by Joan Opyr
“The point, Ma,” I paused and looked her in the eye, “is that she’s right. Sam needs to be making these decisions for himself.”
She opened her mouth to object, but I cut her off. “When he got sick, he was still a teenager. You had to make his decisions for him back then. It’s different now. I’m sure he still wants you there, but he needs—he deserves—the dignity of being treated like an adult.”
“You know he’s going to die, don’t you?”
I shrugged, looking away.
“You need to prepare yourself.” Her voice was quieter now, though her tone was still strident.
“No, I don’t,” I said at last, and I was surprised to hear that my voice was firm and steady. “Ever since Sam’s relapse, you’ve been telling me that I need to get ready, that I need to make my mind up to the fact that he’s going to die. Well, Emma, he’s not dead yet. There are no guarantees—any one of us could get run down by a bus tomorrow. You’ve got to stop throwing dirt in his face.”
I stepped out of the elevator and headed down the hallway to the cafeteria. I didn’t look back to see if Emma was behind me or not. I bought a cup of coffee from one of the vending machines and sat down at a table near the back door. My mother sat down and lit a cigarette.
“No smoking,” I said automatically.
“I don’t give a rat’s ass. Besides, we’re the only ones down here.”
We sat in silence until the ash on her cigarette was over an inch long.
“I’m not throwing dirt in his face,” she said. “I’m just—it’s hard to explain. I made my mind up five years ago that I’d fight like hell to keep him alive, but I need to make sure that I won’t have any regrets. I’ve got to do everything I can for him, however crazy it seems to the rest of you.”
I reached across and took her hand. After staring at our hands for a second or two, she patted mine. She stubbed her cigarette out in the nearly empty coffee cup and leaned back in her chair.
“He’s a grown man, Ma. Just because he acts like a teenager doesn’t mean we should treat him like one.”
“Sometimes,” she said, “you sound just like your father.”
Back upstairs, Sam was sitting up in bed, drinking his second liter of potassium. He looked completely disgusted. The Six Million Dollar Man was back, and Steve Austin was ripping the plastic face off an OSI secretary to reveal an evil Fembot. I resumed my perch on the windowsill.
“Did I miss anything?”
“I don’t know. I just turned it back on.”
I pointed at his cup. “Does that taste bad or what?”
He nodded. “Like shit, but it beats having it pumped up your ass as an enema.”
I made a mental note to congratulate Dr. Trilby.
“Let me get this straight,” I said, for maybe the fifth time. “We know that Burt Wood was killed by tropanic poisoning.”
My mother bent her head to light a cigarette. “Basically. The seeds he ate . . .”
“Or was fed,” I interrupted, stabbing a fork into my pancakes. “Are you sure you don’t want anything to eat?”
Emma shook her head. “Just nicotine for me.”
It was five a.m., and we were sitting in the House of Pancakes. Hugh had gone home, and Dr. Trilby had thrown us out of the ER so that Sam could rest undisturbed. Emma and I were both wide-awake. It was clear that Sam’s lymphoma had reached some sort of apex, and the next couple of weeks would be critical. For now, at least, Sam was out of immediate danger.
“So the seeds Burt ate,” Emma continued, “or was fed, contained tropane alkaloids. Highly toxic. All the cops found in your brother’s urine was evidence of THC, but that was enough for a warrant. They searched the house Monday afternoon.”
“My bedroom too?”
She nodded. “I’m afraid so.”
I thought about the more questionable reading material I kept in a box under my bed and inwardly winced.
“Your brother began vomiting sometime after you left yesterday morning and kept it up non-stop for most of the day. The sheriff’s deputies showed up at three, and I had to juggle taking care of your brother with seeing to it that they didn’t rip the place apart.”
“Did they find anything?”
“Of course.”
“Oh, Jesus. What are you going to do?” I had visions of the Drug Enforcement Agency bankrupting my parents and seizing the family homestead.
