“Things rarely happen to me, even once.”
“So we’re a good fit.”
He touched the small of her back, felt the knuckles of her spine. He wondered if his mother had seen the broken glass before leaving, if she’d resisted knocking on his door because she didn’t want to spy Moira wrapped in the striped comforter she’d bought him in high school. She viewed Moira as a reckless, wayward flower child, and had probably deceived herself into thinking the car belonged to a neighbor.
A joke occurred to him: “Maybe my mother broke them.”
“To dissuade me from corrupting her son.” She slitted her eyes, smirked darkly. An hour earlier, as his mother washed dishes, Moira’d had to bite the edge of the blanket to muffle her moaning. Now, she held the hem of her T-shirt (his, actually), threatening to flash the traffic. She liked flashing people.
“We should turn her in.”
Looking at the street, Moira said, “The villain always returns to the scene of the crime.”
His mother’s Oldsmobile eased into the driveway. She cut the ignition (the engine cycled a second or two longer) and lowered the windows an inch. Then she opened the door, said hello and embraced Moira. Lee watched his mother’s eyes close, as if she were hearing adverse news; she didn’t look at him. He tried to determine if she’d been crying at the cemetery, or if it had been more of an angry morning, but he couldn’t tell.
Moira said, “Lee thinks you broke my windows.”
His mother eyed the damage, then smiled. She said, “Mama didn’t raise no fool son.”
They laughed, though Lee felt a rising commotion in his chest. After another glance at the shattered windows, his mother said, “Now, Mr. Detective, grab my groceries from the trunk.”
HE HAD SPENT CHRISTMAS DAY BESIDE THE HOSPITAL bed that crowded his mother’s small den. He’d adorned the bed’s guardrails with red tinsel, but she never noticed. The metastasis had claimed her mind months before, stripped her to a husk of body and voice; in October, she’d sobbed and cursed him because he refused to take her trick-or-treating. Now she mostly slept. When she woke Christmas afternoon, he spooned broth into her mouth and wiped her chin. She smiled, then submitted to a sponge bath. Always there was the suppressed, aching hope that such coherence—when she remembered his name or her own, when she spoke lucidly, or watched television and not the ceiling fan—signaled some improvement the oncologists could not predict. But when he tried to comb her hair, she screamed; she mistook the brush for a pistol.
A year before, they had driven three hours south and spent the holiday in the Rio Grande Valley and Mexico. They left early to avoid the afternoon heat—even in December, temperatures climb into the nineties. They dallied at rest areas and fruit stands, watched deer graze in the shade of mesquite trees. “Too bad we don’t have anything to feed them,” she said. Across the border, she bought half-priced leather purses and cartons of cigarettes, a sequined serape, and a Santa Claus–shaped piñata for a neighbor’s daughter. Farmacias anchored almost every corner, and she haggled with girls in dingy lab coats about the prices of muscle relaxers and Pro-crit. Lee trailed his fingers over the metal shelves where pill bottles were stacked in pyramids; the Spanish labels and dusty surfaces made him feel nervous, illicit. They ate dinner above the Canada Store and after the enchiladas, she drank margaritas—the best she’d ever tasted, she kept saying on the ride home. She was fifty-three. In a week she would start chemo.
“I wonder if it will hurt,” she said. “Or if I’ll just throw up.”
“The doctor said some people don’t even get sick. You could be one of those.”
She lowered her window, which meant she needed a cigarette. The scratch of her lighter, a flash of flame. He thought she might say something after blowing a breath of smoke into the night, but miles ticked by with only the sound of wind slicing around the car. The mucky air smelled of brine, like the Spanish moss draping the trees. Eventually the headlights started illuminating plastic grocery bags caught on barbed-wire fences.
“Those belonged to illegals,” his mother said. She flicked her cigarette outside and rolled up her window. “The bags keep their valuables dry when they cross the river.”
She reclined the seat, bent her elbow over her eyes. Though he hadn’t realized it was on, Lee could now hear the radio, the speakers whispering an old song, something by the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band. She said, “I wonder what they bring. What would you bring?”
Before he could answer—when he was still imagining the men and women and children fording the river—she said, “I know. You’d take pictures of your girlfriends. And one of Dad. Maybe some books, but they’d get heavy.”
