by Joy Fielding
“I live in Florida,” Jeff told her. “I flew in last night.”
“I’ve met your sister, of course.”
“Ellie. Is she here?” Jeff’s eyes shot down the long corridor.
“She was here earlier. I believe she went home to make some arrangements.”
Jeff suddenly felt his knees buckle, and he grabbed for the counter to keep from falling down.
“Oh, dear,” the nurse said, running around to the front of the station. “Are you all right? Sandra, get me a cup of water. Right now. Here you go,” she said seconds later as she directed Jeff to the nearest chair and lifted a paper cup filled with water to his lips. “Just sip on this. Slowly. How’s that? Are you all right?”
Jeff nodded.
“I guess it’s always a shock,” the nurse was saying. “No matter how old our parents get or how sick they are. We still don’t expect them to die.”
So that’s why Ellie had called him this morning. Not because his stepmother had called her, but because their mother had died. Ellie didn’t even know he was in Buffalo. He jumped to his feet. He had to call her.
“Whoa, steady,” the nurse said, her hand on his elbow, guiding him back to his chair. “I think you should just sit here for a while. Why don’t you let me call your sister, tell her you’re here.”
It was more statement than request, and Jeff felt himself nod his agreement. From his seat against the wall in the hospital corridor, he heard the nurse talking to his sister. “Yes, of course I’m sure. He’s right here in front of me. He seems pretty shaken up,” he thought he heard her say. “Yes, I’ll keep him here until you get here.”
And then his mind went blank. Conscious thoughts were replaced by a series of pictures, as if he were watching a television with the sound turned off. He saw himself as a young boy, walking happily beside his mother, his hand tucked securely inside hers as they went from store to store in a large discount mall. That image was quickly supplanted by another—his mother tenderly combing his hair. And then another—his mother kissing the scrape on his knee after he fell off his new bicycle. One picture after another, cascading like discarded photographs across his line of vision: his mother, young and healthy, laughing and vibrant, loving and attentive.
And then more pictures, tumbling like cards from a well-worn deck: his mother pacing beside the phone and sobbing into her pillow, her hands shooing him away when he tried to comfort her; his mother’s swollen eyes and twisted, angry mouth, refusing the breakfast he’d brought to her bed; his mother, sad and defeated, crying and deflated, impatient and indifferent.
His mother packing his suitcase and sending him away.
“It’s just that he reminds me so much of his father,” Jeff heard her say, as if someone had suddenly turned on the sound of the imaginary TV. “I swear they have the same damn face.”
No, stop it. I’m not my father.
The volume getting louder. “And I can’t help it, but every time I look at him, I just want to strangle him. I know it’s irrational. I know it’s not his fault. But I just can’t stand looking at him.”
No. Please stop.
“I just need some time to myself, to figure out what’s best for me.”
What about what’s best for me?
“What about Ellie?” Jeff heard his younger self ask instead. “Is she going to Daddy’s?”
“No,” his mother replied flatly. “Ellie stays with me.”
“Jeff,” a voice was saying now. “Jeff? Are you all right?”
The TV set in Jeff’s head went suddenly blank.
“Jeff?” the voice said again. Gentle fingers touched his hand.
“Ellie,” Jeff said, his sister’s face coming into focus in front of him. She was crouching in front of him, her face older and fuller than he remembered it, her hair a less flattering shade of blond, her gray-green eyes ringed with red. She was wearing a light blue sleeveless blouse and Jeff noted the freckled flesh that hung loose on the undersides of her arms.
“You should do something about that,” he said absently. There were all sorts of exercises he could recommend.
“Do something about what?”
“What?” he asked, raising his eyes back to her face.
“Are you okay?”
“Yeah.”
“You don’t seem okay.”
“Just tired.”
“When did you get here?” Ellie asked.
“Last night.”
“Last night! Why didn’t you call me?”
“It was late,” Jeff lied. In truth, he didn’t know why he hadn’t called her. “Maybe I wanted to surprise you.”
