CHAPTER EIGHT: Oops
Jim hadn't meant to be suspicious. Really. Ezra always seemed prepared to think the worst of the adults in the house, but Jim didn't think that was fair. His father had to work hard to take care of them all. Maude had them all to look after.
But after Ezra had mentioned that he and his mother exchanged notes to keep from being heard, every crumpled up bit of paper in a wastebasket seemed a little suspicious. He'd even looked at some, but they'd turned out to be nothing - old envelopes, or, once, the amazingly contentless rough draft of a letter from Maude to her parents.
He hadn't even been thinking about communication between Ezra and Maude when he noticed the pad of paper out of place in the living room. It was the sort of thing that Sally just didn't let happen, but, since it was Sunday, she wasn't there doing the constant tidying that Jim had grown up expecting. Well, he could give her a break and put it back in his father's office himself.
The top sheet was blank, but it had some pretty clear indentations. Not the sort of thing he usually looked at too closely - it was too much like spying. He couldn't help noticing, though, that the indentations varied in depth, and that they seemed to be from two very different writing styles.
Yes, one was the scrawl that Ezra used; the other was Maude's handwriting, recognized from the letter draft he'd seen the other week.
Bingo.
Jim tore off the top few sheets and retreated to his bedroom. Two minutes later, he threw himself onto his bed face-first. Damn damn damn!
He stayed in his room until his father came home, then asked to see him in the study. As soon as the door was shut, he handed the sheet to his father. "Read this."
His father looked at him. "Jimmy, don't go lording things over me. If this says something I need to know, just tell me."
But Jim couldn't. He looked around - a pencil! He pressed it into the sharpener for a fraction of a second, then placed the paper on his father's desk and rubbed the side of the lead over the indentions. Ezra's words leapt out of the page, white shapes in the brown; Maude's were slightly less distinct, but still were clearly legible to anyone.
His father read the sheet, his eyes going upwards and down several times. "Where did you find this?"
"It was on a pad of paper - I was going to put it back in here and I noticed that I could sort of read the top sheet..."
William folded up the paper and put it in his back pocket. "Come with me," he said, very calmly. "We're going into my office."
The ride into town was done in silence - nothing too unusual there. The office was empty; Jim wished it weren't Sunday. What was his father planning? Was he going to do something to him?
His father took a folder labeled 'Paterson Industries' out of a filing cabinet. "I've always had suspicions - I think Maude may have monkeyed with his late last fall," William said, taking out a stapled document. "Maybe changed dates to make one of the other girls look bad, then switched the real proposal back in at the last minute. Do you - do you smell her on it?"
Obligingly, Jim sniffed, but of course it was a useless exercise. The whole place was permeated by the scents, or, more accurately, the perfumes and aftershaves, of a dozen people. He shrugged. "I can't tell anything."
"What about - what about finger prints. Are hers on it?"
Jim squinted, trying to make sense out of the greasy residue all over the white sheets. "Maybe you could have the police dust it or something," he said. "But Maude probably touched it no matter what, right? She was your secretary."
"Police! Are you crazy!" William threw the folder back together and into the cabinet.
The scary calm was giving way to - something else. William turned and pushed Jim backwards to the wall, his hand firm and completely unable to be defended against. "What is the USE of these - these cursed abilities of yours, if you can't tell me something I really need to know? CAN YOU TELL ME THAT? Why have them - why tell me things you learn from them - when you can't FINISH THE JOB?"
"You've got the note..."
William smacked him across the face, hard. "Maude can explain it. She will be able to explain it, and that runt of hers will go along with it. I need to be able to know whether or not she'll be telling the truth."
A thought seemed to occur to him. He backed off a bit and started to pace a tight arc around Jim. "Can you do that for me, Jimmy? Can you tell me whether she's lying to me, when I confront her? Can you? You'd tell me the truth, right?"
"I don't... I can't always tell, especially when someone's a really - when someone is used to being dishonest," said Jim.
"YOU WORTHLESS FREAK!"
And his dad was gone, slamming the door to his office and then the door leading outside. A moment later, the Buick revved up and peeled out of the lot much too fast.
Jim sat down on the stinking beige carpet and cried.
William Ellison wasn't a large man. He wasn't given to temper or drunkenness. In the months Ezra had lived under his roof, he hadn't seen William ever lift his hand to his older son, and seen Stevie spanked only twice; both times, Ezra had frankly admired William's restraint, since, on both occasions, he'd have been tempted to throttle the kid.
But William was a grown man. And Ezra was only nine. The way William drove up, the way he slammed the car door and charged into the house - it was going to happen again. Ezra wasn't going to be able to defend his mother. It had happened twice before, and it would probably keep on happening until he was big enough to take them on, or until Maude figured out a way to keep from bringing doom on them.
Maybe Jim... but Jim wasn't with William. Where had he left him?
This was bad.
Ezra crept downstairs. William had found Maude drinking tea in the kitchen.
"Explain this!" William shouted, waving a sheet of paper covered with dark smudges.
"I..." clearly Maude didn't know what William was talking about either.
"You and your brat, plotting to take me to the cleaners! Out of here. Call your cousin. I want you gone by this evening."
Maude started, "I can explain, darling! Ezra and I were working on a drama together. That sheet must have been under one of our dialog scenes. Right, Ezra?"
Ezra nodded. "For school. You can ask Mrs. Grady about it tomorrow. It's part of my enrichment program."
With William's attention on Ezra, Maude dared show her disgust at his explanation. He'd said far too much; he shouldn't have given William something that could be verified. But - he hadn't been trying to sustain the relationship, he realized. He just wanted to get them out alive, without any bruises if possible. If Maude DID get her way in the end... it would hurt Jim and Stevie. No, this farce of a family had to end, for everyone's sake.
William deflated. "Tomorrow I'll call," he said. "I want you both elsewhere tonight. But... but I won't make you take your stuff if you don't want."
"If you don't trust me," sniffed Maude, "I don't WANT to stay another half-hour. Ezra, start packing your boxes. I'll call Sandra. That is, if you deign to let me use your phone."
In truth, it took almost two hours to get their stuff assembled and arrange to be picked up. Sandra and her husband were both coming, in separate cars. Usually uncle Henry had seemed to want as little contact with Maude and Ezra as he could manage, but he'd probably been convinced that, as a man, it was his duty to take part in their evacuation.
Where was Jim?? Could William have done something to him? Would he get to say good-bye? These thoughts occupied Ezra as he packed. Finally, he wrote a quick note - just Aunt Sandra's address and phone number, and 'I can't tell you how sorry I am for all this' - and stuck it under Jim's pillow while Stevie, who'd been sticking to him, sad and scared, all evening, was in the bathroom. Fifteen minutes later, while he sat on his boxes in the foyer, William found it, waved it in his face, and tore it up. If uncle Henry hadn't been there, he'd probably have been hit, he knew. Damn all these people.
Then they were loaded up and were driving out of the development. That's when Ezra saw Jim. 'So that's what 'dragging your feet' means,' he thought. He started to unroll his window - "DON'T" barked his mother's cousin.
"I'm sorry, Jim," he said then, in a low voice. "206-555-5647. 206-555-5647. I'm sorry, Jim."
Jim wouldn't normally have given a Chevy Malibu and a Pinto wagon driving down Cedar St. a second glance, but hearing Ezra's voice saying his name... it was impossible to miss something like that. Damn, it had happened. It was all over.
206-555-5647. Got it.
TBC
