Five Women (42 page)

She got a little paranoid about telling them that. She hoped they wouldn't tell their friends they had been requested not to come, and have someone decide to turn this into a gay issue in which she was the villain. She had enough troubles with issues already, and she had never been a political animal of any kind.

The social worker, Ms. Lambert, arrived at their apartment at ten o'clock in the morning. Little Billie was at school, and Mamacita had cleaned the apartment so carefully it looked like a model for a home magazine. Billie had already changed her clothes three times and finally decided she would wear jeans like she and everyone else always did; this wasn't supposed to be the Brady Bunch. When the doorbell rang she stood still for a moment to quiet the pounding of her heart, and then she opened the door.

The woman had smooth dark hair and a scrubbed face with no makeup on it, she was wearing a suit, and she looked about nineteen. Billie's heart sank. Was she supposed to be judged on the most important event of her life by a teenager?

“Come in,” she said.

Ms. Lambert got right to work. She, like the cop, had a note pad, and she also had a tape measure. “Is this Billie's room?”

“Yes.”

She measured it, and wrote in her pad. Billie held her tongue. What did those people think, that she would make her son sleep in a closet? His bedroom was almost as big as hers, and he was a lot smaller.

“How many other people live here?”

“Just me and my son.”

“This is his bathroom?”

“Yes. It's a two-bedroom, two-bathroom apartment, as you see. We also have a doorman, I'm sure you noticed.”

Ms. Lambert nodded. She was looking at Little Billie's neat bathroom as if it were the natural right of every child to have something as nice as this for his very own, instead of thinking he was lucky to have a successful mother. The Brady Bunch used to share, as Billie remembered. Suddenly Billie was enraged at the whole thing.

“Why do you people waste your time with me?” she said angrily. “Think of all the mothers punching their kids, burning them with cigarettes, scalding them, shoving their heads down the toilet! Women living with crazy drug-addicted lovers who hate their kids, who torture them! Child molesters, sadists, lunatics! Kids who have no food because their mother is too stoned to get it or spends all her money on crack cocaine! You should be somewhere else, preventing some child from getting killed.”

“We know there are many tragedies in this city,” the woman said. “My caseload is much too heavy as it is. But I don't know what kind of mother you are until I find out, and you don't have to yell at me.”

“I have to yell at somebody,” Billie said. “This upsets me.”

“We have to be as sure as we can that no child falls through the cracks in the system. Billie was reported, Billie must be investigated.”

“What cracks in what system?” Billie said. “He goes to private school. He's there every day.”

Ms. Lambert proceeded to the kitchen and looked in the larder and the refrigerator. She wrote in her pad again. What was she writing? Too much sugar?

“He gets a well-balanced dinner in the restaurant every night,” Billie said.

“I'll see that this evening. And I'll also get the chance to interview your son.”

That hurt. It was as if Little Billie had terrible secrets of neglect to tell them, that they still didn't trust her. They were trying to turn him into a stranger.

“This is a very pleasant home,” Ms. Lambert said. “I don't know why you would want to keep him out of it and make him stay in a bar all night.”

“Yellowbird is a restaurant that happens to have a bar in it, like all restaurants unless they don't have a liquor license yet.”

“The more reason it's inappropriate for a nine-year-old.”

“My father owned a roadhouse in Piano, Texas,” Billie said. “My Mama and my brother and I hardly ever saw him unless we went there. He worked very hard all the time, the way I do. Sometimes I really missed him. It was a thrill for us to have dinner at his place. When I was Little Billie's age I was entering my Daddy's contest nights for kids, singing. Later I sang there on a regular basis. It didn't hurt me any growing up around a bar and restaurant; what hurt was wishing we could be together more.”

As soon as the words had come out of her mouth Billie was surprised. This was the first time she had realized how lonely she had been for Les Redmond as a child, for his laugh and his strength and his proud and tolerant smile. She remembered her mother having dinner there once a week, at her special table down front, just so she could see him for what should have been a regular family meal, and she also remembered that she and her brother had been there, too, and for the same reason.

“He did the best he could for his children,” Billie said. “So do I. I come to this from experience. You may think it's bad, but I think it's better than any alternative you could think up.”

“We'll see,” Miss Lambert said. “I'll be at Yellowbird tonight.”

Billie went to work with Little Billie and gave him his supper, waiting for the social worker. The restaurant started to fill. Then she heard a growing noise outside, a kind of chanting, and saw that the customers were coming in with curious looks on their faces. She went to the door and looked out.

