“Because . . . because—”
“I have a similar beauty mark on my stomach. Would you like to see mine?” Carline stood and began pulling her tucked blouse out of her skirt. She exposed a tiny black beauty mark above her belly button.
Seeing it, as plainly as she had seen her own beauty mark so many times, Tandi was taken aback although not convinced.
Retucking her blouse, Carline sat down again. She said nothing as she waited for Tandi to get over her shock.
“My mother is dead.”
“For a long time, I was.”
“You’re not my mother. How could you be? Anyone can have a beauty mark on their stomach—it’s not an anomaly.”
“No, it’s not, but it could be hereditary.”
That word stopped Tandi. She stared disbelievingly at Carline. “Lady, if you’re my mother, which I most definitely do not believe, then why would you let Glynn and me think you were dead? Tell me that, Mrs. Hughes.”
Tears sprang into Carline’s eyes. She lowered her head.
The fake tears irritated Tandi. “Answer the damn question!”
Carline raised her head. “I am your mother.”
Every time Carline said the word mother, Tandi’s heart fluttered while her anger intensified. Could it be true? No, it couldn’t be true. If it were, how could it possibly be?
“I don’t believe you. You’re trying to pull a scam.”
“No, I’m telling the truth. I would have never left you, if I had been strong, if I had not been so afraid.”
Tandi stopped abruptly at the head of the table. “Afraid of what? Responsibility? Yes, that must be it, responsibility—the biggest part of being a parent is being there for one’s children to make sure all their needs are taken care of. Obviously, you couldn’t do that. The question is why.”
Carline couldn’t bring herself to say what needed to be said.
“That’s what I thought. You have no answer, but fuck it! I don’t believe you anyway. You’re sick. I want you out of this house.”
Carline began wringing her hands. “The truth is never easy. I could’ve made it easy on myself and never said a word, but I would have only prolonged the lie. I can’t live out the rest of my life with this lie over my head. God would—”
“Oh, so now you bring God into it. Is the mention of God supposed to make me believe your lie? Okay, Mrs. Hughes, if what you’re saying is true—you swear before God, right? Then nothing you could say in the way of explanation would justify what you did. I can understand a woman leaving her man, but I will never understand a woman who deserts her children, her own flesh and blood.”
“So you do believe me?”
“No, I don’t believe you! I’m standing here trying to figure out why you would mess with me like this.”
“I’m not messing with you, Tandi. When I left you back then, my mind, my life was so messed up, I didn’t have many choices. It was either leave you or kill you and myself.”
“Stop it!” Tandi was incredulous. “I don’t wanna hear any more of your lies.”
“I’m not lying! Tandi, I gave you life. I named you. You’re my flesh and blood.”
Tandi gasped. “No, no. You’re lying.” She couldn’t believe. It was too far out there to be true.
“I know I told you I never had any children. I had to tell you that because that’s what I’ve been telling myself for the past thirty-four years. It was the only way I could try and forget about you and Glynn. I told you I was weak. It’s true, I was. For years I was strung out on drugs. By the time I had the strength to withstand—”
“Withstand what?” Tandi asked, glaring at Carline. “The hard work associated with being a mother?”
“No. The criticism of others.”
“Oh, please! Tell me something that makes sense, which none of this does.”
Carline rubbed her hands hard. “I was too ashamed to face you and Glynn.”
“That’s bull! We were children.”
“Yes, but years were slipping by. You were smart. I didn’t wanna see you hurt the way you are right now. I didn’t want you to hate me.”
Tandi’s cheeks were tight, her throat was scratchy; she wasn’t sure anymore what to believe. “Oh, you think I’m hurt now? The hurt you hear in my voice, that you see on my face, that’s part of my soul, Mrs. Hughes; it’s been with me all my life, it’s never left me, it’s been my constant companion. That hurt has made my life miserable.”
“And I’m so sorry. I never intended for you to suffer. I—”
“You’re not my mother, so why are we still discussing this? I don’t even know why you’re still in this house.”
