“Certainly. Why not come tomorrow? Same time as before?”
The next day Heekin arrived at our door for the second time. On the drive there, he had promised himself to ask about my mother. She was fifty percent of the story, after all, and it made sense that he inquire about her. He rang the bell, forgetting the detail about my sister breaking it with all those coins. The door opened anyway, and Heekin was prepared to blurt the question the moment he saw my father’s face. But after so much waiting, it was my mother who stood before him.
“I thought I heard someone out here,” she said in a soft-timbred voice. Heekin. “Is everything okay? You look startled, if you don’t mind me saying.”
“It’s j-j-just. I was, well, on the d-d-d-drive over I was imagining . . . not imagining . . . p-p-planning how this visit would g-g-g-go. And I didn’t expect—”
“Didn’t expect what?”
“You,” he managed to say. “I didn’t expect you.”
“Well, I didn’t expect to see you, either. I prefer my husband talk to you on our behalf. I don’t feel comfortable doing interviews. But I’m afraid you’ll have to see him another time. I will let him know you came by.”
My mother stepped outside, pulled the door shut behind her. She gave Heekin a warm smile and started past him toward the Datsun in the driveway.
“I d-d-don’t understand,” he called after her. “We have an appointment. Where is he?”
“Upstairs in bed. He’s thrown his back out.”
“I’m s-s-sorry.”
“I’m sorry too.”
My mother reached the car, sizing it up as though it were a horse she was wary of mounting. Heekin watched as she went through the keys on her chain, determining which would unlock the door. “You hate to drive,” he blurted, getting the words out all at once.
She looked up at him with her glittery green eyes. “How do you know that?”
“Your husband. It’s on the tapes. The tapes from the interviews, I mean. I remembered him saying that about you.”
“Well, you’re right. It makes me nervous, because I’ve never been very good at it. But I manage fine when the situation calls for it.”
“I could drive you. Wherever you’re going.”
My mother did not answer immediately. She stared at something inside the car, jangling her keys, before looking back at him.
“No interview,” he promised. “Just some friendly chitchat.”
Her errand turned out to be to the pharmacy for my father’s pain pills. My mother explained that on occasion he called in prescriptions under her name, since the one thing he maintained from his former career was his medical license. Other than that, Heekin did the talking, stuttering and rambling despite his best efforts. He told her about his lonely year spent in the air force working as a typist. “Not many p-p-people know this b-b-bit of trivia, but H-H-Hugh Hefner also worked as an air force t-t-t-typist. It’s the only thing that guy and I have in c-c-c-common.”
It was a joke Heekin had told before, one of the few he could count on to get a laugh, but my mother just said, “Forgive me, but Hugh who?”
“Hefner.”
“Heifer?”
“No. Hefner.”
“Oh,” she said. “And who’s that?”
“You know, the head of Playboy magazine.”
Her hand went to her chest. “I’m sorry, Mr. Heekin—”
“Sam. Call me Sam.”
“I’m sorry, Sam. But I’m not familiar with those sorts of publications or the people in them.”