There was a line of women, marching in front of Yellowbird, and they were all holding up placards.
The child should be in the workplace with his mother
some of the signs read.
Rights for working mothers
read other signs. And one, in homage to the old Simon and Garfunkel song, read
Mother and Child Reunion.
Eve Bader was carrying it.

Just then Ms. Lambert arrived, trying to make her way through the protesters to get into the restaurant, and behind her came a camera crew from Fox TV News, and Penny Crone with her little crewcut and a mike in her hand.

“Billie,” Penny Crone said gruffly, shoving the mike in front of her face, “is it true you keep your nine-year-old child in your bar?”

“Who are these people?” Billie said to Eve, wildly.

“Why do you have your kid in a bar where drag queens go?” Penny Crone persisted.

“Who called the television?” Billie said in despair.

“I did,” Eve said. “I told you there was a way.” She pushed herself in front of Billie and held up her placard so the cameraman could get a shot of it, and also so it would not obscure her face. “I'm Eve Bader,” Eve said into Penny Crone's mike. “I recently appeared in a CBS television movie about this same issue, and I have a statement to make on behalf of Billie Redmond. She is a caring, single, working mother who . . .”

“Oh, God,” Billie said. She ran into Yellowbird and slammed the door before she had to hear another word. Ms. Lambert followed her.

“My goodness,” Ms. Lambert said. She was scribbling.

“You don't have to write it down,” Billie said. “We'll all see it on television tonight and I'll be a lot more famous than I want to be.”

“Where is Billie?”

“Come on.” She took the social worker to Little Billie's booth to meet him. Billie had prepared him for this interview and told him just to be himself, but still she was nervous and angry that a little kid had to convince a bureaucrat that he belonged with the good mother he loved.

“Will you leave us alone, please?” Ms. Lambert said.

Like then he'll feel free to tell you what a sadist I am, Billie thought. Somewhere a kid is probably dying this moment from being banged against the wall, and you're here looking for drag queens. She went back to the bar to attend to her customers and the reservation book, but her eyes kept scanning the back of the room.

Ms. Lambert finished with him, finally. She looked at her watch, and wrote the time down in her little note pad. There was no clock in Yellowbird. It was not even supposed to be the nineties. “I'll call my supervisor in the morning when she comes in, and you'll hear from us,” she said, in a tone that was carefully neutral. There was no sign of reassurance, nor any warning of coming disaster.

As soon as she left Billie had a big glass of vodka on the rocks.

“Mama,” Little Billie said, coming over and taking her hand. “Don't worry. I was stupendous.”

“You were? What did you say?”

He shrugged. He looked tired. She thought it was from the emotions of the evening, but she wondered whether he should have been home in bed. Then she realized that if he were home he wouldn't go to bed anyway. He would be playing with one of the neighbor kids or watching television or banging away on his computer. At least he doesn't have television here, she thought.

He doesn't have kids his age either. Maybe she thinks I'm wrong. Maybe I
am
wrong . . . Do these people just punish you? Don't they even give you a chance to do different?

She took Little Billie home after the TV news was over, so neither of them would have to watch it. She was too afraid someone would say she was bad. And then all she had to do was wait.

Ms. Lambert called her in the morning. Billie had sent Mamacita to take him to school so she could wait for the call. “We're going to let the child stay with you for now,” Ms. Lambert said, “on the condition that you make certain changes.”

“What changes?” Billie asked, feeling nervous.

“You have to get a baby-sitter or some member of your family or an adult friend to stay with him in your apartment at night when you go to work, so he doesn't have to go to Yellowbird. It's an inappropriate place for a child. Billie has to be home, under proper supervision, and he has to go to bed at a normal hour.”

“I could manage that,” Billie said.

“This has to be done immediately.”

“Okay.”

“I will be back to check.”

“Fine.”

“He's obviously well-nourished, well-dressed, clean, and cared for,” Ms. Lambert said. “It's his mind we're worried about.”

“You won't have to worry about it anymore,” Billie said.

In the afternoon when she picked up Little Billie from school Billie had a talk with him. “How would you feel about Mamacita staying here to baby-sit for you when I'm working at night?”

“Which night?”

“All of them.”

He hunched up his shoulders and squinted his face at her like a little troll. “Is that what Miss Lambert said?”

“She'll let you continue to live with me if you stay out of Yellowbird. She says it's for adults.”

“If a family brought their kid and they had dinner there, would she make them leave?”

“I don't know. People don't bring their kids.”

“If I stay here, could I see my friends?”

“If their parents say it's okay.”

