“Are you all right?”
“I’m fine,” she said. “I was just… I was looking at you, that’s all. I don’t see you enough, I don’t think. We should, I don’t know… We should do something together, sometime. ”
He squirmed. “Like what?”
His squirming did not go unnoticed. She tried to back away from the suggestion. “I didn’t have anything in mind. And maybe it’s a bad idea. It’s probably… well. ” She turned and went back into the kitchen so she could talk to him without having to watch his discomfort while she confessed the truth. “It’s probably easier for you anyway, that I keep my distance. I imagine you have a hard enough time living it down, being my boy. Sometimes I think the kindest thing I can do is let you pretend I don’t exist. ”
No argument came from the fireplace until he said, “It’s not so bad being yours. I’m not ashamed of you or anything, you know. ” But he didn’t leave the fire to come and say it to her face.
“Thanks. ” She wound a wooden spoon around in the pot and made swirling designs in the frothing mixture.
“Well, I’m really not. And for that matter, it’s not so bad being Maynard’s, either. In some circles, it works out pretty good,” he added, and Briar heard a quick cutting off in his voice, as if he was afraid that he’d said too much.
As if she weren’t already aware.
“I wish you’d keep a better circle of company,” she told him, though even as she said it, she guessed more than she wanted to know. Where else could a child of hers seek friends? Who else would have anything to do with him, except for the quarters where Maynard Wilkes was a folk hero—and not a fortunate crook who died before he could be judged?
“Mother—”
“No, listen to me. ” She abandoned the pot and stood again by the edge of the wall. “If you’re ever going to have any hope of a normal life, you’ve got to stay out of trouble, and that means staying out of those places, away from those people. ”
“Normal life? How’s that going to happen, do you think? I could spend my whole life being poor-but-honest, if that’s what you want, but—”
“I know you’re young and you don’t believe me, but you have to trust me—it’s better than the alternative. Stay poor-but-honest, if that’s what keeps a roof over your head and keeps you out of prison. There’s nothing so good out there that it’s worth…” She wasn’t sure how to finish, but she felt she’d made her point, so she stopped talking. She turned on her heel and went back to the stove.
Ezekiel left the fireplace and followed her. He stood at the end of the kitchen, blocking her exit and forcing her to look at him.
“That it’s worth what? What do I have to lose, Mother? All this
?” With a sweeping, sarcastic gesture he indicated the dark gray home in which they squatted. “All the friends and money?”
She smacked the spoon down on the edge of the basin and grabbed a bowl to dish herself some half-cooked supper, and so she could stop gazing at the child she’d made. He looked nothing like her, but every day he looked a little more like one man, then the other. Depending on the light and depending on his mood he could’ve been her father, or her husband.
She poured herself a bowl of bland stew and struggled to keep from spilling it as she stalked past him.
“You’d rather escape? I understand that. There’s not much keeping you here, and maybe when you’re a grown man you’ll up and leave,” she said, dropping the stoneware bowl onto the table and inserting herself into the chair beside it. “I realize that I don’t make an honest day’s work look very appealing; and I realize too that you think you’ve been cheated out of a better life, and I don’t blame you. But here we are, and this is what we have. The circumstances have damned us both. ”
“Circumstances?”
She took a deep swallow of the stew and tried not to look at him. She said, “All right, circumstances and me. You can blame me if you want, just like I can blame your father, or my father if I want—it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t change anything. Your future was broken before you were born, and there’s no one left living for you to pin that on except for me. ”
From the corner of her eye, she watched Ezekiel clench and unclench his fists. She waited for it. Any moment, and his control would slip, and that wild, wicked look would fill his face with the ghost of his father, and she’d have to close her eyes to shut him out.
But the snap didn’t occur, and the madness didn’t cover him with a terrible veil. Instead, he said, in a deadpan voice that matched the empty gaze he’d given her earlier, “But that’s the most unfair part of all: You didn’t do anything. ”
She was surprised, but cautiously so. “Is that what you think?”
“It’s what I’ve figured. ”
She snorted a bitter-sounding laugh. “So you’ve got it all figured out now, have you?”
“More than you’d think, I bet. And you should’ve told that writer about what Maynard did, because if more people knew, and understood, then maybe some respectable folks would know he wasn’t a criminal, and you could live a little less like a leper. ”
She used the stew to buy herself another few bites to think. It did not escape her notice that Zeke must’ve spoken to Hale, but she chose not to call attention to it.
“I didn’t tell the biographer anything about Maynard because he already knew plenty, and he’d already made up his mind about it. If it makes you feel any better, he agrees with you. He thinks Maynard was a hero, too. ”
Zeke threw his hands up in the air and said, “See? I’m not the only one. And as for the company I keep, maybe my friends aren’t high society, but they know good guys when they see them. ”