Concrete Angel (29 page)

Unlike Mickey, Daddy took to Ryan immediately, confirming my idea he’d always wanted a son, a future cadet at West Point, a junior partner at the firm.

Or maybe he did have his own son in his arms that day, although it was hard to believe my parents could put their bickering aside long enough to make another baby. Still Mother’s behavior at the time of her pregnancy had been strange.

Daddy began to pace, jiggling Ryan as he walked. I wondered if he held me so tenderly. He wasn’t the father my mother described Herbert Hobart as being, but he wasn’t John Walton either. How easy it was to settle in with the
The Waltons
, the antidote to what I found in my life. Only the grandmother on the show reminded me of mine.

Grandmother and I had fretted about Mother’s job choice from the moment she came home, paperwork in hand. “Don’t look at me like that,” she told both of us. “Do you want a steady paycheck or not?”

She’d applied for jobs all over the city. The Philadelphia House, a downtown hotel catering mostly to medium-income tourists rather than flush businessmen, was the only place to respond. I supposed the turnover in hotel maids was significant, large enough for the hotel to take a chance on Mother’s scant job history. It was still a time when a short job history was not unusual for a woman.

Dad was able to bury most of her peccadilloes, including her stays at mental institutions, her nights in the slammer, her run-ins with the post office and various other officials. He composed a sterling recommendation for her to brandish, especially glowing about her time spent at the stationary store in Hatboro, her business acumen, her creativity. Someone else signed it. He wanted her to find work badly. The fear his child support might now extend to Ryan for the next eighteen years was probably gnawing at him. Eve, at work, might do less harm than Eve, at home. Maybe. This was probably the same thinking that led to the job in the stationary store earlier.

Now he’d heard what his letter wrought, I expected him to comment on Mother’s ineptitude at housework or the on impropriety of the mother of his child cleaning hotel rooms, but it was another aspect worrying him.

“You’re not going to be able to resist taking things you see in those rooms, Eve. It’s like an alcoholic working in a bar.” He paced the floor smoothly now, careful not to jolt Ryan awake. “There must be some other line of work that’d suit you better.” He paused, clearly at a loss for what it might be. We all were.

“I’m waiting for your ideas on the subject,” she said, tapping her foot. “Maybe you’d like to send me back to school so I could train for something.”

I could see she was already imagining her new co-ed wardrobe.

“She hasn’t taken anything from a store in years,” I said.

Perhaps her time with Mickey had been a sort of penance period. Mother flashed me a look it was impossible to decipher-part grateful but partly annoyed her child had to stick up for her—maybe annoyed too that I knew as much as I did about her past peccadilloes. I was sitting in judgment somehow. She could never get it into her head that the murder of Jerry Santini and its cover-up laid her open to my probe. She was indebted if only she could see it.

But instead she was unashamed, contemptuous of Daddy’s remarks.

“Nobody’s made me a better offer, Hank. And I haven’t taken anything from a store, much less a hotel room, in years. That part of my life is long past. And now, with little Ryan here,” she gestured toward the crib, not noticing Daddy held him, “I’ve an incentive to leave it all behind me.
Us,”
she corrected herself. She glanced fondly toward the crib again,
still
not seeing it was empty. “I’m looking forward to supporting my little family.”

When Mother spoke like that, with an overblown vocabulary and too much virtue in her voice, it made me worry. Did she already have some plan in the works? Had she pocketed an item from the human resources office of the hotel on her way out the door? Whether I liked him or not, Mickey had kept her in check, confining her to the low-stakes return business.

Daddy shook his head, handing me my brother. “I don’t believe you can do it. I’d like to think so, but I don’t.” He paced the floor. “It’s some sort of sickness you have. I used to think it was about the thrill involved in taking stuff, but now I’m not so sure. I read an article somewhere about people who hoard. Maybe you’ve got such a disorder: hoarding. Still have the storage unit? Or is it more than one unit by now?” He fired this question at my grandmother who’d been silent. “Is your basement still a flea market, Adele?”

Nobody said anything. The apartment we stood in was curiously empty. Mother had pretty much destroyed the things she’d had in the house with Mickey. Our home was Spartan, for once: no fish, no glitter, no African violets, no hula dancers on the wall.

“You’d think you’d have some interest in finding out what your problem is and solving it.” He whipped around. “Or that
you
’d want to know what’s wrong with her, Adele. You must be up to your eyeballs in her crap.”

“I…” my grandmother started to say, but Mother interrupted.

“I’m done with it, Hank. Give me a break.” Mother paced the floor, a cigarette hanging from her lips. “What do you care? It’s not on your head anymore. Last time I was in trouble, my one call wasn’t to you.”

“Look, it’s none of my damned business what job you take on, but if you go to jail again—even for a night—I’ll ask for, and get, custody of Christine. She can spend her final year at home in my house. It’d probably be the best year of her life—free of you and your shenanigans. My tolerance is running out.” He laughed. “That’s not true. It ran out years ago. But…”

This was a startling statement. Never once had I heard him express the slightest interest in taking me in. Was it really me who’d stood in the way of his complete desertion of Eve Moran? I’d always wondered if I reminded him too much of my mother. Did he see me as her willing accomplice in crime?

He confirmed my idea at once. “Christine’s out of it soon enough, but I don’t know what will happen to Ryan. Poor little fellow.”

I looked at my brother, vowing nothing bad would happen to him. And Daddy couldn’t have him. I might not be sure about who his father was, but his mother was definitively mine. Ryan was ours until he declared otherwise himself.

“Don’t you think I know all this?” Mother stubbed out her cigarette. “What kind a job did you think I’d get with my experience? Model, actress, editor of
Cosmo
.” I waved the smoke away, wondering why she’d taken to smoking again when the rest of the world had quit. “I’ve no real employment record and several smirches needing explaining. You couldn’t erase all of it apparently.”