“I'd sort of like it,” Little Billie said. She realized then that he would probably like it a lot, but was too polite to say so because he knew it offended her. Every time he had wanted to be with his friends at night instead of with her she had been unhappy about it.

“Mamacita is afraid to go home so late at night,” Billie went on, “so she would have to sleep in your room with you. Is that all right?”

“I'm too big for that. Couldn't she sleep in the living room?”

“If she doesn't mind.”

“We could get a folding bed,” he said. “We would have had to get her one for my room anyway.”

“Okay.”

“Well, that's settled,” he said. “You need to bring back all my stuff.”

“I'll do it tonight.” He looked so pleased it hurt.

She wondered if she had kept him at Yellowbird too long, and if she had been selfish. She had thought she was protecting him, and he had always seemed so adaptable she had thought he enjoyed being there, but now when she scrutinized her motivations she realized she had bribed him with creature comforts and protestations of love. Little Billie got along with adults, which was good, but he was still a child, with a child's innocence. Her approval meant more to him than anything because she was his mother. He would do anything she wanted, but he was growing up and he had needs of his own that she couldn't ignore anymore. She remembered their mild arguments. Little Billie really did want to be home in his own apartment, but he was willing to please her in the end, even when he put up a fuss.

This was one more rite of passage. In a few more years she wouldn't have to pick him up at school, he would be zipping all around the city by himself on the bus. He would lock his room and do secret things in there. He would like girls. His Mama, soon if not already, would be the woman who had brought him up, not the woman he most wanted to be with. We all do the best we can, Billie thought, like our parents did; but when she hugged Little Billie goodbye to go to work she missed him already, not just for tonight but for the rest of his life.

Chapter Thirty-five

“I
'M SO HAPPY
to be here with my friends,” Felicity said, sipping her wine, “and so miserable at home.” The four of them were in Yellowbird, and Aretha was singing “Chain of Fools” on the sound system, a song Felicity thought was singularly apt for herself. It was a song Billie liked too, and had it played often, but Billie said it was really about men. Felicity knew she was complaining again, that she always complained about Russell, like a howling, trapped animal, but she couldn't help it. Her frustration ruled her life. “Russell has been away on a business trip for the past two days, and I wish he would never come back,” she went on. “It's so nice to be in my own house without worrying that he's going to yell at me. It's so peaceful. He's coming back tomorrow afternoon and I'm dreading it.”

“I'm tired about hearing about your husband,” Kathryn said. “If you're so miserable, get rid of him. I got rid of mine, except for the one who died.”

“Well, Kathryn, you're very courageous in every aspect of your life,” Gara said.

“I never thought about it,” Kathryn said. “I just did what I had to, to survive.”

“I know.”

They all knew Kathryn's story, briefly at least: that her mother had killed her father, that he had been brutal and her mother was set free, and Felicity sensed that all of them had somewhat the same kind of dysfunctional childhood, even though it had appeared in different ways. Why else had they bonded? They were four women who were totally different, and yet in some ways they had each passed through the same tricky terrain. Every one of them had been an outsider. She sensed that each of them had felt abandoned and afraid. Felicity wondered how much longer they would all have to carry around the destructive baggage of the past without moving on, and thought that of the four she was the one who was in the worst place in her life. Kathryn was the only one of them who was always happy, or so it seemed. Eve hid whatever she was feeling under bravado. Gara was afraid to live. And so am I, Felicity thought.

“Let me tell you how I got my apartment and my money,” Kathryn said. “Does anyone mind if I smoke?”

“Yes,” Gara said, “but we want to hear the story too.”

Kathryn lit up. “My last husband, Mr. Henry, came from family money. His father had made his fortune in fertilizer. There wasn't a farm in the East that didn't use something from Henry Chemical.”

“So he was the Shit King,” Eve said brightly, with a grin.

“No, no, that's organic,” Kathryn said. “His was made in a factory. But my husband didn't work for his father, although he was a major stockholder in the company; he had been a professional tennis player, and when I married him, he was selling medical supplies. He was rich, rich, rich, but he was also cheap, cheap, cheap. I didn't know that when I married him, but I found it out soon enough. But I put up with him because I wanted my kids to have a decent father and a happy home. Which they did, until my oldest son, Jim Daniel, when he was fourteen years old, was in a terrible auto accident and lost his arm.”

“Oh, no!” the other women gasped.

“My son was never the same after that. He dropped out of school, took drugs, and seemed so angry. He was particularly angry with his stepfather, when there seemed to be no reason for it. They had always been devoted to each other. Well, some years later, Jim Daniel explained it all to me. Jim Daniel had let us all think he had been out in the car alone, experimenting the way kids will do. But the truth was my husband, Mr. Henry, had been the one driving the car. He was drunk. He ran away from the wrecked car leaving my injured son in it, so no one would know he had been there, and he made my son take the blame.”

