“Spend some time thinking about how people care about you,” I say.
“Do they? You’ll notice the media is gone. I’m yesterday’s news. Just Marva Meier Rios the clinically depressed hoarder who, according to some reports, is raising chickens in her living room,” she says, chuckling.
It’s alarming how it doesn’t bother her—as if she’s already checked out so nothing matters. But it does. “You can’t let that be your legacy. Not after all you’ve achieved in your life. Don’t let that be how you’re remembered.”
“At least I’ll be remembered.” Her tone is joking, but this isn’t funny.
My voice is trembling as I say, “It’s not too late. You can create something new. Please … stay around to do it.” Then, though I expect she’ll hate it, I throw my arms around her in a hug. She stiffens, but she at least gives me a couple pats on the back before pulling away.
“Best of luck to you,” she says.
“I’ll be back in a few days to pick up the rest of my things, and to make sure you haven’t dragged a bunch of junk back the moment my back is turned.” Tears are welling in my eyes. “I very much look forward to seeing you then.”
I allowed for traffic, but the freeway didn’t get the memo that rush hour is supposed to be over by now, so I’m racing to baggage claim to meet Ash. According to the monitors, his flight arrived eight minutes ago. Standing at the spot that divides me from the secure area, I wait, catching my breath. There’s plenty of time. Ash still needs to disembark and get down here.
It’s going to be tough, but I’m allowing myself only a minute or two of gushing over how happy I am to have him home, and then it’s on to business. I’ve got a bag packed in my car that’ll see me through the next few days. We’ll get a hotel, then we’ll immediately sign him up for NA and look into local outpatient rehab programs. Heather and Hank offered to let us stay with them—mind-blowingly generous of them considering they have a toddler and an impressionable teen—but it’s important that Ash and I have time alone. I’ll need one-on-one time without distractions to get him ratcheted into the new rules—the new me—from day one. He needs to understand that it’s not going to be how it was before.
After a few minutes go by, I unfold the piece of paper on which I’ve written ASH and stand holding it jokingly as if I’m a hired driver, staring with a mix of excitement and fear at the escalator that will transport my son to me and into his—our—new future.
After thirty minutes and no sign of Ash, I decide to give it ten more. Still no Ash. I find my way to ticketing, where I wait in line another twenty minutes before being waited on by a woman who looks quite a lot like me—granted, me on a good day, when I’ve bothered blow-drying with the round brush. “My son was supposed to be on a flight from Tampa, and I’m meeting him at baggage claim. He hasn’t shown up. Can you check if he was on that flight?”
“A minor?”
“No, he’s nineteen, but he doesn’t have a cell phone.”
“Good for you,” she says. “I’m embarrassed to say my eight-year-old has one.”
After verifying my ID and collecting a confirmation number, she consults her screen. “According to this, he got a boarding pass … but didn’t check in for the flight.”
“How could that be? He went all the way to the airport and then didn’t bother getting on the plane?”
“He might have cut it too close, gotten stuck in security. Or you’d be surprised how many people stop for Burger King and miss their chance to board—happens all the time. He’s probably trying to get on another flight standby.”
Or he changed his mind and left. “Is there any way to check?”
“Sorry, no. Don’t worry, he’ll get ahold of you somehow.” She gives me an encouraging smile—mom to mom—and I leave, crumpling up the ASH sign and tossing it in a trash can on my way out.
Honey, I’m hooooome!” I shout as I poke my head in through Marva’s mudroom door a few hours later. I’d stopped for lunch and to make phone calls to tell my family and Heather that Ash didn’t show. With each passing hour, I’m forced to face the ugly reality. He didn’t miss his plane. Nope, that little shit just changed his mind.
Marva comes out from the hallway. “You don’t get it, do you. The job is over. You can go home.”
“He never got on the plane.”
“Ah,” she says. “Sorry to hear that.”
“So I might as well do more work on the office before Will gets here for his inspection—especially since, technically, I don’t have a home to go to.”
