Mockingbird by Sean Stewart
I blinked. “Wow.”
He laughed, embarrassed. “Maybe it’s from watching Planet of the Apes too many times when I was a kid.”
“Yes! On the Dialing for Dollars Movie at three!”
“That bit at the end when they’re going to blow everything up—”
“And the monks take off their masks and they’ve got this white skin and blue veins and these horrible transparent heads!” I said. “Exactly!…Oh God.”
“Are you okay? You look a little green.”
Sand, I told myself. Think about sand. Black pepper. Newspaper.
My stomach subsided.
A perky blonde waitress came to our table. “Hi, my name is Susan and I’ll be your server today. Would you like any drinks to start?”
“Ms.—ah, Toni? Wine? They have a Louis Jadot Pouilly Fuissé that’s very nice.”
Sneaking a glance at the wine list, I saw that this was the most expensive item on it, forty-five dollars a bottle. Should I give him a point for subtly indicating that I could order whatever I would prefer, or subtract points for trying to show off? Hard to call. “No thanks,” I said. “Not before dinner for me.” Or, in fact, until next October. “Water will be fine.”
“Are you sure?” Bill said. “In that case, um…I’ll have a Peachy Keen, please.”
Susan sparkled brightly at him and perked off in the way of blonde waitresses everywhere. I wondered if she was pregnant. It’s the eeriest thing about pregnancy: you can have a baby in your womb, your whole life about to change, your body turning itself inside out, sucking the calcium from your very bones, morning sickness leaving you weak and dizzy with hunger, your fingernails blue and your concentration shot, and no one can tell. Time and again over the last couple of weeks I had found myself staring at the young women who passed me in the street, or the girl working behind the counter at McDonald’s, or the salesclerk who rang up my purchase, and thinking, Is she pregnant? Is she? What about her, over there?
And you can’t tell. You just can’t tell.
“So what’s a Peachy Keen?” I asked.
“Peach cordial, ice cream, and Kahlua,” Bill said. “They make these great frozen drinks here. You sure you wouldn’t like one?”
Yuck. “No, thank you.” I wondered what Louis Jadot would think of his pouilly fuissé losing out to a Peachy Keen. “Anyway, you were just starting to say something when I yelped.”
“Oh.” Bill’s mouth worked for a moment. “Let’s, uh, let’s just order. I’ll get back to it later.”
Another set of letters came around, announcing the approach of the Kellogg Building and the YMCA. “For some reason I always thought a revolving restaurant would turn so slowly you could hardly tell it was moving,” I said. “But this one just…rockets around, doesn’t it?” I tried looking away from the windows, toward the hub of the restaurant, but we had just come even with a tank of lobsters. They sat there like so many political prisoners in the blue-tinted water, their claws held shut with rubber bands, waiting numbly to be boiled alive and then served with creamed butter and port—
I took a few quick panting breaths, as the books advise, and stared very hard at the pepper shaker on the table. The stuff in it was fine ground, not coarse, but the shaker had a gold top and it was something to cling to.
“Are you sure you’re all right?”
“Absolutely.”
Bill stared at me for a longer time, caught himself, and looked around. “Nice view,” he tried.
“Mm.”
“Um—Terrible thing about that woman in Phoenix,” Bill said. “You hear about that?” I nodded. “Inconceivable. That any mother could take her own child and step off a building. She must have been on drugs.”
“No.”
“What?”
“No drugs. They did an autopsy. There were no drugs.”
“Oh. I hadn’t been following the case that closely.” Bill shook his big head and reached for his menu. “Just shows that some people don’t need drugs to be stupid. See anything you like?”
“Oh, well,” I said, staring blindly at my menu. “Everything looks so good.”
(Momma dries a coffee cup and puts it up. She is taller than me, always, until the last six months of her life, when she shrinks terribly. She is smoking two packs a day and doesn’t give a damn about the effects of secondhand smoke on the rest of the family, no matter how often I bring it up. “One good tip about how you pick a husband,” she says as I hand her a bowl to dry. “The reason you leave a man is the same as the reason you married him.”)
