And When She Was Good (12 page)

T
HURSDAY,
O
CTOBER 13

H
eloise is cleaning up from dinner, letting Scott finish a report at the kitchen table. He's supposed to have his homework done before dinner, but soccer makes that impossible. Don't the teachers know about the sports? Don't the coaches understand how much homework kids get these days? They must. But they rationalize that it falls to the kids, which means it falls to the parents, to reconcile all these conflicts.

“Mom, do you know what mitochondria are?” Scott asks.

Such questions often give her a pang. She has tried hard, read much, but she was never strong in science and her mathematical skills stalled out at the arithmetic stage. She tells herself that other mothers, ones who had the luxury of all the education they craved, probably don't remember what mitochondria are, that if Scott is studying them (it?) now, she must have studied them (it?), too, in her own grade-school days. Something to do with a cell, right?

Luckily, Scott is just showing off his own knowledge. He recites the definition with confidence—so it
is
a plural—then goes back to his work. Chastened, Heloise settles down with a novel. Her new self-improvement list involves reading the work of Nobel Prize winners. It is slow going. Her “pleasure” read, the one by her bedside table, is a much livelier story about the origins of the current economic crisis, but it's like reading a horror story right before bedtime. At any rate, when Scott does his homework, she does her homework. She is finally beginning to adapt to the writer's old-fashioned rhythms when the doorbell rings.

“Who could that be?” Scott says, sounding for all the world like a fussy old lady, as if they are two spinsters living together. Heloise is reminded why she's determined for him to play soccer, how good it is for him to have some male attention, even if it's secondhand and second-rate. Personally, Heloise wouldn't mind if they were two fussy old spinsters growing old together, but she knows that's no life for a boy.

“Probably a neighbor. I'm sure I've violated the homeowners' rules again.” Heloise tries to be scrupulous about staying within the law, as defined by Turner's Grove. Nothing gets meaner faster than a neighborhood dispute.

It's Leo, her accountant and he looks strange to Heloise. Drunk, she thinks at first, but there's not a whiff of alcohol on him and he's steady on his feet. Still, he's loose and giddy.

“I wasn't expecting you,” she says. Rude, but—Heloise does not like anyone arriving at her home unannounced.

“Quarterly filings,” he says. “I was in the neighborhood, thought I'd stop by and get your signature.”

“Don't you usually messenger those over?”

“I do. And it costs seventy-five dollars, which I charge to your account. This visit is free!” His voice soars a little on the last word—he sounds like that squealing pig in the insurance commercial that Scott and Audrey love—and Leo giggles at the sound.

“Do you have a pen?” Again, rude. She should ask him in, offer coffee or a drink, even something to eat. After all, he knows about Scott. As her accountant, he had to know she has a dependent. She was tempted, when Scott was young, not to claim him, calculating that the tax benefit was not worth creating a paper trail for his existence. But another accountant, Leo's predecessor, had convinced her that it was in Scott's best interest. She was paying into Social Security, he was her only heir, if anything should happen to her, God forbid—so Leo belongs to the “legitimate” side of her life ledger, and she has tried her best to keep him there.

He pats his chest. “How about that? I don't.”

There is nothing to do but open the door and let him in. He goes to the dining-room table where Scott is working. “I don't suppose I could have a soda,” he asks Heloise.

“We don't have soda,” Scott says. “It's very bad for your bones.”

“Juice? Iced tea? Oh, what the hell, I'll have a glass of that.” He indicates the quite nice pinot noir that Heloise is nursing. Disciplined as always, she has cut back, so it's her first glass of the night. But she resents sharing a twenty-five-dollar bottle of wine with Leo. She pours him a rather stingy serving, using a milk glass.

“Hell of a season,” he says. “Seems like more and more of our clients are treating October fifteenth like April fifteenth.”

“Not me,” Heloise says.

