Tad was all excitement, as I had hoped he would be, and I loaded him in for a ride I had in mind, to the university at College Park, where they had a dairy building, as part of their farm complex, where you can get ice cream of various kinds, experimental kinds, most of them wonderful, not at all like what they sell in “parlors” as they’re called. They brought a book for Tad to sit on, but I held him on my lap, and ordered something made with diced dates for myself and plain strawberry for him, as being pink, pretty, and tasty.
He loved it. He ate it spoonful by spoonful, in the slow careful way a child has for something like that, and I loved watching him. When he was almost to the end he suddenly stopped, closed his eyes, and said: “M’m! M’m!” like he’d heard them sing on the Campbell’s soup advertisements. It made my heart beat up, the most beautiful sound in the world, of my own little baby being happy. He didn’t even complain when I hugged him tight, forgetting about his shoulder, so I knew he’d finally healed. I let him taste to the last spoonful, then ordered two quart cartons, one of strawberry, one of vanilla with chocolate chip, to take home to the Lucases. When we got back Jack was out on the curb waiting. It seemed odd, as previously he had shown me no special respect, and in fact took me quite for granted, in a way I didn’t much like. But now he was deference itself, opening the door, helping me out with Tad, being so helpful I was crossed up, assuming at first it was respect for the new car, or something of the sort. However, it turned out that wasn’t the reason. “Will you go up to Ethel?” he whispered. “She’s in a state up there-went to bed, believe it or not. You were gone so long she thought you’d flown the coop. She thought you’d taken Tad back. So
“He is my son, Jack.”
“I know he is, and you are entitled to have him for the day any time you want. But Ethel feared-”
“I know what she feared, and she should fear it, because someday soon I hope to make it happen. I am the boy’s mother and he should be with me.”
“I thought you weren’t ready yet, that you still couldn’t take care of him, all by yourself-”
I swallowed what I wanted so badly to tell him, to tell Ethel, for I was still afraid of how she would turn it against me. “I’m not. But soon I hope to be.”
“She’s scared to death up there.”
And then, as he walked me into the house, holding my arm, as I held Tad by the hand: “She’s nuts about him, Joan, just nuts. Don’t take him, please-not yet. He’s what she lives for.”
“What I live for, too.”
“Yeah, we know about that. But-”
“I’ll talk to her about it.”
So I did, coming in on her as she lay on their double bed, staring at me with puffy cheeks and red eyes, and giving a little cry when Tad came toddling in, having let go my hand at the head of the stairs, to pull up his sock or something. She jumped out of bed, swept him into her arms, and listened close as he told her: “’Tawberry! ’Tawberry! ’Tawberry!”
“Ethel,” I told her, very calm. “I brought him back-this time. But I’m in better shape now, financially I mean, than I have been-the job has worked out very well, and I
She looked up at me from where she was cradling my son by the foot of her bed and wrapped one hand around the back of his head, as if to protect him. To protect him from me, his mother. “You may do that, Joan, when you’re settled proper and have a situation suitable to the mother of a young boy. Not working nights for tips, from men who pay to drink and see your bosom, and if it’s only to see it and not to touch it, and much more besides, I’d be surprised.” She spoke this all in a syrupy sweet voice, as though the tone could hide from my little son what venom the words contained. “I know Luke Goss, and so does my Jack, and he bragged just two nights back about that car he sold you, saying he expected he’d have you in its back seat some night soon if the way you pet him on the arm and give him glimpses inside your blouse at the Garden is any indication of how you feel about him. Now Luke Goss does well enough with that yard of his and I’m not telling you he couldn’t make a tolerable husband for some woman, so if you’ve decided to make a play for him, so be it. But I have to warn you, Joan, you might find marriage proposals aren’t what you get put to you in the back seat of a used car.”
I was frozen, my temper held in check only by the look of distress I saw had crept into Tad’s eyes. He may not have understood all the words but he wasn’t taken in about their meaning, and could tell that there was something like hatred between us. “Luke Goss is a liar,” I said, “a salesman who will say anything to anyone to make himself shine in their eyes. I serve him drinks and that is all, and there never will be more, and if I ever touched his arm it was only to keep him from falling over in his seat from too many Manhattans. I will not be kept from my son by lies, not his, nor yours, nor anyone’s, and if you try you’ll wish you hadn’t.”
“… Wish I hadn’t? What are you saying, Joan? That I might have an accident like Ron’s someday?”
“I wouldn’t know, that depends on whether you drink as much as he did.”
She stood. “I’m sorry, Joan, but I don’t think it is appropriate for us to continue this conversation in front of the boy. If you would kindly leave, Jack will see you out.”
I bent to kiss my son, and he saw the tears I was holding back, because he flung his arms around my neck and clung, until finally I had to take his little hands and gently lift them off me and force myself to step away from him. “Mommy will be back,” I told him. “Next Sunday. And the Sunday after. And more than that, soon, much more, I promise.”
“More,” he said, but his voice quavered as though uncertain. And I knew then I couldn’t give up on Mr. White, however impossible it might seem.
All that time, I hadn’t said anything, to Liz, Bianca, or anyone there at the Garden, about what had happened to me.
And I said nothing to Mr. White as to what I’d done with his money, not that I minded his knowing, but I feared he wouldn’t approve, and shied off from letting him veto. I also said nothing to Tom, who came in as he had before-not every night, but two or three times a week, always sitting at Mr. White’s table, always taking seltzer, and always staying completely sober, but it must be said leaving me feeling a little tipsy in turn. He kept trying to date me, for an evening, or early morning actually, after I got through work, saying he knew a place where we could go “and not be bothered,” whatever that meant. And I kept putting him off, saying, “Soon, I hope-I’ll take another rain-check,” but it was harder each time. In spite of the way we’d begun, I’d come to like him. Or perhaps ‘like’ is the wrong word, but I was drawn to him, and I was coming to understand better what Liz had told me that first night, about the undeniable appeal of being asked, especially when it’s an attractive man doing the asking.
Then one night he came in earlier than usual and didn’t bring up the subject. He seemed in a very low mood, as though something was on his mind. I asked: “What is it, Tom? Did I pour gravy on your ice cream? What’s on your mind anyway?”
“Plenty. I have a friend that’s in trouble.”
“Someone I know?”
“Jim Lacey.”
“… Oh? The one whose son you spelled the day of the funeral?”
“The one. You may have seen him in the paper. He’s been indicted.”
“Indicted? For what?”
For answer, he dug into his briefcase and tossed a newspaper down on the table between us. The story was on the bottom of page one. James E. Lacey, senior municipal engineer with the county, had been indicted in a matter involving taking bribes to recommend sewer connections for some new development area. It was one of those cases they have all the time in Prince George’s County, where millions are made overnight on the basis of rezoning decisions, the award of sewer connections, of water connections, of paving connections. “Well, I’m sorry,” I said, as pleasantly as I could. “It always hurts when a friend gets in some trouble.”
“What hurts is, I’m not able to help.”
Not knowing what help was called for, I said nothing, but in a moment he explained: “He’s an idiot, a gambler, up to his ears in debt. No one would lend him a dime, and his trouble is, he can’t make bail. It’s been set at $12,000, and will cost over $1,000 for a bond, and he just doesn’t have it. Can you imagine, a man with his power and connections, sitting in a jail cell because he can’t raise a thousand dollars? If I had it I’d stand the bond myself-but it’s out of the question for me.”
