696: “For one mad . . .”
What a Piece of work I Am, Chapter 24 begins
“FOR ONE MAD MOMENT,” she said, “I thought I might just get rid of all the loot, such as it was, throw it all into the sea, bury it under the sand, but I knew that wouldn’t do—”
“—because the storm of the decade would probably strike that night, and all the stolen jewelry would come washing up on shore, and after the winds stopped howling, when people came out of hiding, they would find the beach sparkling with evidence.”
“Always possible, I guess, but with me it was more that I felt I had to make Guy understand that he was in trouble, that he was on the wrong path. I was worried for him. I felt a completely irrational protectiveness, as if I were his mother.”
“I’ve seen those mothers,” I said. “On the television news. Their sons have shot a dozen people in a fried chicken joint but the moms go on and on about how good the little guys were as children. ‘Whoever did this, it wasn’t my Tommy. And even if it was my Tommy, he wasn’t himself when he did it.’ ”
“Well, Guy was himself when he did it. Let me tell you. Looking at his pathetic haul, I realized that this was Guy. And against all logic I wanted to protect him. I put everything back just as I had found it. When I left, I locked the door behind me. I told myself that I’d have to talk to him about it when he got back from Pennsylvania.”
She looked into the distance for a moment, then added, “—and about the baby.”
I sighed and said, “I suppose I should have guessed.”
“Not necessarily,” she said. “He didn’t. You want another drink?”
“Sure,” I said. “Why not?”
I got up and followed her to the sideboard where she kept the liquor.
“I had missed him while he was away, you know.” She seemed teary for a moment, but then she affected a cocky swagger, like a slapstick private eye. “Until I found the goods.” She went back to being herself. “After that, I had the odd hope that he might never return. It was a calming thought, in a way. Maybe he would feel the rippling disturbance of my discovery, even at a distance, sense that something was wrong back in Babbington, and decide not to return.”
“He might write for his things,” I suggested, “or he might send someone for them.”
“If he had called and asked me to pack his things and ship them, I would have accepted whatever excuse he offered, and I would have packed his things and shipped them to him, and I would have completely ignored the stuff that he’d stolen. I would just have left them where they were, not acknowledged ever having found them. I had come to think of it as the best course, the best result of all of this. It would save everyone a lot of embarrassment. I sort of hoped it would happen that way.”
“And the baby?” I asked.
She shrugged. “An abortion.”
“Hard to get, back then.”
“Hard,” she said, with a look of some surprise, “but not impossible.”
I decided not to ask.
“But he came back,” she said. “I saw him. I watched him. I was just coming out of one of the rooms on the second floor, just coming out onto the walkway that ran across the front of that long building where the cheaper rooms were, and I saw that Hawk of his, and I stepped back into the doorway, into the shadows, so that he wouldn’t see me, and I watched him get out of his car. He opened the trunk and took his bags out, and I had the queer feeling that he was faking it.”
“Faking it? What do you mean?”
“Faking every move he was making. It was as if everything he was doing—the way he grabbed the bags and pulled them out, the way he set them on the ground and stretched, looked out over the bay—as if all of that was for anyone who might be watching.”
“So he’d look like someone who was glad to be back, ready to get to work.”
“Tired from the family responsibilities he’d been shouldering—”
“—taking care of his mother—”
“—and stiff after all that driving—”
“—but ready to get back to work.”
“It was all an act. And it gave me the creeps. I thought of slipping away. Just getting out of there.”
“If I had been with you,” I said, “beside you watching him, if I’d had some part-time job, mowing the lawn or something, I would have urged you to go. I would have warned you. I would have told you to get away.”
“Well, you weren’t there, and I shrugged the feeling off. I left the room and started along the walkway toward his car, and I put a bounce in my step and a smile on my face, in case anyone was watching me, so that it would be clear that I was glad to have him back. When I was just opposite his car I leaned on the railing, struck a pose, so that when he heard my voice and turned to look at me he would see me at my best, and I called out ‘Back at last!’ in a voice so full of false delight that I hardly recognized it.”
“ ‘Tootsie!’ he cried.”
“He never called me that.”
“Oh. Of course not.”
“He spun around, and he looked up at me. His face was full of sunshine.”
“You wondered what kind of fool you’d been to think of leaving him.”
“Yes. You’re right. He dropped his bags and held out his arms, and I scampered down the steps and ran to him, with a little leap at the last moment so that he could catch me and swing me around with my legs bent, just like a movie embrace, perfect. I kissed him, hard.”
“A kiss full of promise, deep, wet, a kiss to make the heart pound.”
“Stop torturing yourself, Peter. I figured that I might as well enjoy what there was to enjoy.”
Since I was playing Guy’s part, I took her hands, looked into her eyes, beamed a big fake grin at her, and said, “ ‘God, I missed you.’ ”
“ ‘I missed you, too,’ ” she said.
[to be continued]
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