If I could say why I would leave Bill Jr., would I see why I should marry him? He sat across the table from me, looking awkward in his expensive suit, and all I could see was his clumsiness. Him suggesting the most expensive wine on the menu. The dreadful peach and Kahlua drink. How big and sure and comfortable he was dismissing Mary Keith, the woman in Phoenix who had killed herself and her child, this woman he knew nothing about, nothing…
And it seemed to me, seeing him there, that Momma was right, and that if I were to love him, someday, it would be because he had his clarity to offer, his certainty. He might sneak a cookie or a bowl of ice cream to gratify his small greeds, but he would never deceive me. The obtuseness, the Dignity I disliked, were also a sense of honor that compelled him to do right, and I knew, I just knew, that when he found his woman, he would treat her well, because it would dishonor him to do less.
And maybe a man like Bill Jr. needed a mate like me to see around a corner or two for him. Well, that was probably a fantasy. “Men don’t change,” Momma used to say. “They grow, but they don’t change.”
Bill’s Peachy Keen arrived and he set to, sucking down great streams of dirty orange alcoholic Slurpee. Whether he changed or not, I was pretty sure Bill Jr. was going to grow, all right.
“Are you ready to order?” Susan the waitress asked. (Are you sick with nausea behind your bright smile? I wondered. Do you lie awake at night wondering how you’re going to cover daycare on your waitress’s salary?)
I forced my eyes to focus on the menu, wondering how little I could order without Bill noticing. I decided to go for a salad. Eat a couple of pieces of lettuce and a lot of the bulk goes away, making it look as if you’ve really tucked in. “Grilled chicken Caesar, please. And could I have lots of cracked pepper on that?”
“Sure!”
“Lots,” I said.
“I think I’ll try the Cobb Spindle,” Bill said. According to the menu, this was a delicious combination of romaine lettuce, smoked turkey breast, Gorgonzola cheese, provolone, egg, tomato, olives, white beans, roasted pepper and red wine vinaigrette. I nearly passed out from reading the list of ingredients.
“Is there something peculiar about that pepper shaker?” Bill said. “You seem very taken with it.”
“What? No! No, no. It looks like one we have at home,” I babbled. “Maybe Momma stole a pair from here. She would do stuff like that. I used to think you could buy Hilton brand hand soaps at the store.”
Bill closed his menu. “Your mother was quite a character.”
“Several of them. Um, would you excuse me?” I said, easing out of my chair and walking as steadily as I could to the ladies’ room.
There is something extremely soothing about a really clean bathroom. Bright, clear light, clean fixtures, mirrors if you want them, cool tiles, and silence. And unlike the restaurant proper, the bathroom, being in the central hub, wasn’t careening gaily around the Greater Houston Metropolitan Area. I wet my face with cold water and stood for a couple of minutes with my head hanging over the washbasin. At home, when the nausea was really bad, I had taken to lying on the floor. There was something quite perfect about the hard, cool tiles pressing against my back. I couldn’t bring myself to lie flat in the bathroom of the Hyatt Regency, not in my silk jacket and nice blouse, but I was sorely tempted.
The nausea receded and I made it back to the table much refreshed. I even took out a disused smile, polished it up, and gave it to Bill.
/> His answering smile looked, to my eyes, a little unfelt. I was beginning to lose some patience with Bill Jr. A good fellow, basically, but here I was, having accepted his date, doing my level best to make sparkling conversation. He could at least try to be a little more entertaining himself. In the long run, I suppose, it’s not terribly important that your husband be a great romancer, but, like being handsome or rich, it’s one of those little attributes that a man really ought to cultivate if he possibly can.
I sat down, and he gave me a long look. “Ms. Beauchamp—”
“Toni, please.”
“—Ms. Beauchamp, you are no doubt wondering why I asked you here today,” Bill said. He took a breath and met my eyes. “I’m afraid we’re going to have to let you go.”
Once again I felt the sensation of the elevator starting up; the dizzy earth falling out from under me.
