I heard you've been getting some pretty rough handling from the other kids. I'm sorry about that.
It hasn't been so bad, she says, taking his hand. Her face - the fresh scatter of angry-looking pimples on her forehead - tells a different story. The pimples say the handling has been rough indeed. Having a parent arrested is not a situation even Judy Blume covers (although someday she probably will).
I also hear you've been handling it pretty well, Billy Halleck says. Not making a big thing out of it. Because if they ever see they're getting under your skin ...
Yeah, I know, she says glumly.
Miss Nearing said she was especially proud of you, he says. It's a small lie. Miss Nearing hadn't said precisely that, but she had certainly spoken well of Linda, and that meant almost as much to Halleck as it did to his daughter. And it does the job. Her eyes brighten and she looks at Halleck for the first time.
She did?
She did, Halleck confirms. The lie comes easily and convincingly. Why not? He has told a lot of lies just lately.
She squeezes his hand and smiles at him gratefully.
They'll let it go pretty soon, Lin. They'll find some other bone to chew. Some girl will get pregnant or a teacher will have a nervous breakdown or some boy will get busted for selling pot or cocaine. And you'll be off the hook. Get it?
She throws her arms around him suddenly and hugs him tight. He decides she isn't growing up so fast after all, and that not all lies are bad. I love YOU, Daddy, she says.
I love you too, Lin.
He hugs her back and suddenly someone turns on a big stereo amplifier in the front of his brain and he hears the double-thud again.. the first as the Ninety-Eight's front bumper strikes the old Gypsy woman with the bright red cloth kerchief over her scraggly hair, the second as the big front wheels pass over her body.
Heidi screams.
And her hand leaves Halleck's lap.
Halleck hugs his daughter tighter, feeling goose flesh break all over his body.
'More eggs?' Heidi asked, breaking into his reverie.
'No. No, thanks.' He looked at his clean plate with some guilt: no matter how bad things got, they had never gotten bad enough to cause him to lose either sleep or his appetite.
'Are you sure you're ... ?'
'Okay?' He smiled. 'I'm okay, you're okay, Linda's okay. As they say on the soap operas, the nightmare is over - can we please get back to our lives?'
'That's a lovely idea.' This time she returned his smile with a real one of her own - she was suddenly under thirty again, and radiant. 'Want the rest of the bacon? There's two slices left.'
'No,' he said, thinking of the way his pants nipped at his soft waist (what waist, ha-ha? a small and unfunny Don Rickles spoke up in his mind - the last time you had a waist was around 1978, you hockey puck), the way he had to suck in his gut to hook the catch. Then he thought of the scale and said, 'I'll have one of them. I've lost three pounds.'
She had gone to the stove in spite of his original no sometimes she knows me so well it gets to be depressing, he thought. Now she glanced back. 'You are still thinking about it, then.'
'I'm not,' he said, exasperated. 'Can't a man lose three pounds in peace? You keep saying you'd like me a little . . .'
thinner
'. . . a little less beefy.' Now she had gotten him thinking about the Gypsy again. Dammit! The Gypsy's eaten nose and the scaly feel of that one finger sliding along his cheek in the moment before he had reacted and jerked away the way you would jerk away from a spider or from a clittering bundle of beetles fuming in a knot under a rotted log.
She brought him the bacon and kissed his temple. 'I'm sorry. You go right ahead and lose some weight. But if you don't, remember what Mr Rogers says -'
*- I like you just the way you are,' they finished in unison.
He prodded at the overturned Journal by the lazy Susan, but that was just too depressing. He got up, went outside, and found the New York Times in the flowerbed. The kid always threw it in the flowerbed, never had his numbers right at the end of the week, could never remember Bill's last name. Billy had wondered on more than one occasion if it was possible for a twelve-year-old kid to become a victim of Alzheimer's disease.
He took the paper back inside, opened it to the sports, and ate the bacon. He was deep in the box scores when Heidi brought him another half of English muffin, golden with melting butter.
Halleck ate it almost without being aware he was doing so.