Trauma (10 page)

“What difference? It's enough to make you feel ill.”

“Isn't that a woman's role in life? Cleaning up? Look at you. You've spent your entire adult life cleaning up.”

“Yes, but people's bodies. It doesn't bear thinking about.”

“I don't clean up bodies, Mom. The coroner's department does that. Well, sometimes I clean up
bits
of bodies. Hair, teeth, stuff like that. I found seven toes the other day, underneath a tumble dryer. Guy killed his girlfriend with a chainsaw.”

Her mother flapped her hand in disgust. “I don't want to think about it. If that Duke would get up off his backside and find himself a job, you wouldn't have to do it. By the way, how
is
Duke?”

“Pretty much the same. He went for an interview at the Century Plaza. Bar work.”

“I could never understand what you saw in that man.”

“I know you didn't. You never stopped telling me. Even now you don't stop telling me.”

“What about your other job? The cosmetics thing?”

“I think I lost it. Maybe it was too … menstrual.”

Bonnie's mother stared at her. “I'm sure I don't know what on God's good earth you're talking about sometimes, Bonnie Mulligan.”

Bonnie carefully set down her coffee cup. “Mom … what would you do if a rich and famous TV personality invited you to a party?”

“What? What are you talking about now?
Party
?”

Bonnie had promised herself that she wouldn't tell anybody about Kyle Lennox because she desperately wanted to keep it a secret. She felt that, if she told her mother or Duke or Ray or any of her friends, it would turn out that she had misunderstood what Kyle Lennox said, or maybe the party would just turn out to be a big disappointment, with nobody famous there at all, and she would end up looking like a fool.

But she was so excited about it that she had to talk about it somehow, to somebody.

“A party. Like, you know, just some TV actors, and some TV producers, people like that. Not formal. Just a kind of a poolside thing. Champagne, maybe. Swimming.”

“Who's going to invite me to anything like that?”

“A famous TV personality.”

“I don't know any famous TV personalities.”

“I know. But supposing you did. Supposing you knew—I don't know—Kyle Lennox?”

Her mother stared at her for a long time, steadily chewing a cookie with her false teeth. “I can't understand a word, Bonnie. I swear to God.”

Bonnie looked up at the picture of her father with his cheesy smile. He had shot himself in the garage when Bonnie was fifteen and she could remember his blood being hosed down the driveway. And nobody had understood why.

That afternoon, around four o'clock, the hospital called and said that Ray could come home. Duke didn't want to miss
All My Children
, so Bonnie took the Buick and drove over to pick Ray up. The sky was a deep reddish color, as if God were using a strawberry filter. The temperature was dropping, too, and Bonnie felt that something strange was going to happen.

She found a space at the far end of the hospital parking lot, but before she could climb out of the car her cell phone played Henry Mancini's “Dear Heart.” She flipped the phone open and said, “Bonnie's Trauma Scene Clean. How can we help you?”

“Bonnie, it's Ralph.”

“Ralph! Hi, Ralph.”

“I just called to make sure that your boy was okay.”

“He's okay. I'm at the hospital now to pick him up.”

“That's good. What about the assault charges?”

“I haven't heard yet. But I think there's a reasonable chance that the police won't pursue it. You know, first offense, good character, plus his mom's a personal friend of Captain O'Hagan.”

“Well, I hope things work out okay.”

“Okay. Thanks. How was Pasadena?”

“I—ah—wanted to apologize about that.”

“You don't have to apologize. You needed me there and I couldn't go. That's all there is to it.”

“As a matter of fact, I postponed it till Friday evening. It suited the buyers better. They had so many presentations to see yesterday that they were running nearly a day late.”

“I see. Well, good luck.”

“Ah—I was wondering if—well, I was wondering if you'd still like to come with me.”

Bonnie climbed out of the car and slammed the door twice.

“I'm not fired?” she asked.

“That was me being irritable. Of course you're not fired. Do you think I'd fire one of my very favorite salespersons?”

“So I'm not fired and you want me to go to Pasadena with you Friday?”

“If you can get into the office by two-thirty?”

