Authors: T. Jefferson Parker
"Why didn't you
tell me sooner?"
"I was
ashamed."
"They are the ones who should be ashamed."
"They're not ashamed
of anything. That's why I've become so important to them. What could you have
done?"
"Done? I could have
helped the only blood I have left on earth. Why, the television, it says you
have no job, and no place to live in just a few weeks. And still, you don't
call or write me?"
Colesceau stepped back a
little and sighed. "Thanks for coming."
"How do you live
with that noise outsider
"It stops at nine."
"They would
crucify you if they had the courage."
"And the
hammers."
"Make me some tea.
I'm going to sit here where it's cool and think about this situation. There
must be a way we can overcome it."
Colesceau made the
tea. He brought it out to her.
Helena was watching
"Rape Watch: Irvine."
"Are you on the
TV all day?"
"They broadcast live
when I go outside for any reason. Or when someone visits. Yesterday, law
enforcement. Now you."
"What are they
saying about the children?"
"They're
demanding a safe neighborhood for them."
"But you love
children."
"True."
"And if you had
ever shown interest in a Romanian girl, she would have given children to you,
like I gave you to your father."
References to his
mother in childbirth disgusted him. His father was weak, womanly and
traitorous. Matamoros was ashamed to be sired by him. Which was why he had
taken his mother's maiden name when he came to the states. He tried to think of
something pleasant, always difficult in the presence of Helena. "You've
told me that a thousand times, Mother."
"Instead of the
French or Italian girls in Bucharest. Instead of the German girls in the
magazines. Instead of the American girls in California."
"I know your
opinions." Certainly, he did. She'd been opining about his prospective
mate for twenty years or so. Her words had always made him sad and edgy and
angry. At first it was because he didn't really understand them. Later, because
he knew she was right.
"You will never
attract an American woman like you desire."
"This isn't the
time to discuss it."
"It's the reason
for all that's happened. Your
own
type, Moras. Your
own
level. What is similar and harmonious. A hummingbird for a hummingbird. A sow
for a hog. Beautiful and educated American women for beautiful and educated
American men. For you, a simple Romanian peasant girl. Someone like me."
"You horrify me,
Mother," he said softly. "I love you, but you always have."
When she forced him to sleep in her bed after the
death of his father, Colesceau had begun to truly understand why his mother so
adamantly choked his desires for other women. He began to understand this while
he lay in her bed the very night his father was shot to death by the state
police, lay still and silent and in considerable pain as she sobbed and
worked the cooling herbal poultice over
the stitched fang holes that the attack dogs had left all over his body. Her
desire was easy for him to feel. It entered him through her fingers, arcing
down into him like electricity in slow motion. It never left. He could never
really make it leave.
Now, years later, he
considered killing her just to stop her damning words, but there was the money
she gave him, the rent she paid, the vehicles she financed for him, the savings
and checking accounts she helped him maintain, the lawyers and doctors she
hired and fired like maids.
"I believe I
have a solution for our immediate problems, Moros. You will move in with me.
We can transport you in a private way, and no one will know you are with me.
He just looked at her, the brown and broken teeth
rising from her gums.
"What do you think of that,
Moros?"
"No."
"Do you have a better
solution?"
"I'll be all
right here, Mother. I'll finish out my lease here, that's twenty-five days.
Then I'll find another place to live. It's not impossible. It's a free
country."
"Not for sexual perverts, it
isn't."
"I'm not a sexual pervert. And I'm not moving in
with you. I'm not going anywhere. This is my home."
"Then
I'll
move in here. And I will hear no
argument about that, if you expect to continue your allowances. No arguments
from you, Moros. But, more tea. And turn up the TV."
He picked up the remote
and pressed the button. As the "Volume" bar rose up one side of the
screen, hatred rose up in his heart. It was like water jumping to a boil. But
it was a soft, compromised hatred, not one that would ever spur him to action.
It frustrated him so much that he couldn't just shut her up and get it all over
with. Then start to rebuild his life from the ground up, clean slate, American
Dream and all that: no Depo-Provera, no shrill neighbors, no Helena to tell him
he should aspire only to women as ugly as her.
"Who is this
woman on the screen, Moros?"
He looked. "I
don't know."
His mother turned her
white round face toward him and Colesceau knew she was studying him through her
sunglasses.
"Yet she is a
neighbor?"
"You see her there,
staring at my front door—what else could she be?"
"You desire
her."
"No, not
really."
"They say her name is
Trudy Powers. You know her, don't you?"
"She's lived
here longer than I have."
Colesceau took
Helena's cup back to the kitchen, poured some fresh tea. What he hated most
about her was
the way she knew what he
was thinking when it came to women. She always knew the ones he'd like, ever
since he was just a boy. He looked out to the living room at her, his
black-shrouded harridan of a mother with the dictator's sunglasses, the
babushka and brown, broken teeth. His heart was pounding heavy and hard, like
an idling Harley. But his muscles felt loose and strong, better than they'd
felt in years.
Over one week without a hormone injection, he i
thought.
After three years of it you
don't need any more. And if you do, one more's not going to do you any good at
all.
Here I am, he thought, caught in another drastic
moment. But it felt like he was getting stronger every minute. !
