April North by Lawrence Block Page A

what you said, how you wanted to talk to me about something you heard about Craig.”
    “I don’t know that you should have told him, April.”
    “It was the right thing. Because he sat me down and he told me all about himself, Mom. It was quite a story.”
    “Oh?”
    “He used to be very wild,” she went on, inventing brilliantly, “when he was just a boy. Oh, you know how it is—his parents were rich and I guess they spoiled him something awful. He always had everything he wanted and he went to exclusive prep schools and he ran around with a wild crowd.”
    “That’s what I heard.”
    “That was because he didn’t have any responsibility,” April went on. “He was rich and he didn’t have to work and he was wild. But then his parents died. It was very sudden and all at once he was all alone.”
    “How dreadful!”
    “I guess the shock made him settle down. All at once he was all alone in the world, with no one to love him or take care of him, and he saw that his past life was wrong and that he couldn’t live that way any more.”
    “The poor boy.”
    She went on, elaborating on Craig’s reformation, telling how he had joined the church again, and how he was serious and sincere, how he was a prince among men. As she talked, she watched the play of expressions across her mother’s face. It was obvious that she was swallowing every last word.
    Which, April thought, was fine. She felt pleased with herself. She was lying magnificently, playing to her mother skillfully, working every gambit in the book. Her mother’s weak points were church and family, and these points played predominant roles in April’s story.
    “He told me he wouldn’t have had anything to do with me before,” she finished up. “Because he knows I’m a good girl from a good family, and that wasn’t the sort of girl he was interested in before—before his parents died. He wanted wild girls then. Girls who would— well, you know.”
    “Of course, dear.”
    “But now he needs a girl he can respect. And he respects me, Mother.”
    Mrs. North beamed. “He well might,” she said. “You’re a girl deserving of respect.”
    “Well, I come from a good family. And I know the difference between right and wrong.”
    Mrs. North beamed more brightly. These were the key words, April thought. God, she should be an actress.
    She finished and waited. Her mother sat silent for a moment or two, her head bobbing in thought. At last she raised her eyes.
    “April,” she said, “I’ll tell you something, my dear. Quite often we tend to judge men and women differently, and this is as it ought to be. A man is different, April. A man is born with a certain amount of wanderlust in him, and a man often has to let loose and run free as the wind. A woman cannot do this. A woman must stay pure for the man she will someday marry.”
    “I know, Mother.”
    “But a man may sow wild oats, April. And I’d be the last to say that it’s better for a man to hold himself in during his youth. Perhaps it’s better for him to sow those wild oats then. The minister might not agree with me—”
    “I know.”
    “—but you see what I mean. For if a man sows his wild oats in his young days, he can get these improper desires out of his system. He can settle down. He knows what is right and what is wrong, and he knows the taste of forbidden fruit is not all it’s cracked up to be. So he learns to live life as it should be lived. Otherwise a man may run wild after marriage, and if that happens, may the Lord help his poor wife.”
    She felt like saying something about her own father, who had quite obviously never gotten around to sowing wild oats. But she stayed silent
    “Your Craig,” her mother said. “Now there’s a boy who ran wild when he was young and who grew out of this wildness into something good and gentle and upstanding. A boy like that could make a good husband, April. A husband you’d never need to worry about.”
    Later, when her mother left