Certain my mother’s asleep, I’m about to touch her arm and suggest she go upstairs, but then she suddenly says, “So many times I truly would not have made it without him. He accepts me for exactly who I am. That’s very important. You know that, right?”
I think about Cal and nod, but her eyes are closed and she doesn’t notice.
“And then those tough periods. Everyone goes through them. Don’t kid yourself. Don’t look at other people and think they’re having an easy, breezy time of it. And Mark . . . ,” she says, and I know I’m not here for her right now, “. . . there’s no one better to have with you than that man. He’s strong and methodical and doesn’t overreact. In other words, he’s nothing like me.”
Pulling herself upright, she stares into my face.
“On September eleventh, especially in the early hours, people thought this was it, that since we lived on the East Coast between two major cities, we would, without a doubt, be bombed into oblivion. But not Mark. Not your dad. He didn’t have any inside knowledge or anything like that, but he knew panicking wouldn’t help. He came home from the office immediately after the first plane hit the tower and found me cowering under the granny square blanket. You know the one my aunt crocheted?”
“Sure.”
“I had it over my head and was staring at the TV through the holes. He walked over, sat down next to me, and gently took it off. He said, ‘I don’t know what will happen, but I know it will be fine in the end,’ and then we talked about escape routes and where we could go and whether we should cover the windows with plastic. But it was those words, the assurance things would work out, even when it seemed as if the world was shattering. That’s what he did for me. He comforted me and made me feel safe. He’s the kind of person you want with you at the end of the world. All the other stuff, his taste in music, the way he dresses, his need to have his socks rolled a certain way . . . none of it matters.”
Sammie is scratching and whining at the back screen door, wanting to join us. I think again about Cal. How last summer, when I twisted an ankle during a run, he set me up on the couch, foot elevated with an ice pack wrapped in a dish towel. He raced to the store and returned with Advil, three different kinds of gossip magazines, dark chocolate, and the movie Love Actually. It didn’t matter that it was a holiday movie and it was August. He knew it was my favorite.
My mom reaches over and grasps my arm. She pulls me closer to her so that she’s looking directly into my eyes and says, “Claire, this is what I want for you. I want more than anything else for you to find someone who . . .” My arm smarts under her wrench-like grip.
“Mom, it’s okay. I’m okay.”
“It’s just, it’s just . . .” Letting go of my arm, she falters and draws a raspy breath before continuing, “. . . he’s always been here. I feel like there wasn’t anything before him. That I was, I don’t know, somehow untethered before we met,” she says, floating her hand up into the air. “I’m so afraid, terrified, to feel that way again. That I’ll simply blow away.”
Her sobs hurt my heart, and I know patting her arm and cooing sympathetic sounds are no salve for the wretchedness of this pain. Again, I’m filled with an old remorse, faced with suffering that I still don’t know how to help. Finally, her crying subsides, diminished to gulps and sniffling. There’s a rustling in the hydrangea bushes along the fence, and my mother points to a rabbit hopping across the open space next to the flower garden. Sammie, sensing the interloper, begins barking in high-pitched staccatos.
“Hush,” I shout to her, not lowering my voice, figuring the dog’s likely already woken up most of our neighbors.
“I should shoo that bunny away, but I don’t have the strength,” my mother says, hiccupping. I push out of my chair and walk toward the rabbit, who crosshatches his way through the flowers and then the herbs until he reaches the rows of lettuces, where he takes a delicate nibble and then perches on his hind legs to dine.
Mom gestures a forget about it wave, and when I return she’s slouched in the chair, her eyes shut, one arm draped over her head.
I think she’s sleeping, but then she mutters, “You’re closed off. I know that. You don’t open yourself up, and it’s not only with me.” I start to comment, but she looks at me, reaches over, and rubs her hand gently down my arm.
