The Deep End (22 page)

Joanne had only to look at her to know that something was wrong.

“W
hat’s the matter?” Joanne asked immediately.

Lulu shook her head, turning away. “Nothing,” she mumbled.

Joanne reached out and touched her daughter’s shoulder, slowly spinning the reluctant girl around and lifting her chin with gentle fingers. “Tell me,” she said. Lulu began shuffling from one foot to the other, looking from side to side and avoiding her mother’s penetrating gaze. “What is it, Lulu? What happened?” Lulu’s eyes focused briefly on her mother’s before retreating to the safety of the surrounding walls. She opened her mouth as if she were about to speak, then said nothing. “Did someone phone?” Joanne asked, holding her breath.

“No,” Lulu told her, obviously surprised by the question. “Who would phone?” Once again, her body began swaying rhythmically back and forth.

“Lulu, something’s wrong. I could see it the minute I walked in the door. Did you have another fight with Robin before she went out?” Lulu shook her head vehemently. Too vehemently, Joanne thought. “What happened, Lulu?” she asked patiently, her fear subsiding.

“I don’t want to tell you.”

“That’s obvious. It’s also obvious that it has something to do with Robin.” Lulu raised her head, opening her mouth to protest, then quickly lowering it again, saying nothing. “Did she say something that hurt your feelings?” Lulu shook her head. “Does whatever happened have anything to do with Scott Peterson?”

“No,” Lulu said, a touch too adamantly. “Yes,” she whispered.

“Did he … did he do anything to upset you?” Joanne asked gently. She saw Lulu’s eyes fill with tears. “Lulu, did he touch you in a way that made you uncomfortable?” Lulu stared at the floor, her right hand wiping away a loose tear. “Lulu, tell me. This is not the time for twenty questions.”

“He didn’t touch me!” Lulu cried. She turned from her mother and ran quickly up the stairs to her room.

Joanne stood in the front hallway trying to decide what to do: she could follow her daughter upstairs and continue peppering her with questions until she received some satisfactory answers; she could wait and confront Robin when she came home; she could go to bed and do nothing, which, in truth, was what she really wanted to do, and hope that the problem would go away by itself. Things have a way of working out, she tried to tell herself, turning to the stairs.

Lulu was standing at the top of the landing. “Robin and Scott were smoking marijuana,” she said quietly.

Joanne felt her body go numb. “What?”

Lulu said nothing, knowing her mother had heard what she said.

“Please don’t tell me that,” Joanne whispered, more to herself than to her daughter. She walked over to the
staircase and sank down on the bottom step. From behind her, she felt Lulu approaching, the child’s arm falling protectively across her mother’s shoulder as she placed herself on the step behind her. “What happened?” Joanne asked, wishing that she didn’t have to hear the answer.

“Scott came to pick her up a few minutes after you left. Robin was still getting ready. Scott said he’d go up and hurry her along. So he went into her room, and I was trying to study, but they were making so much noise, Robin was giggling like crazy. You know that cackle she gets when she’s really laughing. Anyway, I went in there to tell them to please keep it down. I knocked first but they didn’t hear me. So I opened the door, and there they were on the floor beside her bed … passing this joint back and forth.”

“Doing what?”

“You know, passing a marijuana cigarette back and forth.” Lulu pressed her chin down painfully into Joanne’s shoulder.

“How do you know what it’s called?”

“Mom,” Lulu exclaimed with obvious exasperation, “everybody knows that.”

Joanne maneuvered her body so that she could escape her daughter’s killer chin and also watch the child’s face while she spoke. “Then what happened? After they saw you.”

“They offered me a drag.”

“They offered you a drag,” Joanne repeated, hating the expression almost as much as the fact. “That was very thoughtful of them.”

“Robin looked kind of scared. I think she was afraid that I might tell you, but that if I smoked some too, then I wouldn’t.”

“Robin’s a very clever girl,” Joanne agreed. “She should only be that clever in school.”

It all came clearly into focus: Robin’s schoolwork; her change in attitude; the poor grades; the frequent absences from class. The classic signs of involvement with drugs Joanne kept hearing about on the radio and from various friends and acquaintances with regard to their teenagers. But not mine, Joanne had always thought, letting the warnings slip past her unheeded. Children of perfect mothers never smoked dope or did things they weren’t supposed to do. How could I be so smug? She asked herself now. How could I be so stupid? Where the hell have I been all my life?

