Free Rainbow's End by James M. Cain Page A

out? Know what I want? Something to eat. I’m hungry. How about you?”
    â€œYou mean, you’re cooking my supper?”
    It had an intimate sound, but anything to get to something different from what we’d been talking. “That’s right.”
    â€œDave, you’re so sweet.”
    The peas and the salad were part of what had been brought by the neighbors that day. The chicken was from a package of legs already cut, that I’d picked up in market the day before. The pie and ice cream I kept on hand all the time. Whether she took my making her supper as meaning something romantic, that I can’t say, but the way she let down her hair, sitting there at the table with the torn dress twisted around seemed to say that she thought I’d changed now that I knew our relation was different from what I’d thought and that I was willing to make a fresh start. That’s not how it was with me. All I wanted was something to eat and a change of subject while I thought over all I’d heard. My head wasn’t spinning around, but it was turning and turning and turning as I tried to get used to it—that Aunt Myra was really my mother and that some guy who wasn’t yet named, some big wheel by the way he’d acted about me, was my father. She puttered around while I was washing up, grabbing a cloth and wiping the dishes, always taking care to show more than the law allowed. When we went in the living room she tried to sit in my lap. I turned on the TV and got the 11 o’clock-news. At last I said I was tired, and how about going to bed? She hemmed and stuttered but at last went to her room after telling me good night.
    I went to bed and was at last alone in the dark with what I’d been told. It may seem funny, but little by little things cleared. I found I didn’t mind that Aunt Myra was my mother—on account of her big black eyes, the way she doted on me, and the way I doted on her. But the rest of it—who my father might be—was just a great big ache, a hollow place in the dark I had to find out about. I was still thinking about it, or imagined I was anyway, not knowing I’d fallen asleep, when I moved and touched something in the bed. A hand was laid on me and a low whisper came. I must have jumped. “Don’t be scared, Dave. It’s me, Mom.”
    I felt around. She was there, beside me under the covers, without a stitch on. I jumped up, or tried to jump up, but she grabbed me and held me close, still whispering: “I don’t bite! You don’t have to be afraid! Hold me close and love me! It’s all right! It’s nature!”
    â€œIt’s not all right. Get out!”
    â€œNo! No! Please!”
    â€œMom, I said get out! No such thing can happen between us!”
    â€œBut it can between you and that girl?”
    â€œLeave her out of it, please.”
    â€œI won’t leave her out of it, no such. We were happy—before she came—just the two of us, talking about how nice we would have it when our little dreams came true. I knew all the time that my secret, the one I told you tonight, would make it all right, what we wanted to do and what you had to do! Don’t you know that I had caught on to what you were going through? What a man your age goes through? What he needs from a woman? Don’t you know that I was willing? To give you all you wanted and more? You wanted it too, from me—oh yes you did. I could tell. Then she had to butt in. I hate her, I hate her, I hate her ! Why did you take up with her? Why—?”
    â€œI didn’t take up with her.”
    â€œOK, you didn’t. So now it’s my turn, right now!”
    â€œI tell you, no!”
    â€œYes, yes. Here, let me—”
    I think there was more. The way I remember it, we wrestled and fought a long time, naked there in the blankets, me getting a startled idea of how young she really was, and soft and stacked. Finally I