“In recognition of the good work you’ve done for the company, my father and I have agreed to give you twelve weeks’ severance pay. We won’t be filling your position, so you won’t be required to train a replacement. I should make it clear that this move reflects the direction of the company, and is not intended as a slight against your professional qualifications.” He reached into the breast pocket of his suit. “I have already written a letter of reference.” He handed it to me. “You can review it this afternoon and tell me if there are points you would like to have clarified.”
“You can’t do this.”
Bill regarded me across the table.
“You can’t do this. This is wrongful dismissal.”
“You are not being dismissed, Ms. Beauchamp. The position you currently hold has been eliminated.”
“I’ll sue.”
“You are certainly welcome to speak to legal counsel, if you think it appropriate,” Bill said. “I think you will find Friesen Investments is acting well within its legal rights.”
“Legal rights. Legal rights! What about moral rights, Bill? Your family owes us every goddam dime,” I said hotly. “If it wasn’t for my mother—”
“I agree,” Bill said. He looked out the window. “But you aren’t your mother, are you? Ms. Beauchamp, the…special relationship between your mother and my father has been very productive. But your mother was an exceptional woman. To be perfectly frank, I very rarely need an actuary. And when I do, I can always hire a far more experienced one as a consultant.” He met my eyes again.
“You had this scripted out, didn’t you? You read it in one of your magazines: ‘How to Lay Off an Employee: Make eye contact. Be unemotional. Don’t be drawn into arguments.’” I looked down at my beautiful silk shantung jacket and felt outraged that he should ruin the first occasion on which I’d worn it. “You’ll be hearing from my lawyer this afternoon.”
“I think you will find you have no case, Ms. Beauchamp. Don’t waste your money.”
“Oh, I’m not filing for wrongful dismissal,” I said. “I’ll be naming you in a sexual harassment suit.”
“What! I’ve never—”
“You invited me out to lunch. I couldn’t very well say no, could I? Not to the boss. We came here, sat down, and then you made it clear that if I wanted to keep my job, I would have to sleep with you. When I turned you down, you came up with this ‘downsizing’ scam.”
Bill’s doughy face got blotchy and congested. “That’s ridiculous. No one would ever believe I’d force myself on you. Why not Maria, or that pretty secretary down the hall?”
I smacked my forehead with my hand. “Gosh, Bill, you sure know how to flatter a girl. I don’t know, maybe you have a thing for bowlegged chicks.”
He started to flush. “Toni, I didn’t mean—”
“It’s too late to be a Southern gentleman now.”
“I can’t believe you’d…You’ll never win that suit, you know.”
“Probably not. I’ll make sure to get it in the papers, though. Often and I’ll be especially sure to tell your mother, Bill. Gosh, how upset will she be to think that her son—” He slammed his hands on the table. “My momma used to call me the hatefulest child there ever was,” I said. “You oughtn’t to mess with me, Bill.”
“Go ahead,” he said, white with anger. “Try telling my mother. While you’re at it, you can tell her how your mother was screwing my dad nearly up to the day she died.”
The instant he said it, I knew it was true. Oh, Daddy. “What did you say?”
“You heard me.”
Momma, you lying, lying bitch.
“He told me the night of the funeral,” Bill said. “He had a few too many bourbons in him. Wanted to stay up talking after we got home. Mother went to bed. ‘Just between us,’ he said. ‘Man to man.’” Bill looked down at the table. “You are exactly right. Your momma made us. She made our money, and she made fools of us too. She made a fool of my mother, all those years. The Friesens have to make it on our own, Toni. Can you see that? We just…we can’t have our families joined together like this. It’s not right. It’s dirty. It’s a bad, dirty story, and we have to stop it.”
Another wave of dizziness swept over me. Houston kept sliding, sliding, slipping away from me as we spun. “Yeah, well, it’s one thing to call the game over when all the chips are on your side of the table, isn’t it, Bill? You’ve made your profits off Momma, so now you get to cast her off. But what about me? I’m—” I bit it back. “I’m not in a very good position right now. Financially.”
“It’s a really good severance package, Toni. Really generous. And the letter I wrote is embarrassing. It’s a great letter. I looked it up in one of those magazines of mine you were talking about. ‘Winning References, and How to Write Them.’”