“Maybe you just weren’t sure you’d go through with it.”
Jeff didn’t have to ask Ellie what she was referring to. “Maybe.”
“You want some coffee?”
“Already had plenty.”
“Me, too. Maybe we could just go somewhere and sit down.” Her knees cracked as she pushed herself out of her crouching position.
A few minutes later, they found themselves in their mother’s empty room, Ellie perched on the side of the freshly made hospital bed, Jeff standing at the window, looking out at the street below. “So, what happened exactly?” Jeff asked.
“Her heart just gave out, I guess.”
“What do the doctors say?”
“Not much. I mean, what can they say? It wasn’t exactly a surprise. The cancer had pretty much taken over. She’d been in and out of consciousness for the last few days. Her heart was getting weaker by the minute. When I was here yesterday, her skin had taken on that horrible gray pallor. I knew she wouldn’t last much longer.”
And suddenly Jeff was laughing, loud and long.
“Jeff? What is it? What’s going on?”
“The bitch just couldn’t wait, could she?” he said.
“What?”
“She couldn’t wait one fucking more day.”
“What are you talking about?”
“A few fucking hours,” Jeff said.
“You think she did this deliberately? That she died on purpose before you could get here?”
Jeff threw his head back and laughed even louder than before. “I wouldn’t put it past her.”
“You’re talking crazy.”
“She just couldn’t pass up the chance to screw with me one more time.”
“That’s not true. You know it isn’t. She’d been asking for you for weeks. She wanted to see you so badly. She kept hoping you’d come.”
“Then why didn’t she wait? Tell me that.”
“She didn’t have a choice, Jeff.”
“Of course she had a choice. She always had a choice. Like when she chose to give me up, when she chose to keep you, when she chose to forget I even existed. . . .”
“She never forgot about you, Jeff.”
“She knew that sooner or later, I’d show up. She just couldn’t be bothered waiting. I wasn’t worth the effort.”
“That’s not true.”
“So she abandoned me all over again. The final slap in the face. This time from the grave. Way to go, Mother. I’ve got to hand it to you. Nobody does it better. You’re still the champ.” Jeff sensed his sister approaching from behind, felt her hands on the sides of his arms. He flinched and pulled away. “Where is she anyway?”
“They took her to the funeral parlor. We can go there, if you’d like. You can see her, say good-bye.”
“Thanks, but I think I’ll pass.” He laughed again.
“What?”
“The nurse at the station said she’d passed. Like she’d passed her driving test or something.”
“It’s just an expression, Jeff. I guess she thought it was gentler than saying she was dead.”
“Hey, dead is dead, no matter how you say it. So, what happens now?”
“We go home, finalize the funeral arrangements. I was thinking of Friday. I don’t see any point in dragging it out any longer than that, do you? She didn’t have many friends. . . .�
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“I’m shocked,” Jeff said, his voice a sneer. “And no, by all means, the sooner we put her in the ground, the better.”
“You’ll stay at my house,” Ellie said. “Kirsten, too, if she’s coming.”
This time Jeff didn’t bother to correct her. Kirsten, Kristin—what difference did it make? “She isn’t.”
“Just as well. This way the kids will have you all to themselves for a few days.”
“They won’t even know who I am,” Jeff said.
“Then it’s high time you did something about that.”
Jeff swiveled around to face his sister. He saw the sadness in her eyes and understood for the first time that the mother she’d lost was a different woman entirely from the mother he’d never really known. “Okay,” he said.
Ellie’s face flushed pink with relief. Tears of gratitude filled her eyes. “Good. I’ll call Bob, tell him we’re on our way home.”
“Why don’t I just meet you there? I have to go back to the motel, pack my suitcase. . . .”
“You brought a suitcase?”
“You know me.”
“I’d like to,” she said.
“You go on, finish making whatever arrangements are necessary,” he told her. “I’ll go back to the motel, take a shower, pack up my things, and be at your house in an hour.”
