Nora beside me with a glass of water was a welcome sight. “Chuck it in her face,” I said.
Nora chucked it. Mimi separated her teeth to gasp and she shut her eyes. She moved her head violently from side to side, but there was less violence in the squirming of her body.
“Do it again,” I said.
The second glass of water brought a spluttering protest from Mimi and the fight went out of hen body. She lay still, limp, panting.
I took my hands away from her wrists and stood up. Gilbert, standing on one foot, was leaning against a table nursing the leg I had kicked. Dorothy, big-eyed and pale, was in the doorway, undecided whether to come in or run off and hide. Nora, beside me, holding the empty glass in her hand, asked: “Think she’s all right?”
“Sure.”
Presently Mimi opened her eyes, tried to blink the water out of them. I put a handkerchief in her hand. She wiped her face, gave a long shivering sigh, and sat up on the sofa. She looked around the room, still blinking a little. When she saw me she smiled feebly. There was guilt in her smile, but nothing you could call remorse. She touched her hair with an unsteady hand and said: “I’ve certainly been drowned.”
I said: “Some day you’re going into one of those things and not come out of it.”
She looked past me at her son. “Gil. What’s happened to you?” she asked.
He hastily took his hand off his leg and put his foot down on the floor. “I–uh–nothing,” he stammered. “I’m perfectly all right.” He smoothed his hair, straightened his necktie.
She began to laugh. “Oh, Gil, did you really try to protect me? And from Nick?” Her laughter increased. “It was awfully sweet of you, but awfully silly. Why, he’s a monster, Gil. Nobody could–” She put my handkerchief over her mouth and rocked back and forth.
I looked sidewise at Nora. Her mouth was set and her eyes were almost black with anger. I touched her arm. “Let’s blow. Give your mother a drink, Gilbert. She’ll be all right in a minute or two.”
Dorothy, hat and coat in her hands, tiptoed to the outer door. Nora and I found our hats and coats and followed her out, leaving Mimi laughing into my handkerchief on the sofa.
None of the three of us had much to say in the taxicab that carried us over to the Normandie. Nora was brooding, Dorothy seemed still pretty frightened, and I was tired–it had been a full day.
It was nearly five o’clock when we got home. Asta greeted us boisterously. I lay down on the floor to play with her while Nora went into the pantry to make coffee. Dorothy wanted to tell me something that happened to her when she was a little child.
I said: “No. You tried that Monday. What is it? a gag? It’s late. What was it you were afraid to tell me over there?”
“But you’d understand better if you’d let me–”
“You said that Monday. I’m not a psychoanalyst. I don’t know anything about early influences. I don’t give a damn about them. And I’m tired–I been ironing all day.”
She pouted at me. “You seem to be trying to make it as hard for me as you can.”
“Listen, Dorothy,” I said, “you either know something you were afraid to say in front of Mimi and Gilbert or you don’t. If you do, spit it out. I’ll ask you about any of it I find myself not understanding.”
She twisted a fold of her skirt and looked sulkily at it, but when she raised her eyes they became bright and excited. She spoke in a whisper loud enough for anybody in the room to hear: “Gil’s been seeing my father and he saw him today and my father told him who killed Miss Wolf.”
“Who?”
She shook her head. “He wouldn’t tell me. He’d just tell me that.”
“And that’s what you were afraid to say in front of Gil and Mimi?”
“Yes. You’d understand that if you’d let me tell you–”
“Something that happened when you were a little child. Well, I won’t. Stop it. What else did he tell you?”