I wouldn’t do the bastard the favor of smiling.
Bill said, “When you’re trying to convince my mother that I’m a sexual predator, don’t mention about Elena and Dad, okay? She doesn’t know.”
“Okay.”
But I was remembering how Penny Friesen had looked when I came downstairs the night of the funeral and found her alone by the kitchen table. The hardest thing about having someone die, I find, is forgiving them. Oh, she knew about Momma and Bill Sr., all right. She had known all along.
I wondered if Daddy knew. God, I hoped not. That too, on top of everything else he had put up with. Too much. Too much.
“Are you going to file that suit?” Bill asked.
I looked at him across the table, a great lump of a man sitting there, greedy and pompous and well-meaning and a prick. “Funny how it always works out like this, isn’t it? The rich guy’s son goes to business school and has a nice suit and when the axe falls it’s somebody else’s head bouncing in the street.” Susan the perky waitress was approaching with our orders. “No, of course I’m not going to file any damn lawsuit.”
“Thank you. I really think—”
“But you know what I am going to do, Bill? Let me tell you, as my mother’s daughter. I’m putting the curse of the Beauchamps on you and your crummy company,” I said, shaking with fury. I heard the Preacher in my voice, his iron sentences. “You’re going to drill three thousand meters into bedrock and suck sand, Bill. Your partners will get scared, your creditors will all ask for their money on the same day. Strange blips on the world currency markets are going to thin out your cash reserves overnight, costs for your rigs are going to be two hundred percent over budget, and stains will appear on the office carpet that no amount of shampooing will remove. Are you listening to me?”
“Here we are!” Susan said, setting down our lunches. “Y’all enjoy now.”
Rich steam rose from Bill’s Cobb Spindle, heavy with the smells of provolone and Gorgonzola cheese. “Thank you,” I said, and rising with all the fury and dignity I could muster, I walked proudly to the bathroom and threw up.
I didn’t go back to my office at Friesen Investments. I drove to Slick Willie’s instead, the swanky sports bar-cum-billiard hall where Candy worked as a waitress. I had promised her I would report back about my date.
“He fired you?”
“Yep.”
She pulled a beer for a customer. “Wow. Bad date.”
“Yep.”
The black bicycle shorts of the Slick Willie’s uniform made her legs look chunky, but the white peasant blouse emphasized her excellent breasts; as, presumably, it was supposed to do.
The real action at Slick Willie’s was always on the pool tables and at the jukebox, which played an assortment of my generation’s rock ’n’ roll favorites VERY LOUDLY. Just an…exCITable BOY!
“Did you tell him you were going to have another mouth to feed?” Candy shouted. “For that matter, why didn’t you tell him earlier, and skip the restaurant gig entirely?”
“He was—I…”
“Didn’t want to scare him off?”
“Yeah.”
She hugged me and pathetically I started to cry. “Oh God, Candy. What am I going to do? Baby coming, no job, no money from the will…”
“You know that for sure? The lawyer called?”
“Yeah. It gets worse. It turns out that Momma owed the IRS a lot of money. A lot of money. I went and talked to my accountant about it last week. To make a long story short, it took most of my savings to keep them from putting a lien on Daddy’s salary.”
“Oh my god. Can I, uh…”
“No you can’t,” I said. “You haven’t got any money, right? Of course. I still have some stuff stashed away in my IRAs. I figured I’d be okay in a year or two. But now I don’t have a job…”
Two college-girl types next to us laughed, billiard balls cracked, and the jukebox continued to thunder around us.
“Isn’t that just like her?” I said. “Spend everything and then skip town, leaving me to clean up.”
Candy shook her head and held a finger up to my lips. “You can’t take care of everybody, Antoinette. You can’t cover all of Momma’s debts.”
