Pascal's Wager (5 page)

“Have you seen your mother since we talked? I'm not nagging you. Heaven forbid I should nag.”

“Yes, I saw her.”

I moved out into the hall with the phone. Jacoboni had taken a sudden intense interest in his computer screen, a sure sign he was homing in on every word I said. The hallway itself was resembling Highway 101: Every freshman on campus was following Tabitha's lead and skating through Alfred P. Sloan on roller blades, and that was compounded by the group of five male second-year grad students who seemed to be forever in the halls. I took the phone out the end door to the courtyard and sat on the edge of the circular planter that was overgrown with wandering Jew.

“You still there?” Max said. “Jill?”

“Yeah. Look, Max, I had lunch with Mother, and I know you think she's the queen of Sheba, but I
know
she's got a problem.” I gave him the
Reader's Digest
version of our lunch date. He groaned with increasing drama at every plot twist.

“Nobody acts like that unless she's seriously hitting the bottle,” I said.

“You actually smelled liquor on her breath?” Max said. “I'm just asking?”

“No, but who could tell with the amount of perfume she was wearing? Since when did she start bathing in fragrance and forgetting the smaller niceties—like combing her hair?”

“The stress is getting to her. I knew it—I saw it coming—but does she listen to me?” Max sniffed. Any minute now he was going to start blowing his nose. I could feel myself stiffening. I was already squeezing perspiration out of the cell phone.

“What do you want me to do about it, Max?” I said. “I told you—when I even hinted that she might have, oh, a headache, she practically cleared the table. Do
you
want to be on the receiving end of one of her tirades?”

“I don't want to ruin a beautiful friendship. You, she'll forgive. Me, she'll put out with the garbage.”

“Oh, come on, Max, you two have been friends for twenty-five years. And if she comes after you with her saber tongue, you'll stand there and take it until she's worn herself out. If she comes after me, I'll say things I'll regret and put even
more
distance between us. That's why I don't get into it with her, ever.”

“What are you talking about—-what distance? Her whole world revolves around you!”

“Then you and I aren't orbiting in the same solar system. She has been avoiding me for six months. There was a time when I cringed every time she called me. Now if my phone rang and it was her, I'd probably lose consciousness. Look, I tried, Max, and it didn't work. After our little incident at Marie Callendar's, she's not going to make another lunch date with me for a long time.”

“She said you were having lunch next week.”

“What?”

“She told me she was meeting you again for lunch next week. She said you discussed it.”

“Where was I? I'm telling you, the booze is getting to her.”

“It's not booze.”

“Then how do you account for—”

“Last night, I finally talked her into letting me come over and cook dinner for her. I fixed everything she likes. Polenta with gorgonzola, my stracotto al barolo—that's the beef braised in red wine sauce—”

“Enough with the menu, Max. What happened?”

“I told her, ‘Go upstairs and take a hot bubble bath and when you come down, it will be a feast to die for.' While she was up there—God forgive me—I went through every cabinet, every closet, the pantry Not a drop of alcohol, just like always. Nothing. Nada. Not even a cork in the trash can.”

“You went through the garbage?” I said. “Tell me you weren't wearing your velvet jacket.”

“Silk shirt. I hope the coffee grounds come out at the cleaners.”

“Coffee grounds? Since when did she start drinking coffee?”

“She didn't. It was left in the pot from the last time I was over. I had just dumped it into the trash, then I stuck my arm in there. Maybe I'm the one with the problem?”

“When was the last time you'd been over there?” I said.

He paused. “Two weeks ago.”

I switched the phone to the other ear. “What are you thinking?”

“Nothing. I'm not thinking. I don't want to think. But you go over there, Jill. You check on her.”

“What do you want me to do, dismantle the garbage disposal? You went through everything. She's obviously not drinking at home.”

“It's not that.”

“What then?”

The usual rich tenor of his voice was thinning out until it was almost shrill.

