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We both heard the sound of the garage door going up.
"Who is that, your father or mother?"
"I don't know. I didn't expect either one, but I'm glad we got the kitchen cleaned up. Hurry," I said.
She gathered everything she was going to take upstairs with her and went out.
"Oh, I've got to get something for your dinner," I moaned.
"Don't worry about it right now. When you get a chance, you'll do it," she said, and tiptoed up the stairs. I watched her enter the attic and close the door softly. Then I went downstairs to see who had come home and why.
It was my mother, and she didn't look happy. "Why are you home so early?" I asked.
She looked at me without speaking and then took a deep breath and put her purse on the kitchen counter. "I had a terrible to-do with Beverly Bucci."
"Alice Bucci's mother?"
Alice's mother worked in the radiology department at the hospital.
"Yes. In the cafeteria. Apparently, her daughter and her friends have done a lot of gossiping about you and Karen lately, and Beverly Bucci got an earful. She cross-examined me as if she was one of the detectives who interviewed you. She was very loud about it, and a crowd developed around us. I told her how upset you were and how you didn't know all that much more about it than anyone else, and she actually challenged me, wagging her head and saying she couldn't understand that. 'How could your daughter be practically her sister and not know what was going on?' I let her have it between the eyes and. . ."
"What?" I said when she hesitated.
"Some doctors and my supervisor had to break it up. My supervisor told me to take the rest of the day off. I'm glad about it. I didn't feel comfortable leaving you here by yourself all day after what happened, anyway."
"I'm all right, Mama."
"Of course, you are, but you don't know how these things will affect you or are affecting you, believe me. The nerve of some people. She practically accused you of being an accomplice. If that daughter of hers gives you even the slightest trouble tomorrow, I want you to call me immediately. I won't stand for it," she vowed.
"I can handle Alice Bucci," I said with as brave a face as I could put on. The word accomplice made me shudder.
"Sure you can." She smiled. She looked around. "Smells like you baked a pizza."
My heart started to thump. I had cleaned up the kitchen well, but I didn't air it out.
"Yes," I said. "I made a small one. I had to keep busy," I said, hoping she would be satisfied with that.
She kept her smile, but it turned into a little smile of curiosity.
"But you had pizza last night with Daddy."
"I didn't even think of it, but you know me and pizza. I guess I could eat it every night."
"I guess so. Okay." She looked at the time "I have an idea. Let's go for a ride. I don't think it's healthy for you to be shut up here all day. I don't care about anyone talking about it, either. There are too many busybodies."
"Where will we go?"
"Down to that little shop in Wurtsboro where they sell those pretty and unique things for the house. We don't spend enough time together," she added. "It's my fault. I give too much of myself to this job. Pretty soon, you'll be off to college like your brother."
"I like to be with you, Mama, but you don't have to do this. I'm not complaining."
"I know you're not." She hugged me. "You're too sweet. I'm going up to change into something comfortable, and then we'll be off." She started out and then paused in the doorway.
"You would tell me if she called you, wouldn't you, Zipporah?"
"I would tell you if she called me," I recited back to her.
She held her gaze on me for a few moments, scrutinizing my face. Some alarm had been triggered inside her. There it was again, I thought, that extraordinary sensitivity a mother has with her children. Maybe I was good at being as poker-faced as my father when if came to speaking to the police, but my mother surely honed in on my nervousness. She was just unsure whether it came from being in the spotlight because of Karen or something else.
