All My Mother's Lovers
Page 4
She walks closer and says gently, as if speaking to an invalid, “What are you reading?”
He lifts up the book and shows her. It’s a detective novel, one of the many her mother read and loved. She had shelves and shelves of them, collecting all the books by the same author, becoming obsessed with one for a while, reading everything they wrote, and moving on to the next. LA noir, Florida noir, medical thrillers, psychological thrillers, literary crime, spy novels—she collected and read all of it. Maggie’s never been the reader her mother was—Ariel inherited that trait far more clearly—but she sees the appeal, though she prefers true crime to fiction and viewing or listening to reading.
“Dad, you need to get up and do stuff,” Ariel says from the doorway. His face is screwed up and angry, and as he speaks, his voices rises. “There’s shit to do, stuff to plan, you can’t just sit there!” Ariel’s arms wave around as he yells this, and Maggie knows she needs to stop this and control the situation.
“Okay, now, Ariel, come on—”
“No, no, don’t you do that, Maggie, don’t you dare, it’s not your responsibility, it’s Dad’s, he’s the parent—hello? Are you still a parent?” Ariel is full-on screeching now, and Maggie wonders what the last eighteen hours have been like in this household without her. Ariel is supposed to start his junior year of college at UC Irvine in a month and is still home for summer vacation, and he was here when it happened, when their mother’s car was found rammed into a tree, probably after swerving to avoid something, a child or animal. This is what Ariel explained happened last night, but Maggie realizes she doesn’t actually know many of the details and needs to regroup, to get things figured out. The body, for instance—where’s the body?
First order of business, she thinks, is to get Ariel out of here, get him doing something useful. She’s pretty sure her hands are shaking, so she balls them up into tight fists, clenches hard. “Ariel,” she says, turning to him. They’re virtually the same height, and she stands close so he can’t see Peter and has to focus on her face. “Go get those flowers from the front door. Make a list of all the people you think we need to call. Find out how we get an obituary in the paper. Can you do that for me?”
Ariel stares, his jaw working hard as he tries to stop himself from crying again. Maggie flashes back to when he was a young teen and she’d just become officially legal; back then, whenever she told him to do anything, he’d respond with a loud, sarcastic “Okay, Mom.” She wonders if he’s thinking of this as well, of how he can’t say that anymore. Without a word, he turns and slams the door of the office shut behind him. Maggie’s shoulders jump at the sound, and she feels a surge of anger, or maybe just adrenaline, but tamps it down. She can’t fall apart now. She’s the oldest child, the independent one, and apparently the most capable grown-up in the house at the moment. And she has to deal with her father.
“Daddy, have you eaten anything?” she asks him. He shakes his head and murmurs a no. “Okay, let me get you something. Also, is your lawyer still Janice, the woman who helped with my arrest that time?”
“Arrest?” Peter asks mildly. “Oh, that. That was so long ago.”
“Janice, Dad. Is she still your lawyer?” Maggie asks. It’s hard to keep from shouting, but she manages.
“Mm.”
Well, okay then, she thinks, and swallows again, pushing away the panic, anger, adrenaline, whatever it is, because she has to believe that Peter will be all right again eventually, that he’ll be normal, recognizably her father. She doesn’t have time or energy to consider the alternative. “I’m going to call her, okay?” she says.
He doesn’t respond. She leaves his office, wanting very much to slam the door like Ariel did but restrains herself. She knows, without really thinking about it, that she will restrain herself a lot in the coming days.
* * *
• • •
MAGGIE SITS IN her childhood bedroom for a moment, on the single bed her parents never agreed to graduate her out of. She isn’t out of breath, but she feels she has to catch it. She isn’t dizzy, but she needs everything to stop spinning. She isn’t jet-lagged, has never been jet-lagged, but she feels like daylight savings has just happened and that she’s flown across the Atlantic to boot.
Her room looks nothing like her anymore. It’s a reflection of a past self. On the wall above the bed are taped-up pictures of an androgynous Johnny Depp torn out of the teen magazines she would buy—until recently, he was the one exception to her disinterest in men, but when she found out he was an abusive asshole, she had let him go, not without regret. Beside Johnny are pictures of women—Uma Thurman in Kill Bill, Gwen Stefani in her most punk No Doubt phase, Janet Jackson pre–Justin Timberlake Super Bowl. There’s a hole in the center of Gwen’s picture from where the poster was ripped out of the magazine, cutting off her cocked hip.
