Thrown-away Child

question. Which was just as well. It was enough to see the improvement in Ruby’s mood.
    “So they run Teddy down to Charity Hospital emergency room,” Uncle Bud said when he could be heard. He popped the Dixie cap with his sturdy thumb and handed the bottle to Miss Minnie, who put it to her lips and slugged back the beer as if she had been drinking with sailors most of her life. “Teddy, he stay over in the burn unit a couple, three days ’til his rump healed.”
    “A harrowing story,” I said to Teddy.
    “Yeah, well, you know—all part of my wild years.” Teddy sniffed, and wiped his nose with some fingers, a residual habit from white powder days. “I quit all that bad stuff—the drinking, the sex, the drugs. Especially the drugs. They started creeping me day and night.”
    “That can happen,” I said.
    “Sure, but I’m not saying all that excess wasn’t fun. It was. I quit, but—big old but here—I never robbed anybody, never murdered or raped anybody. And never did I lose a job or show up late when somebody was expecting me. All those years of the drugs and all, I laughed my ass off and had a great time.” Teddy looked up to Janice, who was finally approaching our end of the table, and asked her, “So where’s my TV commercial?”
    “I don’t even want to talk to a head-sucker.” Janice curled her lips and turned from Teddy. She took off the Ray-Bans and looked at me.
    She was an attractive woman with a kindly face, her disdain for poor head-sucking Cousin Teddy notwithstanding. She was quite tall, taller than a lot of men but seemed untroubled about that, since I noticed she was wearing high heels. She had big intelligent eyes the color of licorice, and cinnamon skin with freckles lightly sprayed over high cheekbones. After one look at her up close I would have wagered big money on a cop hunch that Janice Flagg was the type of attractive woman who draws wrong numbers for men pretty much all the time.
    Teddy cracked open another crawfish and slurped down more cooked brains. Janice ignored the disgusting act. After giving me the once-over, she said to her sister, “Hello there, Ruby. You’re looking real good. So’s the new boyfriend. I could sit down in his lap and say hi—or else maybe you could introduce us.”
    Ruby turned to me, and said, “Any wonder now why I’ve kept my little family secrets?”
    I wiped my fingers on the tabletop newspapers, stood up, and offered a semiclean hand to Janice. “The name’s Neil Hockaday.” Janice took my hand and would not let it go.
    “Well, well,” she said, “you’re surely different from all Ruby’s other beaux.”
    “That’s right, we got married.” Janice let go of me. I sat down. Ruby laughed.
    I certainly had not meant to fuel anything between competitive sisters, but that was exactly what my crack about marriage might have done for one cheap, fleeting moment. I regretted the marriage remark because I felt a little sorry for Janice. From experience I know a lonesome soul when I see one. Like her freckles, solitude also marked Janice’s face. Solitude would be fine if only a person could choose the people to avoid.
    “I hear you’re some kind of policeman up in New York,” Janice said. This was a statement, but Janice had one of those southern inflections where everything sounds like a question.
    “Neil’s a detective,” Mama said. “He work for this special unit called SCUM something-or-other.”
    “It stands for Street Crimes Unit—Manhattan,” I said.
    Janice glanced at Ruby and smiled. If a cat could smile before snatching up a mouse, it would look like Janice’s smile. She said to me, “Let’s see now, I don’t believe Ruby ever had particularly warm feelings for policemen.”
    “Janny, why you want to go saying a thing that?” Mama asked.
    “Oh, I didn’t mean—”
    “Janny needs a man, Mama,” Ruby said, calmly interrupting her sister. “We should try to understand her bitterness and overlook the foolish things she says.“
    “La, you two girls!” Mama said. “I can’t stand it. Why don’t y’all get it out of your systems—go back out to the alley and scuffle like you used to?”
    “Vi, honey, they grown womens now,” Miss Minnie said. “Womens got eviler ways of fighting than rolling in the dirt. Besides, they entertaining us.”
    “My life’s too busy for me to be fretting about boyfriends or husbands,” Janice said, ignoring both her mother and Miss Minnie. She seemed to be