The boy huddled against his locked door, eyes streaming tears but open wide and fixed on the contorted face of the stringyhaired harpy at his mother's window.
Still in reverse, Christine accelerated a bit, turned the wheel, and nearly backed into another car that was coming slowly down the row. The other driver blew his horn, and Christine stopped just in time, with a harsh bark of brakes.
"He's got to die!" the old woman screamed. She slammed the side of one pale fist into the window almost hard enough to break the glass.
This can't be happening, Christine thought. Not on a sunny Sunday. Not in peaceful Costa Mesa.
The old woman struck the window again.
"He's got to die! "
Spittle sprayed the glass.
Christine had the car in gear and was moving away, but the old woman held on. Christine accelerated. Still, the woman kept a grip on the door handle, slid and ran and stumbled along with the car, ten feet, twenty, thirty feet, faster, faster still. Christ, was she human? Where did such an old woman find the strength and tenacity to hold on like this? She leered in through the side window, and there was such ferocity in her eyes that it wouldn't have surprised Christine if, in spite of her size and age, the hag had torn the door off. But at last she let go with a howl of anger and frustration.
At the end of the row, Christine turned right. She drove too fast through the parking lot, and in less than a minute they were away from the mall, on Bristol Street, heading north.
Joey was still crying, though more softly than before.
"It's all right, sweetheart. It's okay now. She's gone."
She drove to MacArthur Boulevard, turned right, went three blocks, repeatedly glancing in the rearview mirror to see if they were being followed, even though she knew there wasn't much chance of that. Finally she pulled over to the curb and stopped.
She was shaking. She hoped Joey wouldn't notice.
Pulling a Kleenex from the small box on the console, she said, "Here you are, honey. Dry your eyes, blow your nose, and be brave for Mommy.
Okay?"
"Okay," he said, accepting the tissue. Shortly, he was composed.
"Feeling better?" she asked.
"Yeah. Sorta.
"Scared?"
"I was."
"But not now?"
He shook his head.
"You know," Christine said, "she really didn't mean all those nasty things she said to you."
He looked at her, puzzled. His lower lip trembled, but his voice was steady." Then why'd she say it if she didn't mean it?"
"Well, she couldn't help herself. She was a sick lady."
"You mean. like sick with the flu?"
"No, honey. I mean. mentally ill. disturbed.
"She was a real Looney bin, huh?"
He had gotten that expression from Val Gardner, Christine's business partner. This was the first time she'd heard him speak it, and she wondered what other, less socially acceptable words he might have picked up from the same source.
"Was she a real Looney Tone, Mom? Was she crazy?""Mentally disturbed, yes."
He frowned.
She said, "That doesn't make it any easier to understand, huh? "
"Nope. 'Cause what does crazy really mean, anyway, if it doesn't mean being locked up in a rubber room? And even if she was a crazy old lady, why was she so mad at me? Huh? I never even saw her before."
"Well. "
How do you explain psychotic behavior to a six-year-old? She could think of no way to do it without being ridiculously simplistic; however, in this case, a simplistic answer was better than none.
"Maybe she once had a little boy of her own, a little boy she loved very much, but maybe he wasn't a good little boy like you. Maybe he grew up to be very bad and did a lot of terrible things that broke his mother's heart. Something like that could. unbalance her a little."
"So now maybe she hates all little boys, whether she knows them or not," he said.
"Yes, perhaps."
"Because they remind her of her own little boy? is that it'?"
"That's right."
He thought about it for a moment, then nodded." Yeah. I can sorta see how that could be."
She smiled at him and mussed his hair." Hey, I'll tell you what-let's stop at Baskin-Robbins and get an ice cream cone. I think their flavor of the month is peanut butter and chocolate.
That's one of your favorites, isn't it?"
He was obviously surprised. She didn't approve of too much fat in his diet, and she planned his meals carefully. Ice cream wasn't a frequent indulgence. He seized the moment and said, "Could I have one scoop of that and one scoop of lemon custard? "
"Two scoops?"
"It's Sunday," he said.
"Last time I looked, Sunday wasn't so all-fired special.
There's one of them every week. Or has that changed while I wasn't paying attention?"
"Well. but. see, I've just had He screwed up his face, thinking hard. He worked his mouth as if chewing on a piece of taffy, then said, "I've just had a. a traumamatatic experience."
"Traumatic experience?"
"Yeah. That's it."
She blinked at him." Where'd you get a big word like that?
Oh. Of course. Never mind. Val."
According to Valerie Gardner, who was given to theatrics, just getting up in the morning was a traumatic experience. Val had about half a dozen traumatic experiences every day-and thrived on them.
"So it's Sunday, and I had this traumatic experience," Joey said, "and I think maybe what I better do is, I better have two scoops of ice cream to make up for it. You know?"
"I know I'd better not hear about another traumatic experience for at least ten years."
"What about the ice cream?"
She looked at his torn shirt." Two scoops," she agreed.
"Wow! This is some terrific day, isn't it? A real Looney Tune and a double-dip ice cream!"
Christine never ceased to be amazed by the resiliency of children, especially the resiliency of this child. Already, in his mind, he had transmuted the encounter with the old woman, had changed it from a moment of terror to an adventure that was not quite-but almost-as good as a visit to an ice cream parlor.
"You're some kid," she said.
"You're some mom."
He turned on the radio and hummed along happily with the music, all the way to Baskin-Robbins.
Christine kept checking the rearview mirror. No one was following them.
She was sure of that. But she kept checking anyway.
After a light dinner at the kitchen table with Joey, Christine went to her desk in the den to catch up on paperwork. She and Val Gardner owned a gourmet shop called Wine & Dine in Newport Beach, where they sold fine wines, specialty foods from all over the world, high quality cooking utensils, and slightly exotic appliances like pasta-makers and expresso machines. The store was in its sixth year of operation and was solidly established; in fact, it was returning considerably more profit than either Christine or Val had ever dared hope when they'd first opened their doors for business.
Now, they were planning to open a second outlet this summer, then a third store in West Los Angeles sometime next year. Their success was exciting and gratifying, but the business demanded an ever-increasing amount of their time.
This wasn't the first weekend evening that she had spent catching up on paperwork.
She wasn't complaining. Before Wine & Dine, she had worked as a waitress, six days a week, holding down two jobs at the same time: a four-hour lunch shift in a diner and a six-hour dinner shift at a moderately expensive French restaurant, Chez Lavelle. Because she was a polite and attentive waitress who hustled her butt off, the tips had been good at the diner and excellent at Chez Lavelle, but after a few years the work numbed and aged her: the sixty-hour weeks; the busboys who often came to work so high on drugs that she had to cover for them and do two jobs instead of one; the lecherous guys who ate lunch at the diner and who could be gross and obnoxious and frighteningly persistent, but who had to be turned down with coquettish good humor for the sake of business. She spent so many hours on her feet that, on her day off, she did nothing but sit with her aching legs raised on an ottoman while she read the Sunday papers with special attention to the financial section, dreaming of one day owning her own business.