Monday's Lie (25 page)

“You sure you've had enough to eat?” he asked, forking in the last bite of his omelet. “You should take advantage. I'm a stingy bastard. I almost never buy.”

“I'm fine. Thank you.” I finally took the memory stick from where it had been burning a hole in my concentration. “And thank you for this.”

“You're welcome. I hope you—
enjoy
isn't the right word, is it? I hope it's a good thing. I hope it does something positive for you.”

“I should get back.” I stood up and offered my hand.

His palm slid over mine, a solid, earnest clasping. “I guess I'll see you around,” he said.

“Do you think that's going to be necessary?”

A brief, wounded look rippled through his expression. “No, probably not.”

My throat clenched, locking out the next breath. “Well then, take care.” I meant it more than the generic crumb of etiquette that it was. But it rang flat from a voice that wouldn't cooperate, that didn't admit to being hurt over hurting him.

“You, too,” he said.

The jump drive was warm in my hand, or more likely in my imagination.

Brian called out to me after a few steps, “And, Dee, maybe think a little kindlier of me after you listen to that?”

But I was still angry, and Brian Menary, in everything from his curly-topped height to his globe-trotting loafers, put a name and face to the all that seeded my acre of discontent. I came back to within whispering distance. “After listening to a conversation with my dying mother that you snuck into my house and taped without my knowledge?” I squinted at him. “Yeah, I'll try.”

•  •  •

The trick of breathing while not giving over to crying was a painful struggle with the knot in my throat. I shut my office door and plugged the drive into my computer. The player launched and my mother leapt from the little speakers. She'd said plenty of words in her lifetime that I'd never heard, told a thousand stories I didn't know, but none at all for more than three years. I thought I'd never again hear her say something new.

This time machine took me back to the weeks when my heart was broken in a series, a run of healing over and then recracking each time I entered her room. Every day, she was weaker than the last, wavering, flickering. She wasn't going pale as much as she was lightening. She glowed with a terrible cold radiance in those last weeks, before the very end, as if her spirit would outpace the cancer and burn right through her. But at least she was still there.

Patrick was still there, too. I suppose that had been the best of us, such as it was when we were still holding out hope for our life together. It was the end of the middle, the last of the time we fed and watered the expectation that the other person would eventually become what we'd paid for with our youth and with our stubborn oaths.

And there she was—

. . . and those maniacs on two beat-up scooters, racing down the road, wrestling over that duffel with nothing in it but Pritchett's laundry.
My mother laughed here, a rougher version of the harp-string sweep she'd had in health. Her laugh was possibly the most beautiful thing about her. On the surface it honored whatever was funny, but it was layered with wisdom, secret knowledge, and unknown connotations that made you want to pin her down and force her to tell you everything, to hold her captive until you understood the entire trill of it. As if you ever could.
Honestly, that no one died was almost a shame. A stunt that stupid should end in flames and flag-draped coffins.

Brian laughed here. It was a jolt to hear and recognize it. It's not like our last conversations had been bubbling over with comedy.

Is Paul going to listen to these?
she asked.

I don't know. I kind of doubt it. They're only going to run transcripts and just put them in at the end of the file
.

“End of the file.” I like that for a euphemism.

Oh, God! That sounded terrible! I—

My mother burst out laughing again.
It's fine. It's fine. I was trying to be funny. I'm so sorry. Please don't worry about it. Here's something for them to translate, just for Paul, from me to him, here at the end of the file.

Presumably she shot the bird or made some other rude gesture, because Brian belted out another laugh.

But seriously, Brian, I want you to steer them away from Dee.
I startled, a reflex at hearing my name in her voice again.
Make them leave her alone. She hates this stuff. She always has. She's trying so hard to have a normal life. Trying even too hard, maybe. But she'll figure that out. I don't know that she ever quite got over me leaving for so long when she was a teenager. I don't know that I ever got over it either. It was terrible timing on top of just being a terrible thing in general. Hey! That was the first time we met, you and I.

Indeed it was,
said Brian.
Not sure I ever got over that night myself. Talk about trial by fire, man.

You were just a baby. Oh, God, the look on your face. You seemed barely older than Dee that night.

A different caliber of laughter from them both. Grimmer, and complicated with images they shared that I couldn't imagine.

My mother took up the thread again.
And I guess this will be the last time we meet, eh?

I guess so. Is it corny if I say it's been a privilege?

Very corny, but don't let that stop you
.

Well, it's been a privilege.

Thank you. And as such, you owe me, right?

Uh-oh. Let me get my wallet.

I just want this one favor. Remember me. And when you do, ease him away from my daughter. Distract him if and when it comes up again. I know it amuses Paul no end to imagine a stable full of Vesses at his command. He wants to know what I've put into their heads. He thinks he needs to control everything. He worries too much, but there's no telling him that. I'm used to it. I just can't stand the thought of him bending her, convincing her. She's so capable. She's so beautiful. She should be freer than me.

Some muffled rustling.

Brian said,
I'll be handling all the follow-up anyway. I'll see to it. No big deal. There's not that much more to cover. Or should I say not too long to cover it? He's got to retire soon, right?

Please tell me you're not pointing out that I should have outlived Paul Rowland?

They both laughed on the recording and I seethed with a jolt of envy. My house. My mother. My benediction.

My mother sounded suddenly very tired.
It's funny, it seems you're supposed to have these aspirations for your children. You're almost an absentee parent if you don't try to put down a rail for them to ride, but from the moment she took her very first step, all I ever wanted to see was what she wanted to do. It fascinated me. It didn't matter what it was, only that it was what she chose next.