“Not I,” Scott corrects her matter-of-factly, and it's odd how shame and pride can simultaneously fill her heart, although she knows it's a grammar lesson learned from the musical
Peter Pan,
which Scott loves. She reminds herself that educated people make such gaffes all the time, that she has brilliant clients who say “between you and I” and use “whom” even when “who” is correct.

“No, I wish all my clients were like you,” Leo says. “So honest. So ethical. I've never seen anyone as careful as you.”

A compliment. That is, it should be a compliment. But there is an odd tone under his words.

“You're really worried about being audited,” Leo says.

“Isn't everyone?” she asks.

“Abstractly, yes. No one wants to be audited. But it's like a lot of things in life. As much as we don't want it to happen, as easy as it would be to set up a system to simplify our own lives—like filing stuff, you know? You buy things, you get all those warranties and instruction manuals, and you know you should have a system for filing them, but they're just in a big stack on your desk. Or passwords! Passwords. You say, ‘I am going to write that down in a safe place, or at least put the hints down in a safe place,' and”—he threw his hands up in the air—“you never do. Well, you probably do. I never do. Most people don't. That's what I'm saying. You're so careful. Being audited must be a powerful disincentive for you in a way it's not for most of the people I work with. It's almost like you would
die
if you were audited.”

She tops off his glass, then turns to her son. “Scott? Are you almost done? It's getting close to bedtime.”

“Forty-five minutes,” he says, correctly.

“Well, when you are done, you can watch television.”

He slams the book shut. “I'm done!” He has probably skimped on some essential task. She really should check his work. But getting him away from Leo seems more important.

“Why don't you watch in my room?” she says. This is a treat. Although she has a television in her room, she seldom uses it, and Scott is not allowed to have any “screens” in his bedroom, not even the cell phone she reluctantly gave him this year after there was a mix-up and he was stranded at soccer practice. “Just put your pj's on first, so if you fall asleep, all I have to do is steer you to bed.”

He runs upstairs, delighted by the novelty of it all, indifferent to Leo. Good.

“How did you know I would be home tonight?” she asks him. “It would have been a long way out of your way if I hadn't been here.”

“Audrey has Thursdays off, right?”

“Not necessarily. It varies, according to my schedule.”

“But Audrey usually has Thursdays off, which means you have to monitor the phones.”

She glances at her BlackBerry. “I'm available to my employees, certainly.”

“Like you were available to Sophie?”

“I'm not sure what you mean.”

“I mean, you're sitting here in your five-hundred-seventy-five-thousand-dollar house—six hundred and fifty thousand before the bubble burst, but what do you care? your mortgage is only two hundred thousand—with your cute son, drinking wine, while girls are out there putting themselves at risk and you just sit on your ass and take forty percent off the top.”

This is not the kind of detail that can be gleaned from her books.

“I own the firm. I am responsible for all the overhead costs, as you know. I have a silent partner who takes a big chunk of the profits in exchange for his original investment.”

“Man, Sophie was right. You are a cool customer.”

Heloise takes a healthy sip of her wine. This bottle might get finished tonight after all. A terrible thought crosses her mind. Ply Leo with liquor, send him on his way, hoping he wrecks his car on the famously curvy roads of Turner's Grove, roads that claim teenagers with such regularity that it's almost like human sacrifice. But no, she is not that person. She was once, but she decided she must not harm anyone again, if at all possible.

So where does Sophie fit within that vow?

“I'm terribly sorry about what happened to Sophie. You know that. You keep my books. You know that I've covered her prescription costs, that she receives the equivalent of a workers' comp payment.”

“Yes, you're Lady Bountiful. Sophie's cool as long as you're cool. But if you decide to stop, she's fucked. With a legitimate workers' comp claim, she wouldn't have to worry. So why are you standing in her way? That's what I couldn't understand. Why would you pay out of pocket when a workers' comp claim would be a win-win for everyone?”

“Have you been talking to Sophie again? I asked you not to.”

