Saint Maybe - Anne Tyler [97]
She stole it, is how. Shoplifted. Not even you know the worst of it.
“… and she’d sashay off to school all prissy and Miss America with her books held in front of her chest. The boys were fools for her, but my Tommy was the only one she’d look at. You should’ve seen my Tommy. He was movie-star handsome. He could pass for Tony Curtis, ought to give you some idea. He and Lucy went steady from ninth grade on. Went to every dance and sports event together. Well, excepting Junior Prom. They had a little disagreement the week before Junior Prom and she went with Gary Durbin, but Tommy beat Gary to a pulp next morning and him and Lucy got back together. At their Senior Prom they were King and Queen. I still have the pictures. Tommy wore a tux and he looked good enough to eat. I said, ‘Tommy, you could have any girl you wanted,’ but then, well, you guessed it.”
She lit her cigarette and tilted her head and blew out a long stream of smoke, all the while staring defiantly at Ian. He said, “I did?”
“Lucy went and got herself pregnant.”
“Oh.”
“I said, ‘Tommy, you can’t be certain that baby’s even yours,’ and he said, ‘Mom, I know it. I just don’t know what on earth I’m going to do,’ he told me.”
Ian said, “What?” He felt he’d missed something. “You mean it could have been someone else’s baby?” he asked.
“Well, who can say?” Mrs. Millet said. “I mean life is all so iffy, right? I said, ‘Tommy, don’t fall for this! You could be anything! You could be a male model, even! Why saddle yourself with a wife and kid?’ But Lucy talked him into it. She had him wrapped around her little finger, I tell you. It was the kind of thing that just breaks a mother’s heart.”
“So … but this aunt of hers,” Ian said. He seemed to be losing track of the purpose of his visit. “Alice, you say.”
“Alice Dean. Well, she had nothing against it. She was delighted to marry Lucy off. Meant she could get back to wherever she came from and her old-maid ways. So Tommy and Lucy set up house in this crummy little trailer over at Blalock’s Trailer Park and Tommy started work at Luther’s Sports Equipment, but when Lucy told him she was expecting again—two babies in three years!—he left her. I don’t blame him, either. I do not blame him. He was just a boy! ‘When you going to do this, when you going to do that?’ she was always asking, but he hadn’t had him any kind of life yet! Naturally he wanted to roam a bit. She claimed he was irresponsible and she fretted about the least little thing, so of course he stayed away even more and when he did come home they’d fight. Twice the police had to be called. Then thank the Lord, he finally had the sense to leave. Got shed of her and asked for a divorce. And wouldn’t you know she hired herself a big-shot city lawyer and sued for child support. Proves what I’d been telling him: all as she was after was his money. Someone to support those kids; by then she’d had the second one and she was always yammering about, ‘I can’t feed these kids on yard weeds,’ and such. I told Tommy, I said, ‘She should just go to work, if she needs money so bad.’ ”
“But then who would watch the children?” Ian asked.
“Lord, you sound just like her. ‘Then who would watch the children?’ ” Mrs. Millet mimicked in a high voice. She flicked her cigarette into a tin ashtray. “She should’ve got a sitter, of course. That’s what I told Tommy. ‘And don’t expect me to sit,’ I told him. I never did like other people’s children much. So anyhow, Tommy hung around here awhiles but there wasn’t all that much for him in Portia, and so finally he hitchhiked to Wyoming. He