I like that,
Brian said.

Me, too.
So get between them, if and when you can, Brian.

I will. You know I will.

Rustling . . .

Brian speaks again.
Okay, just one more set of questions on Cordriss and
—

The recording cuts out.

At home, Patrick asked me if I was feeling okay. I said I was. It was true if only in the sense that I had a pulse and my cholesterol was within the recommended guidelines. He suggested we go out for dinner. That was fine with me.

“You're just having soup?” he asked.

“I'm probably not even having that. I'm not really very hungry.”

But I ended up eating all of it.

•  •  •

My mother lost her ring finger for love. She'd always said it was a gardening accident, but on the day she died, she told me the rest of the story. I had just been in to give her a dose of morphine.

“Leave the bottle, Plucky.”

“What?”

She reached for me with her damaged hand, looking for all the world as if it were covered in gray paper. Her luminescence had receded in what felt like just a few hours. “It's time.”

“No.” I shook my head. “You haven't even complained once. You're just having a bad day. Come on. Hang in there. Give this dose a chance to work and get some rest. It can't be that far yet.”

She was still her, if only in her flashing eyes. The whites of them had gone yellow days earlier, but their beam was just as spearing as it ever had been. “And since when am I defined by what I choose
not
to say?”

“Since forever.” I slumped next to her on the bed and finally took her proffered hand. I ran my index finger over the vacant knuckle ridges.

She flattened my hand next to hers on the bedspread. “I'm so used to it, it doesn't even look strange to me anymore.”

“Me neither.”

She told a version of the jailhouse brawl, and as it always did, it turned me eleven years old again, close to her and stoked proud to be sanctioned ready for a story, ready for a trust, even if the names had been changed to protect the innocent and the not so innocent. Or maybe they hadn't been. I'd never know. But now I knew that those parts didn't matter. They never had.

She touched the next knuckle. “And then my wedding band got caught up in the tiller blade.”

“No, Mom, you lost that finger before I was born.”

“I was married once before you were born.”

“Huh? When was this? You said it was gardening.”

“It was. Sort of. And like I said, this was all before you were born.” She waved away the details. “It wasn't even in this country.”

I propped up on my elbow. “What? Well, where was it? Who was this guy?”

She sighed. “Oh, Plucky, it's a long story and I don't have the energy. It was another life. Not a very good one, really, except for Ramon. I quit my work for a little while and we bought a farm.”

“You on a farm?”

“Me in suburbia? Me in heaven? I'm me wherever I go, aren't I?”

I couldn't disagree. “Go on.”

“There was an accident. One of the hired men started up this rattletrap old tiller we had, but he didn't look first to make sure that my husband was clear of it. He wasn't. He'd stumbled. I was coming across the field when it happened. When I got there, they were cursing and screaming at each other, but not getting very far by way of stopping the tiller from chewing right through his leg. He was bleeding all over everything. They finally stopped the blades, but by then, my man and the machine were more or less all one thing. We realized we were going to have to reverse the blades before we could pull him out.”

She stopped, winded. The rest of the story slipped out on a whisper, fast and pained. It was the first time she'd let me see how much it had worn through her reserves.

“So the hired man set the switch and eased the power back on, and I reached in to pull Ramon free. One of the blades nicked my finger and almost glanced off, but it snagged on the edge of the wedding band. It happened so fast. The next blade came behind it and took the finger clean off.”

“What happened to Ramon? What happened to the farm?”

“Ramon never even made it to the hospital. We got him into the truck, but he bled to death before we got to the main road. I cried for almost a year, then sold the farm, and came back to work for Paul again.”

“That's awful.”

“Yes. It was. But that's life sometimes, Dee. There's so much of everything if you last long enough. Some of it's lousy.” She stroked my face. “But so much of it is amazing.” She'd thrown a stone into my well, too. She studied my face to get a fix on my depth, but whatever echoed back only caused her to sigh and pat my hand. “You're going to want to have some stories to tell.” She smiled and closed her eyes.

So my mother had run for normal once, too. An off-the-main-road kind of normal even, with trucks and farmhands and tools, and Andrew Wyeth–style fields. Yet in the end, she went back to Paul and his coded directives. I would never have existed if she hadn't. She made a way for us, Simon and me, even without the usual brand of normal.

She'd had both kinds of life in multiple measures. More life, but never more than she could handle.

We were quiet for so long, I thought she'd fallen asleep. I was glad of it, stupidly hoping that a nap would let her feel better for a little while, that morphine dreams would distract her from her pain and delay the inevitable. Just for another day. Maybe two.

“Why don't you go out for a while? It'll be fine. Go get some air . . . maybe run some errands,” she said with her eyes still closed.

“I want to stay.”

She thought about it for a moment. “I'd like that. Put on some music for us, Plucky. Turn it up loud.”

O
nce
upon a time, there was a sandwich. . . .
Simon's text came in while I waited on Wednesday morning in the sticky-floored lounge of the auto-service center. His message interrupted me from sipping again from a cup of brown water purported to be coffee. It tasted awful, but I was restless and stubborn to pin down what was wrong with it. Ultimately, I was skeptical that they had used the right kind of beans. I tried to suss it out with tiny little tastes. Pinto beans maybe. Or limas. With food coloring dripped in to cover the mistake.

Can't,
I typed.
The car died. I'm at the repair shop now
.

How about after work? Need to talk.
His reply came so fast, I hadn't even set down my phone.

Ok. Quick one.

Earliest?

4?

Cool. See u there.