Then the doorbell
rang. He looked to the TV screen to identify his new torment. He could feel the
soft hatred still inside, the swirl of it through his blood and nerves. But
instead of more cops, or reporters or something wretched like his mother, there
was something wonderful now standing on his porch, asking that her ring be
answered. She had her purse slung over her shoulder and something flat and
heavy in one hand.
Trudy rang the doorbell again and Colesceau smiled,
turning toward the entryway.
But Helena was
already there, swinging open the door. Colesceau looked past the black-shawled
shoulder of his mother to see the look of genuine fright on Trudy's face as she
smiled at Helena. Tried to smile, was more like it.
"May I come in for just a moment?"
"Only for just a moment."
"You must be Mrs. Colesceau. I absolutely love
the eggs you decorate."
Helena turned to look
back at him, and Colesceau knew she was trying to understand how Trudy Powers
knew about her eggs. Colesceau knew that behind the black plastic of her
sunglasses her little pig eyes were narrow, suspicious and uncertain.
She turned away from him
and back to Trudy Powers. "It is an art I have practiced for many years.
I've never felt worthy of its tradition."
"I'm no expert on the
tradition, Mrs. Colesceau, but the eggs are beautiful."
Colesceau smiled and bowed
to Trudy very slightly. In the afternoon light that came through the still-open
door Trudy Powers looked like a goddess. She was radiant, beautiful and filled
with power. The dust rising in the sunlight around her was gold. Her skin and
her hair and her thoughts were gold. Beside her, Helena seemed like one of
those black holes they always talked about on the Discovery Channel, a place of
hungry nothingness that ate solar systems like appetizers.
"Miss
Powers," he said, bowing again.
"I'm concerned that
they did the wrong thing in demonstrating at the Parole Board building today.
I'm really sorry they did that, and I advised them it was wrong. I apologize
for what they've done. I made you a pie."
Helena turned away and
waddled into the living room. Colesceau extended his arm toward the kitchen,
encouraging Trudy to go in ahead of him. She smiled on her way past him, a
nervous smile. "Can I set it here on the counter?"
"That's fine. It
was kind of you."
She put the pie on the
counter, then looked at him. She was nervous but she didn't back away. He could
tell it took resolve. But she seemed convinced that she was animated, or at
least endorsed, by a higher power than herself. God's little errand girl, he
thought, placating the evil monster.
"How nice to
have your mother here."
"Oh, very." Colesceau felt a
swirl of things just then: hatred, attraction, frustration, power. And a light,
fizzing sensation down in the fleshy end of himself.
"Mine died when
I was young."
"But you still
are young."
"I'm
thirty-four. You're just twenty-six, aren't you?"
"Miss Powers, I
feel a hundred. At least."
"After all
you've gone through, it's understandable."
"I've sinned.
But it was a long time ago. And I have hon- , ored the promise I made you. My
behavior has been excellent I in all ways."
Colesceau thought he
heard his mother grunt from the living room, but it could have just been the
TV, or the blood rushing against his eardrums.
"It's good you
can acknowledge your sins."
"It's easy when
they're as large as mine."
"Paul was the
great sinner, until his conversion. The farther you have fallen, the higher
you can rise."
He pursed his lips
and looked down. It was a look of contrition he'd practiced for years on
Holtz. "What's inside the pie?"
"Apples. Organic
apples. I hope you like apple pie."
"Oh,
powerfully."
"Mr.
Col...
Moros. I brought you something else.
I hope you don't think it's presumptuous or something, but I just thought, from
some of the things you've said, that you'd understand it."
"I understand
your kindness."
"It's about a
kindness far greater than my own."
She opened the flap
of the purse, leaving it over her shoulder. Out came the black book he fully
expected to see. He could see a sheet of folded paper marking a place about
halfway through. Trudy set the Bible on the counter next to the pie.
"It's yours to
keep."
"I feel it could
ignite in my hands."
"Don't
underestimate the power of forgiveness."
He stepped forward and set
his hand on the cover. He smiled at her, then looked down again.
"Well, I should
go. Maybe we can talk again."
"I would like
that very much."
She smiled—all of life and
goodness was contained in that smile—and hiked up the purse strap. He could see
her breasts move under the blouse. Soft and large, still fairly high. She
walked by him, then stopped behind Helena.
"Mrs. Colesceau,
it was nice to meet you."
"Moros does not need
the company of American women. You confuse him. You cost him his
testicles."
She pronounced it with a
long "e" at the end, so it sounded like a Greek philosopher. Testi
clese.
Colesceau winced. Even though
Trudy Powers knew what he had gone through, knew the rough outlines of it,
anyway, when his mother said that word it brought a fresh sense of shame to
him.
"God can give
them back," said Trudy.
"And he hates
apples."
"Then give the
pie to someone who doesn't."
Trudy looked at
Colesceau and walked out.
He read the note left in the Bible by Trudy Powers.
It was written in graceful, feminine script, with the eyes dotted by circles
that looked like happy balloons:
Dear
M
atamoros,
My husband and I will pray with
you any time you
need
God,
any time
of the day or night. Just call if you need us! We could meet at a chapel or
park or down at the ocean, allow you to get away from the crowd for a while.
Please do call. 555-1212.