“Yeah? If I don’t, who will?” I said bitterly. “That’s my job, picking up after Momma. If she hadn’t been—”
I stopped myself. Candy didn’t need to know I had lost my job because of Momma’s affair with Bill Sr. Candy, pretty Candy—she saw happy things. And she did her job. She cheered us up, she laughed and joked. She pulled her weight. It was my job to pay the debts, to hold the bitter things. And I was going to pull my weight too. Because if there was one thing Momma taught me, it was to endure.
He laughed, embarrassed. “Maybe it’s from watching Planet of the Apes too many times when I was a kid.”
“Yes! On the Dialing for Dollars Movie at three!”
“That bit at the end when they’re going to blow everything up—”
“And the monks take off their masks and they’ve got this white skin and blue veins and these horrible transparent heads!” I said. “Exactly!…Oh God.”
“Are you okay? You look a little green.”
Sand, I told myself. Think about sand. Black pepper. Newspaper.
My stomach subsided.
A perky blonde waitress came to our table. “Hi, my name is Susan and I’ll be your server today. Would you like any drinks to start?”
“Ms.—ah, Toni? Wine? They have a Louis Jadot Pouilly Fuissé that’s very nice.”
Sneaking a glance at the wine list, I saw that this was the most expensive item on it, forty-five dollars a bottle. Should I give him a point for subtly indicating that I could order whatever I would prefer, or subtract points for trying to show off? Hard to call. “No thanks,” I said. “Not before dinner for me.” Or, in fact, until next October. “Water will be fine.”
“Are you sure?” Bill said. “In that case, um…I’ll have a Peachy Keen, please.”
Susan sparkled brightly at him and perked off in the way of blonde waitresses everywhere. I wondered if she was pregnant. It’s the eeriest thing about pregnancy: you can have a baby in your womb, your whole life about to change, your body turning itself inside out, sucking the calcium from your very bones, morning sickness leaving you weak and dizzy with hunger, your fingernails blue and your concentration shot, and no one can tell. Time and again over the last couple of weeks I had found myself staring at the young women who passed me in the street, or the girl working behind the counter at McDonald’s, or the salesclerk who rang up my purchase, and thinking, Is she pregnant? Is she? What about her, over there?
And you can’t tell. You just can’t tell.
“So what’s a Peachy Keen?” I asked.
“Peach cordial, ice cream, and Kahlua,” Bill said. “They make these great frozen drinks here. You sure you wouldn’t like one?”
Yuck. “No, thank you.” I wondered what Louis Jadot would think of his pouilly fuissé losing out to a Peachy Keen. “Anyway, you were just starting to say something when I yelped.”
“Oh.” Bill’s mouth worked for a moment. “Let’s, uh, let’s just order. I’ll get back to it later.”
Another set of letters came around, announcing the approach of the Kellogg Building and the YMCA. “For some reason I always thought a revolving restaurant would turn so slowly you could hardly tell it was moving,” I said. “But this one just…rockets around, doesn’t it?” I tried looking away from the windows, toward the hub of the restaurant, but we had just come even with a tank of lobsters. They sat there like so many political prisoners in the blue-tinted water, their claws held shut with rubber bands, waiting numbly to be boiled alive and then served with creamed butter and port—
I took a few quick panting breaths, as the books advise, and stared very hard at the pepper shaker on the table. The stuff in it was fine ground, not coarse, but the shaker had a gold top and it was something to cling to.
“Are you sure you’re all right?”
“Absolutely.”
Bill stared at me for a longer time, caught himself, and looked around. “Nice view,” he tried.
“Mm.”
“Um—Terrible thing about that woman in Phoenix,” Bill said. “You hear about that?” I nodded. “Inconceivable. That any mother could take her own child and step off a building. She must have been on drugs.”
“No.”
“What?”
“No drugs. They did an autopsy. There were no drugs.”
“Oh. I hadn’t been following the case that closely.” Bill shook his big head and reached for his menu. “Just shows that some people don’t need drugs to be stupid. See anything you like?”
“Oh, well,” I said, staring blindly at my menu. “Everything looks so good.”
(Momma dries a coffee cup and puts it up. She is taller than me, always, until the last six months of her life, when she shrinks terribly. She is smoking two packs a day and doesn’t give a damn about the effects of secondhand smoke on the rest of the family, no matter how often I bring it up. “One good tip about how you pick a husband,” she says as I hand her a bowl to dry. “The reason you leave a man is the same as the reason you married him.”)
