Telling Lies

by Wendy Hornsby

  “Oh, Maggot, I’m so tired.” She was stoned. I don’t know whether the drugs she had taken were kicking in or were wearing off, but I thought she wouldn’t be upright much longer. The disconcerting thing was that the hand that held the gun was steady, and she was intact enough to keep the sight aimed at my sternum.

  I moved slowly toward her. Her pupils were soulless holes that held a beam on my face with the same black stare the gun held at my chest.

  “Let’s go outside, Celeste.”

  “What’s the point?” she sighed. “We can die here, or we can die out there. She’ll never leave us alone.”

  “Who?”

  “Who do you think? Aleda.”

  This was a bomb of another sort. “You lie,” I said.

  Celeste nodded. “I have to. Rod, too. My life may rest on a tissue of lies. But it’s my life. Emily had no right to decide for all of us that it was time to stop telling lies.”

  “What lies?”

  “About everything,” she snapped. “We all knew a firebomb had been set in the Berkeley labs. We all knew there were people working inside the lab. Aleda said it would be just a lot of smoke. We all knew she was lying. For twenty-two years, a whole generation, we covered for each other, we covered for her. One lie, and another, and another. A tower of lies. And I can’t climb down.” She rolled her eyes and seemed to lose her balance a little.

  I had my eye on the gun barrel. “We’ll talk about it outside.”

  She shook her head. “She’ll hear. She always knows things. All that time, she blackmailed us. And you know what we all did?”

  “Tell me,” I said.

  “Nothing. We did nothing.”

  I shook my head. “Emily would never go along.”

  “She did. Aleda had Em by the balls, too.” She thought about that a moment and waved it off. “You know what I mean.”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “Marc!”

  “Marc was dead,” I said. I was edging backward toward the stairs.

  “Baby Marc. Aleda had Marc’s baby. She was preggers when she took off. Or so she said. All those years, Emily had investigators looking for him. Couldn’t find him anywhere. You want to hear the weird part? Last week, someone claiming to be Marc found Emily.”

  Something in the coffee can went click. I lunged, caught Celeste’s gun hand and forced it up and back until her grip released. She wasn’t very strong. The automatic fell to the floor and I kicked it away.

  Like tugging a big rag doll, I pulled her down the stairs and out the front door.

  * * *

  “How’d you know what to do?” Mike asked as the fire trucks drove away.

  “I watch TV,” I said. I was crushed against his chest and enjoying it very much.

  Celeste sat quietly in a black-and-white police unit parked ten feet away at the curb, her hands cuffed and resting in her lap, her trim legs properly crossed at the ankles. After the bomb squad had gone, Celeste was the only curiosity left for the assembled crowd to gawk at. As they grew bored—she hardly blinked for them—they drifted off.

  Casey, who had been answering questions posed by a hand-some young sprig of the law, walked over and shook my arm. “Were you scared, Mom?” Casey asked.

  “I was a little nervous about what Celeste had in that can, but she just didn’t seem to have enough wits about her to be dangerous. Besides, I’m bigger than she is.”

  Mike laughed. He was hanging on very tightly.

  Caesar came stumbling along with two pals, passing a bottle in a brown bag among them. When he saw me, he took a long pull from the bottle and ambled over sociably.

  “Hey, pretty lady,” he said.

  “Hey, yourself,” I said.

  He aimed the neck of the bottle toward Celeste. “See you found your friend you was lookin’ for. Fine lookin’ lady, ain’t she?”

  I looked at Celeste’s trim legs again. “The lady who walks the walk? That’s her?”

  “Like I say,” he nodded and passed his bottle on to a thirsty friend.

  I looked up at Mike. “If Caesar’s right, Celeste was at the wishing well by Hop Louie’s just about the time he last saw Emily.”

  I could see his mind was already clicking.

  “I’m going in with Celeste,” he said. “Just to make sure every-thing’s done right. I’ll call you when I’m finished with reports and we’ll argue some more about whether you should leave tonight or not.”

  Even with Casey standing on the sidewalk behind me, making faces, I kissed Mike. “Write fast,” I said.