“I got her talking about her work,” Max said. “And she says to me—you won't believe this, Jill—I couldn't believe it myself—”

“Try me.”

“She says ‘I was looking through the…the…oh, that thing, that instrument we use to see things magnified.'”

“The microscope.”

“Yeah. Exactly. That's what I had to say. She talked all around the word, and that wasn't the only time.”

“But she wasn't drunk.” I said. “You're sure?”

“You know what I think? I will
tell
you what I think. I think she's depressed.”

“That's everybody's answer to every malady they can't figure out,” I said.

“No, depression affects the mind, the powers of concentration. I know musicians who suffer—oh, it's terrible—they can't even tune an instrument.”

“She's not some melodramatic artist—no offense—but she would never let herself fall into something like that. You've never heard her lecture about antidepressants and support groups? She could've pulled Sylvia Plath right out of the oven with that one.”

“Then show me I'm wrong,” Max said. “Go over there and find out I've built another mountain out of a mole hill. I will kiss your feet. I'll cook you whatever you want. You want lo schinco? You always loved my schinco.”

“You don't have to ply me with food,” I said. “I'll go over there. When did she say we were having lunch?”

“She was vague. Next week was what she said.”

“Okay, so maybe I'll just drop in Saturday. You think she'll be home?”

“That I know. She's always home on the weekends. She won't put her nose out unless I carry her.”

“I have a life-sized picture of that,” I said, sarcasm dripping.

“You'll call me when you've seen her?”

“Yes.”

“Day or night. You have my number?”

“Yeah, Max.”

“Don't make me wait. I won't sleep until I know.”
C'mon, Max
, I thought as we hung up.
I thought I was obsessing. A little Valium wouldn't hurt you any
.

I got through the rest of the week by keeping things in their proper cubbyholes. I prepped for and taught classes and held office hours and tutored Tabitha during the day, and then after my Loop run—during which I didn't run into Socrates again, thank heaven—I stayed up most of the night figuring out how to expand my research to reach a new conclusion. When I did sleep it was sprawled out on the couch in my apartment, my laptop blinking at me from the coffee table so I wouldn't actually go into REM and lose my train of thought.

I was bleary-eyed by Saturday morning, but I had the new proposal done and safely tucked into my desk drawer at the office, ready to be delivered to Nigel on Monday. It was so invitingly quiet in the building that I was tempted to prop myself up at my desk with a cup of Earl Grey and get work done. No Tabitha. No Jacoboni or Peter or Rashad or Deb or bevy of second-year grads. If there were a heaven, that would be it.

But Max would never let
me
sleep again if I didn't go over to my mother's. My only hope of avoiding verbal bombardment came from knowing that she'd actually told Max she was going to see me again. That is, if Max was telling me the truth. I was beginning to think he'd do just about anything to make sure my mother didn't drop out of his life—short of selling his pasta maker and his conducting baton.

I knew Max hadn't been lying to me or even exaggerating a little when I pulled my Miata—bought secondhand from Max—up to the house on Mayfield. He had, in fact, left out the most important information. The oleanders had grown past the lower windows and
were on their way up to the second floor. The grass hadn't been cut since probably July—and it was October. There was a soggy Sunday paper lying in the middle of the lawn.

Okay, so the yardman quit. Big deal
, I told myself firmly as I retrieved the paper and plopped it into the large garbage can that was still parked at the curb. If memory served me correctly, trash pickup was on Wednesday. Yardman or no yardman, Liz McGavock always had the trash can back behind the garage before the truck got to the other end of the street.

I knocked on the front door, a “courtesy” I had been paying my mother since the first time I'd gone there when I moved back to Palo Alto four years ago. I had opened the door and called out, “Mother, I'm home!” Her initial greeting had included, “From now on, wait for me to answer the door.”

