The Most Dangerous Thing - Laura Lippman [55]
But she is stuck here because they have only one car. No other family in the neighborhood has only one car, except for that chaotic single woman across the street, the one who doesn’t mow her lawn until the neighborhood association insists, tells her it’s a breeding ground for rats. What are they going to do when Tim Junior gets his license? How are they going to afford the extra insurance for having teen drivers on their policy? She cries harder.
“There, there,” Father Andrew says. “I can handle it alone.”
“Does everyone know?” she chokes out.
“I’m afraid it was a little public for my tastes. But he was caught, he confessed, he was punished. I’ll make sure that the children understand there is no point revisiting such things.”
He will, somehow. Father Andrew has that kind of power. The children love him as much as their mothers do. Only the fathers don’t seem to get Father Andrew’s charm. The thick, dark hair, the high color in his face, the bright blue eyes, the broad shoulders. It would be unbearable if he were a regular man, because then he would have a girlfriend or a wife. But as a priest, Father Andrew is available to her.
“Maybe we should still have a meeting one day?” she asks. “About Go-Go’s . . . situation.”
“Sometimes, the less said, the better. Let it go. He’s learned a valuable lesson.”
She is torn, wanting to tell him about the sheets, the other problems, if only to prolong the conversation, yet feeling it would be a betrayal.
“About Go-Go,” she starts.
“Yes?”
She can’t do it. “What do you think of him? Truly.”
“I think he’s a boy, ma’am, with all the inherent contradictions and conflicting impulses. He wants to be good. He really does. But it’s hard to be good.”
This is such a generous assessment of her son that she yearns to believe it. Yet a part of her mind steps back and hisses like a goose: You’re a fool, Father. He’s a bad, bad boy. He’s an awful boy. And maybe he has every reason in the world to be that way, but I don’t know how much longer I can keep all his secrets.
Chapter Seventeen
Tim Halloran starts each weekday by circling job prospects in the morning paper, the Beacon, every red loop an exercise in positive thinking. He has never used the want ads before to find a job, managing to rely on word-of-mouth leads from friends and colleagues. But since he left the seasonal job at Goldenberg’s, there is nothing. Or so people say. Sorry, I don’t know about anything. Sorry, things are god-awful tight. Tim knows what’s going on. His boss at Hutzler’s was a vindictive little prick, and he’s spread the word all over town that Tim has a bad temper. Bad? He simply has a temper, unlike that faggot, who liked to hold forth about film—as opposed to movies, some airy-fairy distinction that the guy insisted on—when he didn’t know shit. Guy went on and on about how John Wayne had died on-screen only once, such complete and utter bullshit that Tim, who loves John Wayne, all but recited most of the titles in one breath. (SANDS-OF-IWO-JIMA-MAN-WHO-SHOT-LIBERTY-VALANCE-THE-COWBOYS-THE-SHOOTIST. And that was off the top of his head, not even complete.) OK, Tim’s fuse is a little short, but it’s never affected his work. Tim’s only failure is not kissing ass. He is good at what he does, probably could have been a true mathematician instead of a bookkeeper if he had the freedom to fart around with that academic bullshit. But he was a husband at twenty-one and a father at twenty-three, which means parking the ego and providing for your dependents.
Only he isn’t exactly providing now. They are running through their savings at an alarming clip. Running through? They have run through the savings and kept on going, like a car with no brakes. After