  Grinning, he walked over to the black-and-white car, gave some instructions to the uniformed officers there, then climbed into the back seat beside Celeste. The car immediately pulled away and sped down Hill Street.

  “Jeez, Mom,” Casey said, watching after the car. “First Dad, now you.

  “I’m not getting married.”

  “Well, you’re kissing him aren’t you? And probably other things, too.”

  “How’d you get so wise? Or is that wiseass?”

  I put my arm around her and we crossed the street back to Emily’s building. I don’t know whether Celeste had managed to somehow defuse the incendiary device that had been built into the coffee can, or whether it had been a dud to begin with. When it did its thing, there was a pop and a fizz and a spark big enough to char a hole through the old wool carpet runner under it. The bomb squad had come, caught up on gossip with the detachments of both police and firemen, and, eventually, carried away the remains of the can in a big lead box. For the kids waiting on the sidewalk, they had used lights and sirens when they drove away. As a source of pre-holiday excitement, the event had been as big a dud as the bomb.

  Firemen had dragged the smoldering carpet out to the sidewalk and left it there for the trash haulers. A few lower floor tenants had snuck in behind the firemen to save a few precious pieces of furniture. The furniture now blocked the front steps and cluttered the hall inside. With the front door hanging open, an assortment of nosy neighborhood people had come inside for a better look at the burn mark on the floor upstairs. They still lingered about, finding the furniture more interesting than the damage.

  “Think Ireland can be any more fun than this?” I asked Casey as we pushed aside a hand-carved, inlaid chest that stuck out into the landing.

  “I hope so,” she said. “Poor Mrs. Lim.”

  “I think she enjoyed the fuss.” We had left the door of Emily’s apartment standing open. “Shall we finish packing?” I said.

  “I’m hungry, Mom. There’s nothing in the refrigerator to eat.”

  “Let’s lock up and go out for a while. We’ll get something to eat, maybe see a movie. Something with more kissing than shooting, okay?”

  “Gross,” she said. “I want my jacket. It’s cold.”

  While Casey went to get her jacket from the chair in the sitting room where she had left it after breakfast, I waited in the little entry, trying to figure out how many boxes, and which ones, we would carry home on the plane.

  “What do you want to eat?” I called. “Chinese, Mexican, burgers?”

  Casey, white-faced, backed out of the sitting room and grabbed for me. “Mom.”

  “What?” I went in to see what she had seen.

  There was a man sitting on the sofa. He rose. At first, he was in front of the window, backlit by the glare so I couldn’t see his face. He wore jeans and loafers and a long wind-breaker. He was tall and straight. I knew I hadn’t seen him around the neighborhood.

  “How did you get in?” I asked.

  He shrugged. “The door was open. I hope it’s okay.”

  He moved slowly toward me, away from the window. “I’m glad you’re okay,” he said. “I got real worried when all the police came. Until you came out, I didn’t know what to do. I’ve been waiting for the right time to talk to you. I was thinking I might be too late. Again.”

  “Again?” I asked.

  “Like Emily,” he said.

  He see
med nervous, but more expectant than worried. He had a nice, deep voice that sounded so familiar I didn’t want him to stop talking. I had listened to his voice on Emily’s answering machine tape for hours a few nights earlier. Even with-out the tape, I would have heard a familiar quality in his voice.

  I could not ever have passed him on the street without recognizing that I had known him all my life, though he was no more than twenty-two years old. My father had passed to my sister and brother and I a distinctive long, narrow nose with a hump at the bridge. Casey had my father’s skinny nose, too. Caesar had recognized it when he saw Casey. And when he saw this young man.

  I reached out for the young man with the skinny nose.

  He took a deep breath and touched my outstretched hand. “Maggot?”

  “Hello, Marc. This is Casey.”

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  When I looked up, we were somewhere past Riverside, just at the cusp between new tract house development and open desert. Mike drove, with Casey napping in the front seat beside him. I was in back with Marc, hearing the story of his life. You can learn a lot about a person in an hour. Marc seemed to have a very solid core.

