South by Southeast (32 page)

“She says she can't wait to talk to you,” the nursing assistant said.

“Fine,” I said. “But first, her dogs go outside.”

“She won't like that,” he said. “She loves those dogs.”

“No dogs.”

This time, Mother didn't receive the news well. She cursed in Serbian until she was wheezing. But a moment later, the nurse came back with the two huge identical white poodles on tight
leashes. Both dogs were trussed in enough pink ribbons to march in a parade, but that was just Mother's inside joke. You had to judge Dunja and Dragona by their flashing eyes. One of the dogs growled as they walked closer to me.

“Thanks a lot,” the nursing assistant said, gesturing to the hall while he walked the dogs to the door. “Now you put her in a pissy mood.”

Mother was living in her bedroom now. She'd knocked out a wall to double the size of the master suite. Her home was much better kept than her yard. She might be aging, but she was still living elegantly. For now.

I saw her flaming red hair before I saw her face in the chair. Beneath her favorite wig, Mother's cheeks had shrunken the way Dad's had. Her face was pale. Mother was sick, not just older. She was sitting upright in her plush wingback chair, within two easy steps of her bed.

I wasn't expecting the oxygen tubes in her nose, tied to a tank beside her chair. But then again, she'd been smoking since she was twelve, she always said.

The look on her face reminded me that I should have had her patted down for weapons. She raised her finger to jab the air, angry. “Were you followed?”

“I took precautions.”

“Like you took precautions with your father?”

Mother drew first blood.

“Next subject,” I said.

She indicated her bedside table, which was stacked with more than two dozen tabloids and magazines. “I've been reading about you,” she said. “You must be pleased. You always liked special attention.”

“I haven't talked to a reporter or to the district attorney,” I said. “My only statements have been through my lawyer. I've only talked about Escobar.”

Mother's face darkened with a sour laugh. “I don't know what you're talking about,” she recited. She squinted her eyes, and I knew she was paranoid that her house might be bugged. She also didn't believe me.

“I never wanted this for you,” I said.

That terrible laugh again. “Then tell me why, at the age of eighty-three, I have attorneys on retainer on two continents. Did you plan to see me die in prison from your lies?”

We both knew I didn't have to lie. Mother was rehearsing her testimony.

“It's not coming from me,” I said. “Believe it or don't.”

Mother was trembling, maybe from anger, maybe from something else.

“If my lawyers finds out differently, I will see you rot in hell,” Mother said. She said it like a woman with the confidence that she could have a man killed.

“Thought you didn't believe in hell.”

“I live in hell now,” she said. “So now I believe.”

I noticed a neat row of prescription bottles on her table, but I didn't ask what else she was fighting. “It's not me. I've never had any bad wishes against you,” I said. “That's the first thing I came to say.”

“Go,” Mother said. “Leave my house.”

“She wants to see you. That's the second thing.”

Mother's sagging jowls trembled. “I don't believe you,” she said, blinking.

“She's right outside, in the car. She's waiting for me to come back and say you want to see her. She's cool with it if you don't.”

“There is no length you won't go to?” Mother said. “The devil himself must have your beautiful face. You have no more conscience than to come to an old woman's house to try to trick her? To entrap her? And they say I'm the terrible one. All these lies.”

She might be paranoid for good reason, but she was wasting her
routine on me. “If you say you want to see her, you better be nice. Shit on me all you want, but not on her.”

“
I
should be nice?” Mother said. “Four years pass without a word, and I am not nice?”

“Promise me, or I'll tell her you said no thanks. She'll live. She's tough.” I almost said,
Thanks to you
.

Mother's lips curled, but she thought better against whatever she wanted to say. “Yes,” she said. “Send her in. But only her. You, I never want to see again. And if this is all a lie, I will make a special example of you. I am owed many favors. Don't think I make idle threats.”

“It's not like that, Mother,” I said.

“Always the self-righteous one,” Mother said. “So now I don't have only the cancer to worry about—now it is lawyers and extradition hearings and money, money, money. All because Tennyson Hardwick always needs his head patted and scratched.”

“A killer is dead.”

“Yes, and damn the cost,” she said, voice trembling with the weight of our friendship. Once upon a time, Mother and I spent many hours laughing together. I'd made more than half a million dollars working for her; she would have anointed me as a business partner, if I'd agreed. “Send her in, Tennyson. I'm wasting air when I talk to you. My oxygen is expensive.”

“Hope you feel better, Mother. Sorry about your cancer and your troubles.”

“At least I'll be dead before the bastards can send me to prison.”

“You've always got an angle, darlin'.”

The aged madam chortled, forever a gangster. “Damn right I do.
Pozdrav,
Tennyson.”

Serbian for
good-bye
. It could also mean
hello,
but not this time. “
Pozdrav,
Mother.”

I leaned over and kissed her forehead. Her skin felt as thin as tissue. Just like Dad's.

My last visit went better than I thought, but I didn't like eyes watching me as I walked back to my rental car. I put on my sunglasses and lowered my head. I never looked back.

It was so strange to be back on her old street again, sitting at the curb beneath the jacaranda trees. Did Molly still live around the corner, three houses down? Chela and Molly used to skate up and down the street, the first time since Minnesota that Chela had a friend with a mother and father and brother without a story involving the police. Mother lectured Chela so often about the consequences of saying the wrong thing that Molly's parents thought Chela didn't speak English for a year. But this was the street where she'd been starting to feel like a normal kid on TV. She took out the garbage and got the mail and had her own room. She fed the dogs and did chores.

