"We must get together again, Mr. Corley. Two fellers like us, heh? And, uh, let me repeat that we are most happy to number Samuel among our students. We shall, uh, hope that he shall be back with us again next year."
"That's very nice of you," Mitch smiled.
But he was thinking, The hell Sam will be back here another year! Not in the same place with a character like you! And then, leaving the office, going down the steps of the administration building, he was fairer about it.
He was used to giving bribes; the major clearly wasn't used to accepting them. The poor ineffectual bastard had been flattered and persuaded by an expert, honestly convinced no doubt that he had only cooperated in an act of good will. And… who knew? Who knew? Perhaps he also had a nemesis who would make him do things he would never ordinarily do? A dogged and vicious creditor, a disease which impelled the life it was destroying to a last desperate tasting of life, a woman who had had him hunted down just when he thought he had it made…
He knew now that he should have leveled with Red when Teddy first reappeared in his life. But he was afraid of losing her-he and Red hadn't been together very long at the time. And even with Red knowing and accepting the truth, there would still have been Sam to protect. How could you tell a kid, or let him be told, that his mother was a whore, that she hated him? How would he take it? How could you risk the terrible damage that it might do to him?
He could divorce Teddy, naturally, but that would accomplish nothing. Divorced, she could do just as much as she was doing now. Divorce would crack the whole nasty mess wide open, destroying everything that he had been trying to preserve.
Sighing, he pushed the problem to the back of his mind, putting on a bright face as he came up to Red and Sam. They strolled across to the campus lake together, remained there talking and skipping stones across the water until late afternoon. Then, they returned to the car, and with Sam waving good-bye, Red and Mitch started back to Houston.
Red was looking a little glum, depressed as she always was after leaving Sam. Mitch suggested stopping someplace for a drink and dinner, but Red wasn't hungry. He gave her a brief one-armed hug, knowing what was coming but knowing of no way to head it off. She led into it by a new route, telling him that she thought Sam knew the true nature of the relationship between them.
Mitch shook his head firmly. "You mean you think he suspects that you're not really his aunt, don't you?"
"Well, yes. But-"
"But that doesn't mean he suspects anything else. No," he went on. "I think it's more a matter of wishful-thinking on his part than anything else. He likes you. He'd like to have you for a mother. Therefore, he wishes you weren't his aunt."
Red was silent for a moment. Then she said quietly but flatly that she wanted to be Sam's mother.
"Now, Mitch. Let's get married right away. We've got more than a hundred thousand dollars, haven't we? That certainly should be enough to-to-"
"To what?" Mitch said. "Just what do we know about anything except what we are doing?"
"Well-well, we can learn, can't we? My gosh, other people do, and they don't have a hundred thousand dollars either!"
"We're not other people. We've been living high off the hog for a long, long time, and I think we'd have one hell of a time doing a complete right about-face. As I see it, and you've been seeing it the same way, we'd just about have to have enough to retire on. To retire comfortably. Or at least enough to look around on and find something solid before we jump into it."
"But a quarter of a million dollars, honey! Do we really need that much?"
"We agreed on it. We decided that we'd need every penny of it."
Red said crossly that they could undecide then. There wasn't a real reason in the world why they couldn't get married right now… unless, that is, Mitch no longer wanted to marry her.
"You know better than that!" Mitch said sharply. "My God, what a nasty thing to say!"
"Well… I'm sorry, Mitch. I didn't really mean it, of Course."
"I should think so!" –
"But-but couldn't we do it, honey? Please?"
"Of course we can," Mitch said. "But-wait now, Red! Wait a minute! We get married, and then what? Yank Sam out of school?"
"Why, no. Why would we want to do that?"
"But we'd at least have to have some kind of home where he could visit us. And an income to support that home; something legit. Or did you think we could go on with the dice hustle?"
"Oh, of course not, silly! But…"
"Well, then? Were you just planning to go up to the school and tell Sam we were married, period? I don't quite see what it'll accomplish, but if that's what you want…"
Red told him snappishly to just shut up, for God's sake. He was so darned smart, he ought to hang a medal on himself. Then, after a moment or two, she laughed and patted his cheek.
"Sorry, darling. You're right, of course. It's just that when a person wants something so much-"
"We both want it, and we're going to have it, too," Mitch said warmly. "Who knows? Houston is a good town. Maybe we'll make it right here."
"I'd be satisfied to just make a good chunk of it."
"I think perhaps we should be kind of preparing Sam for the good news," Mitch went on, giving things a good push while they were going his way. "Maybe we should drop a hint or two that you're not really his aunt, that you were a distant relative, say, who was adopted by my family."
Red said that she guessed they probably should do that. It might be kind of a shock to Sam to tell him abruptly that they were married.
"I know, Mitch!" She turned to him, eyes shining. "We'll have him come to the wedding! He can be the best man!"
"Wonderful," Mitch said, basking in her happiness, hating himself for his deceit. "I can hardly wait, honey."
They reached their apartment early in the evening. Despite his near exhaustion, he again slept badly. The following forenoon, on the grounds of having to see his tax accountant, he drove into the downtown business district.
At the bank, he found he had guessed right about the amount in his safe-deposit box. It contained only three thousand dollars. Three thousand out of the approximate one hundred and twenty-five thousand that it should have held. He took the six five-hundred-dollar bills, bought an equivalent amount of cashier's checks and mailed them to Teddy.
It had been more than a month since he last sent her money. But he had pointed out at the time that he was sending a considerably larger amount than her regular exorbitant stipend, and that it would have to do her for at least six weeks. He had hoped in this way to get her off his mental back for a while, to free himself of the constant fear and danger of being late with a payment, and what invariably happened if be was late. Now, he knew he had made a colossal blunder.
Teddy had cracked down on Sam, anyway. Without warning, she had thus notified her husband that the payments had gone up. He had proved that he could pay a larger amount, so henceforth he would have to go on doing it.