Patty shook her head and clutched onto Beaumont's hand.
'You want to go anywhere in the world with him?'
Patty glanced around the room; nobody said anything. She pressed her face against Beaumont's shoulder.
'Sure she does,' Beaumont said. 'She loves me.'
'A crook, Mom? A guy that carries a gun and steals money and is a fugitive from the damned mob?'
Patty sat up straight and rested her clenched fists on her thighs. 'It's not so easy for a girl to be alone, Paulie.'
Paul said, 'You don't go off with a goddamned gangster because it's hard to be alone. If you can't be alone, you can't be anybody. Haven't you ever found that out? To be with somebody first you got to be with you.'
'Oh, Paulie, all that psychobabble. I never thought you should have gone to that shrink in the first place.'
'And where do you get off calling me a gangster, kid?' Beaumont asked.
'You don't like `gangster'? How about `thief'? That better?'
'I don't have to take that shit,' Beaumont said.
'Please,' Patty said. 'Please. Paulie, I can't make it alone. When your father left me I thought I'd die. I have to be with somebody. Rich loves me. There's nothing wrong with being loved. Rich would stand on his head for me.'
'Jesus Christ, Ma,' Paul said. 'My father leaving you was the best chance you had. You didn't love him. He was a creep. You had a chance and instead you went to another creep, and then another. Get away from this guy, be alone for a while. I'll help you. Find out who you are. You could have a decent guy someday if you got your goddamned head together.'
'Who you calling a creep?' Beaumont said. He leaned forward as if he were going to stand. Leaning on the wall, Hawk cleared his throat. Beaumont looked at him and froze, then sank back on the couch.
Patty pounded both fists on her thighs. 'Goddamn you! I found a man who loves me. I won't let him go. Not for you and all your highfaluting shrink ideas. You don't know what it's like to be abandoned.'
Paul was silent for a moment. No one else spoke. Pearl got up from where she had been sitting near Susan and walked over to sniff at Hawk's pants leg.
'Well, not like I mean,' Patty said. 'I mean, sure, you had a tough time when you were a kid maybe, but we took care of you. You went to good schools. Now, you turned out fine, see that. How bad a mother could I be?
Look at you. Got a career, got a girlfriend. I must have done something right.'
Pearl seemed to have, found out whatever she wanted to find out by sniffing
Hawk's pants leg. She turned and came back across the room and sat down next to me and leaned against my leg. Unerringly she leaned against the bad one. I flinched a little and shifted.
'What I got, Ma,' Paul said, 'is me. And I didn't get that from you. I got that from him.' He nodded toward me.
'Oh, God, it makes me tired to listen to you. It's all words. I don't know what they all mean. I know that Rich loves me. If he goes, I'm going with him. You don't know, none of you do, what it's like being a woman.'
'Some of us do,' Susan said.
'Yes-and you've got a man,' Patty said.
'We have each other,' Susan said.
'Well, I've got Rich.'
'Happy as a fish with a new bicycle,' I said softly.
Paul was silent. He stared at his mother; nobody said anything. Beaumont stirred a little on the couch.
'It's kind of no-class, kid,' he said, 'to wash the family linen in front of strangers like this, you know?'
Paul paid no attention to him. He was still looking at his mother. She had linked her arm through Beaumont's and was pressing her cheek, defiantly, this time, against his shoulder. She looked back at him unflinchingly. They held the stare, and as they held it Paul began to nod slowly.
'Okay,' he said. 'That was my last shot. I've been talking to you for two days. You do what you need to do. You are my mother, and I love you. If you need something from me, you know where I am.'
Patty got up. 'Oh, Paulie,' she said and put her arms around him and pressed her face into his chest. She cried quietly, and he held her tight and patted her back, but his gaze over her shoulder was deeply silent and focused on something far down a dwindling perspective.
I looked at Beaumont. 'No cops?' I said.
'No cops.'
'Does it bother you at all that if you take off I'm going to have to deal with Broz?'
'You could take off, too,' Beaumont said. 'You need some money, I can pay you for what you did.'
I shook my head.
'Then I can't help you,' Beaumont said. 'I got to take care of my own ass.'
'And hers,' I said.
'Of course,' Beaumont said.
