“You make me want to cry.”
“While you’re about it, cry for me.”
12
It took me a week to adjust, to catch up with this change that had come in my life, this tremendous, incredible change. Each afternoon I’d sit and look out the window, checking over things I could do with the money I had come into. It was a problem. I had the wherewithal now to get my son back for sure-but no way to explain how I got it, not and be believed, either by Ethel herself or the members of the court she’d hint to about the immoral things I must have done to get a man to pay me so much. Things that in the court’s eyes would make me unfit to be put in charge of a child’s welfare, and not just for now but permanently. I could hear her voice: Where would you have gotten such a quantity of money, Joan? I won’t use the word for what you are, but you and I both know the only thing you have to sell.
At the same time, doing nothing with the money was hardly sensible, not when I had it and needed it so dearly. I had to find something that could get me out of this bind eventually. And then one day, as I stared at that house across the street, I woke up. I had often admired it: a two-and-a-half-story brick cottage, painted white, with nicely mown lawn and cedar trees each side of the drive. But what woke me up was the sign on the front lawn: FOR SALE, with a realtor’s name on it, his address, and phone number. Suddenly I got up, went to the phone, and dialed. Then I hung up before anyone answered. In the Yellow Pages I looked up another real estate man, Ross P. Linden, with offices in Hyattsville just a few blocks away. I rang, made an appointment, and next day went in to see him. He agreed to take over the job of buying, and at the end of the week closed my deal. He had beat the price down from $35,000 asking to $28,000 offered and accepted. He charged me $1,000 for his work, which I thought reasonable enough considering what he did. Then I went out and bought furnishings for it. I bought them at auction sales, which for things of that kind are usually held at night. That meant taking time off from my job, first telling Bianca. “Telling her,” I said, not “asking her”- and of course she put up a squawk. But, if she wanted me to stay on, there was nothing to say but yes, so she said it, swallowing hard. At the end of two weeks, for $1,200, I had the house very well furnished, with living room and dining room suites downstairs, bedroom things upstairs, and very nice rungs all around. On top of the $ 1,200 in regular furnishings, I put out $495 for a color TV, a beautiful cabinet-size thing that I splurged on deliberately. Because, I was getting this place ready to rent, rent furnished to the kind of people who might be in Washington only a short time, but needed a place to live in, a nice place they could have for themselves, their family, and friends- and a color TV, I thought, would act as very nice bait, something that might well tip the beam, make them decide between my place and some other place, if they liked to watch Steve Allen or Perry Como or Dinah Shore, all of whom were now broadcasting in color, or Howdy Doody if they had a little one. And within a week of the purchase going through I had the house rented, for $450 a month, to a couple from Akron, Ohio, who had jobs of some sort with HUD. When the husband and wife both work, they don’t have to count costs too closely, and can afford a very nice rental. They didn’t have any children and their name was Schroeder.
So, I had spent $31,000 of my $50,000, but still had things to do. On the mortgage, just under $5,000 dangled, and I went to the bank and paid it. I can’t say what a relief that was, what a blessed load off my back, as well as an albatross from around my neck. It still left me with $14,000 of my $50,000, and I went out and bought a car. I didn’t buy a new car, but one off a used-car lot, from a man I knew fairly well, from his coming in to the Garden and sitting with me quite often. He had a very nice Ford, a sedan, nicely polished, two years old but with not too much mileage on it, for $1,100. It was green, to blend with my hair, and when I drove it around the block, purred nicely, as though in good condition. The only thing was, it still had its original tires, and they were beginning to get worn. But I had Mr. Goss put five new whitewalls on it, for just over $100, and lo and behold, I had practically a brand-new car for the price of half of one.
So, I had one house free and clear, with no monthly $110 due, and except for taxes and upkeep, no expense at all, and another house free and clear, paying me $450 a month, subject to taxes and upkeep. Or in other words, with the $19.15 tip I still got every night, or nearly $115 a week, and the $150 a week over that that I made in tips at the Garden, I had about $1,500 a month before taxes, and over $10,000 in savings, making me $50 a month, about. Considering that just a few months before I was practically on relief, I knew I wasn’t doing too badly. I also hadn’t heard a peep from Private Church since the day he’d come to my house, leaving me to conclude that neither my recent transactions, if noticed at all, nor Ron’s exhumation had raised any matter of concern to the police. So I was feeling pleasantly up, quite happy with myself, when I drove out to the Lucases’ Sunday, for my weekly visit with Tad. I played it straight with Ethel, making no explanations at all of the car except to say that I had it, and all she could do was stare, first at it, then at me, and say: “I see, I see, I see.” What she saw I didn’t quite know, or to be frank about it, care. I’d been working long enough to afford a used car, on what I was making now; it wasn’t like suddenly appearing with $50,000 out of nowhere.
Tad was all excitement, as I had hoped he would be, and I loaded him in for a ride I had in mind, to the university at College Park, where they had a dairy building, as part of their farm complex, where you can get ice cream of various kinds, experimental kinds, most of them wonderful, not at all like what they sell in “parlors” as they’re called. They brought a book for Tad to sit on, but I held him on my lap, and ordered something made with diced dates for myself and plain strawberry for him, as being pink, pretty, and tasty.
He loved it. He ate it spoonful by spoonful, in the slow careful way a child has for something like that, and I loved watching him. When he was almost to the end he suddenly stopped, closed his eyes, and said: “M’m! M’m!” like he’d heard them sing on the Campbell’s soup advertisements. It made my heart beat up, the most beautiful sound in the world, of my own little baby being happy. He didn’t even complain when I hugged him tight, forgetting about his shoulder, so I knew he’d finally healed. I let him taste to the last spoonful, then ordered two quart cartons, one of strawberry, one of vanilla with chocolate chip, to take home to the Lucases. When we got back Jack was out on the curb waiting. It seemed odd, as previously he had shown me no special respect, and in fact took me quite for granted, in a way I didn’t much like. But now he was deference itself, opening the door, helping me out with Tad, being so helpful I was crossed up, assuming at first it was respect for the new car, or something of the sort. However, it turned out that wasn’t the reason. “Will you go up to Ethel?” he whispered. “She’s in a state up there-went to bed, believe it or not. You were gone so long she thought you’d flown the coop. She thought you’d taken Tad back. So-you aren’t taking him, are you?”
“He is my son, Jack.”
“I know he is, and you are entitled to have him for the day any time you want. But Ethel feared-”
“I know what she feared, and she should fear it, because someday soon I hope to make it happen. I am the boy’s mother and he should be with me.”
“I thought you weren’t ready yet, that you still couldn’t take care of him, all by yourself-”
I swallowed what I wanted so badly to tell him, to tell Ethel, for I was still afraid of how she would turn it against me. “I’m not. But soon I hope to be.”