“I don't know, Ralph. What time are we supposed to get back?”

“There's kind of a business breakfast and then we
leave right away. Come on, tell me you'll come along.”

“I'm not so sure, Ralph. Somebody has to take care of Ray. Cook him some supper and everything.”

“Can't Duke do that?”

“Duke thinks eggs come out of chickens already fried.”

“Can't they survive on takeout for just one night?”

“I don't know, Ralph. Ray's kind of messed up at the moment. I really don't like to leave him.”

“Well, it's your choice. But I wish you'd change your mind.”

“Let me think about it. I'll call you.”.

She switched off her cell phone and went up the hospital steps.

Ray's wrist and ankle were still in plaster, and he could only hop and hobble his way to the bathroom. Both of his eyes were spectacularly rainbow-colored, and his lips were still swollen. But the doctor had said that he was making excellent progress, and besides, they needed the bed. Ray was pleased because the hospital food was “drek.”

Bonnie cooked pork and beans for supper, which was Ray's favorite, with Bisquick blueberry-lemon coffee cake for dessert. Duke drank three cans of Budweiser, and every time he lifted his can he said, “Here's to the hero. Here's to the goddamned hero.”

After the seventh or eighth time, he began to get on Bonnie's nerves. “Oh, you think because he beat up on some totally innocent Mexican kids he's a hero?”

“He stood up for what's right, didn't he? And what's right, sweet cheeks, is that California belongs to Californians and not to the goddamned Mexicans. Do you know that this year there are going to be more goddamned Hispanics living in California than there are white people, and that's not counting the goddamned blacks?”

“Do you want some more of these fried potatoes?”

“Don't change the subject, Bonnie. The boy's a hero. In fact, he's not a boy anymore. He's a man. If I'd known he was going out to beat up on those goddamned wetbacks, I would've gone with him.
Then
they would have learned their lesson. Whop! Whap! Take that, you enchilada-eating ball of grease!”

“You're a bigot, Duke.”

“A bigot? You're calling me a bigot? You're working your goddamned butt off all the hours that God sends you because some Mexican took my job and you think I'm a
bigot
? Under the circumstances I think I'm a model of goddamned tolerance. Under the circumstances I think I'm a goddamned
saint
.”

Bonnie said, “There's still a chance that the police are going to file charges. I hope you're going to be saintly about that.”

“If they charge him—well, that's the kind of price that heroes have to pay. But I'm behind you all the way, Ray. Your old man's behind you all the way. You've earned his respect, boy.”

Ray gave Duke a split-lipped smile. Bonnie, spooning out potatoes, suddenly realized what Ray had done. In one stroke, he had ended all of the arguments between them by electing to side with his father, right or wrong. She supposed she couldn't blame him. Up
until this evening, almost every mealtime had been World War Three, with Bonnie holding her ground against everything that Duke could throw at her, followed by Duke's noisy and abusive retreat. But now it was two against one, and there was nothing she could do but accept that what Duke said went, no matter how prejudiced or illogical it was.

Duke was right about one thing: Ray had gone down to the X-cat-ik Pool Bar as a boy and come back as a sort of a man.

After the meal, Bonnie helped Ray to heave his way back to his room and climb into bed.

Ray said, “You're not still mad at me, are you?”

“Mad at you? Why should I be mad at you? You're my only son.”

“You shouldn't be mad at Dad, either.”

“I'm not really mad at him. I just don't happen to look at life the same way that he does. He's full of expectations, but he never does anything to make them come true, and then he gets disappointed. But you can't go through your whole life being disappointed. Not if you won't make the effort.”

“I love you, Mom. But, you know, Dad's my dad, too.”

Bonnie nodded and gave him a pursed little smile, but it was then that she made up her mind that she would go to Pasadena, after all.

When she got back, Duke had opened another can of Budweiser and was sitting on the couch staring at
Stargate SG1
.

“Look at this shit. Can't they see what those aliens
are doing? Why don't they blow the shit out of them and have done with it?”

Bonnie sat down beside him and helped herself to a handful of caramel popcorn. “Ralph's asked me to go to Pasadena Friday.”

