“And why did you take me in?”
“I already said, I loved you.”
“And my father, I mean Jody Howell, what did he think about it? Did he love me?”
“At least he loved me — then.”
“And that’s why he agreed?”
“Well, why wouldn’t he agree? By then we knew I couldn’t have any children. The doctors had already told me.”
I already knew she had some kind of condition that made it impossible for her to have children, so I didn’t go further with it. More soaking in took place, with her sitting there in her chair, kicking her foot, and now and then looking at me. She had a hunted, guilty expression, not the one she had had when she kept staring at nothing. After some minutes, though, it began to gnaw at me that the whole story hadn’t been told. Now I had more flashes, of how my father had acted toward me, the cold way he had. I never felt toward him the way I’d felt toward Mom or toward Aunt Myra. Pretty soon I asked: “What made him so willing? So willing for you to take me?”
“I already said: he loved me.”
“Was that all?”
“It was all so long ago. I don’t remember.”
“Was any money paid?”
“Well, I would imagine so, yes.”
“How much?”
“I don’t know. It was paid to him.”
After a long time I asked, “Was it that that he used to buy the other place with and build that crazy house?”
“I don’t know. He didn’t say.”
“Did he or didn’t he?”
“He didn’t tell me everything!”
“Was board paid for me?”
“I don’t know.”
“They wouldn’t have paid that to him. They’d have paid it to you.”
“Who is ‘they’?”
“Aunt Myra and my father.”
“Sometimes something was paid.”
“Like the first of every month?”
“I don’t know; it’s been so long.”
“How long?”
“What do you mean, how long?”
“Since board for me was paid.”
“I said, I don’t remember.”
“Is board still being paid for me?”
“You quit banging at me.”
“In other words, it is?”
She didn’t answer, which meant it was, and at last I eased up on her. I had to. By now I’d found out so much that my head was spinning around. I was like a cow that had cropped all the grass it could hold and had to lie down a while so it could chew its cud. I had no idea yet how I felt about it, whether I liked it or not, changing Mom for Aunt Myra or my father for some other guy I knew nothing at all about, except that he must have been decent and really in love with Aunt Myra to put out for me all those years. Also, of course, he must have been able to, which meant he was not just a nobody. All that, though, was stuff that just rattled around. One thing, though, remained to be cleared up. Why, after keeping her pledge all those years, did she up and tell me now? When I asked her, she sidestepped the question. “It had to come out,” she whined. “It had to be told sometime.”
“Why did you tell me tonight?”
“I don’t know, it just came out.”
“To make it all right for you to take off your panties for me?”
“How can you say such a thing?”
“Because it’s true.”
“It’s not true! You should be ashamed. You should get down on your knees and beg forgiveness of me.”
“I don’t. It’s true.”
“It’s not!”
“It is, but get this: It’s not going to happen between us. You know why? I don’t want it to, that’s why. I don’t love you that way.”
“It’s not what I meant, no!”
“It is what you meant. Quit lying.”
She started to cry, and I went over to wipe her eyes. Letting her blow her nose made me gulp; I wanted to kiss her, and did. That was my mistake. She grabbed my hand and kissed it and then pulled me down in her lap, kissing me and slobbering on me. Pretty soon I wrestled clear and said: “So — now we’ve gone over it, haven’t we? Really talked things out? Know what I want? Something to eat. I’m hungry. How about you?”
“You mean, you’re cooking my supper?”
It had an intimate sound, but anything to get to something different from what we’d been talking. “That’s right.”
“Dave, you’re so sweet.”
The peas and the salad were part of what had been brought by the neighbors that day. The chicken was from a package of legs already cut, that I’d picked up in market the day before. The pie and ice cream I kept on hand all the time. Whether she took my making her supper as meaning something romantic, that I can’t say, but the way she let down her hair, sitting there at the table with the torn dress twisted around seemed to say that she thought I’d changed now that I knew our relation was different from what I’d thought and that I was willing to make a fresh start. That’s not how it was with me. All I wanted was something to eat and a change of subject while I thought over all I’d heard. My head wasn’t spinning around, but it was turning and turning and turning as I tried to get used to it — that Aunt Myra was really my mother and that some guy who wasn’t yet named, some big wheel by the way he’d acted about me, was my father.
She puttered around while I was washing up, grabbing a cloth and wiping the dishes, always taking care to show more than the law allowed. When we went in the living room she tried to sit in my lap. I turned on the TV and got the 11 o’clock-news. At last I said I was tired, and how about going to bed? She hemmed and stuttered but at last went to her room after telling me good night.
I went to bed and was at last alone in the dark with what I’d been told. It may seem funny, but little by little things cleared. I found I didn’t mind that Aunt Myra was my mother — on account of her big black eyes, the way she doted on me, and the way I doted on her. But the rest of it — who my father might be — was just a great big ache, a hollow place in the dark I had to find out about. I was still thinking about it, or imagined I was anyway, not knowing I’d fallen asleep, when I moved and touched something in the bed. A hand was laid on me and a low whisper came. I must have jumped. “Don’t be scared, Dave. It’s me, Mom.”
I felt around. She was there, beside me under the covers, without a stitch on. I jumped up, or tried to jump up, but she grabbed me and held me close, still whispering: “I don’t bite! You don’t have to be afraid! Hold me close and love me! It’s all right! It’s nature!”
“It’s not all right. Get out!”
“No! No! Please!”
“Mom, I said get out! No such thing can happen between us!”
“But it can between you and that girl?”
“Leave her out of it, please.”
“I won’t leave her out of it, no such. We were happy — before she came — just the two of us, talking about how nice we would have it when our little dreams came true. I knew all the time that my secret, the one I told you tonight, would make it all right, what we wanted to do and what you had to do! Don’t you know that I had caught on to what you were going through? What a man your age goes through? What he needs from a woman? Don’t you know that I was willing? To give you all you wanted and more? You wanted it too, from me — oh yes you did. I could tell. Then she had to butt in. I hate her, I hate her, I hate her! Why did you take up with her? Why—?”
“I didn’t take up with her.”
“OK, you didn’t. So now it’s my turn, right now!”
“I tell you, no!”
“Yes, yes. Here, let me—”
I think there was more. The way I remember it, we wrestled and fought a long time, naked there in the blankets, me getting a startled idea of how young she really was, and soft and stacked. Finally I threw her out, out of the bed and out of the room, locking the door, which I should have done in the first place. Then I sat there panting, while she sat in the living room crying. Then it stopped, and I heard her go in her room. I got back in bed and tried to think where that put me. Pretty soon I heard her door open, but easy, an inch at a time, as though she was sneaking through. I braced myself for another session with her, wondering what I would do if she tried to break down the door. Then I heard the rasp of the dial and her voice talking low on the phone.