The Whore's Child

area filled up, I could see that my mother, who seemed to possess every ounce of grace allotted to our family, was getting looks from men who found excuses to go the long way around the pool, past her chaise longue. She was wearing dark glasses and reading a magazine, but I knew she noticed them as well, and I knew how much it pleased her. Finally I quit the diving board to go over and join her, imagining that this was what my father would want me to do.
    She must’ve had a similar thought, because when I plopped myself down beside her, she looked up and said, “Hi, sweetie. You come over here to protect me?”
    â€œI’m tired of diving,” I said.
    â€œI guess this suit’s cut too low,” she said after another man strolled by with a long look. She demonstrated with her index finger what she meant. “I didn’t realize until I put it on.” This sounded insincere even to me.
    Later, as we were gathering up our things to return to our room, the same man came back. He was tall and might have been considered handsome, but his legs and torso were bizarrely pale, in stark contrast to his face, neck and arms. Talk about ridiculous men, I thought.
    â€œWell, I just got to ask, darlin’,” he said to my mother. “What’s with all the Band-Aids?”
    We were both dotted with small circular Band-Aids on our legs and lower backs, though most of mine had come off in the pool. To my surprise, my mother told him the whole story about the windshield. I thought she made it longer than it had to be, and funnier than she’d thought at the time.
    â€œIt’s a crazy old world, that’s for sure,” the man agreed. “But a good-lookin’ woman like you shouldn’t be traveling alone.”
    â€œI’m not alone,” my mother said, which I took to be a reference to me. Apparently the man did too, because he looked at me then for the first time, and something about the way he sized me up made me feel like he wasn’t standing corrected.
    Our room opened onto the pool area, and when we’d crossed the hot cement and let ourselves in, I noticed, closing the door behind us, that the man was still watching us from across the patio.
    The restaurant we went to that night was decorated with wagon wheels and leather saddles and harnesses. The waitresses and the cooks, who grilled steaks over an open-pit barbecue, all wore neckerchiefs and checked shirts that looked like they’d been made out of tablecloths. You could choose the size of your steak and how you wanted it cooked, but then you were through choosing. All the steaks came with baked potatoes and beans and garlicky toast.
    A little sign on every table explained that the biggest of the steaks, a T-bone called the Monster, was free if you could eat it all. And this was what the huge man in the booth next to ours had ordered. It was brought to his table with a great flourish of bells, on a platter about the size of the one my mother used for the Thanksgiving turkey. About two inches thick, the steak barely fit. Having cavorted in the pool all afternoon, I was famished, unable to imagine a steak I couldn’t eat. Yet here it was. One look convinced me. The big man seemed undaunted, though, and when the waitress set a little clock on the table and set it for half an hour, the man wordlessly dug in, sawing methodically, until the platter was a pool of blood, eating as if there were no particular hurry. Considering his task, I thought he had excellent table manners.
    â€œDon’t stare, sweetie,” my mother whispered, but everyone else was, and pretty soon she was staring too. Paying no attention, the man devoured half of his T-bone in the first ten minutes, took a sip of water, consulted the clock and slowed down.
    At this juncture, a waitress brought my mother a cocktail she hadn’t ordered, then pointed across the room at the man who’d spoken to us that afternoon by the pool. He raised his glass in a silent toast, and my mother raised hers. “Hold up your Coke, sweetie,” she told me. “Be polite.”
    I didn’t, though. He hadn’t bought me my Coke, and I didn’t feel like being friendly. Besides, I was suddenly sure he had followed us to the restaurant.
    At the next table the big man was eating more slowly now, and the little clock seemed to be ticking away faster. He cut the steak into small pieces and chewed them thoughtfully, beads of sweat