Carline gave up on drying her tears; they wouldn’t stop coming. “When you were a little girl, Tandi, you had a one-eyed baby doll with one leg. Its hair was scraggly and matted and you used to tie a few strands of it in a pigtail with a dirty white shoestring.”
Tandi felt sick. “My-my father told you about that doll.”
“No, I found that doll under a park bench. It was the only toy I could afford to give you. You loved that doll. You never let anyone take that doll out of your arms. “You named that doll Candy.”
The room was spinning. Tandi stepped back from the table. There was something soft under her feet. Looking down, she saw she was standing on her shawl.
Getting up quickly, Carline went to pick the shawl up from the floor.
Tandi quickly snatched it up before Carline could touch it. “I don’t need you to pick anything up for me!” She tossed it across the back of the kitchen chair closest to her.
Carline went back to her chair and sat.
Tandi turned first one way then abruptly turned back the other way. This was all so insane. Her mother was dead. This woman was an imposter. “I have to talk to my father.”
“Tandi, no! You and I need to keep talking. We have to—”
“You and I have nothing to talk about. I don’t want you here.”
“I can’t deny what I did was wrong, but I was—”
“Lady, I’m not buying any of this. I want you gone.”
“I made some bad decisions, Tandi, and I’m sorry.”
“Oh, please. Parents make bad decisions every day. We send the kids out without a raincoat when we see the sky is cloudy, or we send them to the corner store forgetting that they have to cross a busy street. I know, I’m a parent. But we do not just up and leave our children.”
“I didn’t have a choice. Once I left, I couldn’t come back.”
“Well, maybe you should have tried. In case you didn’t know, a child who cries itself to sleep for its mother would rejoice if that mother miraculously returned, not caring what the reason was for her leaving. All would be forgiven. A child’s love for its mother does not wash away with its tears. That love is like a tattoo on the soul. And just in case you hadn’t noticed, Mrs. Hughes, I am not a child. I am a woman who is angry as hell that you dare to show up now and drop this bomb on me and expect that I am mature enough to not be hurt by your revelation.”
“So you do believe me?” Carline asked again.
“Do I look like I believe you?” Tandi snapped. “No, I don’t believe you. I can’t believe you. I know you’re lying.”
“Tandi—”
“Mrs. Crawford to you!”
Carline pushed a stray curl off her face. “I didn’t expect that you’d forgive me, but—”
“You’re dead! How can you expect anything?”
Lowering her head, Carline let her hands settle onto her lap.
Tandi began to trudge around the kitchen, circling the table, circling Carline. If what Carline said was true, then she should have been embracing Carline, but with her whole being, Tandi wanted to rail against this woman with a mighty truculent roar! It was all too much. It had to be a lie, a lie that was weighing her down, draining her, making her weary. She slowed her pace. She dragged herself to the other side of the table across from Carline. She felt no better with the kitchen tabl
e between them.
Carline shied away from looking at Tandi. She was looking at the ring of water at the base of her glass.
“Why did you come to this house?”
“For years I used a private investigator. He told me about Sporty’s illness.”
“Oh, my God. You’ve been spying on us? You—”
“I had to know that you were all okay. Tandi, I really do work for the agency. I asked to be assigned to this case. I figured it was time to face my past.”
“Did my father know you were alive?”
“No.”
“Liar! He had to know. There’s no way he didn’t, but you know something? I don’t believe anything you’re saying.”
“Tandi, I know this is difficult for you to understand.”
“Well, bully for you for understanding that.”
“Okay, if you don’t believe me, believe your own eyes. Take a good look at me. Tell me if you don’t see yourself.”
Instead of looking at Carline, Tandi turned away from her. She couldn’t look. She didn’t want to see anything. She had to keep telling herself, My mother is dead! Wasn’t that one of the first things she ever remembered Sporty telling her?