“You think you can control the thieving?” Daddy sounded weary but almost ready to believe her. This was their pattern after all. Pretend it’s okay and maybe it will be. “You never have yet.”

“I know I can. I managed to stop completely—this last year or two.” Her eyelids fluttered.

I could tell when she was lying about seventy-five percent of the time. Mostly when it wasn’t my eyes she was looking into. At those times, a sort of hypnosis took place.

“With Mickey,” she unnecessarily explained. “I tried.”

Was she counting the return to the return business? Was that what was lurking in her eyes?

Daddy sighed. “I’ve half-a-mind to call The Philadelphia House and tell them about you. Stop it before it starts—before you wind up in jail. Disgracing us all yet again.”

“Then bump up the little bit of money you send us. If you do, I’ll call the hotel and quit. I’d certainly prefer to stay home with my children. Be a mother—”

Daddy waved his hand. “Please, Eve. Have a little pride. I’ll increase your support somewhat if you promise you won’t take anything out of those hotel rooms. Not even a discarded magazine. If you get the urge to steal something, quit immediately and get the hell out of Dodge. Right? Promise? Isn’t Mickey kicking in some support for Ryan?” Mother shrugged.

Daddy didn’t have to do this. Perhaps custody of me was such a turnoff he was willing to put some dough on the line to head it off. “Deal?”

“I’ll quit the first time I’m tempted.”

She said it too quickly, and we all avoided looking at one another. But there were only so many places to look.

S
he kept her word though. Five days a week for the next two months, she dropped Ryan off at Grandmother’s house at five-thirty a.m. and took the train downtown. I got myself off to school an hour later. When I got home from school, she and Ryan were already back home— takeout, or something my grandmother made, on the table. It might work out—despite her daily litany of complaints.

“The nicest couples you can imagine, Christine, community pillars, elders at the church, presidents of the ladies circle—all of them check into a respectable hotel like The Philadelphia House, and proceed to do strange, sometimes unspeakable, things,” she’d say, and start out with mild stories about bodily and other fluids she found every day: “urine, mucus, saliva, semen, coffee, blood, breast milk, booze— stuff I can’t identify.”

I’d grit my teeth as she continued. “An elderly couple from the Midwest, I think, ripped their sheets to shreds last night.” Or, “I found toenail clippings in the bed sheets this morning, nearly cut my hand on them.” Or, “I walked in on two naked boys passed out on the bathroom floor. A gagged girl was in their bathtub. When I helped her out, she laughed and said this would teach her not to drink tequila.” Another time. “There were four of them, crammed into the one bed with another bed not two feet away. They’d torn the curtains from the rod for some reason, had the air set at fifty-five degrees. I thought they were dead for a minute. A mass-suicide pact. Can you imagine calling it in to the front desk?” She giggled. ‘“Only on my floor,’ the damned man I work for would say. He’s convinced I’m a bad luck charm.”

“And oddest of all,” she began, making me shiver, “are the couples who leave no signs of their occupancy. They remake the bed, clean the bathroom, polish every surface. What’re they hiding beneath the cleanliness?” She shrugged. “I get one every week or two, and I turn on the TV and take a good rest when I walk into the room. Sometimes they even leave a big tip. Probably they’re harmless neurotics, but you never know.”

“Sounds interesting.”

I could easily imagine a finicky guest not trusting the cleaning techniques of the average hotel maid, who’d been taught speed was most important. Mistrust of hotel cleanliness must be especially common since the Legionnaire’s Disease.

“Oh, yeah, real interesting. The job is like a college education. Last week, I did fourteen rooms in one day. Including two suites. At least, I’m catching up on the soaps. That’s how most of them learn English, you know.”

“Them?”

“The chambermaids I work with. I’m the only native English speaker on the staff. So patrons always look for me in the hallway to tell me their light bulb needs changing or their pillow isn’t fluffy enough. I’m thinking of saying, ‘Hola’ to conceal it. Some of them are from the islands. Poorer countries. Speaking English is probably what gave me a leg up on getting this job. Oh, I’m talented all right.”

We were in her bed with Ryan between us, watching Mike Douglas on TV. She fluffed her pillow, saying, “I’d think twice before staying in a hotel after this job. Especially the cheaper chains. You should hear the stories the girls tell. Lots of ‘em have worked at place like the Bates Motel.”

“But you get good tips, right?” I stroked Ryan’s cheek, and he turned his head as if to find a breast waiting. Mother noticed and laughed. “That’s one thing he still has to come to me for, Christine.” Ryan was over a year old and I wondered why she still breastfed.

If she pumped though, he didn’t know the difference. He liked me to feed him. I eyed the two enviously as they snuggled. She held a certain allure for him, I couldn’t quite match. “And the tips?” I repeated.

Mother generally didn’t discuss money with me, but her ire at this injustice opened her mouth. “I’m lucky to get twenty dollars a night and I do twelve rooms most days. Sometimes more.”

I wasn’t sure what her salary was. “Still, with your salary and what Daddy gives us we can make it, right? It’s not so bad. I’ve been filling out college applications…”

“I can’t do it forever, Christine. My back aches and my shoulders are nearly paralyzed by the end of the shift from holding up the mattress to get those sheets tucked tight.” To prove her point, she lifted her arm as if a twenty-pound weight rested on it. “We have a protocol on bed making and square corners are a must. They actually do sporadic checks. There’s gotta be some easier way to make a living.” My heart sank. I could think of some easier ways and knew she could too.

M
other never went long without male companionship. She met Bud Pelgrave in the Philadelphia House’s hotel bar a few weeks later.