If I could say why I would leave Bill Jr., would I see why I should marry him? He sat across the table from me, looking awkward in his expensive suit, and all I could see was his clumsiness. Him suggesting the most expensive wine on the menu. The dreadful peach and Kahlua drink. How big and sure and comfortable he was dismissing Mary Keith, the woman in Phoenix who had killed herself and her child, this woman he knew nothing about, nothing…
And it seemed to me, seeing him there, that Momma was right, and that if I were to love him, someday, it would be because he had his clarity to offer, his certainty. He might sneak a cookie or a bowl of ice cream to gratify his small greeds, but he would never deceive me. The obtuseness, the Dignity I disliked, were also a sense of honor that compelled him to do right, and I knew, I just knew, that when he found his woman, he would treat her well, because it would dishonor him to do less.
And maybe a man like Bill Jr. needed a mate like me to see around a corner or two for him. Well, that was probably a fantasy. “Men don’t change,” Momma used to say. “They grow, but they don’t change.”
Bill’s Peachy Keen arrived and he set to, sucking down great streams of dirty orange alcoholic Slurpee. Whether he changed or not, I was pretty sure Bill Jr. was going to grow, all right.
“Are you ready to order?” Susan the waitress asked. (Are you sick with nausea behind your bright smile? I wondered. Do you lie awake at night wondering how you’re going to cover daycare on your waitress’s salary?)
I forced my eyes to focus on the menu, wondering how little I could order without Bill noticing. I decided to go for a salad. Eat a couple of pieces of lettuce and a lot of the bulk goes away, making it look as if you’ve really tucked in. “Grilled chicken Caesar, please. And could I have lots of cracked pepper on that?”
“Sure!”
“Lots,” I said.
“I think I’ll try the Cobb Spindle,” Bill said. According to the menu, this was a delicious combination of romaine lettuce, smoked turkey breast, Gorgonzola cheese, provolone, egg, tomato, olives, white beans, roasted pepper and red wine vinaigrette. I nearly passed out from reading the list of ingredients.
“Is there something peculiar about that pepper shaker?” Bill said. “You seem very taken with it.”
“What? No! No, no. It looks like one we have at home,” I babbled. “Maybe Momma stole a pair from here. She would do stuff like that. I used to think you could buy Hilton brand hand soaps at the store.”
Bill closed his menu. “Your mother was quite a character.”
“Several of them. Um, would you excuse me?” I said, easing out of my chair and walking as steadily as I could to the ladies’ room.
There is something extremely soothing about a really clean bathroom. Bright, clear light, clean fixtures, mirrors if you want them, cool tiles, and silence. And unlike the restaurant proper, the bathroom, being in the central hub, wasn’t careening gaily around the Greater Houston Metropolitan Area. I wet my face with cold water and stood for a couple of minutes with my head hanging over the washbasin. At home, when the nausea was really bad, I had taken to lying on the floor. There was something quite perfect about the hard, cool tiles pressing against my back. I couldn’t bring myself to lie flat in the bathroom of the Hyatt Regency, not in my silk jacket and nice blouse, but I was sorely tempted.
The nausea receded and I made it back to the table much refreshed. I even took out a disused smile, polished it up, and gave it to Bill.
I sat down, and he gave me a long look. “Ms. Beauchamp—”
“Toni, please.”
“—Ms. Beauchamp, you are no doubt wondering why I asked you here today,” Bill said. He took a breath and met my eyes. “I’m afraid we’re going to have to let you go.”
Once again I felt the sensation of the elevator starting up; the dizzy earth falling out from under me.
“In recognition of the good work you’ve done for the company, my father and I have agreed to give you twelve weeks’ severance pay. We won’t be filling your position, so you won’t be required to train a replacement. I should make it clear that this move reflects the direction of the company, and is not intended as a slight against your professional qualifications.” He reached into the breast pocket of his suit. “I have already written a letter of reference.” He handed it to me. “You can review it this afternoon and tell me if there are points you would like to have clarified.”
