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“Why don’t you tell me something about yourself,” said Mrs. O’Brien, after she’d settled herself on the sofa.
“Mmmm. Like what?” I watched her take a small notebook out of her bag.
“Oh, let’s see. What about your interests. Do you have any hobbies?”
I thought for a moment. “Not really,” I confessed.
“Do you sew?”
“A little, but our sewing machine’s been broken for a year now.”
“Cook?”
“I’m not very good at it.”
“Do you go shopping?”
I shrugged. “Sometimes.”
“Any school activities?”
“Sometimes I help in the library putting books away.”
Mrs. O’Brien frowned. “What do you do with your time?”
“Oh, I’m busy,” I said eagerly. “I read a lot, do my homework, clean up around the house, talk to Bunny. Sometimes I don’t have enough time.”
“What about religion? Your mother tells me you belong to the Congregational Church.”
“Yes.” I couldn’t imagine why Bunny would tell her that. We’d been to church maybe three times that I could remember. The last time was two years ago, on Christmas Eve. Bunny made Tom and me get dressed up and she took us down for the evening service. Tom got bored during the sermon and started grumbling out loud to himself and making comments about the people around us. Everyone thought he was crazy. Finally, he stomped out. Bunny and I had to sit there, trying to pretend that nothing had happened.
“I thought I’d stop over and have a word with the minister,” Mrs. O’Brien said. “Maybe he can come by and pay you a visit.”
“Gee.” The minister was a tall, thin, blond man, quite young, and he’d looked very unhappy while Tom was making all the noise. I wondered if he’d remember us. “Gee,” I said, “do you think that’s necessary?”
A
gain Mrs. O’Brien frowned. “It’s now or never, Martha,” she said sharply. “You won’t get another chance. When we go back before Judge Horner next week, he’ll want to know about the progress you’ve made. Do you understand?”
“Yes.” Her anger startled me. It was so easy to go wrong.
“Then let’s not have any more of this ‘gee’ stuff.”
“Okay.”
“Nix on ‘gee.’ ”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Now, where were we?” She looked at her notebook. She hadn’t written anything down yet. “Well, why don’t you tell me a bit about your family. Go back as far as you remember.”
I knew I had to open up, so I started talking about Bunny and Tom and our life together. I told Mrs. O’Brien about Bunny’s house and the neighborhood, the trips to Grandmother’s when we were little, the Sundays we used to spend at the city park or on picnics out at Mason’s Farm. I tried to explain Tom as best I could, and I mentioned a couple of Bunny’s boyfriends. But I didn’t go into details on the touchier things. They would have been too hard to explain. Occasionally, Mrs. O’Brien asked a question or two, and every now and then she jotted something down. Mostly, she just let me talk. She didn’t seem disturbed by anything I said; she didn’t seem particularly interested, either. She just listened. Her manner was perfectly pleasant, actually. I sort of enjoyed myself. Even depressed as I was, I had the feeling that I could win her over, that she’d come around to helping me. The problem, I was afraid, would be Bunny. Mrs. O’Brien didn’t like her. It wasn’t just my imagination—when Bunny was around, Mrs. O’Brien was cooler, more formal, more of an authority. Even now, when Bunny came up in our conversation, Mrs. O’Brien’s eyes darkened, her voice got lower. The signals were clear. But that left me with a dilemma: How was I going to befriend Mrs. O’Brien, earn her sympathy, without being disloyal to Bunny? I’d just have to be careful, I decided.
After we’d been talking for an hour or so, she folded her notebook, sat back on the sofa, sighed and closed her eyes. Her orange hair, the only bit of brightness in the room, stood out like a new summer hat. I wondered if she had to do anything to it to keep it that color.
“It must have been hard on you,” she said after a while. “Your father running off like that and then all the trouble with Tom. It must have been hard.”
“Not really.”
