“I guess so. But I’ve seen her with so many guys it just about makes me sick,” he said tiredly. “Until this year. Now, she says they all bore her and she’s sworn off men forever. I hope she means it. It’s been three months since she had a date. She’s terrible to men. They make such fools of themselves for her. I don’t know what she does to them, honest. And I’m not stupid!” he added quickly. “I mean, I know what she does—technically.” It was a toss-up whether his contempt was greater for his mother or her men.
Pat cleared his throat to camouflage a smile. Toby was conversant with sophisticated sex beyond his years; yet it was difficult and embarrassing for him to talk with friends his own age. Venus could take the blame for it, and Beebo felt a swell of righteous anger at her.
“You know what I think?” Toby said thoughtfully. “I think she’s bored with me, too. Well, after all, I’m a male.” He said it with pride and resentment, as if it were a fact not always respected in his family. “She needs somebody new to hurt and tease. If you make yourself available, I’ll bet she picks on you. It’s no fun, either.”
“Me?” Beebo said incredulously.
“You see her today and you’ll find out,” he warned.
Beebo, conditioned by Venus’s flirting and by the mood of her night with Paula, said incautiously, “You mean she’s interested in me? I mean…” Her voice trailed off, giving her meaning away, and Toby’s cheeks turned crimson. She realized she had shocked him, but he thought it was his fault for making the wrong implication.
“Not that way,” he explained hastily. “She’s not sick.”
“Oh,” Beebo said. “Excuse me.”
Pat frowned at her, and she looked at her knees.
“She wants somebody around to admire her and say yes to her,” Toby said. “Somebody whose feelings she can hurt. You have to be tough as Leo to get along with her. Leo doesn’t have any feelings…at least, they never show.”
“Leo—her husband?”
“Yes. He’s the only man in her life who won’t get down on his knees to her. But I think he’s the only one who really loves her, too. The others love the glamour, but Leo knows her through and through, and he loves her.” He shook his head as if it were incomprehensible.
“You love her too, Toby,” Beebo said.
He hunched his shoulders. “She’s my mother. What can you do?” he said with heartbreaking, youthful cynicism. “Even if the old bag did raise me.”
“Who’s the old bag?”
“Mrs. Sack. She’s my—well, you might say, my nurse…she’s been around so long, she’s part of the family, even if I am too old for her now.” The blush on his face deepened, but he needed terribly to share his burdens, and he felt safe with Beebo. She was a girl, so she couldn’t fall in love with his mother. And she had spirit and humor, which she had used to defend him. Besides, his solitude weighed desperately on him.
“Mrs. Sack was there when Mom brought me home from the hospital, and she’s done everything for me since then. Mom just sat around and blew kisses at me between lovers.”
“She must have done more than that or you’d hate her,” Beebo said.
“I do hate her!” he flared. “Leo hates her, too. That doesn’t mean we don’t love her, but she makes it awful hard.” In a knowing voice he added, “There are two things in this world my mother really loves, and one of them is not men.” Pat and Beebo stared at him. “She loves herself and money. Mostly herself. She’ll tell you that if you ask her. She’ll tell the whole damn world. That’s how full of shit she is.”
“Toby,” Beebo said gently. “Maybe you just see all the bad things now. Maybe when you grow up and get away from her, you’ll see her good side.”
“If she has one,” he said. “She calls me ‘darling’ all the time, and five minutes later she’s calling a complete stranger ‘darling.’ I mean about as much to her as the stranger.”
“I think it’s just a habit with her,” Beebo guessed. “Like some people calling everybody ‘honey.’”
“And secretly hating them all,” Toby said. “I wish just once in my life she’d call me Toby—when she wasn’t mad at me, I mean. That is my name. She gave it to me.”
Beebo wanted to pat him on the back, wanted to smile and say, “She will—I guarantee it.” He was a perceptive boy and very appealing. But she had nothing to comfort him with. “Well, if it’s any consolation, I’ll call you Toby,” she grinned, and was pleased to see him answer her smile.
There was a difficult silence until Pat said, getting to his feet, “That’s quite a bunch of guns. Who gave you the Japanese bayonet?”
Toby followed him to the case and began an animated conversation. Beebo sat pensively listening. Evidently it never occurred to Toby that Beebo could be sexually attracted to his mother. All his precocious knowledge of sex was confined strictly to his mother’s—admittedly free-wheeling—activities. And while Venus had done many things with many people, she had not, to Toby’s knowledge, done everything.
Beebo was surprised to feel so concerned about the boy. She was better acquainted with him now. His descriptions of his mother’s character were so youthfully lopsided they revealed more about him than they did about her. But it seemed certain that one thing he said was true: he did honestly both hate and love her very much.
The three of them were startled when Toby’s bedroom door swung open and Venus stood in the hallway. “Well, darling, why didn’t you send my visitor to me?” she demanded of her son.
Toby turned around, his chin jutting forward, ready for a tilt with her. But she merely inclined graciously all around, her smile flitting over Pat as though he were just another gun and settling on Beebo.
“Come in and talk with me,” she