“You’re free to stay in the bungalow if you wish.” She grabs a pen from the counter and turns to leave. “But I prefer to be alone today.”
Now that I’m no longer an employee, I can hardly wander around as if I work here, so I leave. To kill time until Will arrives—which I expect will be as close to the birthday deadline of midnight as he can cut it—I start packing my things and cleaning up. About seven o’clock, Will storms into the bungalow, slamming the door behind him. He startles when he sees me. “What are you doing here?” he says irritably, as if I were the one bursting in on him.
“I thought I’d stick around in case you needed me,” I say, meeting him scowl for scowl. “Pardon me for trying to help.”
He does that thing he did the very first day I met him, pinching the bridge of his nose in frustration. “It’s not you—sorry. I came out here to blow off steam. You took me by surprise. My mother. She just—ugh.”
“What’s she doing?”
“Acting like nothing’s wrong, that’s what. And meanwhile, I’m a wreck, panicking that anything she touches might be what she’ll use to off herself tomorrow. She’s ironing, and I’m wondering, ‘Is she going to take that in the tub and electrocute herself?’”
“What is she ironing?”
“What? Uh … a top or something.”
“Purple?” I can’t help it—I’m curious if she is going to go with the pantsuit I helped pick out.
“What difference does it make?”
“None, really, only I thought she might be preparing what she wants to be … er”—no point in being delicate—“found in.”
“That does it, I’m done pussyfooting around. It’s time to be proactive. Whether Marva likes it or not, I am combing every inch of that house and confiscating anything she could possibly use to kill herself.”
“Could be tough. She’s pretty creative.”
“Are you going to help me or not?”
“Sure, I’ll help. You want me to distract her?”
“I don’t care if she sees what I’m doing—in fact, I hope she does. Let her call the cops on me, but she’s not going to be able to stop me otherwise. I need to make it clear I’m not taking this lying down.”
Once we’re in the house, Will grabs a garbage bag (blue, which technically is for recycling, but I’m not foolish enough to say anything). I follow him to the bathroom, where he throws open the medicine cabinet and begins chucking its contents into the bag with noisy abandon. “Check the shower,” he instructs me, his eyes wild with a mounting fervor.
I whisk open the shower curtain and am snapping up the plug when Marva arrives. “What on earth are you doing?”
“Childproofing,” Will says, crouching down and opening the cabinet doors. “If you don’t have any razors”—he holds up a pack of old-fashioned single-blade razors—“then you can’t slit your wrists, now can you?”
“Why, of all the cheek! Put those back, and get out of my bathroom.”
“No.”
“William, I insist you stop this instant.”
“Nobody in this room named William. Call me by my real name. Go ahead, say it!”
“Are you still angry about that? It was a whim!”
He stands, grabbing up the trash bag and brushing past her toward her office. “A whim I lived with for eighteen years. How long am I going to have to live with this latest whim, huh? You go off, doing whatever you want to do, and don’t give a damn how it affects me. So lon
g as it suits you. And I pick up the pieces.”
She follows him into the office, her cane thudding on the floor, and I trail behind, willing myself invisible, which seems to be working. “None of this is your affair,” Marva says to Will.
“Of course it’s my affair! You’re my mother!” He snags up a mug filled with pencils, considers it, and, apparently finding it dangerous, dumps it in the bag.
“You have no right to dispose of my things.”
“What’s the difference? You’re not going to be around to use this … this …” He looks around and snatches up a stapler. “This stapler!”
“That is enough.”
“You want me to stop? Then tell me—what’s your plan for offing yourself? Put me out of my misery. Let’s play Clue—will it be with a dagger in the library? Or the candlestick in the billiard room? Or …” Will is frenzied, jittering with the same out-of-the-lines energy that has made Marva’s paintings famous.
Marva finally looks at me. “This is your fault.”
“Leave her out of this,” Will says. “You think it’s okay with me that you kill yourself? Think again. I’ll find how you’re going to do it, and I’ll make sure it can’t happen until I can talk some sense into you, not that I believe that’s possible.”
