“I’m a nice kid, too, darling,” Venus flashed, and Beebo realized from her anger that she had spoken too bluntly. “And I’ll do whatever I damn please with Toby. That includes ruining him if I feel like it.” She sat down suddenly on a satin-topped stool, tired. “I—I ruined him anyway, and I never felt like it at all,” she said, as if too weary to repress the truth.
“I don’t want to bore you, Beebo. But I do want to know what he’s been saying about me. I know he’s been talking to you the last half hour.” She looked across the room at Beebo. “Please,” she said. Her voice was rough with fatigue.
Beebo shifted her weight and her legs felt almost boneless. “Well,” she said uneasily. “I don’t suppose it’s anything he hasn’t already said to you.” Venus looked directly at her, and Beebo wondered if it might not impress her more to hear these things from somebody other than Toby. “He loves you very much, Miss Bogardus,” she said. “But I don’t think he likes you.”
Venus merely nodded. “That’s no news,” she said. “He’s like all the other men I know.” She looked disgusted.
“He said you didn’t like men,” Beebo said.
“I beg your pardon!” Venus exclaimed. “I absolutely adore men. All but Leo, anyway.” She stood up and walked briskly back and forth for a moment, as if she intended to hear no more—at least not till her feathers settled.
“Tell me about yourself, Beebo,” she said, and again Beebo was miffed by the offhand order.
“I’d bore you to tears,” she said. “You don’t want to hear about my daddy’s cows and chickens down on the farm.”
“I think I do,” Venus said sincerely. “I never had a daddy. Or a chicken.” Beebo began to protest about leaving again and Venus waved at her impatiently. “All right, all right, but before you go, tell me the rest about Toby.”
Beebo didn’t know what to make of her. Hadn’t she heard it all from him herself? Venus glanced at her. “He’s been chattering about you since you brought that pizza over,” she explained. “He likes you. That means he’ll talk to you. He only shouts at me…. Sit down, Beebo.”
Beebo obeyed her out of growing curiosity. It seemed clear to her now that she had inadvertently become a line of communication between mother and son; that perhaps Toby did say things to Beebo he refused to mention to Venus—or at least, said them more candidly.
“There isn’t much to tell,” Beebo said, trying to squirm out of it. Venus looked very worried. “He just seems lonesome. I think it was a relief to him to spout off at me.” She smiled.
Venus sighed. “He’s a bewildering little devil,” she said, “but I guess he’s the only human being I’ve ever loved. Or ever will love. I loathed him when I was carrying him. I thought he’d ruin my waist. I scarcely looked at him till he was nine or ten. Mrs. Sack brought him up. He grumbles about her, but there are times when I’d give anything if he’d grumble about me the same way…times when I actually hate that woman!” Beebo watched her blow her nose on a tissue on the dressing table and realized with a twinge that she was crying.
“He calls her ‘the old bag,’” Beebo said kindly.
“And I’m ‘the old bitch,’” Venus said. Her voice was unsteady. “I should never have let him slip away from me. But he scared me, to tell the truth. Not just that he was a baby, and I resented him and didn’t know where to begin caring for him. But he…he had convulsions and things. Terrifying things that absolutely paralyzed me. And Mrs. Sack was so efficient and reassuring. Oh, hell, it’s no excuse. But it seemed like one then.”
“Convulsions?” Beebo repeated, surprised.
“Yes. He has epilepsy. The grand mal kind. Big stuff.” There was a shocked silence and Venus added sharply, “Well, it’s not a one-way pass to the bughouse.”
“No, no. I know,” Beebo replied. “I—I’m just so sorry.”
“Well, I’m sorry, too,” Venus said, and she had control of herself now. The tears had stopped. “Most of the time he’s perfectly normal—whatever that is for boys of fourteen. But every so often, when he’s especially tired or nervous, he gets these…seizures. He gets rigid as a post.” She faced Beebo. “Have you ever seen it?” she said.
Beebo shook her head. “But I’ve heard about such things. It’s like a muscle spasm, isn’t it?”
Venus’s eyes drifted away, seeing it in her mind. “He shoots up from a chair like a jack-in-the-box, and falls straight and stiff as a pole. His saliva foams. We have to be careful that he doesn’t swallow his tongue.” She took a breath. “It’s frightening to see your own child like that…. Well, then he goes to sleep, a stone-dead sleep, and when he wakes up he usually can’t even remember it. He just wants to be quiet for a while, by himself. Read books and stare out the window, sometimes for a couple of days.”
“What do you do for it?” Beebo said. “Is there anything?”
“There are treatments,” Venus said. “Shock therapy, chemotherapy. He hates it but it helps. He hates to talk to me about it. Mrs. Sack always rescued him while I ran screaming from the room. He thinks it makes him repulsive to me. I’ve tried and tried to explain—I’m just a coward!—but he’s so jittery about it now, I don’t dare bring it up.”
Beebo sat looking at her linked fingers, young enough to wonder why the fair and fortunate of this world are afflicted with sorrows as humbling and frustrating as those of the poor. Venus, whom men feared and worshipped, women feared and disliked, and children simply feared; Venus, herself afraid.
“Toby said some hard things about you, Miss Bogardus,” she said at last, “but he also said he loved you,
