Gerald's Game - Stephen King [72]
Hush, Tom!
Don't worry — Maddy and Will are downstairs andiessie's way out on the front deck . . . see her?
At that moment, Jessie suddenly became sure that her father knew exactly what the acoustics of the living room/dining room were like; he knew that his daughter was hearing every word of this discussion. Wanted her to hear every word. A warm little shiver traced its way up her back and down her legs.
I should have known it came down to Dick Sleefort! Her mother sounded angrily amused, a combination that made Jessie's head spin. It seemed to her that only adults could combine emotions in so many daffy ways — if feelings were food, adult feelings would be things like chocolate-covered steak, mashed potatoes with pineapple bits, Special K with chili powder sprinkled on it instead of sugar. Jessie thought that being an adult seemed more like a punishment than a reward.
This is really exasperating, Tom — the man made a pass at me six years ago. He was drunk. Back in those days he was always drunk, hut he's cleaned up his act. Polly Bergeron told me be goes to AA, and —
Bully for him, her father said dryly. Do we send him a get-well card or a merit-badge, Sally?
Don't be flip. You almost broke the man's nose —
Yes, indeed. When a fellow comes into the kitchen to freshen his drink and finds the rumdum from up the road with one hand on his wife's behind and the other down the front of her —
Never mind, she said primly, but Jessie thought that for some reason her mother sounded almost pleased. Curiouser and curiouser. The point is, it's time you discovered that Dick Sleefort isn't a demon from the deeps and it's time Jessie discovered Adrienne Gilette is just a lonely old woman who once slapped her hand at a lawn-party as a little joke. Now please don't get all crazy on me, Tom; I'm not claiming it was a good joke; it wasn't. I'm just saying that Adrienne didn't know that. There was no had intent.
Jessie looked down and saw her paperback novel was bent almost double in her right hand. How could her mother, a woman who'd graduated cum laude (whatever that meant) from Vassar, possibly be so stupid? The answer seemed clear enough to Jessie: she couldn't be. Either she knew better or she refused to see the truth, and you arrived at the same conclusion no matter which answer you decided was the right one: when forced to choose between believing the ugly old woman who lived up the road from them in the summertime and her own daughter, Sally Mahout had chosen Pooh-Pooh Breath. Good deal, huh?
If I'm a Daddy's girl, that's why. That and all the other stuff she says that's like that. That's why, but I could never tell her and she'll never see it on her own, Never in a billion years.
Jessie forced herself to relax her grip on the paperback. Mrs Gilette had meant it, there had been bad intent, but her father's suspicion that she had ceased being afraid of the old crow had probably been more right than wrong, just the same. Also, she was going to get her way about staying with her father, so none of her mother's ess-aitch-eye-tee really mattered, did it? She was going to be here with her Daddy, she wouldn't have to deal with old Pooh-Pooh Breath, and these good things were going to happen because . . .
'Because he sticks up for me,' she murmured.
Yes; that was the bottom line. Her father stuck up for her, and her mother stuck it to her.
Jessie saw the evening star glowing mildly in the darkening sky and suddenly realized she had been out on the deck, listening to them circle the subject of the eclipse — and the subject of her — for almost three-quarters of an hour. She discovered a minor but interesting fact of life that night: time speeds by fastest when you are eavesdropping on conversations about yourself.
With hardly a thought, she raised her hand and curled it into a tube, simultaneously catching the star and sending it the old formula: wish I may, wish I might. Her wish, already well on the way to being granted, was that she be allowed to stay