by D. C. Brod
Making a sour face, she folded her menu and set it beside her. “Oh, just a little area in the garden. The way the wind whips through there, it’s a wonder anyone can keep a match going long enough to light up.”
I pictured those elderly women, standing around the garden, the edges of their coats flapping in the breeze, hands cupping matches to their cigarettes, and it was my turn to hide behind the menu.
Then my mother muttered, “With what I pay for that room, I should be able to smoke.”
I remembered the rule was if a resident was caught smoking in her room twice, she was out. And for a fleeting moment, I thought I had my out. If my mother was the reason she would have to move into a less appealing place—if she did it to herself—then I could shed a little of the guilt. But the moment that bubble surfaced, it burst, and I knew it was wrong. All wrong.
I lowered my menu and saw that she was sipping her coffee, which was pale with cream.
While she still hadn’t admitted that she did sneak a smoke, I conceded that I wasn’t expecting a mea culpa. I just wanted to make my point. Besides, she was going to have plenty to feel defensive about in just a few minutes.
We both stuck to neutral ground as we chatted. She told me about the lecture they’d had on migratory birds that would pass through northern Illinois in a month or so, and I told her about an article I was writing on a woman who collected kaleidoscopes. She told me she thought a woman in her forties shouldn’t be wearing her hair as long as I did; I told her that the rules had changed. Then she conceded that it wasn’t the length that bothered her so much as the fact that I often wore it in pony tail. It was easy, I told her, fully knowing she would next mention that if I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life alone, I needed to put more time into my appearance. She didn’t disappoint. But this time she added, “You’re not getting any younger, you know.” By the minute, I said to myself, almost looking forward to our imminent confrontation.
I waited until the waitress had delivered her stack of blueberry pancakes and rasher of bacon, then watched while my mother poured a generous quantity of syrup over the pile. I even let her take a couple of bites and commented on how good my scrambled eggs and dry wheat toast were.
I took a sip of the strong, hot coffee, set my mug on the edge of the red paper placemat, and said, “I need to talk to you about my biological father.”
Barely glancing in my direction, she dabbed a chunk of pancake in the syrup and thrust it into her mouth.
“Robert,” I added, then pressed on. “Maybe you could start by explaining why you told me he was a mailman who died in the line of duty.” I paused and waited for her to look at me. When she didn’t, I said. “Neither is true.”
She stopped chewing and glared at me, her jaw locked.
I pressed on. “And you were living in Cortez, Colorado, not Colorado Springs.”
Nailing me with her frostiest look, she said, “You were born in Colorado Springs.”
“You moved there from Cortez.”
Her hand trembled slightly as she picked up the mug of coffee and took a sip. I waited for her to return it to the table.
“Mom, I just want to know why you lied.”
She carefully chewed a bite and didn’t make eye contact with me until she’d washed it down with another swig of coffee. I was always a little surprised at how her watery blue eyes could harden and turn flinty.
“What difference could it possibly make?”
“He was my father.”
“You never knew him.”
“So?”
I’d already decided I wouldn’t tell her about the séance. And after my night of research, I didn’t think I needed to. “He was my father. Don’t I have the right to know?”
She just glared, and now the little muscles around her mouth were working.
“Didn’t you think I’d want to know?” I pressed.
“You never questioned me.”
“Why should I? You tell me my father was a mailman, why would I doubt you? Why would I think you were feeding me a lie?” I took a deep breath. And then another. If I lost it now, I’d regret it.
“What did he do,” I asked, “that made you think a lie would be better?”
“Who did you talk to?” she asked.
“I found your divorce papers in the box of stuff I’ve been keeping for you.”
She drew in a deep breath and released it slowly. “The one I asked you to throw away?”
“Don’t change the subject.” I hurried on. “You were divorced in Cortez. I wondered why I’d never heard you mention Cortez. Once I Googled Robert Guthrie in Cortez, I learned that you haven’t been very forthcoming about him. For one, he didn’t die there.”
Her mouth twisted into a bitter smile. “And what else do you think you know?”
The way she stepped on the word “think,” I knew she was angry. Probably more angry than upset at this point. Which was good, because once she started to make her little sobbing noises, I’d have to stop.
“Well, that woman you talked to yesterday...”
She drew back, and though some of the anger left her features, I couldn’t quite read what replaced it. “I won’t discuss that.”
“I need to, Mother. I need to talk to her.” Then I added, “And I will.”
“Well,” she broke off an end of crisp bacon and popped it into her mouth, “you’re going to have a hard time doing that without her name.”
“It’s Mary Waltner.”
Her eyes narrowed, and I could hear the bacon crunching in her mouth. “So,” she said, “now you’re spying on me.”
“No. All visitors to Dryden have to sign in.”
She glanced out the window, which was covered in fat raindrops. “She won’t tell you anything you want to hear.”
“Yeah, well, maybe it’s something I need to hear.”
She studied me for several moments, and I tried not to cringe under her glare. Then she dabbed her lips with her napkin, and set it beside her fork. She kept her hand on the cloth, gently kneading it. “I see,” she said, with a sigh.
