The year She Fell (25 page)

I managed a smile. “I understand. I’m glad you’re still . . . you. Still, you know. Stalwart.”

He shook his head. “Wish I weren’t.”
       

Well, that was humiliating. I managed to walk out of the police station without looking back. Back straight. Head held high. Marie Antoinette going to the guillotine.

I’m being melodramatic. It wasn’t that bad. But beyond the embarrassment, there was also the disappointment. I really . . . wanted him. It wasn’t just that I could see him as the key to restoring my poor lost desire. I really desired him. All of him. The lean body I remembered so well. The mouth that smiled as it kissed. The simple truth of him. The caring.

Just as well that I didn’t get all that. Because I’m not sure I would have had as easy a time giving it up as I’d hoped. Just seduce him and go back to Grady ready to commit, I’d told myself. Now, as I walked, head not so high, up the hill to the old house, I thought maybe that would have been a painful exit—more painful than this one.

And it was
good
that I’d told him. About what happened. What I’d never told anyone. It was . . . healthy. It would help me recover. He was gratifyingly protective. Such a . . . guy. He wanted to beat the man up. Of course, he didn’t know who it was, but just knowing he was willing to break his own laws to avenge me—well, it helped.

I just sort of wished he’d break his vows and heal me.

But it was for the best. No complications now.

I’d about talked myself into this scenario, that I was better off without his kisses. Then a couple hours later, when I was home, the phone rang, and I heard his voice, and my knees gave out and I had to sit down on the little bench next to the phone table. “
Jackson
.” My voice came out a whisper.

But his voice wasn’t soft. It was clipped and professional. His police chief voice. “Laurie, it’s about your mom. She’s okay, but she’s been taken to the hospital.”

My fingers tightened on the receiver. It was starting. Ellen was right. “What happened?”

“One of my officers found her sitting in her car over near the caves off 51. The car was safe on the shoulder, but the bumper was right up against the guardrail. No damage, and he didn’t see any sign she was injured. But she was just sitting there, like she was dazed. So he called for an ambulance.”

I managed to thank him, and hung up and immediately called the hospital. The nurse I reached was reassuring—no obvious injury, but still a bit out of it. A night under observation, a check by the neurologist in the morning . . .
 
maybe a CAT scan.

Mother looked strangely
diminished in the big hospital bed, her hair still perfect against the white pillow, but her arms hooked up to IV bottles. She had to be hating what the fluorescent light did to her complexion—if you think I’m vain, at least I came by it honestly—so as soon as I could, I opened the curtains to let in the late afternoon sun. I almost regretted it, because she perked up right away and began issuing orders.

She wanted out. Failing that, she wanted to check her email. Ellen should go home and return with the newly repaired laptop.

That had us exchanging glances. Check her email? Ellen muttered as we left that she’d never seen such a rapid descent into email addiction, and she was not going to enable it by bringing her laptop to the hospital.

 
I had to agree. Mother should be worried about her prognosis, not her inbox. Besides, the doctor had prescribed a sleeping pill and an early night, and Ellen wouldn’t want to keep her up.

So we left her seething there in her hospital bed, her fists gripping the coverlet. I glanced back once, then ducked out the door. It was embarrassing how intimidating I found that glare of hers, even at my advanced age, even after decades of defiance, even knowing she was trapped there, tethered to the IV poles.

Ellen, to her credit, didn’t say I told you so. She didn’t say anything until we were out in the parking lot and she reaching into her bag for her keys. Then she said, “I wonder if it’s about Cathy. All of this. You know, forgetting that the cameo was buried with her and blaming it on Merilee. Bequeathing the house to Cathy’s alma mater.” She aimed the key at the car door and clicked. “Maybe she’s been thinking about Cathy’s death. Wondering about it. Feeling guilty about it.”

I climbed into the passenger seat. When Ellen and Theresa were both settled, I asked, “But why? It’s not like her to feel any guilt. And, well, it was hardly her fault. Cathy was always doing dangerous things.”

“Not always as bad as during that last year.” Ellen shoved the car into gear and peeled out of the parking lot like a teenage boy in a Firebird. Her knuckles were white against the tan steering wheel. “Before that, Cathy did crazy things, but she was careful. That last day, she didn’t even have the harness fastened right. She must have been distracted.”

Or had a death wish. But I didn’t say that aloud. “Well, that happens to the best of us, doesn’t it? One little lapse of concentration, and disaster. But, you know, I can blame a lot on our mother, but she didn’t have anything to do with Cathy’s risk taking. She probably wished Cathy would sit at home and knit.”

And suddenly I remembered Mother that night at the Emmys. It wasn’t that she embarrassed me. No, she was the perfect Emmy Nomination Mother, gracious and warm and discreet. But I caught her once glancing around at the high-wattage assembly, at all those sleek arrogant young people who can still intimidate me sometimes. I’m among them, but not one of them. I haven’t the requisite fearlessness and, well, narcissism, I guess. (I know I’m self-absorbed, but not in that star way.) And Mother, well, she looked like a robin in a flock of tropical birds, and I saw her falter, just a moment, and realized that however fiercesome she seemed to be back home, however in charge she was there, she really was just a small-town matron, and now she knew it. And I felt a sudden need to protect her from that realization, that self-diminishment, and quickly, foolishly, I came up with an acceptance speech that would focus on her and Daddy. I never got to give it, because the universe doesn’t give awards to those who craft acceptance speeches—or maybe it’s because I didn’t get as many votes as the winner—but I knew something I didn’t want to know about my mother now . . . that she also knew self-doubt, and it was all the more devastating because it was so rare.

