“Take me with you,” I said half jokingly. He was silent.
“Maybe I will. I have a plan, and one of these days, I’ll talk about it with you. If you’re still interested in me after this, that is.”
“I’m more interested, not less,” I said, and he laughed.
“Okay. Tell you what. Tonight, I’ll come to you. I have this extra work, but figure me for about ten. What time does your mother and Cory get home?”
“Sometime after two, I guess. I gather they calm down by having a few drinks and hanging around or going somewhere else.”
“I’ll be there.”
“In Izzy’s truck?”
“No. I’m layin‘ off it for a while. I have another customer’s car at my disposal.”
“Does he know?”
Keefer just laughed.
“What he doesn’t know…”
“Won’t hurt him. I know, I know,” I said.
Knowing he was coming took the shadowy cobwebs of gloom out of my mind. Mother darling watched me with suspicion as I went about straightening up the apartment and doing some cleaning.
“What are you up to, Robin?” she asked finally.
“Nothing. I’m bored, that’s all.”
“Then you should get a job. If they don’t send you to jail, that is. Cory and I will talk to some people tonight. He knows the manager of a supermarket. Maybe you can get a job as a packer.”
“Right. That’s sure to cure boredom.”
She glared at me a moment, and then she shook her head and went off to fix her hair and prepare herself for another night of performing. She and Cory were going to eat out tonight. I told her not to worry about me. I had found some pasta that was less than a year old.
“You’re always so smart, Robin, so quick to be sarcastic. Why don’t you put that to good use and do somethin‘ constructive with yourself.”
“I am. I’m writing a song for you,” I told her.
“You are? What’s it about?”
“About a girl like me who finds out her sister is her mother.”
“Very funny.”
“Wait,” I said as she started away. “It gets better. She find out her brother is her father.”
She slammed the door of her bedroom. Cory, who was reading a motorcycle magazine, looked up at me.
“Robin Lyn, what’s your sin for today going to be?”
“Living with you,” I shot back. His smile wilted as I strutted back to the kitchen to wash down the refrigerator. Grandma always said, “You can’t be clean on the inside if you’re not clean on the outside.”
I wondered what she really meant.
Every night for the rest of the week, Keefer came to visit me. I really had little to do with anyone else. Kathy Ann’s parents had heard about the truck accident, either from her own mouth or from some other gossips in the complex who witnessed it, and they told her to stay away from me or she would be grounded until school began again. She came into the laundry to tell me.
“Of course, I can meet you downtown sometimes,” she said, “but I can’t come up to Cory’s apartment or anything like that.”
“Don’t worry about it. Oh,” I said, “how’s Axel?”
She looked down.
“Nothing bad happened to him, did it?”
“He hasn’t called me since that night, and I went and bought something for him, too,” she complained.
“Well, football players are like that,” I said as if I had all the experience in the world with them. “Maybe he got hit in the head since then,” I offered. “How’s Charlotte Lily?”
“All right, I guess.” Her face brightened. “I told her about you and Keefer and all and she sounded jealous.”
“Why? She was the one who told me he wasn’t worth her time.”
Kathy Ann shrugged, glanced out the window nervously, and then said she would try to see me later. She hurried away.
Now, I thought, I’m like a leper here. Mother darling, if you’re going to be a success, you’d better be one soon and get us somewhere nicer to live.
What Mother darling and Cory did manage to do was get me an interview for that job in the supermarket. She was excited enough about it to get herself up early so she could drive me to the supermarket to meet the manager, a man named Al Ritter. He was lean and dark, with a very black mustache and the deepest cleft chin I had ever seen. His office was cluttered with postings on the walls, and his desk was buried under forms and mailings.
He began by asking me to fill out an application. There was a question that asked if I, the applicant, had ever been arrested. Since my court date was coming up the following week and if I got the job, I would have to ask for time off to go to it, I decided to tell the truth and I checked yes. At first I thought it really didn’t matter. He glanced over the application so quickly, I decided he had already told Cory or Mother darling he would hire me.
