between seven and midnight, watching old movies on AMC or TCM and stuffing his face with fats and sugars.
He grabs his phone again, dials Directory Assistance, and asks the robot on the other end if it has a number for Janelle Patterson. He’s not hopeful; now that she is the Seven Million Dollar Woman, and newly divorced in the bargain, Mrs. Trelawney’s sister has probably got an unlisted number.
But the robot coughs it up. Hodges is so surprised he has to fumble for a pencil and then punch 2 for a repeat. He drums his fingers some more, thinking how he wants to approach her. It will probably come to nothing, but it would be his next step if he were still on the cops. Since he’s not, it will take a little extra finesse.
He is amused to discover how eagerly he welcomes this challenge.
5
Brady calls ahead to Sammy’s Pizza on his way home and picks up a small pepperoni and mushroom pie. If he thought his mother would eat a couple of slices, he would have gotten a bigger one, but he knows better.
Maybe if it was pepperoni and Popov, he thinks. If they sold that, I’d have to skip the medium and go straight to a large.
There are tract houses on the city’s North Side. They were built between Korea and Vietnam, which means they all look the same and they’re all turning to shit. Most still have plastic toys on the crabgrassy lawns, although it’s now full dark. Chaz Hartsfield is at 49 Elm Street, where there are no elms and probably never were. It’s just that all the streets in this area of the city—known, reasonably enough, as Northfield—are named for trees.
Brady parks behind Ma’s rustbucket Honda, which needs a new exhaust system, new points, and new plugs. Not to mention an inspection sticker.
Let her take care of it, Brady thinks, but she won’t. He will. He’ll have to. The way he takes care of everything.
The way I took care of Frankie, he thinks. Back when the basement was just the basement instead of my control center.
Brady and Deborah Ann Hartsfield don’t talk about Frankie.
The door is locked. At least he’s taught her that much, although God knows it hasn’t been easy. She’s the kind of person who thinks okay solves all of life’s problems. Tell her Put the half-and-half back in the fridge after you use it, she says okay. Then you come home and there it sits on the counter, going sour. You say Please do a wash so I can have a clean uni for the ice cream truck tomorrow, she says okay. But when you poke your head into the laundry room, everything’s still there in the basket.
The cackle of the TV greets him. Something about an immunity challenge, so it’s Survivor. He has tried to tell her it’s all fake, a set-up. She says yes, okay, she knows, but she still never misses it.
“I’m home, Ma!”
“Hi, honey!” Only a moderate slur, which is good for this hour of the evening. If I was her liver, Brady thinks, I’d jump out of her mouth some night while she’s snoring and run the fuck away.
He nonetheless feels that little flicker of anticipation as he goes into the living room, the flicker he hates. She’s sitting on the couch in the white silk robe he got her for Christmas, and he can see more white where it splits apart high up on her thighs. Her underwear. He refuses to think the word panties in connection with his mother, it’s too sexy, but it’s down there in his mind, just the same: a snake hiding in poison sumac. Also, he can see the small round shadows of her nipples. It’s not right that such things should turn him on—she’s pushing fifty, she’s starting to flab out around the middle, she’s his mother, for God’s sake—but . . .
But.
“I brought pizza,” he says, holding up the box and thinking, I already ate.
“I already ate,” she says. Probably she did. A few lettuce leaves and a teensy tub of yogurt. It’s how she keeps what’s left of her figure.
“It’s your favorite,” he says, thinking, You enjoy it, honey.
“You enjoy it, sweetie,” she says. She lifts her glass and takes a ladylike sip. Gulping comes later, after he’s gone to bed and she thinks he’s asleep. “Get yourself a Coke and come sit beside me.” She pats the couch. Her robe opens a little more. White robe, white