“My God!” Felicity said.

“As you can imagine, I was horrified,” Kathryn said. “I had never been happy with Mr. Henry, but there was no way I could continue to live with him after that. So I hired the best divorce lawyer in town to go after him. The bomber and I hatched up a plan: We threatened to make the circumstances of the accident public if the divorce went to trial, and we made him give me ten million dollars to keep it quiet. I figured that was what I deserved in punitive damages, but I never would have gotten anything near that in a mere divorce. Mr. Henry had a fit, of course, but there was nothing he could do. The publicity would have ruined his life.”

Extortion and blackmail, Felicity thought, surprised. Kathryn could have done it another way; most people would have.

“I set up a nice little trust fund for my son,” Kathryn went on cheerfully, “and then I went to New York, which was a city I'd wanted to live in many years ago when I was eighteen and couldn't; I bought the apartment I'm living in now for a million and a half, and put the rest of the money with a conservative private banking firm. I'm set for life.”

“Amazing,” Eve said admiringly.

Felicity and Gara exchanged glances. Felicity knew that Gara, too, thought Kathryn's financial triumph was rather startlingly cold hearted, or perhaps it was the way she was telling the story, as if it was just a lighthearted escapade in her long life. What kind of a sleazy lawyer would give her that kind of advice? Felicity wondered.

“Why do you always call him Mr. Henry?” Gara asked.

“Because I never really knew him, did I?”

Eve laughed. “Frontier justice.”

“I had a rough time in all my marriages—no, not really in the first one,” Kathryn said lightly. “The only decent thing I got out of them was my wonderful children. This time I finally got something else.”

I guess I can understand that, Felicity thought. People who have enough money don't understand what some other people have to do to get it.

Then Kathryn turned suddenly serious. “I should have stayed married to my first husband,” she said. “He was the only good one. Now when I look back, I see how wonderful and kind he was. But what did I know? I was a kid, and I didn't want to be married to anyone.”

“Maybe you'll marry him again,” Felicity said.

“It's too late,” Kathryn said. “It never could have worked. It still wouldn't. I didn't love him.”

“Well, look who's here,” Eve said, looking up and starting to sparkle. It was Eben Mars, the potato farmer/poet, her erstwhile lover, wandering in. Felicity knew Eve had not been with him for a while now, and while the other women thought it was over Eve didn't think so. ‘I think I'd like to see Eben this week,' she'd say, and would call him. Sometimes she got lucky.

He came up to their table. “Sit down, Eben,” Eve said, shoving her chair over to make room and pulling out an empty chair from the next table without apologizing to the people who were eating there.

“I'm not intruding?” he asked. Felicity remembered then what a gentle voice he had.

“Of course not,” Kathryn said.

He sat between Eve and Felicity, and Eve introduced everyone again. “Has everyone eaten?” he asked.

“We just ordered,” Eve said. “Eben, do you want to share a chicken-fried steak?”

He shook his head and looked at the menu. “I just want a salad.”

“He's a vegetarian but I'm trying to cure him,” Eve said. “A man needs meat.”

“Meat makes you die,” he said mildly. “Especially here.”

They all laughed. He looked different tonight, Felicity thought, and then realized he was wearing a suit. He looked quite nice in it. “Where's your husband tonight, Felicity?” he asked.

“Not here and I'm glad of it,” Felicity said.

He ordered his salad, and another bottle of wine for the table, and then he turned toward her again. “If I had known you were here I would have brought you my book,” he said. “I'd be interested in your opinion of it.”

“She's not an editor, she's a lawyer,” Eve said, sounding annoyed. “Eben gave me a signed copy, I'll lend it to you.”

“Thank you,” Felicity said. His eyes met hers and she noticed that they were green, flecked with gold. She could feel something tonight that was different from the first time they had met and she realized she was attracted to him, and that he was to her. Perhaps they always had been, but she had been so obsessed with Jason and Eve had been so quick to zero in on Eben that she had put the disquieting feeling out of her mind. Now it came back. They smiled at each other. Gara and Kathryn were talking to each other and didn't seem to notice the undercurrents, but on the other side of him and left out of their moment Eve was watching them carefully, and she looked displeased.