“Your mother is dead,” he had said. “She won’t be coming back.” Tandi didn’t remember crying that night, but she remembered crying many nights after that.
And that was just it. Lorraine Belson was dead, but how did Carline Hughes know about her doll, Candy? Why did Sporty give her the key to the trunk when he himself hadn’t opened it in all these years? And Sporty? Did he stop being a pain in the ass because he was afraid of being put in a nursing home, or did he calm down the day Carline Hughes walked in the door because she was his dead wife come to life? Was it possible? Was Carline Hughes, Lorraine Belson?
Tandi started across the kitchen. “I have to talk to my father.”
“No, Tandi! This is between us. I’m the only person who can answer your questions. I’m the only one you need to talk to. Are you afraid of me? Are you afraid to face me?”
“No, I’m not afraid to face you. I’m not afraid of anything.” She glowered at Carline. Staring intently, studying her face. What she saw there weakened her knees. She saw her own eyes looking back at her. Carline’s nose, Carline’s lips were so much like her own nose and lips. How had those obvious likenesses gotten past her? But of course, she would not have been looking for her dead mother in Sporty’s home health aide, not when she was supposed to be dead.
“Then stay and bitch at me if you have to, but listen to me.”
Tandi felt sick. She wanted desperately to run from the kitchen, from Sporty’s house altogether, but she needed to stay just as desperately.
“Tandi, I have always known how you were getting on.”
“Isn’t it a shame I can’t say likewise? There were no messages from the other side.”
“I know I’ve overwhelmed you when you already have so much going on in your life. I—”
“You don’t know anything about my life.”
“I know that this has been a rough time for you. I’m sorry that—”
“Save it!”
“I’m sorry that I’ve never been here for you, but . . .”
“I said save it.”
“. . . but it was best that I be thought dead.”
“Best for whom? You? What about me? What about Glynn? What about my father? That is, if he didn’t know. Is that what I came in on, him crying because you were alive? Oh, but he’s known for weeks that you’re alive, hasn’t he?”
“Sporty didn’t know, not until I walked into this house. Please don’t blame him. I take sole responsibility for my absence. Thirty-four years ago, I had word get back to Sporty that I was dead. I wanted him to get on with his life.”
“Oh, he did that just fine. Sporty became the most bitter man I’ve ever known. He treated me worse than a one-legged stepchild, but that wasn’t your problem, was it?”
“I didn’t know that he was in such pain that he took it out on you.”
“Of course you knew. I thought you knew how we were getting on. That private detective didn’t tell you?”
Carline fell silent. With trembling fingers, she wiped her face.
Tandi saw that Carline’s hands were trembling, but she didn’t care. She did care that she was beginning to lose her own battle against breaking down—her voice was cracking, her throat was tight, and her heart was crumbling.
“You say what you’ve told me is all true? If it is, then you and my father are despicable beings. I wish you were both dead!”
“Tandida!” Sporty bellowed.
Tandi froze, her heart about stopped.
Sporty slowly wheeled himself into the kitchen. “Don’t ever talk to your mother in that way again.”
Tandi dissolved into a torrent of painful sobs.
55
When Carline couldn’t bear Tandi’s woeful sobs any longer, she went to her and tried to wrap her up in a motherly embrace.
Tandi’s arms shot out, thrusting Carline back, slamming her back into the kitchen counter. “Get away from me! Don’t touch me!”
“Tandida!” Sporty shouted. “Don’t take your anger out on her.”
Tandi sucked her lungs full as she turned on Sporty. “Don’t you say a damn thing to me! You’re no better than she is.”
“I should have told you about Lorraine the first day she came here. It was my decision to not tell you who she was. Tandida, you want to be angry at somebody, be angry with me.” Sporty wheeled himself over to Carline and took her hand. “Are you all right?”
Carline nodded, though she herself couldn’t stem her own tears.
The strangest feeling swept over Tandi when Sporty took Carline’s hand. She was angry that he had lied by his silence, and she felt chastened by the harsh way he had spoken to her; those feelings she was familiar with, but this new feeling—jealousy—she wasn’t. He had never been this concerned or gentle with her.
