Free The Bad Lady (Novel) by John Meany Page A

you that?”
    “Yes.” My mom began to weep.
    “And you believe him?”
    “Of course I believe him. Why would Billy make this up?”
    “Bridgette, I’m just saying sometimes kids can misinterpret things.”
    “My boy wouldn’t make something like this up. He doesn’t even know what sex is. That woman is a sinner. The lowest form of scum on earth.”
    As my mom sipped more bourbon, Rudy leaned over and wrapped his arms around her. He might not have been handsome or smelled good, even so I’ll admit he sure seemed to care about her an awful lot. That gave Rudy a few points in my book.
    “This is unbelievable. Where did Billy say this happened, and when?”
    “Today. He said it happened this afternoon, in the ice cream truck. He said the woman had him take off his shirt, to supposedly cool it off in the freezer. Then evidently things escalated from there.” My mother stood up, began to pace in front of the porch. For an instant, when she glanced toward the living room window, I had to duck to make sure she wouldn’t spot me behind the curtain spying. “Billy said that it all basically started when Nancy Sutcliffe encouraged him to fondle her breasts. Can you imagine that? A grown woman asking a child to feel her fucking tits? How fucking desperate can you possibly be?”
    “Whoa!” said Rudy, cringing. “What are you going to do? Did you call the police?”
    “What good would that do? It’s his word against hers.”
    “Bridgette, you have to do something.”
    “I will.”
    “What do you plan to do?”
    “Well, for one thing, before I decide whether or not I’m going to contact child services, the child abuse hotline, or whoever you‘re supposed to call to report something like this, me and this pedophile Nancy Sutcliffe are going to have a long, long chat. Actually, after Billy told me she molested him, I called her.”
    “You did? What did she say?”
    “Naturally she denied that anything sexual took place. I kept pressing the issue. She didn’t want to hear it. Got pissed off and hung up on me. Cursed me out pretty bad.”
    The more I heard my mom gripe about this, the more I wished that I had kept what had happened a secret, as Nancy had strongly recommended. The weird thing is, I kind of liked what Nancy and me had done. I enjoyed touching her, how it had made me all tingly inside, and I liked it when she had touched me. The way she had tried to teach me about my body. That’s why I was so confused. Yet I knew what we had engaged in must have been thoroughly disgraceful, otherwise, my mom would not have been so livid, and the bad lady would not have been on her case so harshly.
    “Bridgette, this isn’t your fault.”

    “I know it isn‘t my fault.” My mother now wailed hysterically. “Except I never should have let Billy hang around with someone that I didn’t know that well. I‘m so ashamed of myself.”
    “Don’t beat yourself up,” Rudy tried to console. “No one in a million years would suspect that this sort of thing could take place.”
    “Maybe you’re right,” she agreed, using a crumpled piece of Kleenex to dab her weepy eyes. “The thing is if Nancy Sutcliffe was a man, I never would have permitted Billy to drive around with her. I would have exercised more caution.” She and Rudy hugged mightily, like a couple of doting panda bears.
    “Did this woman hurt Billy?”
    “Not physically, no. Psychologically yes . . . For Christ sakes, my son is ten-years old. What could that piece-of-shit whore possibly see in someone so young? He’s not even developed. He’s not even in puberty, for crying out loud!”
    “C’mon babe, calm down.” Rudy massaged her back.
    “How am I supposed to calm down? Someone like that pervert Nancy Sutcliffe should not have a job around children. She’s filth. She needs to stay as far away from kids as humanly possible. That‘s another thing I‘ll do, I‘ll get the sick bitch fired. She has no business catering to minors in fucking Good