“And you. I’d take a picture of you.”
She patted his thigh. “Merry Christmas.”
“Merry Christmas,” he said. He tried tuning the radio, but the reception had faded.
Then she was sitting up, saying, “Daddy was so smart, Lee. He told me about the illegals and their little bags.” She shook out another cigarette, lit it, and cranked down her window again. “I thought he was fooling me, lying in the yard like that. I’d brought him water, you know.”
He nodded. “I know.”
“He’d be so ashamed of me. I’ve made a mess of everything.”
“Don’t be silly, Mama,” he said. What he believed, though, was that his father would be disappointed, as he himself sometimes was. Since she had run screaming to his father’s body years before, she had quit jobs, stripped the walls of his pictures, abandoned her evening walks to sit in the den chain-smoking. Loss had become her religion; in her attempts to conceal her grief, she had worn it the way other women wore wedding rings.
Lee said, “We’ve had a fine day. You’re doing swell. I’m proud of you.”
“Leiland, I know what happens.” She paused to clear her throat, but started hacking hard enough to spill ashes onto the door panel. Her cough was wet and rattling; he cringed. He slowed the car and eased onto the shoulder, but she shook her head and waved him on.
After the spell passed, she said, “I know what happens. I’ll lose my hair and vomit and ruin your life. Then I’ll still die.”
“You’re not going to die, Mama,” he said. “You’ll beat this.”
She drew on her cigarette, then let a stream of smoke slip from the side of her mouth. Ahead, a line of cars was backed up at the Sarita checkpoint. The delay would add an hour to the drive, at least.
“Lee,” she said, “I don’t want to beat it.”
HIS MOST RECENT LOVER WAS A FLAXEN-HAIRED librarian in St. Louis, but the relationship had petered out before he returned to Corpus. When he’d bought his ticket a year before, he’d thought, sheepishly and irrationally, of seeing Moira. Then Russell explained about London, the job coordinating rehearsals. For months, Lee tried to shut out her presence, but even the glomming heat of the Coastal Bend seemed to share her scent. With Moira, he’d always felt his real life was waiting right around the corner and if he could just keep up, she’d lead him to it.
ON THE NIGHT OF THE FUNERAL, SHE TOOK A LIMO to Russell’s apartment—“Why take cabs? For ten dollars more you get a town car,” she said, then disappeared into the bathroom. Lee’d not seen her in five years. A discomposed feeling, almost like fervor, came over him as she showered, but when she emerged wearing baggy jeans and one of Russell’s button-downs, he was more relaxed. Moira’s hair dripped onto her shoulders, and she looked heavier than he’d remembered or imagined. And at once, just how often he’d imagined their reunion became clear. The scene had played out countless ways in his mind, yet sitting across from Moira at Russell’s table seemed unreal, a dream he couldn’t shake after waking. She dribbled the last of the wine into their glasses, and spoke of spending New Year’s Eve in a charter plane, flying over fireworks. She said, “They looked like a school of tiny fish or a giant octopus.”
“A starving octopus will eat his own heart,” Russell blurted. He waggled his glass in a mock toast, his eyes glassy, slow.
“I learned that in college.”
Moira said, “Russ? Sweetie? How much have you drunk today?”
“Not enough.”
“A gang of old women swiped his beer.”
“My New Year’s resolution,” Russell said, “is to never fly in a plane with octopi.”
Moira cackled, a laugh that started small then opened up and pushed against the dining room walls. Russell seemed unduly offended, so she offered a coy apology. Then she winked at Lee. He said, “My resolution is to find another bottle of wine.”
How odd, absurd really, to be looking for Chardonnay in Russell’s cabinets. After his father’s funeral, Lee had spent the night watching his mother sleep in his recliner, fearing she’d taken more Valium than she admitted. He woke her every two hours. The vigil gave substance, direction to the time. And since then, part of his identity had been attending to her, attempting, even when her health appeared solid, to raise her spirits and assuage her loneliness. He’d invented excuses to call from Missouri, bought airline tickets whenever the prices dropped, counseled her against books and films that might depress her. He couldn’t recall not worrying about her, couldn’t imagine not worrying in the future. Who was he if not a distant, overprotective son? In Russell’s kitchen, everything felt random and unmoored. The light seemed too grainy, the creak of the cupboard hinges too shrill. The wine was not where he remembered.