“Come sit down,” Sporty said to Carline. Using the control lever on his chair, he wheeled alongside Carline to her chair. He then swivelled around so that they were seated side by side.
Tandi was disgusted with the two of them. “You’re both liars. You deserve each other. I’m leaving this house. I never wanna see either of you again in life.”
“Tandi, please!” Carline stood. “Don’t go. You need to hear the whole story.”
Tandi’s legs were rubbery, but she forced them onward.
“Tandida, now is your chance to get answers to all those questions you’ve asked of me over the years. Are you now too afraid, or are you too stubborn to hear the truth?”
That stopped Tandi from taking another step.
“We owe you the truth,” Carline said.
“Do either of you even know what the truth is?”
“Yes,” Carline answered, looking at Sporty. She lightly touched her hand to his cheek. “I’m so sorry.”
Tandi watched Sporty’s eyes mellow, his face relax. A strange glow of what? Love? Is that what was in his eyes as he gazed at Carline? The sight amazed Tandi. In all her life she had never seen him seduced by the single touch of a woman. With Iona Lewis and others, he had always been so gruff, so harsh, so controlling. This was not the same man. This man was gentle, caring, and had shown that he could cry. Did he still love this woman risen from the dead?
Sporty turned his head so that his mouth was in Carline’s hand. He tenderly kissed her palm.
Completely mesmerized, Tandi gawked as Carline, moving her hand, leaned in and kissed Sporty tenderly on the lips. Reveling in that kiss, Sporty closed his eyes. A tear beaded up in the corner of his eye.
Tandi was awestruck. Who was this woman?
It was Sporty who Carline looked at and not Tandi. “I knew this day would come,” she said. “I used to have nightmares about it. In my dreams, I’ve seen us all, including Glynn, talking, but I could never picture in my head, asleep or awake, what the outcome would be.”
“The truth would be a nice outcome,” Tandi said.
“Sit down, Tandida. See if the truth is really what you’ve wanted all these years.”
Tandi pulled the chair with her shawl on it back from the table. She sat, although she felt like she was waiting for her own execution. “Go ahead, Daddy. For the first time in your life, tell me the truth.”
“Tandi, this is not your father’s truth to tell. I’ll tell you everything you need to know,” Carline said, holding on to Sporty’s good hand. Although his hand gave her strength, Carline knew she was in this alone. She kept giving Sporty anxious sidelong glances but he wasn’t looking at her; he was looking stoically at Tandi.
Tandi crossed her legs and folded her arms high across her chest. She began shaking her foot impatiently. “Any day now,” she said, not liking this woman one little bit.
Leaning closer to Sporty, Carline again spoke to him. “I want you to know if I had it to do over again, I would never have left you. I would have stayed by your side and raised our children together.”
The only sign that Sporty was feeling anything was in the sad stare he fixed on Tandi. She didn’t like that Sporty was staring at her, nor was she comfortable with what she saw in his eyes—tears. They frightened her. While it was all so surreal, the reality was, if the truth could reduce him to tears, she didn’t know what it could do to her.
“Tandi, long before I came back here,” Carline began, “I used to look in my mirror and pretend I was talking to you and Glynn, but especially to you.”
“Trying to get your story straight?”
“Yes, you could say that I rehearsed my story. I wanted to be able to say the right thing to make you understand why I did what I did. Of course, now that we’re only a few feet apart, I don’t know what to say.”
Tandi didn’t want to hear that. “Ad-lib.”
“Fine,” Carline said. Tandi’s coldness was expected but she didn’t think it would bother her as much as it did. “I’ll start at the beginning. It wasn’t so painful then. I was seventeen when I met Sporty. He was twenty-one. I lived in Richmond, but I was here, in New York, visiting my cousins on my mother’s side of the family.”
“I know nothing of your cousins.”
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