He began by telling me he usually hired only college-age kids because they needed the money desperately and were mostly reliable. Then he picked up the application again, perused it, and paused. His eyes lifted slowly.
“What were you arrested for?”
“Shoplifting,” I admitted.
“Where?”
“Here in Nashville. I have to go to court next week,” I said as casually as I could.
“I see,” he said. “Well, why don’t we wait until we hear what happens to you then.”
“Whatever,” I said, shrugged, and left the office. Mother darling was waiting in her car, her head back, her eyes closed, but one of her tapes playing.
As soon as I opened the door, she sat up and said, “Well?”
“He wants to wait to see what happens next week,” I told her.
“Next week? Why next week? What’s supposed to be happening?”
“My court appearance, remember?”
“Huh? Well, how did he… you told him you were arrested?”
“There was a question about that on the application. At the bottom of the form it says if you deliberately put in false information, you can be summarily dismissed, which I believe means fired on the spot.”
She stared at me, her eyes small, dark.
“You did that deliberately, Robin. You made sure he wouldn’t hire you, and after Cory had asked him to do us a favor, too.”
“Did you want me to lie, Mother darling? That’s no way to start a career in the supermarket.”
“Oh you… you…” She mumbled under her breath and started the engine. “I half hope they do send you to jail next week,” she said.
I didn’t say anything. She looked like she was wiping away a tear before we returned to the apartment complex. Cory was still asleep.
“I don’t know what you’re going to do with yourself, Robin, except get into more and more trouble,” she told me after we entered the apartment.
“I’ll keep house here,” I offered. “If you like, I’ll make dinner whenever you can eat at home.”
She studied me closely to see if I was serious and then nodded.
“We’ll see,” she said, and went quietly into the bedroom, closing the door softly behind her.
“Thanks for making a fool out of me,” Cory said after he had heard the story and risen. He opened the refrigerator, took out the orange juice, and drank right from the bottle, making it far less appetizing for anyone else to drink from it now.
“That’s something you can do easily yourself,” I said.
He glared at me with such rage, I thought I had stepped over the line and he would lunge at me. I actually braced for it, but he calmed down when I added, “I didn’t think I should lie to a friend of yours. It would make things even worse.”
He frowned.
“If I was hired and I needed time off to go to court, don’t you think he would be slightly suspicious and then annoyed that you never told him about me?”
“You coulda just called in sick.”
“People gossip,” I said.
“That’s it,” he said, raising his hands, palms to me. “I’m finished. You’re not my responsibility.”
“Who ever said I was?” I asked, not to be smart, but to see if Mother darling had somehow convinced him he had to look out for the both of us and not just her.
“Nobody, and I thank my lucky stars for that,” he told me.
I rose and left him in the kitchen. Lucky stars, what do they look like? I wondered.
The following week Keefer offered to go to court with me, but I didn’t think Mother darling would like that, and the truth was, I was a little embarrassed about it and how I would look there. I told him I’d much rather he didn’t.
“Fine,” he said. “If you need me for anything, you just call.”
I thanked him. Despite my brave front, I was trembling inside the moment I awoke on the morning of the court date. Mother darling was complaining from the get-go about how she had to get up early after a hard night of singing.
“It’s not easy looking fresh and young when you don’t get any sleep,” she whined.
“So don’t go. I’ll go myself,” I said.
“Oh, sure. Lucky we were able to get you a public defender. You just dress neat and conservatively, Robin Lyn, and you keep that smart mouth shut, if you know what’s good for you.”
I was not the first defendant at court. In fact, we had to wait almost an hour to go in. The judge, Judge Babcock, was a woman with short salt-and-pepper hair. She looked like she had last smiled on her first birthday. Her thin lips were so tightly pressed together as she read the report on me, it looked like she had a zipper where her mouth should have been. When she finally lifted her eyes and looked my way, I felt like she was burning two holes in my face.