“What do you see?”
“You didn’t take me to breakfast because you wanted to visit with your mother.” A brief, chilly smile was offset by her eyes, which had softened and turned moist. “You wanted to make me talk about things that are hard for me to talk about. I don’t have much of my life left, Robyn. We both know that. And I don’t want to spend it weeping over my past. I see too many of the women do it at that place.”
“Mom—” I put my hand on hers, but she snatched it away, then reached for her purse.
“I’d like to go now.”
“Come on, Mom. I’ll drop it.” For now. “You’ve hardly touched your pancakes.”
“I don’t have a taste for them anymore.” And her look added “thanks to you.”
She was slipping her arm into the sleeve of her sweater, and I knew there was no turning her around. I fished a twenty out of my wallet and dropped it on the table.
“I don’t want to go back there just yet.”
We’d been driving in a silence I was determined not to break.
“Where do you want to go?”
She didn’t speak for another minute, and then she said, “I’d like a cigarette.”
I glanced at her, but she kept looking forward.
“You know they’re bad for you. You’ve got COPD.”
After a moment, she said, “What does that stand for again?”
“Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease.”
She sniffed. “Fancy words.”
“For a long time there, you weren’t smoking at all. I thought you’d beaten it.”
She looked at me sharply, “I will choose what I want to beat, thank you.”
The light drizzle had intensified, and I moved the wipers up a notch. “I don’t want you getting sick again.”
With a sigh, she said, “Everyone has to die of something.”
I didn’t need to tell her that suf
focating in your own body had to be an awful way to go; she knew that.
“I miss them,” she said, as though she were talking about some friends who had moved away. “They calmed me.”
Another half mile down the road was a convenience store. I pulled into the lot.
“Virginia Slims, right?”
She nodded without looking at me.
When I got back to the car I was reeling from sticker shock and thinking if she were to keep this up, I’d have to add a couple thousand per annum onto the amount I needed to steal.
I settled into the driver’s seat and looked down at the beige and gold pack I held. My mother was watching me, expectant, but not willing to snatch them from me. “I hate these things,” I said.
“I know.” She sighed. “I do too. In a way.”
But there were days when I hated how much I needed a scotch.
“Some ground rules,” I said, and she nodded like an obedient school girl. “I keep them. You only smoke when you’re with me.” I waited for another nod. “If I hear you’re smoking at Dryden, it’s over.”
“Yes, Mother,” she answered.
“I’m serious.”
“I know.”
Neither of us spoke for several seconds. Then she said, quietly, but with some dignity, “I’d like one now.”
“I don’t want you smoking in my car.”
“I understand. If you’ll just drop me off in that park we just passed, I can sit on the bench.”
I gave her a look. The rain hadn’t let up. “We’ll go to my place.” It would be easier to air out than my car.
We drove the rest of the way in silence. I didn’t often bring her to my apartment. I guess I realized it was kind of a sad little place and figured she’d look at it and start telling me what I needed to add, when the truth was I really didn’t want to add anything except maybe more books.
Bix greeted us at the door, wiggling his little terrier butt. My mother scooted him out of the way with her cane. “Aren’t you an odd-looking creature?” she said in the way she did every time she saw Bix, then settled onto one end of the couch. Bix hopped up next to her, found no welcome, and retreated to the other end where he curled himself into a ball.
She regarded the dog, her lip practically curled in disgust, and said to me, “I can’t believe you let this animal on your furniture.”
“It doesn’t bother me a bit,” I said.
“Hmph.”
I dug the pack of cigarettes out of my purse and handed it to her, then went into the kitchen in search of some matches and an ash tray.
When I returned, she had the pack open and one of the long, slender cigarettes wedged between her first and second fingers. I set a small plate on the table next to the couch and handed her the matches.
“Thank you, Robyn.”
I nodded. “The cigarettes stay here.”
She shot me a look, then averted her eyes. “All right,” she said, as though resigned to gruel three times a day.
I opened the two windows behind the couch, then sat across from her in my purple reading chair and watched as she lit up, taking the smoke into her lungs like she was inhaling sweet mountain air. She held it in for a moment, then exhaled in a rush and coughed a couple of times. It was a thick, phlegmy sound, and I tried not to think about what it was doing to her lungs.
She swallowed and said, “You never smoked, did you?”
“No,” I told her.
“You were smart.”
I shrugged. “There are other vices.”
“Oh? You have some?” she said, her tone arch.
“None I’m telling you about.”
For the first time that day, we both smiled at the same time.
Then my mother glanced at her watch. “I suppose it’s too early for a little glass of Chablis.”
I kept my sigh on the inside, and when I stood, I said, “It’s five o’clock somewhere.”
She gave me an odd look. “Your father used to say that.”
“Wyman?”
She snorted a laugh, and a puff of smoke came out her nose. “Hardly.”
Silly me. Wyman didn’t smoke or drink but compensated by screwing the organist. “Yeah,” I said with a smile. “I should’ve known better.”