“It’s true,” she says. “I sense it, and you do too—I know you do. The thing is, that’s not good. It’s not good to be so closed off. Sure, you shut out the pain, the disappointment—and people, they’ll always disappoint you—but it’s the other part,” she says mushily. “You get so good at keeping things out that everything stays out, even the wonderful stuff. Like love.” I sit down.
“Well . . .”
I don’t want to cry, but it’s like trying to keep the rising tide from washing away the sand castle you just built. Even though you may have dug a moat around it, it’s inevitable the water will come in and destroy it.
“Honey? What is it? I’m sorry,” she says, bending awkwardly in her chair to wrap her arm around my heaving shoulders. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you. Please, Claire, don’t cry.”
“No, Mom, it’s fine. It’s just . . .” And then I tell her about what happened with Cal and me before I left. I spill it all, how I can’t seem to settle into the relationship, how it always feels as if I’m standing outside myself, unable to break through to truly connect with him the way I want to and the way he deserves.
Finally, I run out of words, out of energy.
“I’m so sorry to dump this on you, especially right now.”
My mother is silent for a long time. Then she pulls me to her, kisses the side of my head, and says, “This was such a gift. You talking to me this way. It’s what I’ve wanted for so long. Now, let me ask you three questions, okay?”
“Okay.”
“Does Cal know everything about you and love you anyway? Is he kind and generous? Do you have interesting conversations and fun together?”
I giggle and say, “That’s actually six questions squished into three.”
“Don’t be so technical. Just answer.”
I mull over what she’s asked me and say, “Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, and yes.”
She turns and takes both of my hands in hers.
“Maybe you don’t know this, but it’s not easy to find a yes answer to all those questions.”
She squints at me and says, “Aunt Frannie told me about your talk at the beach today.”
I fiddle with the rim of the glass, moving my finger around and around the top until a soft squeal emits. In the diminished glow from the fire, I see the spooked rabbit race back into the hydrangeas.
“I won’t say I’m surprised,” she continues. “And I won’t lie and say that I didn’t know what was going on at the time, that I had no idea you were hurting too.”
“It’s okay,” I mumble, fixing my eyes on the hem of my jeans and pulling at the fraying threads.
“No, it’s not. But the truth is I probably couldn’t have done anything different. I know it doesn’t change what happened. I know it doesn’t take away your pain or give you back your childhood, but I need to tell you, I want to tell you, how very sorry I am. You shouldn’t have had to take on what you did. And I wasn’t there when you needed me. But know this . . . I loved you then, more than you can possibly know, that I truly appreciated everything you did for me and for your father. And that I love you now.”
I slide off the chair, kneel, and place my head in her lap, breathing in the smell of her, earthy and sweet. I start to sob again.
And it’s before. It’s before the first stroke, before all the roles shifted, before I lost both my parents. I’m the child I was before, and as my mother strokes my hair, I feel the love, coming into me and going out from me. It’s a start. I know it’ll take time and trust to build up from where we’ve been, but it’s a start.
“I love you too.”
The fire sputters and smokes as giant raindrops splatter over us.
“I’m guessing I won’t be sleeping much tonight, but still, a few hours are probably a good idea,” she says as we stand.
“I think so.”
Inside, at the base of the stairs, we hug and say our good nights. As I turn and place my foot on the first step, the house phone rings.
16
Rena
We have to take a really early flight out of Philadelphia, so at five a.m. I drop Maxie off at Janet’s. She answers the door in her bathrobe. I’m not sure who’s less happy: Janet, who already has two cats, or Maxie, who hasn’t ever been in a house with another animal before. I feel sort of guilty leaving him, but now I know he’ll at least get some food on a regular basis.
“Thanks again for doing this,” I say. I hand my sister the plastic grocery bag of canned food and a gallon jug of kitty litter. Steph brings in a box of dry food, and I pick up Maxie’s carrier and take him into the house.
“No problem,” she says, but I notice her eyes don’t exactly match what’s coming out of her mouth. Janet’s life is super orderly, and an extra cat (or, an extra anything) doesn’t really fit into it.