“You promise?”
“I promise.”
“I love you,” Ellie said, her voice breaking.
Jeff took his sister in his arms and hugged her while she cried.
An hour later, he was sitting in the airport lounge, his head lowered into his chest, images of Suzy filling his brain, when “The Star-Spangled Banner” began to play. He reached into his pocket, pulled out his phone, and checked his caller ID, hoping it was Suzy but knowing it was Ellie, calling to see what was keeping him.
He thought of answering it, but then, what could he say? That he’d had a change of heart? That he’d been lying all along? Surely Ellie had suspected as much. She could have insisted on accompanying him to the motel. She could have refused to let him out of her sight, knowing there was a good chance he would turn and run. Instead, she’d chosen the easy way out. Her mother’s daughter after all.
Saying “I love you” had been her way of saying good-bye.
Jeff stared at the phone until the anthem stopped playing, then returned it to his pocket. He settled comfortably back in his seat, closing his eyes as he lowered his head to his chest, and went back to dreaming about Suzy.
TWENTY-EIGHT
TOM OPENED HIS EYES to the darkness of the late afternoon. Not that it was dark outside. It wasn’t. But with the living room drapes pulled tightly shut, it might as well have been the middle of the night. He laid his head back against the floral pillows of the sofa, kicking off his sneakers and stretching his legs out to their full length, ultimately bringing them to rest on top of the wood and glass coffee table in front of him. His right foot—wearing the same navy blue sock he’d been wearing for two days now—knocked against a bottle he’d forgotten was there, sending it crashing to the floor. The smell of spilled beer immediately filled his nostrils. It combined with the sickly sweet odor of marijuana and the discarded cigarette butts that lined the floor, marking his territory like a bunch of tiny pebbles. “What the hell are you doing?” he scolded himself in Lainey’s voice. “This place is a pigsty, for God’s sake. Clean it up.”
Tom laughed. “I’m just getting started, bitch,” he shouted at the dark room, this time the voice his own. “Wait till you see the bedroom.” He laughed again, his eyes lifting toward the ceiling as he lit another joint, his mind returning to last night. What a night that had been!
He grabbed for the half-drunk bottle of beer in his lap and finished it off in one prolonged gulp. How many did that make? he wondered, trying to add up the number of beers he’d had since this morning. Make that since last night, he amended, since he hadn’t slept in at least twenty-four hours and he’d started drinking at around seven p.m.—not counting the two beers he’d had on the way home from work. He dropped the empty bottle to the floor, took a deep drag off the joint, and reached for the phone on the small table next to the sofa, his hand slapping against the lamp and almost knocking it over. Tom turned his head lazily to one side, watching the lamp wobble precariously before righting itself, then he rested the phone on his chest and punched in the number he still remembered from last night. Yes, sir, he thought. Last night was some night.
“Venus Milo’s Escort Service,” a soft voice purred into his ear. “This is Chloe. How can I help you?”
Tom curled his arms around the receiver, feeling himself grow hard at the memory of the girl the escort service had sent over the previous night. “Hi, you,” the curly-haired cutie had said in greeting, stepping inside the small foyer and quickly removing the flimsy sweater covering her enormous implants. “I’m Ginny. I understand you like to party.”
“I’d like to order a girl,” Tom told Chloe now.
“You’d like to hire an escort?” Chloe corrected him gently.
“Yeah. Maybe Asian, for a change.” Tom remembered hearing that Asian girls were usually more submissive than Americans. “Is that a problem?”
“No problem at all. When were you thinking of?”
“I’m thinking of right now.”
“Right now,” Chloe repeated. “Where are you located?”
“Morningside.”
“Okay, that’s easy enough. Let me see if I have anything. Can I put you on hold for a minute?”
“Not for too long,” Tom cautioned, picturing Ginny naked and squirming underneath him.