I returned with a glass for each of us.
“I thought you only drank red,” she said, reaching for her glass.
“It’s early.”
We sat in silence for several minutes, watching Bix, who had fallen asleep on his back with his skinny legs in the air. One paw was twitching.
I was sometimes amazed at how much of her distant past my mother remembered. Her short-term memory was on its way out, but she held onto the past like a jeweler unwilling to give up her most precious pieces. This was what I was counting on. I needed for her to share a few of those gems.
Finally, my mother said, “If Wyman had known about your father—what he was—he never would have married me.”
“Why didn’t you ever tell me about him?”
“You were three years old when I married Wy. How could I expect you to keep a secret like that? And then, well, it never came up.”
That was true. She had seldom spoken of my biological father. I never mentioned him in front of my stepfather, because Mom said it made him feel insecure.
“How did you learn this?” she asked.
I gave her a brief explanation of how I was able to access the Cortez, Colorado obits and found no records of a Robert Guthrie dying there at that time. “And then,” I said, “I found his name on a police report. He robbed a gas station.”
“Yes,” she nodded. “I remember.” She stared off in Bix’s direction.
“Did he do time?”
“Yes. He was sentenced to eight to ten years.”
“Is that when you divorced him?”
“Yes.”
I waited for her to continue, and when I began to wonder if she was going to, I prompted with: “Is he still alive?”
She was slow to focus on me, and when she finally did, she spoke as though not quite detached from a dream. “No. No, he isn’t. At least that’s what that woman told me.”
And then she told me what else Mary Waltner had to say.
CHAPTER 6
“You know, Wyman could certainly be a pain in the tutu, not to mention a philanderer, but he was a good provider.” My mother sighed. “He was also a very proper man.”
Yes, I thought, he may have been a self-righteous, philandering jerk, but he put up a great front. Too bad he hadn’t been able to cover his final set of tracks.
“If he had known about Robert—and Robert’s difficulties—I’m certain he never would have married me. And I needed to be married. For us.” She looked at me. “I wanted what was best for you.”
I nodded, noting the progression there.
She was silent for a long time, and I didn’t push it. As long as she stayed awake, I figured she could still be gathering her thoughts. Who knew where she had to go to do that.
Finally, her brows scrunched together as though this particular thought had been a painful extraction, she said, “He was a cruel man.”
I felt a chill snake its way up my spine. We Guthrie women had a way with these types. Forcing myself to concentrate on the here and now, I thought of how she’d never had a bad word to say about him before this. And even after my research the night before revealed that he had been an armed robber, well, I still thought he could be decent. I mean, here I was, trying to come up with a means and the wiles to steal thousands of dollars, and I considered myself a decent person. Nice, even. “My father?”
She looked at me slowly as her eyes focused. “Yes,” she said. “Robert.”
“In what way was he cruel?”
Tapping an ash from her cigarette, she took a sip of her wine, making a sour face before returning the glass to the cork coaster.
When she didn’t continue, I prodded with, “Why did Robert rob the gas station?” wondering if it was only abou
t the money.
She blinked and said, “He liked to scare people.”
The image I’d held in my mind all these years shifted a little more and darkened considerably.
“How do you mean?”
“Oh, you know... like a bully.” She nodded to herself and then looked up at me. “He was a bully.”
I tried to read the answer to my next question in her eyes so I wouldn’t have to ask it. From what I saw, she wanted me to keep my mouth shut. But I couldn’t.
“Was he abusive?”
Her lips pressed together and she closed her eyes. I thought she was going to cry and then remembered that she couldn’t. I knew I should go over there, scoot Bix off the couch and put my arm around my mother. But I couldn’t.
“I’ve forgotten so much,” she said, “so much of the good things— why do I have to remember that?”
“Bad things can make us strong.”
“Either it’s made me strong or it hasn’t,” she snapped. “I’d like to forget it now.”
I nodded. “Good point.”
“Thank you,” she said, as though my approval wasn’t at all necessary.
I knew my mother—or at least I thought I did—and I knew how to get her mind out of the sad places. Either make her laugh or make her angry. Just now I couldn’t think of a way to make her laugh. So, I said, “As bad as he was, why didn’t you think I should know about him?”
Faster than a sparrow’s blink, her head shot up and her mouth hardened. “What difference would it have made?” She went rigid with anger, one arm crossed tightly over her chest and the other holding up the cigarette like a flag. “It’s not as though you’ve got his blood in you.”
“Then whose blood do I have?” And don’t tell me I’m one hundred percent Lizzie.
She faltered, but then the hardness returned to her jaw. “That’s not what I meant, and you know it. I-I meant you’re not a violent person. You’re not a thief.”
My next breath caught in my throat. I swallowed and continued. “Didn’t he ever try to find me?”
“As far as I know he never tried to find either of us. Until now.” Her eyes locked onto mine. “You were better off, Robyn.”
When I didn’t respond, she added, “He never saw you.”