Freedom

“Yes, we’ve—met,” Joyce said.

“Oh, you’re right, we did meet once,” Coach said.

In addition to her strenuous elocution, Joyce had strenuously proper posture and a masklike Pleasant Smile suitable for nearly all occasions public and private. Because she never raised her voice, not even in anger (her voice just got shakier and more strained when she was mad), her Pleasant Smile could be worn even at moments of excruciating conflict.

“No, it was more than once,” she said now. “It was several times.”

“Really?”

“I’m quite sure of it.”

“That doesn’t sound right to me,” Coach said.

“I’ll be outside,” Patty said, closing the door behind her.

The parent-coach conference didn’t last long. Joyce soon came out on clicking heels and said, “Let’s go.”

Coach, standing in the doorway behind Joyce, gave Patty a significant look. The look meant Don’t forget what I said about teamwork.

Joyce’s car was the last one left in its quadrant of the visitor lot. She put the key in the ignition but didn’t turn it. Patty asked what was going to happen now.

“Your father’s at his office,” Joyce said. “We’ll go straight there.”

But she didn’t turn the key.

“I’m sorry about this,” Patty said.

“What I don’t understand,” her mother burst out, “is how such an outstanding athlete as you are—I mean, how could Ethan, or whoever it was—”

“Ethan. It was Ethan.”

“How could anybody—or Ethan,” she said. “You say it’s pretty definitely Ethan. How could—if it’s Ethan—how could he have …?” Her mother hid her mouth with her fingers. “Oh, I wish it had been almost anybody else. Dr. and Mrs. Post are such good friends of—good friends of so many good things. And I don’t know Ethan well, but—”

“I hardly know him at all!”

“Well then how could this happen!”

“Let’s just go home.”

“No. You have to tell me. I’m your mother.”

Hearing herself say this, Joyce looked embarrassed. She seemed to realize how peculiar it was to have to remind Patty who her mother was. And Patty, for one, was glad to finally have this doubt out in the open. If Joyce was her mother, then how had it happened that she hadn’t come to the first round of the state tournament when Patty had broken the all-time Horace Greeley girls’ tournament scoring record with 32 points? Somehow everybody else’s mother had found time to come to that game.

She showed Joyce her wrists.

“This is what happened,” she said. “I mean, part of what happened.”

Joyce looked once at her bruises, shuddered, and then turned away as if respecting Patty’s privacy. “This is terrible,” she said. “You’re right. This is terrible.”

“Coach Nagel says I should go to the emergency room and tell the police and tell Ethan’s headmaster.”

“Yes, I know what your coach wants. She seems to feel that castration might be an appropriate punishment. What I want to know is what you think.”

“I don’t know what I think.”

“If you want to go to the police now,” Joyce said, “we’ll go to the police. Just tell me if that’s what you want.”

“I guess we should tell Dad first.”

So down the Saw Mill Parkway they went. Joyce was always driving Patty’s siblings to Painting, Guitar, Ballet, Japanese, Debate, Drama, Piano, Fencing, and Mock Court, but Patty herself seldom rode with Joyce anymore. Most weekdays, she came home very late on the jock bus. If she had a game, somebody else’s mom or dad dropped her off. If she and her friends were ever stranded, she knew not to bother calling her parents but to go ahead and use the Westchester Cab dispatcher’s number and one of the twenty-dollar bills that her mother made her always carry. It never occurred to her to use the twenties for anything but cabs, or to go anywhere after a game except straight home, where she peeled aluminum foil off her dinner at ten or eleven o’clock and went down to the basement to wash her uniform while she ate and watched reruns. She often fell asleep down there.

“Here’s a hypothetical question,” Joyce said, driving. “Do you think it might be enough if Ethan formally apologized to you?”

“He already apologized.”

“For—”

“For being rough.”

“And what did you say?”

“I didn’t say anything. I said I wanted to go home.”

“But he did apologize for being rough.”

“It wasn’t a real apology.”

“All right. I’ll take your word for it.”

“I just want him to know I exist.”

“Whatever you want—sweetie.”

Joyce pronounced this “sweetie” like the first word of a foreign language she was learning.

As a test or a punishment, Patty said: “Maybe, I guess, if he apologized in a really sincere way, that might be enough.” And she looked carefully at her mother, who was struggling (it seemed to Patty) to contain her excitement.

“That sounds to me like a nearly ideal solution,” Joyce said. “But only if you really think it would be enough for you.”

“It wouldn’t,” Patty said.

“I’m sorry?”

“I said it wouldn’t be enough.”

“I thought you just said it would be.”

Patty began to cry again very desolately.