Эд Макбейн - Mothers and Daughters

“Well, yes, that’s just what I was wondering,” she said and made a face at the mirror.

“Did you... uh... talk to Agnes?”

“Agnes who? ” Kate said. Her own words nearly convulsed her. She had to cover her mouth to keep from laughing aloud.

“Why... why, Agnes Donohue. Your friend. You know. Agnes? Agnes Donohue?”

“Oh yes, Agnes. What about her?”

“Well, did you... uh... talk to her?”

“When?” Kate asked, and again covered her mouth because she was just being too devastatingly comic for words.

“Today, I guess. This morning. I guess. Didn’t you talk to her?”

“I think I did,” Kate said.

“Well, Ralph said he talked to her, and she said if I wanted to talk to you I should call you personally. That’s what he said, anyway. Ralph, I mean.”

“Oh, is that what he said?”

“Yeah. That’s what he said. I mean, wasn’t I supposed to call you?”

“Well, I don’t know. It’s your dime.”

“No, I’m calling from home,” Paul said. He paused. “The reason... say, is this Katie Bridges?”

“This is Kate.”

“Oh, I thought for a minute... well...” Paul took a deep breath. “You see, Gigi is coming to Stamford Wednesday, and Ralph and I thought you and Aggie would like to see it. On Saturday night. Next Saturday night, that is. If you’re not busy. I mean, you would go with me, and Aggie would go with Ralph. Together, of course. But, you know, you and me, and Aggie and Ralph. If you’re not busy.”

“Saturday night, did you say?”

“Yeah, Saturday.”

“Next Saturday?”

“Yeah, next Saturday.”

“That’s... let me see... that’s the sixteenth.”

“Yeah, the sixteenth.”

“Of May, right?”

“Yeah, May.”

“1959, right?” Kate asked, and covered her mouth to stifle a giggle.

“What? Yeah, sure, 1959.”

“I think I’m free,” Kate said at last.

“Oh, well, good. Then we’re set, huh?”

“Yes.”

“Well, that’s good. I don’t know what time the show starts, but I’ll check. I’ll call you again during the week, okay?”

“Okay,” Kate said.

“Listen, will you call Agnes?”

“Why?”

“To tell her it’s okay with you, so she can tell Ralph it’s okay with her? I mean, I hate to make this so complicated but... well, you see, it is complicated. You see, this was all my idea, Kate, and I...” He stopped short.

“What was your idea?”

“Well, I thought you might like to go to a show. That’s what I thought.”

“Yes, I would.”

“Well, that’s swell. So I asked Ralph, and it gets sort of complicated, so would you call Agnes and tell her everything’s smooth now, and we’re set, okay?”

“Okay.”

“Good. Well, I’ll see you, Kate. I’ll call you during the week, okay? To let you know what time, okay? You got a curfew or anything?”

“One o’clock on Saturday night.”

“Well, that’s not so bad, is it?”

“No, it’s fine.”

“Okay, good. Well, okay,” Paul said. “I’ll say goodbye now.”

“Goodbye, Paul,” she said sweetly. “I’ll be talking to you.”

“Goodbye.”

“Goodbye.”

“So long, Kate.”

“So long.”

“I’ll talk to you.”

“All right, Paul. Goodbye.” Gently she put the phone back into its cradle.

“What opera was that?” Amanda asked from the doorway. “Here’s the lipstick.”

“Thanks,” Kate said. She took off the cap, smeared the white undercoating to her mouth, and then put a bright red over it. “How do I look?” she asked.

“Lovely. Are you sure you’re only going to town?”

“Sure. Where else?”

“I don’t know. You...” Amanda shook her head. “Leave yourself time to practice before you go out tonight, will you? Who’ll be at this party?”

“The usual creeps,” Kate said. A horn sounded outside. “There’s Mrs. Regan!” She bolted for the door. “Mom, if Aggie calls, tell her it’s okay for next Saturday! I’ll see you!”

“Kate, your bag!”

“Oh, hell,” Kate said.

“Kate!”

“Sorry, Mom. Give it to me, will you? ’Bye, Mom.” She kissed Amanda hastily on the cheek, and rushed down the steps and out the front door. Amanda stood at the window in her daughter’s room and looked at the Alfa Romeo parked at the curb. The door on the side closest to the curb opened as Kate came running down the walk. A tall lean man stepped out of the car and held the door open for Kate. For a moment, Amanda didn’t recognize him. And then she realized it was David Regan.

She shook her head, smiled, and went downstairs again as the Alfa pulled away from the curb.

“I almost didn’t make it in time,” Kate said in the car. “A boy called, and he kept me on the phone for a half hour.”

“You must be pretty popular, Kate,” David said.

“Well, it depends on what you consider popular, I guess.”

There was a faint smile on his mouth, not a smile of mockery, but a smile that managed to be tolerant and condescending at the same time. She knew the smile was there, but she would not turn to look at him. She sat hunched between him and his mother and smelling the warm close smell of his woolen sweater and a smell like aftershave, but not the kind her father used, and she knew the smile was on his mouth, and she thought, He thinks I’m just a kid, and she crossed her legs suddenly, and then immediately pulled her skirt over her knees.

“Kate’s very popular, David,” Julia said. “The boys practically camp on her doorstep.”

“I’m afraid your mother’s giving you the wrong impression, David,” she said. She had only begun calling him David in 1957, when she got to be fifteen. Up to that time, she’d called him Mr. Regan, and then she asked her father if it would be all right to call him David, and her father had said, “Why don’t you ask him? ” and she had asked him, and he had said, “Sure, why not? Everybody else does,” and so she’d begun. She still called his mother Mrs. Regan though, well, she was about a hundred years old, and that was respect for elders. But David couldn’t be much older than thirty-four, and it was really ridiculous for a young woman of sixteen to be calling one of her contemporaries “Mr. Regan,” especially when she knew his mother so well, for Pete’s sake Julia Regan was practically her best friend in town, next to Aggie Donohue.

“You mean you’re not a popular girl?” David asked, and there was that same tolerant but condescending tone in his voice.

“Oh, stop it,” Kate said. “You’re teasing me.”

“I am,” David admitted.

“Why?”

“Because you’re so damn cute,” he said, and he covered her hand with his affectionately, and then reached into his pocket for a cigarette. The touch was brief and hardly intimate, but she felt herself tensing as his hand covered hers, felt a desire to turn her hand over and clasp his fingers into hers. And then his hand moved away, he was fishing inside his shirt for cigarettes, she sat silently and stiffly on the seat beside him, scarcely daring to breathe, suddenly flustered. He offered the pack to her. Again, there was the smile on his face.

“Do you smoke, Kate?”

She was tempted to take one, but she knew it would be foolish to smoke here in the car on the way to town where everyone could see her, yet she was tempted because the offered package was a challenge, and yet she knew it was foolish.

“Not right now, thanks,” she said, and she knew by the smile on his face that he didn’t believe she smoked, although she really did smoke whenever she and Aggie and the other girls got together alone. And even her father had said she could begin smoking when she was eighteen, which was only a year and a half away, she was practically eighteen already, and there was a half-used package of king-sized cigarettes in the back of her dresser drawer where she kept it with the tiny piece of driftwood she had found at the lake the year before, minuscule and whorled, a tree in delicate miniature.