“I don’t care for being bullied,” she says, but for all the bravado of her words, she seems flustered. “I have ironing to do.”
Will runs a hand through his hair, about to leap from his skin. “That book … Grimm’s Fairy Tales … I’ll bet you’ve written in it what you’re going to do. If I can find that …”
I lean toward him. “Between her mattress and box spring,” I say quietly.
Marva gives me a look that dissolves my bones so I’m barely standing as Will bolts toward her bedroom. “So this is how you thank me,” she says.
I swallow, but don’t reply. In a moment, Will returns with the book, waving it defiantly at Marva. “I guess now I’ll find out what way you plan to torment me,” he says, but before he looks through it, a piece of paper falls out. Picking it up and unfolding it, he reads aloud, “‘To Whomever May Find Me … ’” His eyes flit over the page, and I expect Marva to snatch it from him in outrage, but she collapses onto her chair, surprisingly mute.
He looks at her crossly. “How dare you write that you love me.” Grabbing a pen off her desk, he thrusts it at her. “Cross it out.”
She waves him off.
“Cross … it … out,” he says through gritted teeth.
“Stop it.”
“Stop it? It’s a little late to start telling me what to do. As I hear it, most parents set rules when their kids are … are kids.” Turning his attention to me, he says, “You know what she did when I snuck past the nanny in seventh grade so I could go make out with a girl at the park one night? Offered me a ride.” He snatches up a pack of cigarettes from her desk, pulls one out, and shakes out the matches tucked into the pack. “Although I do recall you have one rule. No smoking in the house,” he says as he lights the cigarette. “Guess it’s a sore subject, huh?”
“Since when do you smoke?” Marva says.
He sucks the cigarette, then blows out a cloud of smoke. “Since now. Right here in the house! Breaking your one rule! What are you going to do about it?”
“What is it you want me to do?” she snaps.
“What I want is for you to be a parent! For once … in … your … life. Which, as I understand it, is nearly over.” He continues puffing madly.
“Oh, yes, I was such a terrible mother, and that’s why you turned out so poorly, is that it?”
“I adored you, and you didn’t give a damn about me. You still don’t. Tell me,” he says, flicking ash deliberately onto the floor. “Tell me, why would you do this? What could be so awful in your life that you would end it, without any concern for anyone else—how it would humiliate me. Hurt me. Why?”
Marva’s defiant expression falters. “It’s not important.”
“The hell it isn’t!”
I flash back to when Marva told me that she finds why to be the most intriguing word in the human language. “He’s right, Marva. You owe him that—the reason why,” I say, though I fear my intrusion may turn her wrath on me.
It doesn’t—in fact, she seems to wilt. “If you insist on knowing … I made a promise.” Her gaze flickers to the painting but goes back to Will. “We both did. Filleppe and I. We promised we’d never let ourselves grow old, that we’d die before we’d let that happen. If I hadn’t been failing at the promise already, hadn’t been playing it so safe at the time, Filleppe would still be alive. He’d be here with me for this. Going out with me. The two of us together. When I turned sixty-five.”
“Right. The two of you together,” Will says, although his voice has lost its anger. “Do you really believe, Marva … Mother … that that son of a bitch would have ever kept this promise?”
“Honestly?” she says, her eyes moist. “No.”
“So why are you keeping it?”
She gives an almost helpless laugh. “I … I’m not entirely certain. It’s an idea I’ve held on to all these years, and I …” Her voice trails off.
This is supposed to be Will’s battle, but with what Marva just said, I realize the situation may require my particular area of expertise. “Then it’s time to let go of that idea,” I say, and she looks alarmed for a moment, as if I’m going to whip out Post-its and apply the N-Three test. “I’m simply saying, it may be an idea that used to fit, but it doesn’t anymore. There’s no need to keep it because you’ve always had it. You just don’t have room for it anymore—not if you want to bring in something new.”
Will hands Marva the cigarette and holds the suicide note toward its burning tip. “She’s right. It’s time you said good-bye to all that … junk.”