“What’s the matter, Mom?”

“What?”

“Your whole body’s shaking.”

“What happened then?” Joanne asked.

“Nothing. I said no, I didn’t want any, and I went back to my room. A few minutes later Robin came in and told me not to tell you, that it would only upset you and that you’ve been upset enough since Dad left.”

“She’s so considerate.”

“That’s why I was so worried. I didn’t know what to do.”

“You did the right thing,” Joanne assured her, smoothing a few stray hairs away from Lulu’s tear-stained face.

“What are you going to do?” the child asked sheepishly.

“I’m not sure. I’ll have to speak to your father about it.” She looked at her watch. It was almost eleven o’clock. Was it too late to call him? “You go to sleep, sweetie. It’s late.”

“I have to study.”

“You’ll study in the morning. Go on, I’ll be up in a few minutes to tuck you in.” She kissed her daughter’s cheek,
slightly sticky from her tears, and watched her run up the stairs. Try not to take it too seriously, she admonished herself silently, standing up, trying to decide what to do. “Remember, it’s only your life,” she said out loud. An hour later she was still standing in the same spot.

“Good night, sweet thing,” she whispered, bending over to kiss her daughter’s cheek although Lulu was already asleep. Joanne tiptoed from Lulu’s room down the hall to her own, pulling off her clothes and hurling them angrily across the carpet. It would be another hour before Robin returned home. That gave her sixty minutes to decide what she was going to say and do. She debated getting into the bathtub, letting the hot water soak away her anxieties, then decided a bath would leave her not only anxious but wet. She fumbled inside her dresser for a T-shirt, pulling one out and over her head in one continuing gesture, and headed for the bathroom. She’d brush her teeth, throw a housecoat over the T-shirt—when had she started wearing T-shirts to bed?—and wait calmly downstairs for Scott to bring Robin home. But first she would phone Paul, she decided, catching her reflection in the bathroom mirror.
I SPENT THE NIGHT WITH BURT REYNOLDS
… her chest proudly proclaimed as she squeezed the reluctant toothpaste out of its near-empty tube. She squeezed too hard and the toothpaste ended up missing the bristles of her brush entirely, plopping with a singular lack of grace into the middle of her clean white sink. Joanne stared at the large blue glob and made no move to wipe it up. “So I won’t brush my teeth,” she said defiantly, and left the bathroom.

She sat on the bed, her hand on the phone for another ten minutes. Would she be waking Paul up? Would he even
be home? Would he be impatient, tell her that this was precisely what he meant when he said she should be handling things herself and not calling him over every little problem? Could this be considered a little problem? Would he be furious with her for disturbing him? Joanne pulled the phone off its carriage and dialed Paul’s number. Let him be furious, she thought, listening to the phone ring. It rang once and then was quickly picked up, as if he had been sitting right beside it, as if he were expecting her call.

“Hello?” a strange voice answered. A woman’s voice.

For an instant Joanne said nothing, convinced she must have dialed the wrong number. She was about to hang up when the unfamiliar voice spoke again. “Did you want to speak to Paul?” it asked pleasantly.

Joanne felt sick to her stomach. “Is he there?” she heard herself ask.

“Well, he is,” the girl giggled, “but he can’t come to the phone at the moment. Can I take a message?”

“Is this Judy?” Joanne heard her equally unfamiliar voice ask after what felt like a very long time.

“Yes it is,” the voice smiled broadly, obviously pleased to be recognized. “Who’s this?”

Joanne let the receiver slide down her neck and drop gently into its carriage. “No!” she suddenly shouted, grabbing Paul’s pillow off the bed and hurling it across the room before dropping on her knees to the floor, swaying her body back and forth, burying her outraged sobs in her bare thighs.

The phone rang.

Joanne jumped immediately to her feet. It was Paul. Judy had told him about the strange phone call and he had concluded that it could only be her. He would be
angry. Well, so what if he was angry! She thought, bringing the phone to her ear. She was pretty angry herself.

“Mrs. Hunter,” the voice teased unctuously, “you’ve been a naughty girl, haven’t you, Mrs. Hunter? Playing around with your best friend’s husband.” The words held Joanne in an instant state of paralysis, the raspy voice so totally unexpected at this moment. He knew where she’d been! He was watching her! “You’re going to have to be punished, Mrs. Hunter,” the voice continued gleefully. “I’m going to have to punish you.” There was a long, chilling pause.