“Okay, I think I might have somebody for you,” Chloe said, coming back on the line approximately a minute later. “Her name is Ling. She’s originally from Taiwan, and she can be at your place in about forty minutes. How does that sound?”
“Sounds good.”
“That will be three hundred dollars an hour, and you understand we are an escort service only. Anything you negotiate with Ling beyond that is strictly between the two of you.”
“Oh, I understand all right.”
“Good. I’ll just need your name and credit card number.”
“Tom Whitman,” he said, fishing into his jeans for his credit card, about to rattle off the numbers on his card when Chloe stopped him.
“I’m sorry,” she said, the softness in her voice instantly hardening, turning to steel. “Tom Whitman, you said?”
“That’s right. Is there a problem?”
“I’m afraid we won’t be able to fulfill your request at this time, Mr. Whitman. I suggest you take your business elsewhere. Or better yet, get professional help.”
“What do you think I’m trying to fucking do here?”
“Good-bye, Mr. Whitman,” Chloe said before hanging up.
“Wait a minute! What are you— What the hell . . . ? Shit!” Tom jumped to his feet, mashing the cigarette butts beneath his toes and almost tripping over the recently discarded beer bottle. “Did you just fire me, bitch?” What the hell was going on? First that little prick Carter at work, telling him his services were no longer required, that smug look on his stupid face when he’d told Tom a number of customers and even a coworker had been complaining about his attitude, then handed Tom his severance check without even giving Tom a chance to explain or defend himself. Not that he would have, in any event. “I’ve given you every chance to improve yourself,” Carter had said.
Was it any wonder Tom had taken a swipe at him, missing his nose but succeeding in knocking his glasses to the floor and then stepping on them for good measure, before being escorted, none too gently either—he should file a complaint with the human rights commission—off the premises by a security guard? And now this glorified cocksucker from the escort service informing him she wouldn’t be able to fulfill his request, that he should take his business elsewhere, that he should get professional help!
It was that bitch Ginny’s fault. Ginny with
the big tits and the mouthful of expensive veneers. He should have knocked them out of her stupid mouth, he thought, his right hand forming a fist and grinding the joint he’d been dangling between his fingers into scraggly greenish-brown dust, letting the loose pieces of marijuana fall to the carpet like dirty snow. She’d obviously run crying to the powers that be. Goddamn amateur. He’d paid her, hadn’t he? And still she’d complained about everything. Didn’t like being tied up; refused to take it up the ass; wasn’t “into pain.” Damn cunt—he should have blown her bloody head off.
Now what? Tom thought, heading for the kitchen and searching through the cupboards for where Lainey kept the phone book, opening one drawer after another in his search. It was just like Lainey to hide it from him. He emptied one drawer of paper napkins and another filled with placemats and once neatly folded tablecloths. Cutlery was thrown to the floor, plates shattered. It was only after every cabinet had been emptied and Tom stood ankle-deep in detritus that he stopped. Standing in the middle of the kitchen, sweat drenching his stained white T-shirt, perspiration dripping from his hair into his mouth, panting with exertion, he remembered he’d taken the phone book into the living room the night before, that he’d used it to look up Venus Milo’s Escort Service. He laughed. Of all the damn escort services in the book, he’d picked that one. And why? Because he’d thought the name sounded classy. Wasn’t Venus Milo some famous work of art, a statue of a woman whose main claim to fame was that she was missing both her arms? Shit, he thought now, returning to the living room. A naked woman was a naked woman. And without arms, how classy could she be?
He got down on his hands and knees and crawled through the filth on the living room floor, the palms of his hands growing wet and sticky with spilt beer and the assortment of chips and dip he’d consumed for breakfast. He stumbled onto the phone book just as he was about to give up, spotting its moist, dog-eared corner sticking out from behind the drapes, as if it had been trying to escape the debauchery. “Get out of there, you miserable piece of shit,” he commanded, dragging the heavy book into his lap as one hand reached for the lamp, pulling it off the table and setting it down on the floor beside him.