“Nothing,” she said. I raised my eyebrows at this, and she smiled. “Your brother has a corrupt supplier. There were no psilocybin mushrooms in his stash. For future reference, by the way, psilocybin is the technical term. No one calls them magic mushrooms anymore. Anyhow, it turns out they were dried shiitakes, just like you said.”
“You didn’t destroy that bag?” I asked, aghast.
“Of course I did. Your brother had another bag. It was in the bottom of his closet, stuffed into the toe of an old sneaker. Originally there might have been one or two of the real thing mixed in, but I doubt it. I think it’s a case of your brother having the intent, if not the connections. He’s in trouble for the THC, but since he’s a cancer patient, I don’t think they’ll pursue it. As for the rest, Campbell and Young were fishing. They’ve got an inconvenient death on their hands, and the law in this town has been looking for something good to pin on your brother. He is, as Campbell says, a corrupting influence on younger people.”
“Meaning Francie? Don’t make me laugh. When did you talk to Campbell?”
“In between vomiting bouts. I think it was about six-thirty. I called to read her the riot act. That’s when I learned that the deputies had taken those mushrooms to a horticulturist who took one look and laughed in their faces. Campbell hasn’t given up entirely; she’s going to pressure your brother to name his source.”
“For shiitakes? Try Safeway.”
“You’re forgetting about his urine test. She wants to know where Sam got the pot.”
I poured more syrup on my pancakes. “Do you think he’ll spill the beans?”
“Your brother turn nark? Not a chance.”
“Your familiarity with the language of the street is terrifying. If I were you, I’d start encouraging Sam to cooperate. It might help get him out of this mess.”
“You think so? I’ll have you know that Campbell suggested that your brother is the tip of a massive drug underground.”
“Oh, come on. Cowslip doesn’t have an underground. There’s always been a stoner population, just like there have always been farmers and Republicans. Everyone knows who they are. Sam’s been a pothead since junior high.”
My mother rolled her eyes and toked on her cigarette. “You exaggerate. Everyone tries pot a time or two; it’s a rite of passage. Your brother wasn’t a serious user until his diagnosis.” She inhaled deeply and then blew the smoke out of the side of her mouth. My mother is under the impression that if she doesn’t exhale directly in your face, then you’re not breathing second-hand smoke.
I shook my head sadly and said, “You live in a dream world, Emma,” though it was clear that she was no longer paying attention.
Disease doesn’t exist in a vacuum; its effects radiate outwards. Cancer grows, changes, weakens or gets stronger while its host goes on about his business. Every time Sam was in the ER, I expected the world to grind to a halt, but it never did. The cancer pursued its course, the Lewis County sheriffs pursued theirs, and Sam endured. In some ways, he even prospered. In the ordinary course of events, he was a petty criminal, but sometimes it seemed as if non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma had transformed him into someone else, someone brave and death-defying. I often felt a strange kind of admiration for him.
My pancakes had been rendered inedible, so I pushed the plate away. I also traded my ash-covered mug for a fresh cup from another table. “So the only thing they found in his bedroom were the dried mushrooms? No pot?”
She shook her head.
“It’s a good thing you had Bucky’s Salvage haul those wrecks out of our yard before they
had a chance to search them.”
“You don’t think . . .”
“He spent a lot of time out there working on those cars, but they never seemed to look any better, did they?” She had nothing to say to this. Just for the record, I asked, “How bad was his score on the urine test?”
She stubbed out her cigarette. “Well, they measure THC in parts per million. Judging from your brother’s parts, he was smoking a joint in the squad car.”
“Smoking . . .”
“He says eating, actually. When he heard the sirens, he stuffed everything he had into his mouth, chewed it up and swallowed it. He says he ate at least a quarter bag of stems and pieces.”
“Don’t you mean leaves?”
“No, I mean the stems, the buds, and the dregs of a stash. He and Francie took care of the leaves some time ago. They were saving the buds for a special occasion.”
Emma opened a new pack of menthols.
“It’s a stretch,” I said, “but maybe a good lawyer could get him off.”
