“You want to talk to me?” I said.
“About what?” Millicent’s voice was small and hostile. She didn’t seem to be feeling rescued.
“Why you ran away.”
She shook her head. We drove across Commonwealth Avenue. The Back Bay was still. The street lights here were more self-effacing, filtered through the unleaving trees. A single bum slept in a pile of clothing on one of the benches in the mall. Millicent didn’t speak. She stared straight ahead through the windshield. Her face was narrow, with a kind of incipient sharpness to it. Her eyes were black or seemed black in this light. She might become beautiful. Or she might not. It would depend, probably, on what life did to her, or what she allowed it to do.
“You like Pharaoh Fox better than you like your parents,” I said.
“He cares about me,” Millicent said.
“Like Colgate cares about toothpaste,” I said.
“What do you mean?”
“He sells you,” I said.
She shook her head. “He cares about me.”
“He’s a pimp, Millicent. He cares about money.”
“You don’t know him.”
She scrunched up a little tighter in the passenger seat, an emblem of stubbornness, hugging her knees, staring straight ahead, her sharp little face closing in on itself. She was like one of those stars that implodes and becomes so dense that no light escapes. Across Beacon Street I went out onto Storrow Drive and headed west, with the river on our right. On the other side, the big commercial buildings in East Cambridge splashed light on the empty black surface of the water. Neither of us said anything as we drove along the river. We were behind B.U. when Millicent spoke.
“You taking me home?”
“I don’t know.”
We drove some more in silence. Past the Western Avenue Bridge she spoke again.
“How come you don’t know?”
“I need to know what you ran away from before I take you back to it.”
“What do you care?”
“Maybe it was worth running away from.”
“How come you don’t just do what they paid you to do and stop pretending?” Millicent said.
“I don’t want to,” I said.
Storrow Drive had become Soldiers Field Road. I never knew quite where that happened. We went past the Harvard Business School and past the Larz Anderson Bridge. I bore left at the light, following the curve of the river, and pulled into the park on the riverside opposite WBZ. I parked near the water, and shut off the headlights. I left the motor running, so I could have the heat on. It was cold at 3 A.M. in late September, and Millicent was wearing only shorts and a tank top. I gave her my jacket. She took it without comment and shrugged it around her shoulders.
“Why we stopping here?” she said.
She was getting positively chatty.
“It will give us a chance to talk,” I said.
“Oh please,” Millicent said.
I was quiet. The river was black and apparently motionless in front of us. It didn’t look like it was moving past us, flowing east darkly, and without surcease.
“Why did you run away?” I said.
“I don’t get along with my parents,” Millicent said.
“Why not?”
“They’re creepy,” she said.
I nodded.
“You don’t miss them.”
“No.”
“How about school?”
“I hate school.”
I nodded again.
“I never much liked it either,” I said. “You miss anybody at school?”
“No.”
“Do you miss anyone at all?”
“No.”
“Does anyone miss you?”
Millicent didn’t answer.
“What do you think?” I said.
“About what?”
“Do you think there’s anyone who misses you?”
“How would I know? My parents hired you to find me.”
“Do you think that means they miss you?”
She was quiet again. But it was different. She was thinking about the question.
“No,” she said. “It just means they worry what the neighbors think.”
“Could be,” I said. “Do you like one of them better than the other?”
“No.”
“Do you dislike one more?”
“No. I hate them both.”
“Why?”
“I told you. They’re creepy.”
“Give me a for instance,” I said.
“My mother fucks everybody,” Millicent said.
She checked me from the corner of her eye to see how I took the news.
“I bet that’s hard to think about,” I said.
“Don’t you think that’s creepy?”
“Maybe,” I said. “Why do you think it’s creepy?”
“For crissake, a married woman, her age?”
“How do you know this?”
“I know”
“How?”
“I see her come home sometimes. She’s, like, drunk. Her makeup is all messed up. Her clothes are, you know, like crooked.”
“This is suggestive,” I said. “What’s your father’s reaction.”
Millicent laughed a little ugly humorless laugh.
“He acts like she’s not doing anything.”
“Maybe he’s right.”
Millicent shook her head. She was eager now. Nothing like the chance to share grievances to encourage conversation.
“No,” she said. “I found pictures.”
“Your mother and other men?”
“Yes.”
“Who took the pictures?” I said.
She was silent. I could tell she’d never thought about that.
“I think they maybe took them themselves.”
“Sexual situations.”
“Oh yeah,” Millicent said.
“How’d you find the pictures.”
“I was snooping in her room.”
I nodded.
“Your mother have her own room?” I said.
“Yes. That’s kind of creepy, I think.”
I shrugged.
“Your father know about the pictures?” I said.
“I left them where he’d find them.”
“And?”
“Next time I looked they were gone. But he never said anything.”
“Maybe he said something to your mother.”
“No.”
“Why not?”
Millicent gave me a scornful look. The scornful look of a fifteen-year-old girl is as scornful as it gets.
“He’s scared of her.”
“Why?”
“Jesus, you ask a lot of questions.”
“I do, don’t I. Why is he scared of her?”
“I don’t know, he just is.”
“Maybe he loves her and he’s afraid if he makes her mad she won’t love him.”
“You think he doesn’t fool around?” Millicent said.
Her tone suggested that she was trying very hard to speak clearly to an idiot.
“I’d guess he did,” I said. “Does he?”
“Sure.”
“It doesn’t mean he doesn’t love her.”
“How can you love somebody and fuck a bunch of other people?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “But I know it’s done.”
“You married?”
“Divorced,” I said.
“So who are you to talk?”
I wasn’t talking. She was. I smiled at her.
“Sonya J. Randall,” I said.
“Your first name is Sonya?”
“Yep.”
“Gross,” she said. “What’s the J. for?”
“Joan. What made you run away when you did?”
“I told you, my parents are creepy.”
“But you’ve found them creepy for a long time, Millicent. Why did you run now?”
She looked away from me and shook her head.
“There must be a reason,” I said.
She continued not to look at me.
“I got fed up,” she said. “That was the reason.”
She was lying and I knew it, and she probably knew that I knew it, but there was nowhere to go. I’d already pushed her as hard as I dared. Maybe a little harder.
“If you think of another reason,” I said, “I’d be pleased to know it.”