If only another man besides Jason liked me, Felicity thought, an intelligent man, like Jason but available, then I wouldn't feel so worthless, and maybe I could have the courage to leave my situation. Just somebody to show me I have a chance at a life again after this. I need that, I need it so much. This man is single, he's free, and a man whose poetry is good enough to be published must know something about the human heart.

“It's odd, but I feel as if I've known you a long time,” Felicity said to him.

“I feel the same way,” Eben Mars said.

“Even though we're strangers.”

“But maybe we're not.”

“I'm so miserable in my marriage,” she sighed.

“You shouldn't stay in an unhappy marriage,” he said to her. “No one should. Life is too short to be so sad.”

She felt like putting her head on his shoulder. He exuded protectiveness like musk, or perhaps that, too. Felicity began to feel the familiar sexual pulsing. She crossed her legs, but that only made it worse. “I don't know what to do about my life,” she said. “I feel so trapped.”

“But you must leave him if you feel that way,” he said.

She sighed again. “I guess I'm just used to being unhappy. I had a crazy childhood; my mother beat me. My husband bullies me and it must feel normal to me.”

“My mother beat me too,” Eben Mars said quietly.

“She did?”

“She took out all the frustrations of her life on me. I think that's why I chose the wrong woman to marry, and why I'm so afraid to connect. I'm afraid the woman is going to hurt me if I give her any power. A little boy's mother is very, very powerful.”

“So is a little girl's,” Felicity said. “My mother was unhappy in her marriage, too, and she would drink and chase me around the house with a belt.”

“Mine used a bread knife,” he said.

“No!” Felicity said, horrified. They looked at each other. We are truly the walking wounded, she thought; this man is my soulmate. “Did she ever cut you?” she asked.

“When she could catch me.”

“Mine, too, with the buckle,” Felicity breathed.

“You can't let yourself stay in a bad situation now,” Eben said. He put his arm around her and Felicity didn't know whether to cry or to smile. “You have too much going for you. You deserve to be happy. Don't keep thinking you're the little girl who somehow deserves to be punished, or the victim of the bully who ruled over you when you were little. You're a grown woman now, as old as she was when she hurt you, and you can take your own destiny in your hands.”

“Thank you for saying that,” Felicity said. “I wish I had the courage.”

“Your friends will help you,” he said.

You
help me, Felicity thought, so strongly she almost spoke the thought aloud.
You
be my friend.

“Why are you talking about the past?” Eve snapped at them. “The past is long ago. Latch on to your power like I do and you can do anything. People who sit around and complain are weak and self-indulgent.”

“You think that because you don't see the gray areas,” Eben said to Eve.

“What do you mean?” Now she was really angry. “I do so.”

“You see everything in black and white,” he said. “It's good or it's bad, you like or you hate, you're right and they're wrong.”

“How would you know that?” Eve shot at him.

“We've had many conversations, you and I.”

“You do see things that way, Eve,” Felicity said thoughtfully. “He's right.”

Eve's eyes bulged and her lips compressed into a little red line. She's going to have a stroke right here at the table, Felicity thought in amazement. Why is she so angry? And even while she was thinking it there was a perverse pleasure in telling Eve what she really thought of her, with this gentle man who knew Eve too protecting her, the way her father should have protected her against her mother. Felicity felt a little shiver of pleasure in the face of Eve's enormous and harmless rage.

“Do you think you know me?” Eve demanded, glaring at Eben. “You haven't the faintest idea what I'm about.”

“I think I do,” he said.

The waiter had brought their food, but only Gara and Kathryn ate. Eve, who was usually ravenous, was too angry, and Felicity and Eben had been too busy talking to each other.

“Well, you don't,” Eve said.

“I'm going up the street and have a drink at a new piano bar that just opened,” Kathryn said. She put down her credit card and gestured to the waiter. “Does anyone want to come or do I go by myself?”

“I have to get up early tomorrow morning to work,” Gara said.

“Oh, you never want to go anywhere,” Kathryn said to her.

“That's almost true,” Gara said, and smiled.

“Then I'll go by myself,” Kathryn said cheerfully. “Maybe I'll meet my next husband.”

Gara and Kathryn paid their checks and left. Felicity and Eve and Eben kept sitting there, finishing the wine, then finishing the mineral water, then ordering after-dinner drinks, which none of the four women had ever done there before. Felicity realized that Eve didn't want to leave her alone with Eben because he had once been Eve's lover, and perhaps might be again; and that Eben didn't want to go anywhere with Eve but that he didn't want to leave either. As for herself, she didn't have to run home to Russell tonight, and sitting here next to this attractive and sensual man who understood her she was having such a good time she didn't want the evening to end. In spite of Eve's bad mood . . . .