Page 114 of We All Live Here
Jensen makes his way back to Mum, which means that all the four people have to stand up and sit down again. They are starting to look a bit pissed off. Mum’s face is all tight and furious. “Is he going?”
Jensen says quietly: “He wants to tell Bill something. He says he can tell him through me.”
“What?”
“You don’t want Bill to talk to him. But I can…pass it on via the phone? I actually think it might be helpful.”
Lila looks at Jensen, disbelieving. “Oh, for Chrissake. How?”
“Just…just hear him out. And then he promises he’ll leave.”
Mum glances behind her at Bill, and then at Gene, who is hovering at the end of the aisle, watching them. She looks like she can’t work out what to do. Her face softens a bit when she looks at Jensen and shelowers her voice. “Will you stop if you think it’s going to make things worse? I don’t want…”
Jensen puts a hand on hers. “I will be a very careful translator if necessary.”
Mum thinks again, then sighs and turns to Bill. “Will you just hear what Gene has to say? Then he says he’ll go.”
Bill sort of harrumphs for a minute and then he glances sideways and says: “Well, he’d better hurry up. I don’t want my granddaughter’s performance interrupted.”
The school orchestra has started filing in. There are tiny year threes with triangles and tambourines and bigger year sixes with guitars and a clarinet, all being shepherded into their red plastic seats at the front by a variety of teachers. Celie thinks that any minute this thing is going to start and her family will still be there bringing the drama. She sinks even lower in her seat. Jensen nods at Gene, and Celie watches Gene tap something into his phone. Jensen’s phone rings with a disco tone, which causes a whole bunch of parents seated around them to tut and start shifting in their seats. Jensen holds up a hand in apology. He puts the phone to his ear and listens. Then he leans toward Bill.
“He wants to tell you there’s been a big misunderstanding.”
“I’m not interested in anything that man has to say.” Bill looks straight ahead. Penelope is holding his hand tightly, running her thumb backward and forward over his knuckles.
Jensen looks at Bill, then holds the phone back to his ear. “He says he’s not interested…Okay…okay.” He listens, then leans toward Bill again. “He says you have the wrong idea about the time he and Francesca spent together. He realizes you think they had sex. They didn’t. They just hung out.”
“Had sex”? What is this? Now we’re bringing old-people sex into this? Celie wants to throw up at the thought of people that old eventhinkingabout having sex. She puts her face briefly into her hands. She is not sure this night could get any worse.
Jensen is still talking, his voice too loud, even though he’s trying to be quiet. “He says she just wanted to party. To be young again. She hung out with Gene and the crew of the movie at a bar, she danced and had a good time, and the next day he didn’t see her—he thinks she went shopping in Dublin. Or maybe to see her friend. But that was it.”
Bill turns in his seat. “Then why on earth did he tell me he slept with her?”
“He didn’t,” says Mum, after a moment. “The letter just said she saw him.”
Bill looks at Mum. “He didn’t sleep with Francesca?”
Jensen says loudly into the phone: “Bill says you definitely didn’t sleep with Francesca?”
They look at Gene, at the end of the row of parents. Gene shakes his head, and pulls a face. He says something into his phone. Jensen listens and says: “He says your mother would never have looked at another guy. This has all been a terrible misunderstanding.”
Bill is clearly stunned. Almost as much as the parents around him, who cannot believe what they are listening to.
“You’re absolutely certain?” says Bill.
Jensen speaks into the phone: “He says are you sure?”
Jensen nods at whatever Gene is saying. And then he puts his hand over the mouthpiece. “He says Bill, old pal, the drugs may have knocked out a good part of his gray matter, but he would definitely have remembered that. Sorry, Celie.”
“Honestly, that is so not the worst part of this conversation.”
Bill blinks. “Is he telling the truth?”
“Are you telling the truth?” Jensen nods again and turns back to Bill. “He says Scout’s honor. He doesn’t want to leave without you knowing the truth.”
Something weird has happened to Bill. He is staring at his hands. And shaking his head to himself. And then he looks at Penelope. “Oh, my goodness,” he says. “I feel rather foolish.”
I feel sick, thinks Celie.
