Double Cross (17 page)
By the time she was finished, I was mesmerized. I didn’t realize that my face had drifted close to her. When she looked up, our eyes were no more than six inches apart. She gasped.
I jerked back in my chair. “I’m sorry; it’s just that I’ve never seen anyone slice a muffin with such precision.”
“Measure twice, cut once; that’s the key to weight control. That, and cigarettes.” She picked up one of the muffin slices and nibbled it like a mouse gnawing cheese.
“I thought measure twice, cut once was a saying that had to do with woodworking.”
She waved a hand in the air. “Maybe so, but it applies nicely to eating, also.”
I didn’t see how it had anything at all to do with eating, but there was no point in pressing the issue.
“I understand you got shot in the finger.” She said it with no more emotion than if she’d been observing that I’d bought a new dress.
“Actually, I got shot in the side. Just a nick, though. It was no big deal.”
She pointed at my splint with her fork. “Then what’s that?”
“It got caught between a reporter’s head and the floor of Starbucks.”
She took another nibble of muffin. “You know, when you were a little girl you were so clumsy.” She grunted as she chewed, and I wasn’t sure if it was a laugh or an expression of disgust. “We used to laugh when you would play in the backyard and get tangled up in your own feet. You had more bumps and bruises than any child on the block.”
At that point, I’d had enough. “Well, I couldn’t have been too clumsy, Mother. I was all-district in basketball and all-state in softball.”
“Were you really? That’s wonderful. Nevertheless, you were clumsy when you were small. There can be no doubt about that. I remember it as if it were yesterday.”
Maria came in from the kitchen and placed my omelet and hash browns in front of me on a dark blue plate. Garnished with diced tomatoes and parsley, the food was so pretty that I almost hated to cut into it.
I picked up my fork. “I thought you might call me when I was in the hospital.” I made a point not to look up. “It was all over the news that day. You must have heard about it, didn’t you?”
“I don’t think that we did. Did we, Stanley?” Her voice had an unnaturally casual quality. “My memory anymore is so awful. Getting old is no treat, you know?”
Stanley’s head was buried in the Arts and Leisure section of the paper. He merely cleared his throat.
“We were awfully busy last week,” she continued. “It seemed that we had something every night. I don’t know how we can keep up this schedule.”
I placed my hands in my lap. “I’m your daughter. I was in the hospital.”
She wagged her fork in my direction. “I suppose I have to remind you that you didn’t call me, either.”
“I was the one who got shot. I think the calls customarily run in the other direction in that situation.”
“You’re right. I should have called.”
I took that as an admission that she had known.
“I guess it will take some time for me to get back into this mothering thing.” She pointed at my omelet. “Do you think I could have just a taste of that? It looks scrumptious.”
Before I could answer, she had cut off a hunk of egg and placed it on her plate. She then spent at least two minutes subdividing it and moving it around with her fork until it was arranged just the way she wanted it in relationship to her remaining muffin slices.
“You know, I broke my arm once when I was twelve,” she said. “Roller skates. Uncle Ralph told me he’d never seen a child take to skating as quickly as I did. He said I always tried to do too much too soon . . .”
As she went on about her natural ability as a skater, I fiddled with the tape on my splint. Maria appeared to my right and poured coffee into my cup. I smiled up at her and wondered whether she had a daughter, and if so, whether they laughed and talked and fixed each other’s hair. In fact, I wondered whether she might want another one.
Maybe it was self-centered of me, but I tried again to bring the conversation back to my injuries. After all, the newspapers had called me a hero—and this was my mother! I held up my splint. “My line of business can be dangerous, but I never really appreciated how dangerous until I met Simon Mason. The past year has been crazy.”
My mother looked at me blankly, as if she had no idea how to respond to such a rude interruption of her roller-skating story.
Stanley rustled his paper and peeked around the edge. When our eyes met, he withdrew behind it again, like a turtle pulling its head back into its shell. “So, I understand the bullet was intended for that
Morning News
reporter,” he said from behind a grainy photo of a football player. “What’s her name?”
Morning News
reporter,” he said from behind a grainy photo of a football player. “What’s her name?”
“Katie Parst.”
He lowered the paper and squinted at me over the reading glasses that were perched near the end of his skinny nose. “She’s the one who’s been doing those reports on organized crime, isn’t she?”
“That’s right, an extortion ring. She’s a brave woman. I’d never met her before, but I like her a lot. She stayed with me for a long time at the hospital.”
My mother lifted a piece of omelet with her fork, opened her mouth unnaturally wide, and inserted the bite carefully into her mouth, seemingly concerned that some part of the egg or fork might brush against her teeth. This time she chewed and swallowed before she spoke. “I’m sure this Parst woman probably felt a sense of obligation. After all, according to the paper, you saved her life.”
“I’m sure she did feel obligated. But I think she likes me, too.”
“Of course she does, dear.” She smiled and scooped three dollops of cream cheese the size of golf balls from a dish in the center of the table. She placed them on the edge of her plate. Suddenly she picked one up with her fingers and popped it directly into her mouth.
My jaw must have dropped, because as she picked up a second one, she said, “What are you staring at, honey? It’s the dairy group.” She popped that one into her mouth, also.
I wanted desperately to be back on earth. I lowered my head and concentrated on my omelet.
“It was a terrible thing about Simon Mason’s assistant, the lady who killed herself,” she said. “Stanley and I saw it in the paper, didn’t we, dear?”
His voice barely made it over the top of the page. “I don’t remember anything about any suicide.”
My mother placed her fork on her plate. “Of course you do. We talked about it, don’t you remember? I said that I wondered if Taylor knew her.”
