She didn’t see the stare; she was still looking at Ted, her swollen eyes fixed on him intently.
‘If, on the other hand, I came back and you’re gone, bag and baggage, I won’t have to call anyone or say anything. Tout finis.’
I’ll go with you! Bobby thought at Ted. I don’t care about the low men. I’d rather have a thousand low men in yellow coats looking for me — a million — than have to live with her anymore. I hate her!