The Girl in Times Square

“How many of you were there? Please tell me more than two.”

“Eleven.”

Lily’s eyes widened. “You might want to forgive your mother,” she said. “Eleven kids.”

“Who said I didn’t forgive my mother?”

“So did she nickname you Spencer for Spencer Tracy?”

“Correct.” Again looking at her with friendly approval.

“Spencer is a nice Irish name.” She stared at the pavement.

“Quinn is a nice Irish name. Why does your friend Paul call you Harlequin?”

Lily was discomfited. “Once he saw a clinch novel in my room. Has never let me forget it.”

“Oh, yeah? My sisters read those and never stop torturing me. According to them the only way I’ll get hitched is if I become more like the man from one of those novels. From which series was your book? Temptation or Intrigue?”

“Blaze,” said Lily, flushing with embarrassment and then laughing when she saw Spencer’s amused face. They were at her apartment, and she had a tinge of regret that the stroll was over so soon.

“So why did your mother like the name Anne? Who is Anne?” “I don’t know. My mother just likes that name.”

“Likes that name a lot,” Spencer said thoughtfully.

Lily glanced at him from the top of her stoop. “Detective O’Malley,” she said, teasingly, “I’m sorry to inform you but my mother’s preference for the name Anne is not one of your MP investigations.”

“Don’t be so sure. What about your other sister? She’s just plain Amanda.”

“That was my mother’s continued subterfuge over my father. AmANNEda.”

Spencer grinned. “Your brother? Was he spared?”

“ANNE-drew.”

Spencer laughed. And then he said, “Oh, of course—your brother is the Andrew Quinn, the congressman for the first district?”

“Yes. The Andrew Quinn.”

“Well, congratulations. He was just re-elected last year, wasn’t he? I remember it vaguely. That was a squeaker.”

“You can credit me for that squeaker, I campaigned for him. Me and Amy. And it was a landslide compared to his first election against Abrams.”

She opened her front door, while he remained at the bottom of the stoop. “Very, very interesting, Lily Blaze Harlequin. Well, good night. I still say you might want to look into your mother’s regard for the name Anne.”

“Thank you, Detective O’Malley, in my copious free time I’ll do that.”

“Miss Quinn, you can call me Spencer.”

Lily had a smile on her face the entire five flights of stairs.

12 (#ulink_3aeb38a8-e345-5fa3-8a88-f28d66bfe12a)

A Little Rented Honda (#ulink_3aeb38a8-e345-5fa3-8a88-f28d66bfe12a)

Lily was having a rare and desultory conversation with her mother and she could tell it was desultory by the amount of quick, sloppy black circles she was dashing off on her sketchpad, wearing down her nub of charcoal, getting black all over her fingers and her quilted bedspread. She had just come out of her bath—she had been taking baths for a while now, she found herself too tired to stand in the shower.

Now she was feeling relaxed and sleepy, but her mother was keeping her on the phone. Lily was on her new comfy bed, with the sky-blue curtains behind her tied in bows, billowing in the hot breeze. Black circles, black. Blah blah blah. Then her father came on the line and said, “Did your mother tell you she drove the car into a ditch?”

There was silence.

“Can you get off the phone?” said Allison. “Can’t you see I’m talking to my daughter?”

“What ditch?” said Lily incongruously.

“Oh, just a little ditch, by the house,” said Allison.

“Your mother means a ravine, Lil. She crashed the car into a ravine, left it there, and now has to go to court to explain to the judge why she would leave a perfectly good Mercedes in a ditch without notifying either a tow company or the police.”

Allison had nothing to say to that.

And the only thing Lily said to it was, “Is that the first time Mom drove the car into a ditch?”

“Yes, it was an aberration,” Allison said.

“Oh, yeah?” said George. “Tell that to the stop sign you plowed through and knocked over on Wailea Drive last month.”

“It doesn’t count,” said Allison. “That was a little rental car. A Honda.”

“Your mother is on a lot of medication, Lily,” said George, realizing perhaps how all this was sounding. “Sometimes it knocks her out. Makes her shaky behind the wheel.”

Lily called back the next morning when she was pretty certain her mother was asleep. “Papi,” she said, “You can’t let Mom drive a car. The first time was a stop sign, the second time was a ditch, but the third time is going to be a woman with a baby carriage.”

“I know, you don’t think I know? I know! Who lets her? I don’t let her. I tell her all the time I’ll drive her anywhere she needs to go. What else do I have to do? But she says she wants to run out for fifteen minutes to the drug store. And Lily, think about it, what am I, her policeman? Did I retire so I could police your mother? She is a grown woman. She knows when she should and shouldn’t drive.”

“I don’t think she knows. I don’t think she should drive at all. At the best of times she’s a bit … erratic.”

“I don’t know this? I know this better than you, daughter.”

“What’s wrong with her, Papi?”

“Ah. You know your mother. She loves her histrionics. She loves for everything to be about her. Look at me, I’m sick, I’m depressed, I’m not well, I’m going to court. What a sham it all is. There is nothing wrong with her.”

Lily waited. “Nothing?” she said.

“There is one thing wrong with her. She keeps falling down. She can’t walk down the one step to the sunken living room, or up one step to the front door to get the mail without falling down. You should see her legs. You wouldn’t believe what they look like. And her arms. They’re covered with black and blues. You almost can’t imagine how terrible and bruised her legs look. And your mother has such nice legs, as you know.” George chuckled. “If someone didn’t know any better, you’d think she was a battered wife.”

Listening, falling in her sadness for her mother, Lily said, “A person who can’t walk down one step into the sunken living room should not be driving.”