“Don’t you want to take these down already?” her mother had asked the last time Maggie visited. “It’s been long enough. Almost a decade.”
At the time, Maggie had tightened up, had answered something sarcastic or glib or possibly mean. She can’t remember, but she knows her mother thought it was silly that this room remain a shrine to her teenage self. Maggie didn’t know how to explain that she found comfort in her unchanging room. She liked the teenager she’d been, the raw newness of discovering her desires, the things that made her angry, the causes she became passionate about. She doesn’t think high school was her happiest time, and she’s pretty suspicious of anyone who thinks it should be, but she knows she was more open then, more willing to extend herself. Everything else shifts, changes, moves, grows up—and dies, she thinks now—so why not keep one thing the same, especially if it isn’t hurting anyone?
She takes a deep breath and lets herself sink back, her Conversed feet still on the floor. Just for a moment, she thinks, and shuts her eyes.
* * *
• • •
SHE WAKES UP groggy a full two hours later. She’s shocked Ariel has let her sleep this long. Her mind tries to wrap around the discomfort, the disconnect of being in her old bedroom on a Monday afternoon when she should be at work, sharing a muffin with Simon. She checks in on Peter again, remembering she’d meant to get him to eat, but he says he isn’t hungry. Her phone has pointless news alerts about the now-finished eclipse, two texts from Lucia—Did u land safely? and Babe?—and some Facebook messages that she swipes away without looking at who they’re from. She checks her work email to make sure that her leave is being handled smoothly. Her boss has answered her, expressing her sorrow for Maggie’s loss and telling Maggie that she’ll get three days of bereavement leave and can use paid or unpaid vacation days thereafter, and gently suggests that she hopes to see Maggie back after Labor Day. Maggie has been working at the agency for four years, and her boss likes her; she’s good with younger clients who don’t really get how insurance works or what the point of it is. They can connect with Maggie, her nose stud, her slicked-back hair, her clear hipsterness even inside her button-down and slacks. She’s newly grateful for having this often sneered-at job, a stable one with a salary and benefits, rather than the freelance or barista and server life some of her friends lead—unlike them, she thinks, she’s isn’t worried about being fired when something like this happens and she has to leave.
In the kitchen, she sets up her battle station, plugging her laptop in so she won’t have to think about its battery life, laying her planner and several pens beside it. This will be her base of operations. She waits for the tabs to load, the feeble beginnings of her research from early that morning. An air bubble rising up her esophagus makes her pay attention to her body—she must be hungry, even if Peter isn’t.
“Ariel!” she shouts into the house, which is silent but for the hum of the refrigerator behind her. She calls his name again and gets no response. Reluctantly, she lowers herself out of the tall chair and checks the cupboards and fridge. There’s plenty of food
, but most of it requires actual cooking. Peter taught her how to cook a long time ago, and it’s something she occasionally enjoys, especially recently because she and Lucia do it together a lot. Maggie had cooked with friends before, in the sad dorm kitchens in college and with roommates in St. Louis before she got her own place, but never with a lover, and the experience kept surprising her with its tenderness. Lucia cooked with care, and Maggie found herself increasingly doing the same, wanting to nourish Lucia in some way, to make her feel full, comforted. Just after they’d agreed they were officially together, Maggie prepared a marinated pork shoulder dish they’d shared at a restaurant; Lucia had taken one forkful of meat, held it in her mouth for a moment, and gently spit it out into a napkin before bursting out laughing. Maggie had mixed up the olive oil and vinegar ratios in the sauce recipe. At least the plantains she’d fried came out perfectly.
She can’t muster up the energy to cook anything now, so she grabs a cereal bar and scarfs it down. For Peter, she gets a yogurt and some bread and cheese and a banana and puts it on a plate, which she brings to his office. He’s leaning back in his chair with the book open on his stomach, which has grown rounder over the years into a distinct potbelly. His eyes are closed, and Maggie thinks he may be feigning sleep.
She heads to Ariel’s room. The door is shut, and she can’t hear anything inside. She knocks, and when she gets no response, tries the handle, but it just turns uselessly. Ariel convinced their parents to get him a real lock for his birthday when he was fourteen, with a key and everything so he could lock it from the outside as well as inside. Maggie had helped, mentioning to their father—she’d never say as much to Iris—that Ariel probably just wanted to jerk off in peace. Ariel has always been fiercely private. It’s why she likes shocking him so much. She wanders through the house, which seems bigger than it ever has before, so different from her one-bedroom apartment in St. Louis, which feels spacious enough for her and more. She begins to hear Ariel’s voice as she approaches the backyard and sees the door to it is open. But he’s not there; she walks toward his voice and realizes he’s on the phone, walking up and down the gravel-filled side yard. Shoeless.