“With his record?”
“Okay, maybe they could send him to some sort of twelve-step program.”
Emma laughed harshly. “It doesn’t matter anyway because your brother is going to jail. To jail or to his grave or maybe both. It’s like that game, the lady or the tiger, only he’s got two tigers.”
What could I say? It didn’t seem to matter anymore that he’d made one of the tigers himself. He was out of choices, and I wanted to help him. “What can we do?”
“Do you suppose Bucky has crushed those cars?” my mother asked. “God knows they weren’t worth saving for parts. The Buick didn’t have any wheels, and the Impala didn’t have an engine.”
I thought for a moment and said, “If they’re smart enough to think of the cars, I’ll just say that anything they find is mine. I don’t have a record, so the most that could happen is I’d get a weekend in jail or some community service.”
Emma closed her eyes and rested her forehead on her fingertips. Smoke curled up from her cigarette and wound its way to the ceiling. When she finally looked up again, I was surprised to see that she was smiling. “I am obsessive, aren’t I?” she said.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that you clearly think I’d make soup out of you and feed it to Sam. I’m beginning to have a pretty clear picture of the past five years, and just this once, while I have this blinding flash of clarity and reason, I want you to know that I’m sorry. People will tell you that mothers don’t have favorites, Bil, and that’s true. I love all of my children equally, but Sam and I—we have a different kind of bond. He needs something from me that the rest of you don’t. Because he’s sick. But I can tell you right now that I would never allow you to go to jail to save your brother. He’s made his bed, and now he can lie in it.”
She looked bone-tired, and I wanted to do something for her. Unfortunately, I couldn’t think of anything. Her choices were all tigers, too.
“Emma,” I said, “that man who died in Sam’s cell—what would you say if I told you that he wasn’t Burt Wood? He was Frank Frost.”
She answered without any hesitation at all. “I’d say that you haven’t lost your talent for eavesdropping.”
Chapter 20
Emma and I talked until six-thirty, when I dropped her off at the hospital. Like it or not, I had to see Sylvie. The weather had turned decidedly cold, and the forecasters predicted an early frost. Though the sun was up, the sky was low and dark, and the wind was blowing fiercely. I needed to sleep, but I couldn’t and wouldn’t until I’d talked to her.
Sylvie’s apartment was on the third floor of an old building downtown, not far from the Cowslip Café. I rang the doorbell several times. There was no answer. I was contemplating my next move when someone tapped me on the shoulder.
It was Sylvie. She stood there in her bomber jacket, her head cocked to one side. The jacket was zipped all the way up, and her hair was pulled back into a short ponytail. Her cheeks were wind-burned, not surprising if she’d ridden a long way in a cold wind.
“You’d better come in,” she said.
I followed her through the front door and into the large hallway.
“I’m going into the kitchen to make us some coffee.”
I shook my head. “I don’t want any.”
“I do. You can wait in the living room.”
She was brisk though not unfriendly. I went into the living room and sat down on the sofa. I hadn’t paid much attention to my surroundings the night I slept over. I realized now that it didn’t look like a student’s apartment. The sofa was slip-covered in a soft, white cotton twill, and it looked new. There was a large abstract painting hanging on the wall above the fireplace. There were no posters anywhere, just photographs and watercolors, all framed and matted. I wondered what Sylvie would make of the poster of “Monarch of the Glen” that Emma had nailed up over our sofa. Not that I was likely to be taking her home anytime soon.
She came back with two mugs. Coffee for me, like it or not. I would have preferred a pillow.
“I forgot the sugar,” she said. “I’ll be back in a second.”
No matter which way I tried to sit on the sofa, I felt awkward. The cushions were too soft, and they seemed determined to surround me and suck me into their depths. That explained the sore back I’d gotten the night I’d slept over. I finally opted for sitting sideways, my back against the arm and one leg drawn up, the ankle resting on the opposite knee. When Sylvie came back with the sugar, I realized that I probably looked like a GQ ad, but it was too late to try to reposition myself.