  Mike turned to me. “Want to find a telephone?”

  “No,” I said. “Stopping would just take time. I know Jaime is fine.”

  “You’re sure? We could call the sheriff.”

  “No. I’m sure,” I said, touching Marc’s shoulder. “He’s with Aleda.”

  Marc had been telling me the story of his life with his mother. I had filled in for him details about my family—his family—that his mother either didn’t know or had misremembered. It was spooky how much he knew about us. He had followed my career from the beginning. He had collected articles Emily had published in medical journals, and the occasional pieces about her and her adventures that showed up in the press. He played the flute, like my father.

  Marc’s shadow life with his mother, moving frequently, changing his name between schools, leaving friends behind, had been populated by mythic characters—largely, my family. He was incredibly like his father, my brother, his namesake. I felt I had always known him.

  “Why did you keep running?” I asked him. “The government wasn’t very interested in your mother after a while.”

  He shook his head. This part of his story wasn’t clear to him. “At first, I think, Mom was afraid the Feds would take me from her, put her in prison. Then, when she sent out feelers to see whether it was safe to come in, someone threatened us and started looking for her. We hid. After a while, it was habit. I can’t explain it. It was just the way we lived.”

  “Didn’t your mother know we would have helped her?”

  “She was afraid you would be hurt. It was like you were all held hostage.” He pulled nervously at his ear. “It was true, too, wasn’t it? As soon as Mom and Aunt Emily made arrangements for Mom to surrender, look what happened.”

  I did look. Emily shot, Rod immolated. To protect whom? From what?

  When we drove into Jaime’s gravel driveway, Lupe was on the porch, sweeping. She went to the screen and yelled some-thing. Tires on the gravel made too much noise for us to hear what she said. The collie nosed open the screen and ambled down the steps, with Jaime and Aleda slowly following him. Two uniformed Riverside County sheriff deputies came outside behind them and waited on the porch with Lupe.

  Aleda Weston had once been very beautiful, not so much because of her features, which were regular and refined, but because of the grace and confidence of her carriage. People would stop to watch her go by, or listen to what she had to say.

  As she came down the steps, there was still something left of the old confidence, just a shadow you had to know to look for. I was looking for it very hard, the way I had looked for a spark of life in Emily’s eyes a few days before.

  Aleda was painfully thin. Her thinness added emphasis to the beginnings of a dowager’s hump forming between her shoulder blades. The hump gave her posture a stoop, made her seem burdened. I suspect that anyone seeing her for the first time would see only a rather plain, middle-aged woman.

  What had Max said? Everyone had been in love with Aleda. I know I still was. Celeste, no matter how wild her stories were, couldn’t change that. In my heart, Aleda was an echo of my sister, Emily.

  I had heard all of Celeste’s invective, her accusations against Aleda. While I had suffered some lingering doubts, as soon as I saw Aleda again, I knew the truth. Mike had said I would. Celeste had created a tower of lies in which to dwell. Now that it had come crashing down around her, I wondered whether she could sort out any truth for herself. Not that I cared in the least.

  Aleda picked up her pace when I got out of the car, though her gait seemed pained. She smiled at Marc, but reached for me. I carried a wrapped package under my arm and nearly dropped it to embrace her.

  “Oh, Maggot,” she said, tears welling in her pale eyes. The skin of her hand felt dry and thin, like old silk. Like my grandmother’s hand. “Look at you. All grown up.”

  I glanced at Casey in time to see her roll her eyes at this comment.

  “Aleda,” I said, “this is my daughter, Casey.”

  Aleda reached toward Casey. “You look so much like your Aunt Emily.”

  Casey didn’t know whether this was a compliment, but she managed a polite smile.

  Jaime grabbed Casey around the middle, like the old days, and gave her a spin, albeit a tamer one than when she was smaller. “What happened to my little girl? She’s just a big hunk of junk now.”

  Casey giggled.

  Aleda pointed at Mike. I know you. You were with Maggot at the jail when I was brought in.”

  “Mike,” he said, offering no official title. “I’ve heard a lot about you.”