At the table, Moira was laughing again. “That’s ludicrous, Russell.”
“It’s true.” He smiled drowsily. “Lee, buddy, how tall are you?”
“Five-nine,” Lee said, though suddenly the answer seemed wrong, a random number he’d plucked from the ether. “Maybe a little shorter.”
Russell shrugged, saying, “Well, you look tall.”
“Anyway,” Moira said, “the short man only paid half price, maybe twenty American dollars. I got in free because I’m a woman, but most men paid forty bucks.”
Russell repeated, “Forty bucks,” chuckling. The alcohol was thickening his tongue, blotching his cheeks.
“What are we talking about?”
“She’s regaling us with stories!”
Moira continued, “There were red tube lights hanging from the ceiling, and each room had a sofa, leather or velvet. One had a Jacuzzi. But no doors anywhere. You just walked from room to room, stepping over them.” She paused. She glanced at Lee, then Russell, then Lee again. Water trickled in the rain gutter. She said, “People fucking everywhere.”
Russell slapped his knee. “Christ on the cross!”
Moira sipped her wine, swallowed quickly. Excitement brightened her eyes. She said, “Waitresses walked around selling chocolate and condoms. I tried not to stare, but that was silly because they want you to stare. People you never think of having sex. A deaf woman did sign language to the man on top of her.”
“And this place is legal?” Lee asked.
“Completely. It’s sleazy and fabulous. You feel—”
“Jesus, Moira,” Russell interrupted. He slouched forward, his expression blank. “You didn’t.”
She narrowed her eyes, then shifted to face the picture window. The night had turned the glass to a mirror and Lee saw her staring into the darkness. The rain fell heavier now. His mother’s plot would be soaked, the sod filling the hole turned to mud. Moira drew her leg up to sit on her calf.
“Of course not, Russell.”
They glared at each other for a moment, then Russell refilled his glass. Moira folded her napkin, aligned the edges and smoothed the creases. The heater cycled on.
When no one spoke, Lee asked, “How long can the octopus live without its heart?”
HE HAD BEEN IN THE FRONT ROOM, WAITING FOR the hospice worker to return to the phone, when his mother began calling his name from the den. He was still glum and frustrated from trying to get her to take her morning medication. She’d been feisty, opening and closing her mouth too quickly for him to place the capsule on her tongue, then once he succeeded, she refused to swallow; she smiled and spit the pill onto her nightgown. Eventually she’d cooperated and when she slept, he crept into the kitchen to arrange delivery of another oxygen canister. It was only October, but November’s supply was already exhausted. He’d been on hold for ten minutes, listening to elevator music in the receiver.
“Lee,” she called. Her voice was bright but diminished, a sliver of its old self. “Lee.”
“Just a minute,” he said.
She didn’t need help to the restroom; he’d taken her before her nap. Probably she needed another pack of cigarettes or wanted help lighting one she already had. Recently she’d started forgetting how to smoke. He found her puffing on straws and ballpoint pens, and because it did more good than harm, he left her alone. Withholding her cigarettes allowed him to believe she might live another day, another hour, just as staying on the phone rather than rushing to her side seemed reasonable.
The sound of her fall reminded him of something being dropped into sand. He burst down the hallway, then stopped short of the den’s threshold for fear of planting his foot on her body. She wasn’t there. His eyes scanned the den—the linen that needed changing, the flowers, the couch and television, her recliner, all of the sharp, hard corners that could hurt her. The room was empty.
Then he saw them; her oxygen tubes pulled taut from the machine, stretching through the sliding doors onto the sundeck. Everything stopped. Through the glass, he saw her feet and legs, hopelessly tangled in the tubing. The sun shone bright on her body, illuminating pale, dry thighs. Her left hand still clutched her nightgown; he pictured her inching toward the deck, holding the hem above her ankles so she wouldn’t stumble. A cigarette and her lighter lay a few feet away. His heart flattened: blood. It saturated a lock of her hair and dripped down to collect in a spreading, syrupy puddle. She was not crying or speaking or doing anything at all; her eyes were locked on the potted azalea in front of her.
