“Don’t use that kind of word in front of your grandmother, Susan,” her grandfather said, and she saw that mouth of his go stern and tight.
She just looked at him, wondering why she’d even come here, but still, she had to try. She had to have money.
“I tried to protect Noelle for years, but I couldn’t save her because she let him do it-do you hear me?-Noelle let him beat her. She was just like all those pathetic women you hear about.”
“Don’t be stupid, Susan,” her grandmother said in a voice that could have crushed gravel. “Your grandfather and I have discussed this, and we know that battered wives are weak and stupid women. They’re dependent. They have no motivation. They have no desire to better themselves. They aren’t able to leave their situations because they’ve bred like rabbits and the men they’re married to drink and don’t have any money.”
“Your grandmother is perfectly correct, Susan. They aren’t our kind at all. They are to be pitied, certainly, but don’t ever put your dear mother in that class.”
“Amabel told me how Noelle came here once-it was early on in her marriage-and told you both what my father was doing. You didn’t want to hear about it. You insisted she go back. You turned her away. You were horrified. Did you even think she was making it up?”
Sally thought for a wild moment that this was surely the wrong way to go about getting money from them. She hadn’t realized all this resentment toward them was bottled up inside her.
“We will not speak of your mother to you, Susan,” her grandmother said. She nodded slightly to her husband, but Susan saw it. He took a step toward her. She wondered if he would try to hold her down and tie her up and call Doctor Beadermeyer. In that moment, she truly wanted him to try. She wouldn’t mind hitting that tight, mean mouth of his that masked weakness and preached platitudes.
She took a step back, her hands in front of her. “Listen, I need some money. Please, if you have any feeling for me at all, give me some money.”
“What are you wearing, Susan? That’s a man’s jacket. What have you done? You haven’t harmed some innocent person, have you? Please, what have you done?”
She’d been a fool to come here. What had she expected? They were so set in their ways that a bulldozer couldn’t budge them. They saw things one way, only one-her grandmother’s way.
“You’re not well, are you, Susan? If you were, you wouldn’t be wearing those clothes that are so distasteful. Would you like to lie down for a while and we can call Doctor Beadermeyer?”
Her grandfather was moving toward her again now, and she knew then that he would try to hold her here.
She had a trump card, and she played it. She even smiled at the two old people who perhaps had loved her once, in their way. “The FBI is after me. They’ll be here soon. You don’t want the FBI to get me, do you, Grandfather?”
He stopped cold and looked at his wife, whose face had paled.
She said, “How could they possibly know you were coming here?”
“I know one of the agents. He’s smarter than anyone has a right to be. He also has this gut instinct about things. I’ve seen him in action. Count on it. He’ll be here soon now with his partner. If they find me here, they’ll take
me back. Then everything will come out. I’ll tell the world how my father-that larger-than-life, very rich lawyer- beat my mother and how you didn’t care, how you ignored it, how you pretended everything was fine, happy to bask in the additional glory that such a successful son-in-law brought you.”
“You’re not a very nice girl, Susan,” her grandmother said, two spots of bright red appearing on her very white cheeks. Anger, probably. “It’s because you’re ill, you know. You didn’t used to be this way.”
“Give me money and I’ll be out of here in a flash. Keep talking, and the FBI will be here and haul me off.”