She taps her finger on the nylon netting at the front of the carrier, and Maxie hisses. “What time’s your flight?”
“Seven forty.” I peek into the carrier and unzip the front. I try to give Maxie a rub on the side of his neck, but he backs away and growls.
Janet says, “Running a little late, aren’t you?”
“Little Miss Dawdle here couldn’t get her act together so we could walk out the door. Isn’t that right?” I bend down to kiss Stephanie on the top of her head.
Stephanie’s sitting on the foyer floor, petting Janet’s cats, Mewy and Flounder. They’re huge, twenty-pound Maine Coons, and Steph looks even tinier next to them. They crawl into her lap and over her shoulders. It’s like she’s being attacked by a hairy python.
“Stephanie, honey, get up and let me brush you off. You’re completely covered with cat hair.” Pouting, she pushes the cats away and stands up. From out of the corner of my eye, I see a flash of black that is Maxie escaping from the carrier.
“Got any tape?” I ask Janet.
I follow her into the kitchen. As always, it’s perfect. There’s a three-foot-tall ceramic rooster on the corner of her white granite countertop. There are two framed prints on the wall of roosters eating corn, rooster dish towels, and even measuring cups and spoons with rooster-shaped handles hanging from rooster-head hooks above the stove. My sister has a thing for roosters.
Janet did good for herself, I’ll give her that. She married Brent the year after they graduated college. He does something in finance in New York City, and she manages a yarn boutique. Rich ladies come there to commission her and her staff to knit or crochet these really beautiful throw blankets for their designer living room couches. Janet was always good with her hands, and her marketing degree really helped her to grow the business. She started out just selling yarn. But now she also gives these how-to classes on Saturdays. She’s even talking about having an online catalog. Like my mom says, Janet will always land on her feet and on the top of the mountain. My mom also says if you want to find a needle in a haystack, have Rena jump in because, for sure, she’ll land right smack on top of it.
Handing me the tape, Janet asks, “Can I fix you guys something to eat on the plane?”
I squash a long piece into a messy ball and pat the sticky side up and down Stephanie’s black leggings.
“No, that’s okay. I packed some stuff for us. Brent’s fine with me leaving the car here?” I didn’t want the car sitting outside my empty house for so long. I had the house inside lights on timers. To maybe fool burglars into thinking someone’s there.
“He said it was no problem.” Janet takes the roll of tape from me and puts it back in the kitchen drawer. It’s so neat in there with all the crap organized in separate plastic boxes for paper clips, pens and pencils, and sticky notes. There’s even a container for a ruler and another one for a calculator.
“Are you excited about finally getting to leave?” she asks.
“Yeah. It’s going to be tough, me and Steph getting set up in a new place and everything, but I’m so hoping it will all be worth it.”
Janet hugs me and says, “I just know this doctor will be the one to figure things out.”
I hug her back and say, “Keep praying for us, okay?”
“Of course. Always.”
“Hey, did I tell you Gary finally made that appointment to have his stomach checked out?”
“Good, it’s about time. Maybe it is genetic, who knows?”
“Right now, to tell you the truth, I’m hoping for anything. Just to get some kind of an answer, you know?”
“Absolutely understand.” She hugs me again and says, “It’ll work out fine, sis. I know it will. Stay strong.”
I sniff and say, “I’m sure trying.”
“Oh, I meant to tell you,” she says. “Guess who I ran into at the grocery store last week?”
“Who?”
“Mrs. Hopkins. Remember her? You used to babysit for her son, Greg or Craig?”
“Craig,” I say.
“Craig, that’s right,” she says, wiping the counter with one of the rooster dish towels. Of course, I can’t see a crumb or spot anywhere on it. “She was in the checkout line, and we got to talking about when you used to watch him. All those ear infections he had. Remember?”
I did. He was this cute two-year-old with curly blond hair and really horrible ears. He’d even have pus and blood coming out of one or both of them. Poor little guy. Would scream all the time.