Fortunately, she quickly said something that restored my usual sense of displacement. Gazing at one gorgeous starlet, she murmured so that only I could hear, “She looks like Cathy, don’t you think? Only not so strong.”

Now I looked over at Ellen and said, reluctantly, “Maybe Mother did, well, take pride in Cathy. In her fearlessness. Maybe we all did. And so we didn’t notice when it turned into, I don’t know, recklessness.”

“You’re not saying she—”

“ I don’t think anyone who values life above all jumps off cliffs. Even with a harness on.”

“She called me Cathy.”

Ellen and I both swiveled our heads to look at Theresa. “What do you mean?” Ellen said, hastily glancing back at the road.

“Mother. This morning. Before she left. She said, ‘Cathy, don’t forget to close that window upstairs.’“ Theresa paused. “I don’t even look like Cathy.

And, I said, grimly amused, “The resemblance is slight otherwise too. I can’t see you jumping off a mountain.”

Theresa bristled at some insult I didn’t make but she heard anyway. “No, I only risked my life treating cholera victims. “

Ellen, as always, intervened. “I can’t see her blaming herself. Not for Cathy’s death. But it’s not something you get over, losing a child.”

Theresa said neutrally, “I think she also never got over losing your father.”

Ellen sighed. “She wasn’t much older than I am now. And she never dated again.”

“As far as we know,” I said. Ellen gave me a sharp look, but I’d already said too much. Instead of elaborating, I added, “But she did go on with life. She adopted Theresa after Daddy died. And she never . . . faltered. But Cathy’s death—to lose a second loved one too early—”

Theresa sighed. “I should have stayed here after high school. But I thought she was over it after, what, four years?”

“And you had a—” I searched for the word. “A vocation. You couldn’t just ignore that.”

“True vocations last,” Theresa said flatly.

So much for my attempt at empathy. “Well, no use looking back so many years. Seventeen since Cathy died? More than twenty for Daddy? We did have to get on with our own lives. She’s never asked for our help. Not even now.”

“Maybe she’s depressed,” Ellen said as we pulled into the driveway. “Thinking about death. Growing older, changing her will. Looking back at her life, and seeing mostly the losses.”

She meant Daddy and Cathy, but I wondered if she also meant the three of us, all escaped out of state and out of Mother’s influence. Did she look back at her life and wonder what led us all to leave? “Well, let’s hope the doctors sort it all out.” I got out of the car and slammed the door. “Maybe all she needs is medication, and this weird stuff will stop.”

As I climbed the porch steps, I glanced back at Theresa, walking a few paces behind. I wanted the nurse among us to agree with me. But of course she didn’t. She just shrugged.

Once back in the house, I imagined even Theresa was thinking how very odd it was to be here without Mother. Had the three of us ever been alone together here? I imagined Mother, back in her hospital bed, fighting off that sleeping pill and fretting that we’d get up to something reprehensible. Well, she’d probably only expect that of me.

I hated to disappoint her. And I guess I corrupted Ellen—easy enough feat, requiring only the decent bottle of Merlot and Chris Isaak on the CD player. Theresa, well, she held out for awhile, but eventually she too succumbed to temptation and started tossing back the wine. She was practiced enough at it that I suspected her cloister served wine with dinner as well as with communion.

It was, I realized while the popcorn was popping, a party. With my sisters.

So there I was, in Daddy’s
old study, getting drunk with a nun and a minister. Okay, a former nun and a liberal Presbyterian minister, but still, I felt like the whore of Hollywood Babylon in this group. Theresa sat back, just watching us, but after awhile I stopped feeling intimidated by her gaze, and Ellen, well, Ellen started performing. There was no other word for it. She was putting on a persona, still Ellen enough to tell me she hadn’t gone nuts, but a tougher, wilder Ellen, with glittering eyes and nothing tentative in her laugh. Then she started talking about sex.

We’d been discussing— or rather, I’d been describing—my new obsession with the biological imperative. Husband, baby, in that order, but soon. I can’t imagine what got me going on this, especially considering my brilliant plan for seducing
Jackson
and restoring my sexuality had turned to dust just a few hours earlier.

Ellen took this as an opportunity for premarital counseling.

“I’ll tell you the one thing I’ve learned from twenty years almost of marriage,” Ellen said.

We waited. I expected some typical ministerial platitude about each partner having to give ninety percent. What she said was, “Don’t give him too many blow jobs.”

I couldn’t look at Theresa. I figured that after that presidential impeachment, even she must know what a blow job was, and if she didn’t, I wasn’t going to enlighten her. Instead, I inquired as politely as I could, “Why not?”

“He’ll start to expect it. Every week. And it won’t be anything special. It’ll be necessary, but not special. And that’s about as worthless as a thing can be, you know—necessary but unappreciated.” She took another swig of the Merlot, and added, “So do it only on special occasions. When he’s been really good. Make him beg for it too. Let him know it’s a real sacrifice and he’s sure lucky he behaved well enough to get it. And it’s foreplay, not the main course. Don’t let him get away with getting off without getting you off.”