“If you say so, dear.” He still didn’t lower the paper.
“I wonder who I could have talked about that with if it wasn’t you?” she said, scratching her head. “Well, did you know her, Taylor?”
“Yes, I knew her pretty well, actually. She didn’t like me.”
“Why not? Did you do something to her?”
I sighed. “No, I didn’t do something to her. She just never took to me, I guess.” The last thing I wanted was for my mother to know that Simon’s top assistant was in love with him and jealous of me.
Stanley chose that as the time to emerge again from his shell. He put down his paper. “How did it happen?”
“How did what happen?”
“The suicide.”
“Carbon monoxide. She apparently loaded herself up with Valium, got in her car with the garage door down, and turned on the ignition.”
Stanley took off his reading glasses and set them on the table next to his plate. “Poor girl. Are they certain it wasn’t an accident?”
“It was the middle of the night, and she left a note. Kacey Mason and I found her—and the note.”
He tilted his head. “You were at her house?”
“Kacey and I had a meeting with her that morning. We found her body. Later, we found the note in the house.”
“How gruesome,” my mother said.
“Yes, it was pretty gruesome.”
Stanley picked up his glasses again. “What did the note say?”
“That’s pretty sensitive, with her family and all.”
“Of course.” He put his glasses on and opened the business section.
My mother picked up her last slice of muffin. This time she slathered cream cheese on it with her knife. “That’s certainly a nice house you’re living in,” she said, just before shoving the muffin in her mouth. Suddenly she seemed to have no concern at all for her teeth. A glob of cream cheese stuck to one of her incisors. I figured I could spend a lifetime trying to make sense out of the eating habits I’d observed in this one brunch. I resolved never to pay attention to her eating again, unless I was making a video for her therapist.
“It’s Simon Mason’s house. I’m living there with Kacey. She’s a good kid, a good friend.”
Stanley looked at me over his paper again. I hadn’t even realized he was listening anymore. “You’re actually living in Simon Mason’s house? You were that close to him?”
“Yes. He was a lot like Dad.”
My mother took a long drink of grapefruit juice and put her glass back on the table. She wiped her mouth with her napkin. “Well, it’s all water under the bridge. I hope you’re moving on. Each day is a new day.”
“You’re a veritable cliché machine,” I said.
“Well, Miss smarty-pants, I’m sorry I couldn’t be more original.”
“I was just kidding.”
She folded her napkin and placed it on the table next to her plate. “It’s all right. I don’t know why I’m being so sensitive. It’s the stress.”
I didn’t know if she was referring to me or to something else that was causing her stress.
“If you’re finished eating, I’ll give you a tour of the house.” Her voice was suddenly bright again.
Actually, I’d barely begun to eat, but I looked again at my tight jeans and put my fork down. “I can’t wait to see it.”
Stanley stood up. “If you two don’t mind, I’ve got some work to do. I’ll be in the study.”
She waved at him. “You go on, dear. We’ll just be having a girl talk.”
I didn’t know what she had in mind, but I had a difficult time envisioning us in a girl talk. So far, the morning had been so much less than I had hoped for, in nearly every way. I could feel my shoulders sagging at the mere thought of a long walk through her house.
Just before we pushed back from the table, she pulled a prescription bottle out of her pocket. She shook a pill out onto the table and sized it up carefully before cutting it in half with her knife. As she placed the pill on her tongue and tipped her head back, I glanced at the bottle, which was almost empty. Valium.
I nodded at the bottle. “What would happen if you took five or six of those?”
“Why would I do that?”
“You wouldn’t, but do you know what would happen?”
“Honey, if I took two of them, I’d be asleep in ten minutes. That’s why I cut them in half. If I took five or six, I wouldn’t wake up for a week.”
CHAPTER
EIGHTEEN
WHEN I GOT BACK to the house, Kacey was in front of the television in blue sweatpants and a yellow Tri-Delta sweatshirt. Her feet, in running shoes and white ankle socks, were propped on an ottoman. She wore her hair in a haphazard ponytail. “Well, how did it go?”
I tossed my purse on the couch. “What are you doing here?”
She picked up the clicker and turned off the TV. “When I pulled out my stuff to study for my econ final, I realized I’d left my notes here. So I had to drive over and get them. I’ve only been here a few minutes.”
I kicked off my shoes and plopped down on the couch. “It was disappointing.”
“Are we talking about Rob Morrow or about your mother?”
“Both.”
“Strike two.”
“I don’t want to talk about Rob.”
She waved a hand in the air. “That is grossly unfair. Everybody in my sorority is waiting to hear about that date.”
I shot her a look. She got the point. “So, what went wrong with your mom?”
I sighed. “Let’s see, where do I start? First, I didn’t know we were going to church, and here I am in blue jeans.”
“So what? Lots of people wear blue jeans to church.”
“Not to that church. I looked like an idiot, as usual. Then, all that my mother wanted to talk about was herself—and, you know, after twenty years, I was kind of hoping she’d have some interest in hearing about me.”
Kacey slid her feet off the ottoman and leaned toward me with her elbows on her knees. “I’m sorry. Wasn’t she interested at all?”
“Not really. It was obvious she hadn’t given me a lot of thought.”
“I’m sure that’s not true. She was probably nervous. Besides, didn’t you say she had some psychological problems?”
I laughed. “I’ll say. You’re not going to believe this. We’re sitting in church, and the choir is singing—you know, a choir song. Nobody else is supposed to sing. Well, my mother starts singing along with them—out loud. Other than the choir, she’s the only one in the whole building who’s singing.”
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