“Oh God,” Joanne moaned.

“I’m going to start by pulling down your panties and spanking you …”

“Go to hell!” Joanne shrieked and slammed the receiver down so hard that it bounced back up at her like a snake, and she was forced to slam it down a second time.

“Mom?” the frightened voice asked. Joanne spun around to see her younger daughter in the doorway watching her, eyes like saucers. “What’s the matter? What are you doing?”

“I had an obscene call,” Joanne answered quickly, her voice husky, her breathing rapid. “Didn’t you hear the phone ring?” she asked, seeing the look of surprise that crossed Lulu’s face.

Lulu shook her head. “I only heard you yelling.”

Joanne sat for a minute on the floor, letting this statement sink in, before pushing herself to her feet.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to wake you up.” Joanne escorted her sleepy, puzzled daughter back to her room. “Go back to sleep, sweetie. I’m sorry I woke you.”

“Is Robin home yet?”

“Not yet.”

“I thought at first you were yelling at her,” Lulu explained, her eyes closing upon contact with her pillow. “It’s so strange to hear you yell,” she whispered.

Joanne returned to her bedroom, threw her bathrobe over her T-shirt, and clumped down the stairs to wait for her elder daughter to return home.

“Tell him to come in,” Joanne said evenly as Robin was about to close the front door.

“You better come in,” she heard Robin whisper to the young man behind her.

Scott Peterson shuffled inside and smiled innocently at Joanne.

“Close the door,” Joanne told him. She heard Robin take a deep breath. “Maybe we should go into the living room,” she suggested and the silent couple reluctantly followed her inside. Joanne flipped on the light. “You can sit down if you’d like,” she indicated, but no one moved. “I think you both know what this is about.”

“The little tattle-tale,” Robin immediately sneered, just loud enough to be clearly heard.

“Don’t start blaming Lulu for this,” Joanne cautioned.

“It wasn’t anything …” Robin protested.

“And don’t tell me it wasn’t anything,” her mother countered, her voice rising. What was she supposed to say next? She cleared her throat. Why wasn’t Paul here to help her? “I don’t want to argue with you,” she said, her voice steady once again. “As far as I’m concerned there’s nothing to argue about. I think I have a pretty clear picture of what happened. You can dispute me if anything I say is substantially wrong.” That sounded fair, she
decided, looking from her daughter to Scott Peterson, whose eyes were burning holes right through her. She wasn’t invisible now, she thought, almost wishing she were. “Lulu said that you were in your room earlier this evening smoking … a joint … and that you offered her some.” There, she congratulated herself, that was quite well done. Paul would be proud of the way she was handling this situation. She saw him nod his invisible approval from his place across the room.

“She had no business coming into my room,” Robin was objecting loudly.

“I beg your pardon?” Joanne exclaimed, momentarily amazed at the sound of her own voice. “I beg your pardon?” she repeated as if to solidify it was in fact her own, watching the startled image of her husband rising in his best lawyerlike fashion to object. Keep it steady, he was telling her. Nobody wins any points in anger. “You don’t think she had any business coming into your room?” Joanne repeated Robin’s words with a sense of awe. The best defense is a good offense—her father’s daughter, all right, she thought. Except where was her daughter’s father now? Too damn busy with little blondes in their twenties to be available for such minor problems as this. Paul’s image smiled sheepishly. A bosomy blonde appeared beside him. “You don’t think she had any business coming into your room.” Joanne’s voice grew even louder.

“You don’t have to say everything twice. We’re not deaf.”

“I’ll say things as many times as I goddamn well please,” Joanne heard someone shout—surely not herself! The blonde’s arms went fearfully around Paul’s waist. “And what’s more you’ll listen to every word till I’m damn well finished.”

“Mom!”

“Mrs. Hunter, it’s really not all that big a deal.”

“You shut up!” Joanne shouted at the invisible blonde, though it was Robin’s boyfriend who took a step back. “I’ll decide what’s a big deal around here. How dare you bring dope into this house!” How dare you bring this woman in here! “How dare you offer it to my children!” How dare she come before our children’s welfare!