A Map of the World - Jane Hamilton [68]
Occasionally a sudden bolt of reason would come to me and I’d understand certain facts. Everything that I could think of to sell would in some way cripple us, or cripple the cause. There were very few places we could go any longer. It was going to prove difficult, if not impossible, to find someone to watch the girls while I was away trying to get Alice out. We had always been satisfied with our circumscribed life. We had been proud, I think, to know that we could get by with so little. As for child care, the few people I might have ordinarily called upon for help were in distant parts. Dan and Theresa were out of the question, besides still being in Montana, and the girls’ regular school-year sitter was at her summer cabin in Boulder Junction. My mother was doing her good deed in Rumania.
I had finally called the embassy and left the message for Nellie that no one was hurt, but that she should phone her son as soon as possible. “Is something the matter?” she asked when she got through. There was a lag and an echo, so that I heard my hello coming back to me as she asked, “Are you all right?”
“Ah—”
“What is it? What is it, Howie?”
I was loathe to tell my mother that Alice had been arrested for hurting a small boy or that she’d been running her hands up and down the backs of junior-high girls in the locker room.
“What is it? Do you need me, sweetheart?”
“I’m going to have to have some money to get Alice out of jail,” I shouted, hoping that sheer volume would make her understand the particulars.
Because of the echo we were talking over each other. “I can’t hear you, sweet. This is a terrible connection.” She asked again, “Are you all right?”
“Alice has been mistaken for someone else and is in jail.” That was the story. That was what had happened.
“Oh, for goodness sakes. How long will it take them to clear it up?”
“I’m not sure,” I said. “They set the bail at—”
“With all due respect, honey, I really think Alice brings troubles down on her own shoulders. I love her dearly, you understand, but she sometimes has such a bad attitude. What did you say they think she did?”
“Sh—she.” I could tell my mother that it was fraud or embezzlement, that the school was missing a few hundred dollars from the petty-cash drawer. “We’ll get through it,” I said. “We’ll be fine.” I would tell her everything after the preliminary hearing, after I heard the charges for myself. I couldn’t very well tell her what I myself didn’t understand.
“You need me to come home! I can hear it in your voice.”
“No, that’s not it. If we can just get her out I’m sure it will blow over.”
“What about the girls? Who are they mistaking Alice for? The world is so chaotic! The mess here is unbelievable. The hospital conditions are primitive, there are so many AIDS babies, not enough medication, not enough food. We’re doing what we can—”
“That’s great, Mom.”
“—But my goodness, the children just break your heart.”
“Do you think you could loan us some money? A few th-th-thou—”
“You’d think with computers they’d be able to straighten out those kinds of mistakes right away.”
I thought that maybe it would hit her, after she’d hung up, that Alice was locked away, and she’d call back wanting, the second time, to listen. She didn’t have much left to give—that much she had recently made clear to me. But it was possible she had an emergency stash she could bust into. I would ask her for the full amount tomorrow, after I’d had some sleep. “Could you call back on Thursday?” I said. “I’ll know more by then.”