Mother's house looked almost the same, except that the trees were taller and the grass needed cutting. Even the beige paint color was the same. The mailbox was wooden, painted to look like a standard poodle, slightly more faded. Chela wondered how Dunja and Dragona were doing. She'd brought their favorite rawhide treats.

Finally, Ten got back. He knocked on the car window and beckoned her outside.

“She's sick, Chela,” Ten told her in Mother's doorway, but she heard
You're sick, Chela
. Stereo effect. He spoke in a low voice so the man in white standing nearby wouldn't overhear. A male nurse, Chela noted. As if Mother would have any other kind.

“What's wrong with her?”

“She has cancer. I don't know what kind or what stage. She looks much older.”

Had she expected to find Mother jogging around the block? Chela had told Mother she would get cancer if she didn't stop smoking
three packs a day of that unfiltered European shit. But none of that made her feel better. Chela's visit to Mother was ruined already.

“If you can't handle it, I can make up an excuse,” Ten said.

Chela shot him a look. Ten was the one who'd taken her away and told her not to call. “Thanks, you've already done plenty.”

Ten was wearing his robot face, or more like Mr. Spock. Half the time, he didn't seem to hear a word she said. “I'll be waiting in the living room.”

“You don't need to wait.”

“I'm here. Might as well.” He sounded like the Captain.

After Raphael, Ten might be afraid she'd never come out of Mother's house. After Raphael, she was still shocked he'd agreed to bring her.

But seeing Bernard had helped her realize how stupid it was to be afraid. She'd wanted to talk to Mother since the beginning, but Ten had never wanted to hear it. To him, Mother had amazing superpowers of mind control, so he'd put up an electric fence between them. Chela had expected him to try to talk her out of a visit, but he'd said he would come along. Maybe he'd needed to see her, too.

Chela was so surprised by the sight of Mother shrunken in an enormous chair that at first she didn't notice how much bigger the room was. Mother had knocked down the wall between their rooms and made them both her suite. Chela wondered how long Mother had waited for her.

Chela leaned over Mother's chair and hugged her. When Chela tried to stand up straight, Mother held on.

“You were always a beauty. But now!” Mother's eyes twinkled as she looked her up and down. “Chela, you are so lovely. I always knew you would be tall.” When Chela smiled, Mother laid a dry, warm hand across her cheek. “So, so lovely. And school?”

“Graduated from high school with a B-plus average,” Chela said. “Not bad for a lazy ass.”

“You would never wake up for school. Always an excuse.”

Ten's like a jail guard,
Chela almost said, but jokes about Ten didn't feel right. He'd made her go to school. In contrast, Mother had taught her there was more to life than books. She wasn't sure either of them had been wrong.

“He wants to adopt me.” Chela hadn't planned to tell Mother. “Legally.”

Mother's face puckered. “He loves lawyers too much.”

“He wanted to do it before I was eighteen, but it didn't work out. After that, I didn't see the point. I still don't.”

“What was the problem before? Records?”

“My birth mother wouldn't give her consent. Bitch.”

“Your . . . ?” Mother was surprised, leaning closer. She held her fingers to the tubes in her nose, keeping them in place. “Your mother was gone.”

“He found her.”

“How?”

“He's a detective. That's what he does.”

Mother's face turned paler. “A police detective?”

Chela made a face. “Ten?” she said. “No way. His dad was a cop, but he was retired. Captain Hardwick.”

Chela didn't realize that she'd said the wrong thing until it was too late. Mother blinked, her eyes suddenly as intense as a lizard's. “What did you say to Captain Hardwick, Chela?”

Chela had forgotten how paranoid Mother was and how much she had done. How could she think Chela would tell the Captain their secret?

“I never talked about you,” Chela said. “He was retired, anyway.”

Mother gave her a long gaze, trying to decide what she thought.

Chela's throat suddenly felt hot. She took a seat on Mother's ottoman. “He died.”

“Yes, so I have been reading,” Mother said. She picked up a magazine, waving it.

“That's not Ten's fault,” Chela said. “I dragged him into it. I ran into a friend . . .”

Mother made a sound. She didn't want Chela to say the rest out loud. “It's done,” she said. “We all lose everyone. Everything. We survive.” She paused, a thin, humorless smile creasing her lips. “Until we don't.”

Mother never had been the sentimental type. Mother had been younger than Chela when she lost her parents, and she had survived a hell of a lot.

Mother drew in a long breath through her nose. “My medicine makes me tired,” she said.

“I don't have to stay.”

“A while longer,” Mother said. “I'll tell you when to go.”

They were both quiet for a time. Chela heard Dunja and Dragona barking in the backyard. Mother's room smelled like talcum powder and urine. Chela tried not to notice the bedside potty hidden under her silk bathrobe. Nana Bessie had used a toilet just like it; Chela had emptied it, sometimes twice a day, sometimes more.

“If by accident you live too long, keep your mind sharp,” Mother said. “Look at me—all the lies being told. It will take many months, maybe years, for me to be extradited, indicted, arraigned, so . . .” Mother shrugged, catching her breath. “I pay no attention. Let my lawyers worry. Make sure you have money at the end.”

“Definitely,” Chela said. Mother had opened Chela's first bank account with her, given her an ATM card when she was fourteen. Mother had changed her life. But so had Ten.

“Always have your own money no one but you can touch,” Mother went on. “With money, you are ready for every circumstance.”

“I remember,” Chela said. She had six hundred dollars in cash
in a box under her bed that Ten had no clue about, enough to buy a plane ticket anywhere. Old habit.