Demeta, of course, had stopped my card as soon as she could, on the first of the month. Why not? She had every reason. I’d run away from home with scarcely a good-bye. I couldn’t expect to go on taking her money. I could see that now as clearly as I could see nothing else. How could I have reckoned to get away with it? It was some silly childhood thing that had prevented me from guessing. Some part of me had still believed the implication she’d always given me that, because I was her daughter, her money was mine. Stupid. Of course it wasn’t.
Why then was I hesitating at this phone kiosk, standing in the rain until the woman came out, and then moving in myself and closing the door. Altogether I had ten units left in cash. Not enough to pay my rent. More than enough to call my mother’s house.
Even as I put the coins in and pressed the buttons, I thought, But she’s so busy, she might not be there—and then I thought: She’ll be there. She’ll be sitting there waiting for this call. Waiting for my voice, for my frantic weeping words: Mother, Mother—help me!
And then I didn’t feel afraid anymore, only dreary and small and very tired. It was true, after all, wasn’t it? I’d rung her for help, for forgiveness, to plead with her, or beg her.
I leaned my forehead on the cold dank glass that someone had cracked on the outside with a stone. There was no video in this part of the city. She couldn’t see me. Was that good or bad? I counted the signals. She made me wait through twelve of them before she turned on the autoanswer that, left to itself, replies after two.
“Good morning. Who is calling, please?”
“Jane,” I said. Rain had fallen on my lips, and I tasted it for the first time as I spoke. Jane. A pane of crystal, the sound of rain falling on the silken grain of marble, a slender pale chain—
“Please wait, Jane. I will connect you with Demeta’s studio.”
My humiliation had sunk, and I was hollow. I heard her voice presently. It was politely warm, almost approachable. It said: “Hallo, Jane.” Like the lift.
I clenched my hand so hard on the speaker of the phone it seemed to melt like wax in my grip.
Jain, Mother. Jain.
“Hallo, Mother,” I said. “Isn’t it lovely weather?”
An interval.
“I’m sure, dear,” she said, “you didn’t call me to discuss the weather.”
I smiled bitterly at my dim reflection, bisected by the crack.
“Oh, but I did. And to say hallo, Mother. Hallo, Mother.”
“Jane. Try to be sensible. Your recent actions have been rather unusual, and very unlike you. I’m hoping that this will be an adult exchange.”
“Mother,” I said, “I’m sixteen. Not twenty-six. Not ninety-six. Sixteen.”
“Indeed? Then why have you acted like a child of six?”
I shuddered. I’d drawn her. She’d lashed back at me, neatly and calmly—and decidedly. The rain drizzled. I could smell onions frying and wet pavements, and… La Verte. La Verte filled up the kiosk.
“I really just called you,” I said, “to tell you how happy I am.”
My eyes filled with tears, but I held them inside me, and they drained away.
“I’m sure you actually phoned me, dear, to ask why your monthly I.M.U. credit has been stopped.”
I felt a surge of awful triumph.
“Oh,” I said. “Has it?”
She wouldn’t believe me. She knew she spoke the truth and I was the liar. But still, she’d had to say it, and not me.
“Yes, Jane,” she said patiently. “Your account has been frozen. Permanently. Or until such time as I unfreeze it.”
I stood and watched the rain. My hand had left the speaker, and I was drawing a rabbit on the steamy flawed glass.
“Jane?” she said firmly.
“Mother, why did you call me ‘Jane’? I mean, why not Proserpina? That was Demeta’s daughter in the legend, wasn’t it? Didn’t you think I’d be glamorous enough to be called Proserpina, Mother?”
“Where are you?” asked my mother suddenly. It was a trick. I was meant to blurt out a location.
“In,” I said, “a phone kiosk.”
“And where is the kiosk?”
Too late, Mother.
“The kiosk is on a street, and the street is in a city.”
“Jane,” she said, “have you been taking an illegal drug of some kind?”
“No, Mother.”
“I don’t think, dear, that you quite understand your situation. Your card is inoperable. There is no other lawful way you can obtain money. I think I had better explain to you, in case you’re thinking of it, that finding a job of any sort will be next to impossible for you. To begin with, you will have to possess a labor card. Before any employment bureau will give you one, they will take a body print reading. They will then check you out and see that you are the daughter of a rich woman. Accordingly, they will ask me if I am prepared to support you. There’s a serious shortage of work, Jane, which I’ve no doubt even you are partially aware of. No one who doesn’t need to work is even considered. And when they ask me if I will support you, I will reply that of course I will, you are my chosen child. You have only to return home, and everything you need will be supplied, including money.”
“You once said,” I murmured, “that I ought to get a job in the city, to appreciate the struggle the poor go through.”
“With my sanction, that could have been arranged. Not, however, without it.”
It was warm in the kiosk, so warm the rabbit was running all down the glass.
“All you need to do,” said my mother, “is go into any bank, anywhere in the state, and identify yourself. You will then be able to draw the exact fare money to get you home.”
“Home,” I said.
“Home. I’ve already redesigned and refurnished your suite. You know me better than to think I would ever say anything about the state in which you left it.”
I burst out laughing.
“Jane. I must ask you, once more, to control yourself.”
“Mother, you’ve left me no choice but to become a thief. I’ll have to rob a store or take someone’s wallet.”
“Please don’t be silly, Jane. This sort of hysteria is distressing—however well I may be able to interpret your motivation, we are still mother and daughter. It’s my very concern for your inability to cope with real life that makes me insist you come back to the house. You know in your heart this is true, Jane, and that I’m only thinking of you.”
A cliché. Never be afraid of a cliché, if it expresses what you wish to say, Jane. The kiosk was hot and I couldn’t breathe. I put my hand inadvertently to my throat, and felt the policode, and I said: “Does my policode still work, Mother?”
“Yes, Jane,” she said. “For three more days. And then I’m withdrawing your print from the precinct computer.”
“That’s for my own good, too, is it?”
“You know the expression, Jane, I must be cruel only to be kind.”
“Yes,” I said. “Shakespeare. Hamlet.” I drew in a hard impossible breath. “Spoken by a lunatic who’s just killed an old man behind a curtain, and who has a deep-seated psychological desire to sleep with his mother.”
I slammed down the switch so violently I broke the skin and my hand started to bleed.
It was raining fiercely now. Vaguely through the rain I could see someone else was waiting outside to come in and use the phone.
It became a matter of enormous importance then, not to let them see my face or what sort of state I was in. Though I wasn’t even sure myself. So I pretended I hadn’t hit the switch, and went on listening, and talking to the receiver-speaker for a few moments. My face was burning, and my hands were cold. I couldn’t really think about what had just happened. “No, Mother,” I said to the dead phone.