She sat down on the opposite end of the sofa and drew her legs up beneath her.
“Comfortable?”
“Ecstatic. Your couch is trying to eat me alive.”
“It’s probably hungry. I haven’t fed it any guests lately.”
“So, how have you been since yesterday morning?”
“Fine,” she yawned. “And yourself?”
“Just peachy,” I yawned in response. “Never better.”
We sat in awkward silence for a minute. I didn’t want it, but I took a big swig of my coffee, burning the tip of my tongue and spilling at least half a cup down the front of my shirt.
“Goddamn it to hell!”
Sylvie flinched. I felt horrible and tired. I put the cup down on the coffee table and stood up. “I’m sorry. I’m going to get an ice cube. I burned my tongue.”
She stood up as well. “Do you want to change your shirt? I’ve probably got something you could borrow.”
I looked down at my front, covered in hot brown liquid. “Yeah, if you don’t mind.”
“Sit down,” she said. “I’ll get you that ice cube as well.”
She came back with a soft blue T-shirt and a glass of ice water. I fished out a cube and popped it into my mouth.
“The bathroom’s at the end of the hall. You can change in there.”
I nodded and left the room, my tongue now too frozen to speak. When I came back, she was standing by the window, looking out. I sat down and sank back into the sofa cushions. Still looking out the window, she said, “I guess you heard.”
“Heard what?”
She turned around and regarded me closely, leaning back against the sill. “About my mother. Isn’t that why you’re here?” I nodded as if I knew what she meant. “They haven’t charged her with anything yet.”
“I saw you in Spokane yesterday,” I said, no longer able to hold it in.
“Really?” She raised her eyebrows but otherwise made no other reaction. “That must have been in the afternoon.”
“Early evening,” I corrected.
She nodded. “I got home just after eleven. There was a message on my answering machine. I went down to the sheriff’s office to see if there was anything I could do. They aren’t holding her as a suspect, they just wanted to ask her some questions.”
“Like what?”
“Had she seen him, had he called her, did he want m
oney.”
“Did they ask her about the identification?”
“No, or if they did, she didn’t tell me about it. I left my bike at the station and drove her home in her truck.”
“What did she say?”
Sylvie came back over and sat down, this time next to me rather than at the other end of the sofa. “They’re now treating this as a murder investigation. According to the autopsy results, it wasn’t an overdose. He was poisoned.”
“I know.”
She looked up sharply, her eyes an intense green. “Bil, why are you here? Has your mother been . . . ?”
“No, at least not yet. I’m here because the shit has hit the fan.” The cushion against my back was cool and soft, and despite my agitation, I felt myself beginning to drift off. If I could just sleep for fifteen minutes, I was sure everything would make sense.
“What’s happened? Bil,” Sylvie grabbed my leg and shook me. “Bil!”
I struggled back to the surface. “My mother knows that man was Frank Frost, and if the coroner checks your father’s medical records, he’ll know, too.”
“Why? Bil,” she shook me again. “Why?”
“The dead man had three kidneys. My mother says Frank had three. He used to make some stupid joke about being able to drink fifty percent more than a normal man.”
Sylvie repeated slowly, “He had three kidneys. So they might know he’s not my father, but it doesn’t follow that they’ll necessarily know he’s Frank. It’s a genetic abnormality. Unless they pull Frank’s records . . .”
I nodded in agreement; the action made me dizzy. I kicked my shoes off and drew my feet up, resting them against Sylvie’s thigh.
“Bil?”
Her face was suddenly very close to mine. I didn’t open my eyes.
“I saw you in Spokane,” I said again.
“Be quiet,” she whispered against my ear. “We’ll talk about it later.”
I woke up with a start. The sun was shining in my eyes through a chink in the blinds. I blinked once or twice and then sat bolt upright. Sylvie was sitting in a rocking chair, facing me though her eyes were closed. When I swung my feet down onto the floor, she opened them and yawned.