Clasping, but not actually wringing, my hands, I said, “I’ve started wondering whether my mother — ”
“What?” Patti asked after I had allowed a moment to pass in silence. “Is she sick?”
“No. Nothing like that. I — I’ve begun to wonder what my mother — and boys — men — ”
“Oh,” she said. “I know what you mean. It’s a real shock, isn’t it?”
“A shock?” Did she know something?
“When you first think about your mother that way. It’s a shock, right?”
She tilted her head and raised her eyebrows. I would have agreed with anything she said.
“It sure is,” I said. “It’s a shock.”
She giggled and shook her head in wonder and said, “Just think about the things that you want to do with me — ”
“What?” I said. “What things? I — ”
She leaned toward me and gave me both the knowing wink and the provocative pout. The soda jerk dropped a glass.
“Just think about the things you want to do with me,” she repeated.
“Uh-huh,” I said, doing precisely as she asked.
“Now think about the possibility that your mother was sitting right here where I’m sitting, and some boy was sitting right where you’re sitting, and that boy wanted to do with your mother what you want to do with me — ”
“Huh,” I said, exhaling as if I’d been punched.
“ — and maybe he did.”
This was a way of considering my mother’s past that I hadn’t previously tried, but now that Patti had introduced it into my thoughts, I found that I could easily imagine how Dudley Beaker had felt about my mother. All I had to do was look at Patti and I knew with unsettling vividness. But what about my mother? What had she felt for Dudley? An idea came to me so suddenly that I announced its arrival as if I’d won a prize.
“I’ve got an idea!”
“Good for you,” she said. “What is it?”
“I’m going to take a trip into the past.”
“You’ve got a time machine?”
“No,” I said, modestly, as if it were possible that I might have built a time machine (and for a moment, I wondered whether I could). “This will be an imaginary trip, like a play. I want to look around and see what I can find out about whether my mother — if she might have had — that is, if my father — might not be my father.”
“Oh, so that’s what this is all about.”
“I want you to come with me — and play the part of my mother.”
“Your mother? And what part are you going to play?”
“Dudley Beaker, who might be my father.”
“You are a little pervert, you know that?”
For a moment, I wasn’t sure how to take the remark, but she pouted the provocative pout, so I took it as assent. “So you’ll do it?” I said.
“Sure,” she said, winking the knowing wink. “We’re friends. Anything you want, just ask.”
[to be continued]
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