The Risk Pool

him, especially in parking lots, though lately he had relaxed his vigilance somewhat after my mother informed him of her decision to drop divorce proceedings, a decision he went on record as opposing on general principle and because it meant he’d taken a horrible beating for nothing. Had she bothered to inform her husband that she had dropped the suit? the lawyer wondered. Probably not, or what the hell would Sam Hall be doing at The Elms? It would be just like her not to tell him, and now he’d have to think of a way to avoid another beating, this time in a public place. A public place he wasn’t supposed to be, in the company of a woman whose husband worked the night shift. The good news was that the bar was still pretty crowded, and he doubted Sam Hall would assault him until the place cleared out a little. He and the young woman could make a run for the parking lot, but he doubted they’d make it and he’d have to explain to the woman why they were running, and this was hardly the image of himself that he chose to cultivate. Probably the best thing, F. William Peterson concluded, would be to determine the man’s intentions and try to talk him out of them. So he got up, excused himself, and went over to where my father sat talking to Jimmy Albanese.
    “You understand,” he said to my father, “that by sitting on that stool, you are violating the peace bond sworn against you, an offense for which you could be incarcerated?”
    My father looked over at Jimmy Albanese, who happened to bethe next best thing to a lawyer, having failed the New York bar exam on three separate occasions.
    “He’s full of shit,” was the honorable Jimmy’s expert assessment. “You come in first. He’s harassing
your
ass.”
    “I tell you what,” my father said. “You let me take a hundred right now, and I forget the whole thing. You get the hundred back on Wednesday. Friday the latest.”
    It was a strange request, but F. William Peterson was tempted because he was very afraid of my father, who he was now convinced was certifiable. Unfortunately, he was a little short. “I can let you have fifty …”
    My father frowned. “Fifty.”
    The lawyer showed him his wallet, which contained fifty-seven dollars.
    “All right,” my father said reluctantly, pocketing the money. It was better than nothing, and it was easier to touch somebody else for the other half a hundred. And besides, he’d just had an idea. “I guess that makes us even. Thanks.”
    He was in a hurry, but there was a telephone booth outside The Elms and my father could feel that his luck was changing. Everything was beginning to have that falling-into-place feeling. Before driving to my mother’s, he called Mrs. F. William Peterson. Yes, she knew right where The Elms was located. And yes, if she hurried she supposed she could meet her husband there in fifteen minutes.
    Now
they were even.
    By the time he got to Third Avenue it was late and the house was dark, but he managed to raise my mother. “Don’t call the cops,” he said urgently when he heard stirring inside.
    My mother suspected a trick and raised the shade and window tentatively.
    “Let me take fifty till tomorrow,” he said.
    “What?”
    “Fifty. I’ll pay you back tomorrow and after that I’ll stay clear of here.”
    “Will you give me a divorce?”
    “No,” he said. “But I won’t bother you anymore. That’s the deal.”
    My mother knew him and knew she had him. “We have a son to raise,” she said. “I can’t do it alone. You’ll have to give me fifty a month.”
    He thought about it. “Okay,” he said finally. “Sure.”
    With matters settled thus satisfactorily out of court, my mother gave him the money and considered herself fortunate, which she was. She would never collect a dime of the informal, modest alimony settlement, but then she didn’t expect to. The important thing was that she’d gotten my father to agree to it in a moment of weakness, and he’d feel guilty about not keeping his word, and he’d stay a suitable distance rather than give her the opportunity to bring the matter up. After a year or so, the debt would be considerable and he would be alert to chance meetings on the street and, in effect, she would have her divorce. She slept soundly that night, knowing the burden she had placed on him. As it turned out, her strategy worked better than she could have hoped, because in the middle of June she ran into F. William Peterson, who informed her