“When did you see her last?” Olivia asked, choosing her words carefully. All right, she thought, the girl is a real troublemaker. A bad seed. That really didn’t surprise her. The mother surprised her. But Olivia tried to get past that, to find out what exactly the mother knew, what she was willing to relinquish here.
“The day I walked into her room and saw that little bulging gut and knew she got herself knocked up, I said, ‘Get out here and talk to Bobby and me about that bun you got in your oven, and don’t be denying it.’ And she came out and started running off at the mouth about love and Ben and everything we didn’t know about everything. But you see, lady—”
“Olivia.”
“Olivia. Pretty name.”
Somehow, the way the woman said her name made Olivia want to jump into a hot bath.
“You see, Olivia,” Denise said, rolling all of Olivia’s vowels around her mouth, “I was there myself. All in love with Ruby’s father. Sixteen years old and stupid as a stone. My head was all full of love and sex and fairy tales. Then he left and I was stuck with a kid. Don’t get me wrong—I love her, but I didn’t know my ass from my elbow. We didn’t have a pot to piss in. My mother threw us out, we got the welfare and I used most of it to buy something to make me feel better. Beer or whatever.” She bent her head, embarrassed.
When she looked back up, she said, “Olivia. See, that’s a classy name. I didn’t even know how to pick a name right. Ruby sounded so highfalutin to me back then.” She laughed at her own foolishness.
“The thing is,” Olivia said, because she, too, was embarrassed by the woman’s talk-show story. She wanted to get to the point. “The thing is, Ruby is at my house, and she’s pregnant and needs some care. From a doctor and from an adult.”
The woman squinted at Olivia in the same way that Ruby had, sizing her up, figuring her out.
“And you want to be that adult?” the woman said.
“No. Not exactly. It’s just that she’s been sleeping in basements and—”
“Where’s Ben? Took off already? I think he’s got Ray beat there. Ray at least waited until Ruby was born and he realized he couldn’t stand the crying and the shitting and the spitting up.”
Now it was Olivia who sighed. The sun beating down on her back and head made her dizzy. That, and all the information she was getting about this woman Denise’s life, and about Ruby’s predicament. Olivia thought briefly about her own life, which seemed dull by comparison: the big brick house where she grew up, with its Oriental rugs and six-burner stove and parquet floors, the private school she hated and scorned, her dreams of escape, lying in her room reading poetry, sketching, playing her stereo too loud and burning incense. Olivia realized that until David’s death, she had not known unhappiness. Not really.
“Will you take her back? Help her out?” Olivia asked, hoping the answer would be no. How could this woman help Ruby?
Denise laughed, a short barklike laugh. “That’s why you came?” She laughed again, then glanced down at her watch. “Look, that girl is no good. She started fucking like a rabbit way before it was sensible, and I told her to get herself some birth-control pills, to use condoms so she didn’t get VD or AIDS or whatever, but she went ahead and did whatever she wanted. The drugs, the sex, the ‘nothing can happen to me’ attitude. I went there myself, and lady, it sucks. When the sex wears off and the high is gone, you got no money, no food, and a kid to boot. I wised up, and so will she.”
“But—”
“You think she needs some TLC, be my guest. Give it to her. In there, I got a husband and two boys who are all better off without a knocked-up wiseass kid to screw everything up.”
“I don’t want her so much as I want to help her,” Olivia explained.
“She’s in good hands, then, Miss Good Samaritan, Miss Holier Than Thou,” Denise said. “You got yourself a nice name and a car with New York plates and probably some good sense. God bless you.”
Before Olivia could protest, Denise slipped back inside. Olivia heard the door lock. She stood there a minute longer, not waiting for the door to open, but forcing herself to shape her plan. It was true. Olivia saw that now. She did not want the girl. What she wanted was that baby.
Olivia made the phone call from a phone booth at Big Ed’s, the local breakfast joint near the beach. She got the number from the Realtor, who was eager to sell the house. “I can’t wait to see what an artiste like yourself did with that little gem,” the Realtor said. An image of the wall flitted across Olivia’s mind. “Well”—she laughed nervously—“you’d be surprised.” Then she asked for the number of a good family lawyer in the area, and the Realtor happily gave her one.