Leo gets up and walks over to the refrigerator, opens it, studies its contents. He begins yanking open drawers and helps himself to an unopened box of Mallomars. Heloise starts to protest that those are for Scott, a treat, but decides to stay still. A part of her mind registers the scene as comical—the bespectacled, never-blinking accountant establishing his dominance by helping himself to a box of Mallomars. She wants to tell him,
I've swum with the sharks, buddy, and come out alive. I've seen men do things that would make you piss yourself. Don't push me.

“News flash, Heloise: It's a free country. You can't keep two people from talking to each other. Sophie needs help. She reached out to me. What kind of person would turn his back on her?”

Heloise assumes this is a rhetorical question.

“No honor among thieves, huh? And no honor among
whores,
I guess. You're supposed to take care of these girls. That's the promise you make them, right? That you've got all these systems, that no one who works for you has ever been hurt or arrested.”

“That's true.”

“So what do you call Sophie, in her situation?”

Foolish.
“Unlucky. Very unlucky. But that's not my fault. And it's not your responsibility, Leo. Don't be taken in by her. She's using you to pressure me.”

“A user? That's rich. I'm pretty sure that's what you are. You use these girls and cast them off, indifferent to what their lives are going to be like once they move on.”

“That's not true,” she says with some heat. More than twenty girls have worked for her, and only one has had a bad outcome.

“I'm going to make sure you do right by Sophie,” Leo says. “I'm your accountant. I know things.”

“You signed a confidentiality agreement. As did Sophie. Trust me, you can't afford to talk to anyone.”

“Hey, that agreement isn't binding if my silence means being an accessory to a crime.”

“What crime? My accounts are in order. You said so yourself.”

“Jesus, Heloise. You're a whore. Or a pimp. A madam, I guess. Whatever you call it. And that's illegal, and I prepared the tax returns that helped you cover it up.”

“My tax returns are in order. I report all my income through my three businesses. I pay FICA, Medicare, unemployment—which Sophie can draw on if she wants to end her medical leave.”

“So why can't she file for workers' comp?”

“Because she's not entitled to it, under the law. There is no evidence that her condition is related to her employment with me.”

“She got sick while fucking your clients!”

“If Sophie had a consensual sexual relationship with one of our clients, that was her choice, but it was not a service provided by WFEN. We lobby for income parity for women—”

“Shut up!” He's pacing now, pulling at his hair. Her refusal to say what Leo wants to hear—that she's a whore, that she takes responsibility for Sophie—is only making him more agitated, and she's beginning to wonder at her choice to stonewall him. But she will not hang herself with her own words, ever.

“Look, Leo, this is a horrible situation. You have to trust me. I'm going to continue to take care of Sophie. She was wrong to bring you into this. Clearly she figured out that you have a very tender heart.” And a seldom-used cock. Leo is so innocent he probably doesn't require sex from Sophie—is probably terrified of it, given her HIV status. “She's appealing to your better nature, but she'll let you down. She lets everyone down eventually. She wouldn't be in this situation if she hadn't been greedy.”

“Greedy! You're the greedy one.”

“I assume one hundred percent of the risk and responsibilities of my business. I feel that entitles me to a percentage of what my employees earn. It's a pretty common business model.”

He has stopped pacing, seems to be calming down.

“So it is, so it is. And I know the numbers. You make a good living, even in this economy.”

“I'm not complaining.”

“You must be very good at what you do.”

She has been sitting this entire time. Leo now stands directly in front of her. “Do me.”

“What?”

“Show me what those other men pay for. But use your mouth. For all I know, you're infected, too.”

She speaks quietly but forcefully. “Are you out of your mind? My son is upstairs. This is my home.”

“I'll be quiet. And you won't be able to talk at all.” He is fumbling at his fly, his underwear, although it's clear that he's not quite ready for any kind of attention. He starts to rub himself. He's probably so used to pleasuring himself that it's instinctive to start this way.

“No, Leo.”