“Your client is pleading guilty?” she asked our public defender, a very plain-looking, light-haired man named Carson Meriweather, whose suit hung on his body the way it would hang on a clothes rack. It was as if he was all head with a skeleton beneath.
“Yes, Your Honor.”
“Do you understand what this means, Miss Taylor?”
“I guess,” I said.
“You guess? Either you understand that you are pleading guilty to shoplifting or you are not. This is not some game. Which is it?”
“Guilty,” I said before my throat closed.
“Unfortunately, too many young people have reached your age with a warped sense of right and wrong. There was a time when morality was taught in the home, but,” she said with a sigh, “it’s becoming more and more the responsibility of the court.”
She turned to Mother darling.
“Mrs. Taylor, how have you dealt with this situation in your own home?”
“I… we just moved here recently, Your Honor.”
“Yes? So?” she asked when Mother darling apparently thought that was some sort of an answer.
“I told her she wasn’t to leave the apartment complex. She was grounded.”
“I see. Did you take the time to explain to her how people are working to make a living, how the employees of this department store depend on the department store succeeding, and how robbing and stealing hurts everyone, that if we didn’t stop it, someone could rob her as well and we would have anarchy? Well?”
“I did, Your Honor. I’ve been asking her to behave herself for some time.”
“Oh?”
“I’ve even had her see a therapist back in Ohio when we lived there.”
“I see. And how long do you intend to remain in Nashville, Mrs. Taylor?”
“Oh, I’m here for good, Your Honor. I’m a singer and…”
“Then you had better be sure your daughter understands our laws and what we expect of our citizens,” she snapped.
“Yes, Your Honor.”
Judge Babcock sat up and tapped her pen on the documents before her. It was a long, nerve-wracking pause. She really looked like she was debating whether or not to send me to the gallows.
“My best instincts tell me I shouldn’t do this. I should deal with you as severely as the law permits, but I am going to place you on two years’ probation and return you to the custody of your mother in the hope that this experience has made an indelible impression on you. Understand, so you won’t have to guess, that should you be brought in here for any other offense, I will not hesitate to send you directly to a juvenile detention center, unless,” she said, leaning over her desk, “your new crime is so heinous as to have you tried as an adult. In such a case, you would not be sent to a juvenile center. A juvenile center would be like a nursery school compared to where you would be sent. Am I making myself clear, Miss Taylor? You don’t look like you’re listening.”
“I’m listening,” I said, a little too petulantly. I knew that the moment I uttered the words, and then I held my breath.
She glared hard at me for a long moment before she turned to Mother darling.
“You have a serious parental responsibility here, Mrs. Taylor. I hope you are impressed with this fact and you will devote more time and energy to your daughter’s upbringing and behavior.”
Mother darling nodded. She looked like she was going to burst out in tears any moment. I wanted to poke her with my elbow and make sure she didn’t embarrass us both. She bit down on her lower lip and nodded again.
“Very well. The matter is resolved for now,” Judge Babcock said.
The public defender, who had done little more than instruct me to plead guilty and be polite to the judge, smiled at us and indicated we could leave.
I heard another name called and saw a boy who didn’t look much older than ten being brought in with a man who had his hand firmly around the back of the boy’s neck. I thought, if that’s his father, he would be better off being sent to a juvenile detention center.
“I hope you appreciate the break you just received, young lady,” the public defender said.
“She doesn’t, but I’ll make sure she does,” Mother darling told him.
“You don’t want to come back here,” he said. “That’s one hard judge.”
Mother darling thanked him, and then she hurried us out of the courthouse.
“I swear,” she muttered as we drove back to Cory’s apartment, “I don’t know where you get that belligerent streak that’s in you.”
“Maybe from my mysterious father,” I suggested. “Hey,” I said, nearly bouncing on the seat, “that’s how you can tell who my father was. Which of the dozen or so men you slept with that night was most like me?”
She looked at me as if she wasn’t sure whether I was being serious or not, and then she smirked and shook her head.
“Keep it up, Robin. Keep punishing me for your own failin‘ and faults. See what it gets you in the end.”