She hesitates, takes a deep breath, then holds the cigarette to the paper in Will’s hand until it slowly catches and then burns. Once a flame gets going, Will tosses it into a nearby metal trash can, to my alarm not bothering to notice that other papers are in it. Flames rise up quite spectacularly.
Marva picks up Grimm’s Fairy Tales. “Let’s make it a bonfire,” she says, adding it to the fire, where it’s accepted with a whoosh.
“Um, you guys? We might want to handle this,” I say. The flames are climbing, in my opinion dangerously close to the easel holding Marva’s painting. She and Will are so entranced by the flames they’re not paying attention to how close they are to possibly catching … “I’m going to get an extinguisher!” I say. “Will, move the trash can!”
I bolt out of the room—luckily, per my place-for-everything-and-everything-in-its-place dictum, the extinguisher is under the kitchen sink where it belongs. When I return, Marva is holding the orgy-decorated urn—the remains of her house, her last piece of Filleppe. “I’ve got this,” she says, and dumps its contents out onto the fire, the ash effectively damping the flames.
A trail of smoke rises up, making curlicues that lick the edge of the easel but otherwise leave the painting untouched. I look at it, thinking of all those years of pain and disconnect that Marva and Will passed through to make it to this new path they’ve wound their way to find. As much as I’m happy for them, it makes me ache for Ash and me. We’ve missed out on so much of the normal stuff that families get, but I still cling to the hope that we’ll make up for lost time. Someday, I’ll send him care packages to his dorm room at school. He’ll call me, nervous about a term paper he has due. I’ll come up for parents’ day and take him and his adorable girlfriend out to dinner. He’ll stand at the podium—elected by his classmates to speak because of how he overcame his drug addiction—and address his fellow graduates, saying how he owes it all to his mother …
“What’s she crying for?” Will says to Marva, tipping his head toward me, making me aware I’m full into the ugly cry and hadn’t even noticed. “Maybe you should’ve let her use the extinguisher.”
I’m freshening up in the bungalow before
joining Will and Marva for the birthday cake he brought when I remember I’d left my phone charging when I followed Will into the house. I retrieve it and see there’s a message on it from a Florida number.
I’m in no hurry to listen to it.
There’s no way it’s good news. I’m not going to hear, Hey, Mom, sorry I didn’t get on the plane, but I decided to go to the Willows instead.
Only after I’ve brushed my hair and reapplied powder to my face do I pick up the message. “Mom, it’s me, Ash. Crap, why aren’t you there? Uh, I got stopped up in security. TSA popped me for syringes, found some junk on me. This is my one call—been in friggin’ jail all day. They’re saying I was acting wasted, which I wasn’t. I only did enough to take the edge off, ’cause I don’t like flying. So I need you to make bail. Like, soon. Guy here says I could go to prison. Crap, why aren’t you there?” He goes on in the same vein for a while, at last giving me information on the jail and how to contact them.
Which I’ll do.
Tomorrow.
Tonight, however, I believe I’ll enjoy the peaceful feeling of knowing my son is safe and, while I’m at it, have myself a big, fat piece of cake.
Minutes later, I’m standing at the kitchen counter as Will cuts into the cake—Marva wouldn’t let me sing, citing bad luck since her birthday doesn’t start until midnight (a superstition I suspect she made up).
After I shovel down not one but two slices of cake—lemon, hooyah—I tell them about Ash’s phone call.
“If he’d only gone back to rehab, none of this would have happened,” I say. “Now he might go to prison.”
“Doubtful,” Will says, “especially if there’s a rehab lined up and it’s a first offense. Chances are they’d just make him go back and finish it out.”
For the first time ever, I look at Will and genuinely want to hug the stuffing out of that man. “Really? They can do that?”
“I suggest you get a lawyer.”
Marva holds out her plate to Will. “Just a sliver more. I shouldn’t be having this at all. And, Lucy, you can use my lawyer. I have one on retainer.”
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