  Aleda laughed. “No doubt.”

  The air was clear and crisp. The sky a dusky blue. We all sat on the porch steps to watch the color show of the desert sunset. The package I had brought was wedged between Mike and me.

  “I miss Lucas,” Aleda said. “Shouldn’t we have one of his awful hymns about now?”

  Jaime smiled. “Where is Lucas?”

  “He’s Santa Claus tonight at the shelter Christmas party,” I said. “He’ll be in Berkeley by dinnertime on Christmas day. He promised.”

  “I have a Lucas hymn,” Jaime said. “One of his favorites. He taught us when we were in the Alameda County jail for unlawful assembly.”

  Jaime began to sing a morbid dirge, and Aleda, laughing, joined in:

  Plunged in a gulf of dark despair,

  We wretched sinners lay,

  Without one cheering beam of hope,

  Or spark of glimmering day. A-Men.

  Before the last phrase, Aleda began to weep softly. Jaime and I held her between us.

  “I feel so bad about Emily”, she sobbed into my neck. “It’s all my fault.”

  “How is it your fault?” Mike asked. “Celeste shot Emily. Celeste hired a pro to rig a bomb to do in Rod Peebles. What does it have to do with you?”

  “Marc and I were okay where we were. If we had just left things alone, we would still be okay.”

  “Okay how?” I said. “You would stay in hiding forever? Marc told me he graduates from college in June. I think its high time you both moved out into the world.”

  She didn’t seem convinced. “I knew what Celeste was capable of. Don’t underestimate her power and influence. Or her perversity. She killed Tom Potts because she wanted to. And he wasn’t the only one.”

  “Emily knew the risks,” I said. “She must have felt they were worth taking.”

  I handed the package I had brought to Marc. “Emily had this made for you. I don’t think you need to wait until Christmas morning.”

  Mike was beaming. It was through his efforts that this item had been released—liberated—from the collection of Emily’s possessions the police had found in the trunk of Celeste’s car. Mike speculated that when Celeste broke into Emily’s apartment, among other things, she had taken Ma
rc’s dogtags and had given them, or planted them, on Rod before she sent him to his explosive end. A little detail to add drama to her scene.

  Marc hesitated before he began to slowly remove the brown paper wrapping. He refolded the paper deliberately before he picked up the framed photograph inside. He glanced at his mother, confused it seemed, before he held it up for the rest of us. I had given him the enlargement Emily had made of Marc’s snapshot, the one she had airbrushed.

  “Where’s Dad’s joint?” Marc asked.

  “Purged,” I said.

  Aleda was smiling again. “Poor Marc. Right to the end, Emily got the last word.”

  “One thing still bothers me,” I said. “Why did Emily get her boobs done?”

  Mike laughed and pulled me against him. “Because she wanted to.”

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Mother sat at the table in her big kitchen, in a stream of bright morning sunlight, folding red linen napkins fresh from the laundry. It was a beautiful picture, the contrasts of the red napkins, her shiny silver hair, the pale, well-scrubbed pine table. She is a tall slender woman who holds herself very straight. But her hair was soft wisps, the collar of her cotton shirt was open at the throat, and there was a hole in the toe of her right sneaker.

  She was facing the big bay windows, and now and then she looked out through the redwood trees in the backyard, gazing off toward Grizzly Peak. Through the window, I could see my father in a far corner of the yard, kneeling with a trowel in his hand at the edge of the small herb garden that was planted in the patch of yard that catches only the morning sun.

  It was a beautiful morning. More like spring than Christmas Eve.

  “Grandma,” Casey said softly. When Mother turned, Casey took Marc by the hand and led him over to the table. Max, Jaime, Aleda, Mike and I stayed back, voyeurs.

  “Grandma, this is Marc.”

  “Of course it is.” Mother stood up and pulled out a chair for him. Her eyes were very moist, but she remained com-posed as she looked at him. She put her slender hand on his shoulder. “You are very like your father. Anyone can see that.

  “But I can see your mother in you, too. She has always been my favorite.”