“Yeah, he really had it bad,” I say.
Janet folds the dish towel exactly into thirds so the picture of the rooster shows on the front and hangs it over the oven door handle.
“So awful,” she says. “Mrs. Hopkins said she felt terrible you couldn’t sit for him anymore. She said she was really relieved when the infections stopped.”
We walk back to the foyer.
“Well, thank God, most kids grow out of ear infections.”
Janet says, “She told me he’s married now and she has two grandchildren. Lives somewhere in Florida, so she doesn’t get to see them as much as she wants.”
“Oh, too bad,” I say.
There’s a knock at the door.
“Must be the cab,” Janet says. “Tell them to wait just a second, okay? I have something for Stephanie I think she’ll love.”
I let the cabdriver know. Janet goes into the pantry and comes back with a package wrapped in sparkly paper. She hands it to Stephanie.
Steph rips into it. She gives a little scream and runs over to Janet to hug her.
“Well, try it on, silly,” says my sister.
“A real princess skirt,” shouts Steph. It’s a light blue tutu that’s got silver stars all over it. She twirls around and around until she falls onto the floor, giggling.
“Stephanie, get up off the floor before you get all hairy again,” I say.
“Wait,” says Janet. “There’s something else in there too.”
“Oh, Aunt Janny, it’s a wand. A magic wand. It’s what I’ve always wanted.”
Janet bends down to hug her. She says, “May all your wishes come true, mishmouth.” It’s a nickname Janet gave her when she first started talking because all her words were “mished” together. Stephanie giggles again and hugs Janet tight around the neck.
“Janet, you shouldn’t keep giving her all these presents. It’ll spoil her.”
“Hey, I’m her only aunt. It’s my job to spoil her. Besides, I feel like she’s my daughter too.”
I know this is true. They tried for years, but Janet just could not get pregnant. Something about her tubes being blocked or her uterus being shaped weird. I forget.
“Stephanie, we have to go now. I hope they let us take that wand on the plane. It’s pretty pointy.”
“I’m sure it’ll be fine,” says Janet.
“I wa
nt to say bye to Maxie,” Stephanie whines.
“Good luck with that. I saw him run down to the basement,” I say.
“Stephie, I promise I’ll tell him you said goodbye when he comes up for his dinner. I’m sure he’ll be up real soon to play with his cousins,” says Janet, kissing Stephanie and giving her another hug.
My daughter seems to think this makes sense. But I know there’s not a frigid virgin’s chance in a whorehouse that Maxie will be coming upstairs any time soon to probably be scratched and hissed at by his “cousins.” My bet is that it’ll be at least a week of my sister taking plates of food down to him. In fact, I’d be shocked if she actually sees that damn cat the whole time Stephanie and me are in Arizona. But if that’s what gets Steph going, the lie works for me too.
When we walk to the cab, Stephanie turns and waves her magic wand in Janet’s direction and says, “Bye-bye, Aunt Janny.”
“Bye, Princess Stephanie,” shouts my sister.
Philadelphia International is crazy.
If traveling with a kid weren’t hard enough, the jackass security guy yelling at everyone, “Take off your shoes, computers out of cases, everything from your pockets goes into a bin,” over and over makes me want to fucking scream.
But the shit actually hit the fan before that, when I went to change our seats.
When Stephanie had to stay longer in the hospital, I needed to rebook the flight. The new seats we got were way in the back of the plane. We had less than an hour until we had to board, and there was this huge line to the customer service representatives, but there was no way in hell I was going to sit in those seats.
After twenty minutes, we finally reached the desk. I told the rep—Lynnie, according to her name tag—that our seats had to be changed.
She took my tickets and said, “Well, Mrs. Cole, let me see what we can do.”
She clicked on her keyboard, frowned at me, and said, “Unfortunately, I won’t be able to move you. This flight is at full capacity.”
The Perfect Fraud Page 9