That had been my first clue that her encouragement to quit my teaching job in Trenton and at least apply for a fellowship at Stanford had been purely in the interest of my career, not because she missed me and wanted me close to her. There had been no argument when I said I wanted to live in graduate housing at Escondido Village rather than move back in with her, but she'd definitely kept close tabs on me the first two and a half years—only because she wanted to supervise my studies and oversee my friendships and keep surveillance over my activities, just as she'd always done. She said she wanted to guide me in becoming, as she put it, a strong, independent, intelligent, well-educated, and culturally astute woman. Nothing more. When she'd stopped calling six months ago, I'd told myself I was better off beyond her scrutiny.

Now, as the front door swung open, Mother greeted me in a half-open bathrobe. Black bikinis and a white bra did more than peek out from under it. The sight of me didn't seem to surprise her or prompt her to cinch up the robe. She just smiled vaguely at me and said, “Oh. Come on in.”

“Did I wake you up?” I said.

“Don't be ridiculous. I'm up at dawn—you know that.”

I also know you stood over the yardman with a pair of tweezers and a magnifying glass, but look what happened to that
.

“I was at the office early, so I thought I'd come by,” I said. “I figured you'd have the tea made.”

“No, as a matter of fact, I don't,” she said.

“Oh,” I said. “Do you mind if I make a cup?”

“Help yourself.”

“You want any?”

“Any what?” Tea.

As I trailed behind her to the kitchen, I tried not to wonder whether she'd be any more alert if I offered her a gin and tonic. I glanced back at the foyer and craned to see into the living room. So far everything looked, as usual, compulsively neat and orderly. The Hans Hofmann and Willem de Kooning prints were still on the walls. I caught a peek of the baby grand piano—my mother's only frivolous possession. Everything else in her house was rigid and decidedly unfeminine. She preferred clean lines, she'd always said. Everything uncluttered, unfussy.

So it still seemed—until I got to the kitchen and saw a mound of dirty dishes the size of Mt. Shasta in the sink. I pretended not to see it as I opened a cabinet to get a mug, but it was empty and I was forced to paw through the pile to locate one to recycle.

“Did you have a dinner party last night?” I said.

“No. Why?”

“Oh, I don't know. It was Friday night—you like to entertain—”
And you have enough dirty dishes in here to have served the entire Santa Clara Valley
.

I found the English breakfast tea and pretended to be choosy about which bag I picked from the box as I mentally groped for another approach. I was so bad at being subtle.

“So…Max said he was over for dinner this week,” I said finally.

“Yes, and he talked insheshantly.”

“Incessantly,” I corrected automatically.

“That's what I said.”

“Just confirming. What was he going on about?”

“Music-school politics—about which I could care less and he knows it. Why he felt it nesheshary to tell me that the chairman—no, don't use that!”

I stopped with my hand on the door to the microwave, tea mug ready to go in.

“Why not?” I said. “Is it broken?”

“I can't tolerate the noise it makes,” Liz said.

“What noise? Is there something wrong with it?”

“It beeps. I said I can't—can't—”

“Tolerate it,” I said.

“Do not finish my sentences for me. I am perfectly capable of expressing my own—”

She was cut off by the ringing of the phone, which caused her to jump as if the thing had exploded. Then she snatched up the receiver and said into it, “What is it?”

I set the mug of still-cold water with its floating tea bag on the counter and worked at keeping my teeth from falling out of my mouth. My mother had never been known for her phone cordiality, but it was beneath her to be outright rude. What the
heck
was going on? She couldn't stand the microwave beeping? She was jumping at the telephone ringing?

I paused and listened. Except for Mother snapping into the receiver, there wasn't a sound in the house. Normally on a Saturday morning, she had NPR on, but a glance at the radio revealed the plug dangling from the shelf. If she didn't like what was on, she would at least put some classical music on the CD player. In fact, the only thing close to bizarre I ever saw the woman do was stand in the living room and conduct a concerto that was coming through the speakers. But the place was completely silent. I didn't even hear the clock ticking in the foyer.

I'm blowing this whole thing out of proportion
, I thought.
Max has got me freaked out
.