There was a long silence while Duke swallowed beer. Then he burped and said, “Ralph? That asshole. I thought he fired you.”

“He did, but now he wants me to take a trip to Pasadena.”

Duke nonchalantly flung his arm around her and sniffed. “I hope you got great pleasure out of telling him to stick his trip to Pasadena where you don't need Ray-Bans.”

“No, I'm going to say yes.”

Duke slowly turned his head and stared at her. “You said
yes
? As in, ‘Yes, I'm going to take a trip to Pasadena'?”

“Yes, I said yes.”

“So how long are you supposed to be going for?”

“Just one night. Back on Saturday morning.”

“You don't seriously think I'm going to let you spend a night in Pasadena with that creep?”

“Duke, he isn't a creep. He's my boss. And going to Pasadena is part of my job. He's not interested in my body. He's just interested in the fact that I'm good at presenting the product.”

“Presenting the product? Oh, sure, I'll bet. Ralph Kosherick has only one thing on his mind, and that's getting you to present the product between your legs.”

“Duke, don't be so crude. And don't be so ridiculous.”

“Oh, I'm crude now, am I? Just because I don't want my wife to spend the night with some drooling what's-it's-name—lecher.”

“Going to Pasadena is important, Duke. It's our major presentation for the holiday season. It could make all the difference between Glamorex really succeeding or going bankrupt.”

“And I'm supposed to give a shit about that?”

“Duke, I need the Glamorex job, and more than that, I enjoy it. It fulfills me. For a few hours every day it makes me feel like a woman instead of a cleaner, or a housekeeper, or a taxi driver. I'm going to Pasadena whether you like it or not.”

“I'm your fucking husband, for Christ's sake.”

“Don't you be profane, Duke. I'm going.”

“Didn't you hear me? I'm your husband.”

“Husband? Who are you kidding? You're just some man who sits around my house all day and expects me to wash his clothes and cook his meals and work myself half to death to keep him in beer. Husband? You can't even get your dick up.”

She wished instantly that she hadn't said that, of all things. She had always promised herself that she never would. She knew that you could say whatever you liked to a man—call him lazy and cruel and stupid and narrow-minded. But telling him that he couldn't get an erection was telling him that he wasn't a man at all. It opened up the floor right beneath his feet.

Duke didn't say a word. Instead, he lifted his can of Budweiser and poured beer slowly all over Bonnie's head. She sat on the couch with it dripping from her hair and running down the back of her neck.

“See what you fucking made me do?” said Duke.

Then he leaned forward and screamed into her face at point-blank range, “
See what you fucking made me do?!
”

She washed her hair and wrapped it in a pink towel turban. Earlier in the evening, for just a moment, she had been tempted to tell Duke about Kyle Lennox's invitation, but now she went to her purse and took out the business card with Kyle Lennox's autograph on it and tore it into the tiniest pieces possible.

A few minutes before 8:00 A.M. the next morning Bonnie received two phone calls. She was frying bacon for Duke's breakfast. The first call came from Lieutenant David Irizarry of the Los Angeles Police Department.

“Ms. Winter? Captain O'Hagan asked me to call you.”

“Oh, yes?”

“It's about your son, Raymond Winter. Captain O'Hagan says that we've decided not to file charges of assault against him. However, he will be required at some point to come down to headquarters.”

“I see. I see. That's good news, I guess.”

“Captain O'Hagan will be in touch with you.”

“Thank you. I appreciate it.”

The second call was from Lieutenant Dan Munoz.

“Bonnie? I'm glad I caught you. I've fixed up a job for you at Ivanhoe Drive by the Silver Lake Reservoir. Kind of messy, the kid-in-a-box case. How about meeting me three o'clock tomorrow. We can sort it all out. Who loves you, baby?”

Bonnie hung up the phone and stared at the bacon gradually shriveling in the pan. Duke appeared, wearing a sweaty T-shirt and droopy boxer shorts. He hadn't shaved or showered, and he staggered around the kitchen as if he were still drunk, which he probably was. Eventually he dragged out a chair and sat down, tilting wildly to one side.