“You can’t do this.”
Bill regarded me across the table.
“You can’t do this. This is wrongful dismissal.”
“You are not being dismissed, Ms. Beauchamp. The position you currently hold has been eliminated.”
“I’ll sue.”
“You are certainly welcome to speak to legal counsel, if you think it appropriate,” Bill said. “I think you will find Friesen Investments is acting well within its legal rights.”
“Legal rights. Legal rights! What about moral rights, Bill? Your family owes us every goddam dime,” I said hotly. “If it wasn’t for my mother—”
“I agree,” Bill said. He looked out the window. “But you aren’t your mother, are you? Ms. Beauchamp, the…special relationship between your mother and my father has been very productive. But your mother was an exceptional woman. To be perfectly frank, I very rarely need an actuary. And when I do, I can always hire a far more experienced one as a consultant.” He met my eyes again.
“You had this scripted out, didn’t you? You read it in one of your magazines: ‘How to Lay Off an Employee: Make eye contact. Be unemotional. Don’t be drawn into arguments.’” I looked down at my beautiful silk shantung jacket and felt outraged that he should ruin the first occasion on which I’d worn it. “You’ll be hearing from my lawyer this afternoon.”
“I think you will find you have no case, Ms. Beauchamp. Don’t waste your money.”
“Oh, I’m not filing for wrongful dismissal,” I said. “I’ll be naming you in a sexual harassment suit.”
“What! I’ve never—”
“You invited me out to lunch. I couldn’t very well say no, could I? Not to the boss. We came here, sat down, and then you made it clear that if I wanted to keep my job, I would have to sleep with you. When I turned you down, you came up with this ‘downsizing’ scam.”
Bill’s doughy face got blotchy and congested. “That’s ridiculous. No one would ever believe I’d force myself on you. Why not Maria, or that pretty secretary down the hall?”
I smacked my forehead with my hand. “Gosh, Bill, you sure know how to flatter a girl. I don’t know, maybe you have a thing for bowlegged chicks.”
He started to flush. “Toni, I didn’t mean—”
“It’s too late to be a Southern gentleman now.”
“I can’t believe you’d…You’ll never win that suit, you know.”
“Probably not. I’ll make sure to get it in the papers, though. Often and I’ll be especially sure to tell your mother, Bill. Gosh, how upset will she be to think that her son—” He slammed his hands on the table. “My momma used to call me the hatefulest child there ever was,” I said. “You oughtn’t to mess with me, Bill.”
“Go ahead,” he said, white with anger. “Try telling my mother. While you’re at it, you can tell her how your mother was screwing my dad nearly up to the day she died.”
The instant he said it, I knew it was true. Oh, Daddy. “What did you say?”
“You heard me.”
Momma, you lying, lying bitch.
“He told me the night of the funeral,” Bill said. “He had a few too many bourbons in him. Wanted to stay up talking after we got home. Mother went to bed. ‘Just between us,’ he said. ‘Man to man.’” Bill looked down at the table. “You are exactly right. Your momma made us. She made our money, and she made fools of us too. She made a fool of my mother, all those years. The Friesens have to make it on our own, Toni. Can you see that? We just…we can’t have our families joined together like this. It’s not right. It’s dirty. It’s a bad, dirty story, and we have to stop it.”
Another wave of dizziness swept over me. Houston kept sliding, sliding, slipping away from me as we spun. “Yeah, well, it’s one thing to call the game over when all the chips are on your side of the table, isn’t it, Bill? You’ve made your profits off Momma, so now you get to cast her off. But what about me? I’m—” I bit it back. “I’m not in a very good position right now. Financially.”
“It’s a really good severance package, Toni. Really generous. And the letter I wrote is embarrassing. It’s a great letter. I looked it up in one of those magazines of mine you were talking about. ‘Winning References, and How to Write Them.’”
I wouldn’t do the bastard the favor of smiling.
Bill said, “When you’re trying to convince my mother that I’m a sexual predator, don’t mention about Elena and Dad, okay? She doesn’t know.”
