“Yeah, Mandy? What?”
“Mother. I ought to call her up.”
“...Call her up? What for?”
“To tell her... what’s been on my mind ever since I came back from talking to that rat, Vernick. Rick, I’ve been so ashamed to feel toward her like I did and to put what I did in that note. And the reason was that I blamed her for the way he had treated me, Vernick I’m talking about, never writing or calling me, or sending me something for Christmas. I thought it was because she’d never told him where we lived or anything. But now I know whose fault it was. I want to tell her how sorry I am for putting the blame on her.”
“...Mandy, no, no, no!”
“But, Rick, why not?”
“You’ll spill it to her, that’s why.”
“Spill what?”
“Everything!”
“Well, not about the robbery, if that’s what you’re talking about. Only about Vernick.”
“Oh, that’s all, about Vernick! Wasn’t it bad enough, Mandy, that you went to him with that coat, that you bought it with hot money? It was just our dumb luck that the store didn’t call the cops in and that he didn’t want any trouble. Now you got to start over with a crazy call to your mother! Isn’t there going to be any end to your battiness?”
“But I said I’m not going to tell her!”
“About anything, except Vernick and how you showed him the coat and how it flattened him out, with his talk about you wanting money. So she asks where you got it. What are you going to say?”
“I don’t have to say anything, do I?”
“OK, you don’t say anything, but she calls Vernick to ask what he knows about it. And he says you didn’t tell him. And she says, ‘I’m telling the cops, I have to, I dare not let it pass.’ What then?”
“Well, she wouldn’t do that.”
“How do you know she wouldn’t?”
“You seem to forget she’s my mother.”
“On this I wouldn’t trust Jesus Christ.”
“Well, that’s not a nice thing to say.”
“O.K., I wouldn’t trust anyone.”
“Then, I won’t call. But you make me feel so guilty.”
“I was easier in my mind. Now I’m not.”
9
But in the morning we were nice and friendly again, and he let me dress in the bathroom, without peeping or anything. Then I came out and he went in, and when he came out he was shaved, combed, and fresh, with a clean shirt on, one of those he had bought, and his pants and jacket clean and pressed up, after being delivered by the valet the night before, enduring while I slept. So then we went down and had breakfast and talked over what we would do. We decided to hit for Miami, where we could ask about islands, where they were and what they cost. So we went up again and packed, then came down and paid and checked out, then took a cab to the bus terminal, at Howard and Center streets. But my heart almost stopped when we unchecked our bag, the one with the money in it, and the man suddenly asked Rick, “What you got in that thing, bricks?”
Rick told him, “Books.”
“Oh, that explains it. Boy, is that heavy.”
Walking away, we looked at each other, and Rick said, “Well, we found something out. Now we know what we got. In case the subject comes up. In case it does again.”
“I almost died.”
“Forget it. We made a gain.”
But when we asked at the ticket window, it turned out that to get to Miami, to get the express bus, we had to go to Washington by local. My heart did a little more skipping when we had to surrender our bags, check them through when we got on the bus, but no comment was made anymore about how heavy the big one was. We rode on the back seat, as we had on the local from Hyattsville going to Baltimore, and I whispered to Rick, “Hiya, Pop?” He squeezed my hand, so I felt happy and loved and safe. We changed in Washington, but bought tickets only as far as Raleigh so we could have lunch there before going further south. We decided to stop in Savannah and spend the night in a hotel, before going on next day. So we did have our lunch in Raleigh, more sandwiches and pie a la mode and buttermilk, and it wasn’t the same as it had been in the hotel, but not too bad either. Then we went on, with tickets bought to Savannah, checking the bags through again, riding the back seat again, and finally getting off again. And once more I almost died, as I was halfway up the aisle, leaving the bus, before I remembered the coat, which Rick had put topside on the rack. I ran back and got it and he sicked his finger at me. Then we unchecked our bags on the platform and right away rechecked the big one at the check-it-to-leave-it window, Rick taking the check that time, and then caught a cab to the hotel. Once more, I don’t say which one it was, except it was down by a square, near the City Hall and Cotton Exchange, with a view looking out on some river.
They treated us very nice, very different from how they were next morning with me, and they said nothing at all about being paid in advance. We went up, and I unpacked as usual, putting our things away, and then we went out and had dinner, as it was late and the hotel dining room looked deserted. We found a place called The Isle of Hope and had a pretty good dinner of crab soup, snapper, and parfait, and with his fish Rick had some wine. Then we went back to the hotel, and I didn’t undress in the bathroom, but in front of him, out in the open. But he didn’t pay much attention, and I guess I liked it that way, but I was beginning to wonder how long his fright would last and if it would ever end. I mean I liked it, him being my father, but after all I’m human. But he didn’t make any pass, and I sat there a while in the chair, the only one we had, and he sat sipping his Scotch, as he’d brought the bottle along, the one he’d had sent up in Baltimore. And I said, “Rick, there’s just one thing.”
“Yes, Mandy, what?”
“The same old. Mother.”
“...You mean you still want to call her?”
“Rick, it’s been bugging me all day. Forget what I said last night, about my reason for wanting to then — now there’s another reason. Rick, after what you said, about her calling the cops, it has popped in my head that she could, anyway, without knowing about the coat. Just to report me in as a runaway girl or something. A truant juvenile, something like that. Or suppose she takes space in that magazine? They have one, did you know that? That locates missing children. And how you do, you take an ad out, give in the missing child’s picture, and they run it with her description. And that magazine goes everywhere — to police, filling stations, bus terminals, airports, any place you can think of. And it gets results, so they say. The missing child is found. Well, suppose she does that to me — not out of meanness, but love. So she does what it takes to find me, and then they pick me up... and you up. And there we’ll be with that money, just from being too dumb to put in a call while we still had the chance and head off that dragnet stuff. That’s what I’m worried about!”
“OK, OK, I see your point. And I know what you do.”
“Yes, Rick? What?”
“Soon as we get to Miami you send five bucks to New York, to the newsstand at Grand Central Station, to mail you cards, picture postcards of New York, in the return envelope that you send. So they do, and when you get those cards, you write your mother one, what a swell place it is, New York. Then you say you’re all right and please don’t worry about you, you’ll write her more later. So then you send that in an envelope, to the same newsstand, with a note: ‘Please mail the enclosed card for me.’ So they do and that’s that. Your mother thinks you’re up there, she has no reason to worry, she don’t call the cops or take any ad in that magazine... Hey, Mandy, I try to help.”