Objects of My Affection (42 page)

“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.”

Of course she does. “Thanks, but don't they charge a fortune?”

“Consider it a bonus to your bonus. You've earned it.”

My bonus! After all of this, I can't believe I nearly forgot it. At the reminder, Will reaches into his shirt pocket and pulls out a folded check and hands it to me.

“Woo-hoo!” I say, unfolding it and giving it a loud, smoochy kiss. “Hello, lover … hello, future. So nice to finally hold you.”

I kiss it a few more times, then say, “Thanks for the cake and the cash. I'm going to go—you don't mind that I spend one more night in the bungalow?”

“Stay as long as you need. But don't get carried away,” Marva says. “I'm not looking for a roommate.”

“Just for the night is fine. And, Will, tell Padma how much I enjoyed the cake.”

“Yes, do,” Marva says. “In fact, let me cut off one more piece and I'll send the rest back home with you tonight. Wouldn't want to bring an extra plate into my perfectly clean house.”

“I'm not going home tonight,” Will says. “I intend to stay by your side until your birthday is over.”

“There's no need. I give you my word I'm not going to do anything drastic. Besides, you have it wrong. The promise was that we'd never let ourselves become senior citizens—so by midnight, it's too late. I'll be sixty-five. ‘Crisis'”—she air-quotes the word—“is over.”

Even though I believe her—looks as if Daniel and I were one day off on our guess—I'm glad to hear Will say he's staying anyway.

“And I'll pop in here around ten tomorrow,” I tell Marva, and that I feel the need to let her know before coming in cements that I'm done here. “You two have fun.”

A full moon lights my way as I head through Marva's yard to the bungalow, creating a pretty glow through the trees. It's my last night here, and—though I have a whopping check in my pocket—the
future is uncertain. Ash could be sent back to rehab—or prison, or be released, and then who knows what he'll choose to do. What I do know: I'm no longer willing to put my life on hold for him. He's my son, and I'll do what I can for him, but that no longer includes giving up everything that
I
want. It's
okay
for me to have things. It doesn't mean I care about Ash any less—only that I care about me, too. I want that pretty picture I imagined in my head, what feels so long ago—the one that includes a home and a job and friends.

This time, however, I add to the picture something I didn't even dare think about before, but I realize that I really want it—I deserve it.

As soon as I get into the bungalow, I grab my purse, then head out to my car. Now that I'm finally clear about what I want, I don't want to wait a minute longer than I must to try to get it.

T
he street parking near Daniel's apartment is a nightmare, so I pull into the huge subterranean garage, hoping there are visitor spaces. There aren't, but as I drive around, I notice Daniel's car. He's in the front of a tandem space, so I take a chance and pull behind him, happy to see he's home on a Friday evening.

Getting out of my car, I pause, not sure how to get to his apartment. I've never been here before—just did some drive-bys to torment myself after he and I broke up. Correction: after I broke up with him. I'm glancing around for an elevator or stairs when Daniel's car loudly chirps itself awake and unlocked, the noise bouncing in the cavernous garage. I'm already jumpy enough over what I plan to say, so this nearly sets me clinging spiderlike and terrified to the wall.