The Second Mouse - Archer Mayor [43]
“No—mostly just to dress up.”
“Meaning she probably just had it in her nightstand drawer while she was undergoing treatment. I bet if they ran a Geiger counter by it, it wouldn’t even register. The more I hear, the less worried I am about returning it—assuming we find it,” she added, looking over her shoulder at him.
Upstairs, Nancy sat awkwardly in her chair, her hands between her thighs, wondering where to look. She didn’t want to stare at Doris but didn’t want to be rude by looking out the window.
“It’s okay, honey,” the older woman said. “I used to hate going to hospitals, and the sick people were only part of it. These places smell bad, and they give you the willies, and half the time you don’t know what anybody’s saying.” She laughed. “And then you throw us old folks on top of it. We smell bad, we give you the willies, and you can’t understand us half the time, either.”
Nancy was already shaking her head. “No, no . . .”
“Don’t kid a kidder, girl. I wasn’t always a fossil at death’s door. And don’t you believe for a second that Ellis’s old man was Father Knows Best.”
Nancy stared at her, unsure how to react. Doris raised what was left of her eyebrows. “There you go. Fact is, Ellis doesn’t even know who his father was, and to be honest, I don’t, either. Could’ve been one of several friends I had at the time.”
Nancy smiled nervously.
“You shocked?” Doris asked, still upbeat and cheerful. “You’re cheating on your husband.”
The headache returned with new fierceness. Nancy was torn between defending her ground and simply leaving the room. Had her companion taken another tone of voice, she would have left, but all this was being said almost as if Doris considered her the best of pals and was just pulling her leg.
Nancy took a breath and, more for Ellis’s sake than hers, decided to trust to this last notion. She forced a small smile. “Not to be mean to Ellis, but you should see his competition.”
Doris put her head back and laughed. “Oh, that’s good,” she finally said, wiping her eyes. “Poor Ellis. He’s a nice boy, but my God, I do wonder sometimes.” She reached out and waved at Nancy in lieu of tapping her on the knee. “I like you. Did the second you walked into the room. You’ll probably end up dumping my son. Most people do. But while he’s got you, I hope you can do him some good.”
Nancy was struggling for her footing. She understood that she’d passed a test of some kind, and she appreciated Doris’s candor, but she was still left wondering about how mother and son were connected emotionally. The simplicity of the images Ellis had evoked in Nancy when he’d invited her on this supposedly sentimental trip had been muddled and warped by how Doris really was. The older woman might have looked the role of a nursery rhyme mother, but her attitude made Nancy doubt how great she’d been performing it.
“What was Ellis like as a kid?” she asked, hoping for both a place to start and a way to duck the spotlight.
Doris shook her head and for the first time looked a little thoughtful. “You’re probably asking the wrong person. I’m not going to pull your chain here . . . What did you say your name was?”
“Nancy.”
“You have kids?”
“Not yet. I’m hoping to someday.”
Doris waved her hand in the air dismissively. “Yeah, well . . . Somebody told me once that having a kid changes your life, moves your priorities around, makes you realize stuff you hadn’t thought about before. I think all that’s a bunch of bull. I had a kid because I had sex with somebody. I probably could have had an abortion, so I won’t deny I was curious about being a mother, but once he was out and I figured out the lay of the land, I couldn’t get rid of him fast enough. I’ll always owe my sister for that. She took him off my hands almost from the start. She may not have been any big shakes as a mother, but Christ knows what I would’ve done to him.”
Nancy was disappointed, if not startled. She wished better for Ellis, and perhaps herself by proxy, but given her own knowledge of the world, she didn’t find Doris