Melancholy Baby

Bobby looked down at his thick, freckled hands resting in front of him on the chipped Formica tabletop.

“I don’t like talking about her,” he said.

“Why not.”

“It feels like I’m ratting her out.”

“I work for her,” I said. “She’s paying me to ask these kinds of questions.”

He nodded.

“Yeah, she did a lot of drugs. Still does, I’m pretty sure.”

“Was she... sexually promiscuous?”

“She was pretty slutty in high school,” he said.

“Did you ever go out with her?”

“A little,” he said.

“Did you ever sleep with her?”

“Hey.”

“I told you,” I said, “I’m a detective.”

He nodded again.

“Yeah. I slept with her. Once. Then it was over. She wouldn’t go out with me again.”

“Did she not want you to sleep with her?”

“That’s the funny part,” Bobby said. “She was hot. It was her idea, but after we did it, she didn’t want to see me anymore.”

“What did she say?”

“That’s how weird it was. She didn’t say anything. She just got up, put herself back together, you know, got out of the car, and walked away.”

“She told me she stopped seeing you because you got a girlfriend.”

“I got a girlfriend, but that was a long time after I had anything to do with Sarah.”

“Do you know if she was this way with anyone else?”

“Lotta guys,” Bobby said. “It was like she wanted you to do it to her, and when you did it, she didn’t like you anymore.”

“To her,” I said.

“Whaddya mean?”

“It sounds as if she didn’t enjoy it,” I said.

“No. Not when it was happening, just before.”

“Is there someone I could talk with who knows her now?”

“Her college roommate. They go to Taft together.”

“And her name is?”

“Polly Murphy,” he said. “What’s all this got to do with whether her parents adopted her or not?”

“I have no idea,” I said.

12

I talked with Bobby O’Brien for another half hour but didn’t learn anything more. Over the next few days, I talked with the other classmates she had mentioned, and a few she hadn’t. Several of them agreed with Bobby, that she had changed when she was thirteen. No one had any theories why. No one could give me any information about her parentage. No one had ever heard her question it.

I met Sarah for coffee at Taft. Sarah took hers black.

“What happened to you,” I said, “when you were thirteen?”

“Huh?”

“When you were thirteen, in the seventh grade, something happened.”

“What?”

“I was hoping you’d know,” I said.

Sarah lit a cigarette and took in a lot of smoke and let it out, slowly looking at it as it floated between us.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said. “You find anything out yet about my parents?”

“Not much,” I said.

“Well, whyn’t you do that and stop nosing around about me in the seventh grade?”

“Something happen that made you start to wonder about your parents?”

“In the seventh grade?”

“Yes.”

“No,” she said. “I always knew they weren’t my parents.”

I nodded. Sarah drank some black coffee. I sipped some of mine. Even with milk and two sugars, it was harsh and unpleasant. Drunk black, it must have been appalling.

“You just knew,” I said.

“Yes. I told you that. I always knew. You think I wouldn’t know. You know things like that.”

I looked at my coffee. I didn’t drink it.

“Sarah?” I said.

“Sarah what?” she said, and dropped her cigarette butt forcefully into her coffee. “Why don’t you stop bugging me like I did something bad. I didn’t do anything wrong. Whyn’t you find out what you’re supposed to find out?”

“We’re not supposed to be adversaries,” I said.

“Well, then, stop snooping on me,” Sarah said.

She lit another cigarette.

“Stop snooping on me,” she said.

I nodded. Tears began to well up in Sarah’s eyes. She started to cry in little soft gasps. I put a hand out and patted her arm. She yanked the arm away and hugged herself. I tried to feel bad for her, and couldn’t. There was nothing in our conversation that constituted a reasonable basis for crying. She was always on the verge of hysteria.

“I won’t snoop on you,” I said.

It didn’t slow her much. She cried and smoked and didn’t say anything. I sat and waited and didn’t say anything, either.

Everything about Sarah and her parents seemed fraudulent. And more than that, insubstantial, like something that had been built on the cheap, with shoddy materials and no craft, to conceal something unhealthy and mean.

It’s not like my life is going really swell, either, honey.

I shook my head. Stop it. There was nothing in that direction that would do anyone any good. After a while she stopped crying, and even let me pat her forearm a couple times. She lit another cigarette, and then stood up quite suddenly.

“I have to go now,” she said, and turned and walked away.

Which is probably what I should have done.

13