“Okay.”
But I was remembering how Penny Friesen had looked when I came downstairs the night of the funeral and found her alone by the kitchen table. The hardest thing about having someone die, I find, is forgiving them. Oh, she knew about Momma and Bill Sr., all right. She had known all along.
I wondered if Daddy knew. God, I hoped not. That too, on top of everything else he had put up with. Too much. Too much.
“Are you going to file that suit?” Bill asked.
I looked at him across the table, a great lump of a man sitting there, greedy and pompous and well-meaning and a prick. “Funny how it always works out like this, isn’t it? The rich guy’s son goes to business school and has a nice suit and when the axe falls it’s somebody else’s head bouncing in the street.” Susan the perky waitress was approaching with our orders. “No, of course I’m not going to file any damn lawsuit.”
“Thank you. I really think—”
“But you know what I am going to do, Bill? Let me tell you, as my mother’s daughter. I’m putting the curse of the Beauchamps on you and your crummy company,” I said, shaking with fury. I heard the Preacher in my voice, his iron sentences. “You’re going to drill three thousand meters into bedrock and suck sand, Bill. Your partners will get scared, your creditors will all ask for their money on the same day. Strange blips on the world currency markets are going to thin out your cash reserves overnight, costs for your rigs are going to be two hundred percent over budget, and stains will appear on the office carpet that no amount of shampooing will remove. Are you listening to me?”
“Here we are!” Susan said, setting down our lunches. “Y’all enjoy now.”
Rich steam rose from Bill’s Cobb Spindle, heavy with the smells of provolone and Gorgonzola cheese. “Thank you,” I said, and rising with all the fury and dignity I could muster, I walked proudly to the bathroom and threw up.
I didn’t go back to my office at Friesen Investments. I drove to Slick Willie’s instead, the swanky sports bar-cum-billiard hall where Candy worked as a waitress. I had promised her I would report back about my date.
“Yep.”
She pulled a beer for a customer. “Wow. Bad date.”
“Yep.”
The black bicycle shorts of the Slick Willie’s uniform made her legs look chunky, but the white peasant blouse emphasized her excellent breasts; as, presumably, it was supposed to do.
The real action at Slick Willie’s was always on the pool tables and at the jukebox, which played an assortment of my generation’s rock ’n’ roll favorites VERY LOUDLY. Just an…exCITable BOY!
“Did you tell him you were going to have another mouth to feed?” Candy shouted. “For that matter, why didn’t you tell him earlier, and skip the restaurant gig entirely?”
“He was—I…”
“Didn’t want to scare him off?”
“Yeah.”
She hugged me and pathetically I started to cry. “Oh God, Candy. What am I going to do? Baby coming, no job, no money from the will…”
“You know that for sure? The lawyer called?”
“Yeah. It gets worse. It turns out that Momma owed the IRS a lot of money. A lot of money. I went and talked to my accountant about it last week. To make a long story short, it took most of my savings to keep them from putting a lien on Daddy’s salary.”
“Oh my god. Can I, uh…”
“No you can’t,” I said. “You haven’t got any money, right? Of course. I still have some stuff stashed away in my IRAs. I figured I’d be okay in a year or two. But now I don’t have a job…”
Two college-girl types next to us laughed, billiard balls cracked, and the jukebox continued to thunder around us.
“Isn’t that just like her?” I said. “Spend everything and then skip town, leaving me to clean up.”
Candy shook her head and held a finger up to my lips. “You can’t take care of everybody, Antoinette. You can’t cover all of Momma’s debts.”
“Yeah? If I don’t, who will?” I said bitterly. “That’s my job, picking up after Momma. If she hadn’t been—”
I stopped myself. Candy didn’t need to know I had lost my job because of Momma’s affair with Bill Sr. Candy, pretty Candy—she saw happy things. And she did her job. She cheered us up, she laughed and joked. She pulled her weight. It was my job to pay the debts, to hold the bitter things. And I was going to pull my weight too. Because if there was one thing Momma taught me, it was to endure.