“Mama,” he said, trying to calm the panic in his voice. “Mama, are you okay?”
When she didn’t answer, he thought, This is how it happened, this is where you found her. Months before, they had come onto the sundeck when her hair started falling out, and he shaved her head, first with clippers, then a razor. She had said she felt like a recruit going to boot camp.
“Mama,” he said. “Mama, it’s Lee.”
She blinked, then blinked again, and smacked her lips, as if just waking. He exhaled. The world resumed its motion. She smiled and lifted her dull, wet eyes to him.
She said, “Trick or treat.”
ON THE NIGHT OF THE FUNERAL, LEE DECIDED TO sleep at home. Moira drove him because she wanted to pick up a pint of ice cream. She sped through the slick streets, riffling through a box of cassettes with one hand. They could’ve been years in the past, stealing away from Russell to find a bar or camp on Bird Island, or to skip everything and go straight to bed. The familiarity relieved and vexed him. There was a tingling along his nerves, a building anticipation, as if she were driving him into an undiscovered country. Along Ocean Drive, the bay looked like petroleum and the sprawling homes were still strung with Christmas lights. Luminarias lit one sidewalk; Moira had once told him how she used to kick them over on Christmas Eve.
She tossed the cassettes in the backseat. She’d found nothing. “Who needs a sound track?”
“Not us,” he said.
They stopped at a traffic signal. The glow of the red light tinted Moira’s face. She said, “Actually, I fucked a man in Amsterdam. At that swingers’ club. Was that obvious at the table?”
“No,” he said. He blew into his hands. The engine idled, a loose screw vibrated in the dash. He expected the signal to turn green, but it didn’t, and he saw her under the tube lights, under the faceless man. “No, you fooled us.”
She nodded distractedly. The light stayed red, but the road was abandoned and after a moment, she accelerated through the intersection.
“I didn’t intend to,” she said. “He just had such, I don’t know, ce
rtainty. Mostly I remember his skin tasting metallic; he probably worked with steel. Not really my type, but who knows, maybe we loved each other for a few minutes.”
“We would have to know what love is to know that,” Lee said. The words sounded confident and mysterious, even romantic, which he liked, though he’d never considered them before. He spoke differently around Moira, always had.
She parked behind his mother’s Olds and cut the ignition. The headlights stayed beaming on the bumper and a single streetlamp distinguished the small houses of the neighborhood. She said, “You’re sure you don’t want ice cream?”
“I’m fine.” After saying this, he wondered why he’d answered that way.
Rain drummed on the hood, streaked and pilled the windows. As he reached for the door, she said, “It must have been a nightmare.”
For days, those words had hovered in conversations but no one had said them straight out. They made him feel caught in a lie. Moira bit her lip. In the dimness, she looked forlorn and exhausted, years older than she was. He felt sorry for her and suddenly longed to console her. He almost admitted that every time he’d seen his mother’s car since her death, and even when she was still breathing but dull-eyed and relegated to the hospital bed, the words She’s home scrolled through his mind. He heard them, even envisioned the letters, and his heart stuttered. The words had come when he came from Russell’s to dress for the funeral, when they had returned to the house afterward. She’s home. She’s home. He considered telling Moira that the words had come just moments earlier when she steered into the driveway and killed the engine.
He said nothing. If he’d spoken, he would have wept, and leaning across the seat, he realized weeping terrified him. Moira no longer reeked of incense, but he smelled her perfume, maybe the same musky scent a woman had worn that morning, maybe one his mother had stocked when she sold Avon. At first her mouth stayed tight, and for an extended, desperate moment he feared she would recoil and push him away. But soon she touched his face and let him taste the wine on her tongue, let him breathe her warm breath. She moaned, a soft whimpering that made him self-conscious, like a teenager worried his parents were spying through a window; the moaning exhilarated him, too. Moira’s jacket rustled when he pulled her closer. He pressed his face to her neck; he inhaled her. He listened to her breathing, to her voice saying, Take me inside; he listened to the cars on the road, to their tires hissing like fireworks before they explode into light.
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