chance to do that before. If you wanted to go to a movie, you had to hassle around for a baby-sitter.
You couldn’t go into town to see the Mets unless her folks would take the kids, because my mom
wouldn’t have anything to do with us. Denny was born too soon after we were married, see? She said
Rita was just a tramp, a common little corner-walker. Corner-walker is what my mom always called
them. Isn’t that a sketch? She sat me down once and told me diseases you can get if you went to a cor. . .
to a prostitute. How your pri. . . your penis has just a little tiny sore on it one day and the next day it’s
rotting right off. She wouldn’t even come to the wed-ding.’
Billings drummed his chest with his fingers.
‘Rita’s gynaecologist sold heron this thing called an IUD – interuterine device. Foolproof, the doctor
said. He just sticks it up the woman’s . . . her place, and that’s it. If there’s anything in there, the egg
can’t fertilize. You don’t even know it’s there.’ He smiled at the ceiling with dark sweetness. ‘No one
knows if it’s there or not. And next year she’s pregnant again. Some foolproof.’
‘No birth-control method is perfect,’ Harper said. ‘The pill is only ninety-eight per cent. The IUD may
be ejected by cramps, strong menstrual flow, and, in exceptional cases, by evacuation.’
‘Yeah. Or you can take it out.’
‘That’s possible.’
‘So what’s next? She’s knitting little things, singing in the shower, and eating pickles like crazy. Sitting
on my lap and saying things about how it must have been God’s will. Piss.’
‘The baby came at the end of the year after Shirl’s death?’
‘That’s right. A boy. She named it Andrew Lester Billings. I didn’t want anything to do with it, at least
at first. My motto was she screwed up, so let her take care of it. I know how that sounds but you have
to remember that I’d been through a lot.
‘But I warmed up to him, you know it? He was the only one of the litter that looked like me, for one
thing. Denny looked like his mother, and Shirl didn’t look like anybody, except maybe my Grammy
Ann. But Andy was the spitting image of me.
‘I’d get to playing around with him in his playpen when I got home from work. He’d grab only my
finger and smile and gurgle. Nine weeks old and the kid was grinning up at his old dad. You believe
that?’
‘Then one night, here I am coming out of a drugstore with a mobile to hang over the kid’s crib. Me!
Kids don’t appreciate presents until they’re old enough to say thank you, that was always my motto. But
there I was, buying him silly crap and all at once I realize I love him the most of all. I had another job
by then, a pretty good one, selling drill bits for Cluett and Sons. I did real well, and when Andy was
one, we moved to Waterbury. The old place had too many bad memories.
‘And too many closets.
‘That next year was the best one for us. I’d give every finger on my right hand to have it back again. Oh,
the war in Vietnam was still going on, and the hippies were still running around with no clothes on, and
the niggers were yelling a lot, but none of that touched us. We were on a quiet street with nice
neighbours. We were happy,’ he summed up simply. ‘I asked Rita once if she wasn’t worried. You
know, bad luck comes in threes and all that. She said not for us. She said Andy was special. She said
God had drawn a ring around him.’
Billings looked morbidly at the ceiling.
‘Last year wasn’t so good. Something about the house changed. I started keeping my boots in the hall
because I didn’t like to open the closet door any more. I kept thinking: Well, what if it’s in there? All
crouched down and ready to spring the second I open the door? And I’d started thinking I could hear