"Okay, okay. Maybe you do have a right to worry, but ringing the phone off the wall at two a.m. is only going to annoy my neighbors." Marilyn pulled one of the side chairs away from the table and sank onto its padded seat.
"So, where were you all night?" Mom never let go of a question until she got the answer she wanted.
Marilyn looked at Eli, looking back at her from scarcely an armslength away. She might as well tell the truth. Some of it, anyway. "I was with a man."
Three
***
"A man? On a date?" Mom's shock was expected. Marilyn hadn't been out on a date since Bill's death.
"More or less."
Eli's lips twitched in a grin and Marilyn had to grin back. She already knew he liked to play games.
"What does more or less mean? Was it a date or wasn't it?"
"Well, I don't know, Mom. How do you define a date? He didn't pick me up at the front door or bring me a corsage, but we spent the evening together. We talked. We had a drink."
The hospital had allowed Eli one of those little cans of juice once they decided he didn't have any internal injuries. She'd had one with him.
"So, who is he? Do I know him? Is it that nice doctor who lives on the third floor?"
The nice doctor only dated bimbos with lots of silicone. "No, Mom, you don't know him." She exchanged another grin with Eli as she stretched her legs out in front of her.
"What's he like? Is he nice? Handsome? Is he rich? How old is he? You want one young enough he's not going to have a stroke and need you to push him around in a wheelchair."
"How about twenty-five? Is that young enough?" She'd seen Eli's driver's license and done the math. He had just turned twenty-five in November, not quite three months ago.
"He's--what?"
"Twenty-five. Nice looking, good bone structure. Great butt."
Eli's grin got bigger, splitting open one of the scabbed-over cracks in his lower lip. Marilyn got a tissue from the box on the table and passed it to him.
"He has brown hair and blue eyes. He's about five foot ten, I'd guess." She paused as Eli pointed his thumb upward. "Or five-eleven."
He nodded and made a circle with his thumb and forefinger.
"Yes, five-eleven. Not too short, not too tall. He wears a cool black leather jacket and--" Marilyn paused as Eli popped open the snaps of his jacket, spread it open and pointed.
"--And he has a pierced nipple." How had she missed that? The technicolor bruises must have distracted her.
"You've seen his nipples?" Mom's voice rose so loud and so shrill that Marilyn had to take the phone away from her ear.
One glance at Eli convulsed in silent laughter had Marilyn struggling for composure. She couldn't let Mom hear her laughing or she'd be in for it. Mom could devise tortures that rivaled those of the damned.
"Well, he didn't wear a shirt under his jacket, so yeah, I saw his nipples." Marilyn made a face at Eli and held her finger to her mouth, shushing him. He was making too much noise.
"Marilyn Frances, you should be ashamed of yourself."
"For what? Going out on a date?"
"For making up such terrible lies. It isn't funny. I almost believed you. Do you want to give me a heart attack?"
"Of course not. Why else do I keep telling you to get out and walk more. But I didn't tell you one thing tonight that isn't absolutely true." Of course she didn't tell Mom all the truth, but Mom didn't need to know that.
"Marilyn Frances Franks--"
"Ballard," Marilyn interrupted.
"You were Franks before you were ever Ballard. I don't know what delusional fantasy world you've wished up--"
"It's no fantasy, Mom."
"Oh, please. Do you honestly expect me to believe that you went out tonight with some twenty-five-year-old in black leather and pierced--pierced--and no shirt--"
"Nipple, Mom. He has a pierced nipple. And three earrings. Two on one side. Believe it. You want to talk to him?"
"He's there? At your apartment?" Mom's voice went back up to glass-shattering level.
"Sure. Sitting right here."
Eli already had his hand out, begging for the phone.
"Sure. I'll talk to this make-believe Romeo of yours."
"It's Eli, not Romeo." Marilyn handed Eli the phone. "Be gentle," she whispered. "She's old."
He sat up as straight as he could and wiped the laughter from his face before he put the phone up to his ear. "Hey. Whassup? Is this Marilyn's old lady?"
Marilyn knelt by his chair and he turned the phone out so she could hear her mother sputtering.
"Yeah, Marilyn's da bomb," he went on. "We're gonna get matching tattoos, did she tell ya? We were thinking about hearts that say 'Eli and Marilyn,' but hearts are so last year, ya know? I thought snakes maybe, twining snakes--"
Mom finally managed to form words. "You put my daughter back on the phone this instant. Do you hear me, young man? Marilyn? Marilyn!"
She couldn't keep the torture up any longer. Marilyn took the phone away from Eli, but she had to hold it against her leg until she could stop laughing.
"Yeah, Mom?" She was still a little wheezy.
"Who is that dreadful young man? You get him out of your apartment right now. Right this minute, do you hear me?"
"Relax, Mom. Eli's really very nice. He was just messing with your head. We're not getting any tattoos. Especially not snake ones."
Eli made a pouty face, mourning the snake tattoos, and Marilyn turned her back on him before he got her laughing again.
"I don't care if he's the archangel Gabriel," Mom said. "I want him out."
"Well, guess what, Mom. This is my house and I'm a grown woman. You don't get to tell me who I can and cannot invite into my home. And before you threaten to