“Why?” she mouths, pointing to his bare feet. He tries to wave her away but she stays there, listening.
“Yes, Mrs. Gershon. That’s right. She really was. Okay, thank you so much for your help.” Then, to Maggie, “You know who’s the man? This man. This man right here. And you know why? Can you tell me why?” He cocks his ear toward her, cupping a hand around it. “No? I didn’t think so. Well, I just got this whole funeral thing taken care of and we don’t have to do a thing. Boom! How’d you like that!” He lifts his hand for a high five but Maggie leaves him hanging.
“What do you mean?” she asks.
“I mean,” Ariel says, “that I just called the synagogue, and Mrs. Gershon is still there, and you know she and Mom—” He pauses for a moment, looks down at his bare feet, which must be both burning and uncomfortable on the hot and prickly gravel. “She knew Mom for a long time, like since way back when,” he pushes on, determined to ignore the quaver in his voice. “And she said the synagogue will take care of everything, and she just needs us to get the death certificate from the hospital and scan a copy of it for her by tomorrow afternoon, and then the funeral will be day after tomorrow, which is as soon as she said they can make it. Wait, where are you going?”
Maggie began backing away around the words “death certificate” and now is sliding the door to the backyard shut behind her—he always leaves it open, that fucker, she thinks, wasting the air-conditioning, wasting electricity, he never listens to Mom when . . . though of course it didn’t matter, because Iris never seemed to get mad at Ariel, the goody two-shoes nerd who liked school and D&D and books. She half-heartedly hopes the door will lock behind her, that Ariel will get stuck outside, that he’ll need to wake Peter from his stupor to come and let him in, but no such luck. Ariel is behind her now, asking again where she’s off to.
“I’m taking your car,” she says.
“No, you’re not. What if I need it?”
“Fine, I’ll take Mom’s car then.” She stops. Realizes. “Ariel,” she says quietly, “what actually happened last night? I mean, how? How’d you find out?” She meant to ask Peter, thought asking the adult was the right thing to do, not the twenty-two-year-old junior in college. But now that she’s seen what their father’s like, how monosyllabic he is, she feels lost.
Ariel’s bottom lip is shaking again, his eyes shining. His hands go back in his pockets. He begins to tell her, right there in the hallway. Maggie thinks this is a sitting-down conversation, a hands-wrapped-around-a-mug-of-tea conversation, but she stills and listens.
“I was watching the new season of Episodes, you know, that show with that guy from Friends? Anyway, I was watching, and Dad was getting ready to go to bed because he’s getting to be old and whatever, and someone knocked at the door, and I thought it was Mom, because she was driving back from doing her volunteer work at the retirement home, you know how she started playing bingo or whatever it is with them on Sunday nights—”
Maggie doesn’t know this, actually. She has no idea her mother volunteered or had the time to; Iris wasn’t a person generous with her time, as far as Maggie knows, but she listens, trying to absorb what Ariel is saying, though she can’t keep away the thought that her mother never told her about this, and she can’t remember, suddenly, when the last time they spoke was, when she last heard her mother’s voice.
“—and yeah, well, it wasn’t her, it was this cop, and he had his hat in his hand and shit, which was really weird, and yeah, I dunno, I guess Mom was just driving home down North Rose Ave, and the police dude said they think she must have been speeding and that something, like an animal or something, ran into the road, and she must have tried to swerve and she hit that big tree, you know, where the sign to Camino de la Luna is? You know, before the turn?”
Maggie doesn’t remember the sign, not having driven around the area regularly in years, but she knows the stretch of road he means. On one side are fields, the big square historic park commemorating the early farmers to settle Oxnard—or colonize it, probably; she isn’t actually sure who lived here before. On the other side, separated by a broad boulevard, are the backs of the houses in the West Village neighborhood. Such an innocuous stretch of road.
“And?” Maggie asks. “I mean . . .” She doesn’t know what she means. Ariel just shakes his head and shrugs, like that’s that, like he’s told her everything there is to know.
“Anyway, the car is totaled, obviously,” he says.
“Where is it? Where is she?”
“St. John’s. I, uh, I don’t know about the car.”
“Okay,” she says. But it isn’t. “I’ll take Dad’s car, then.” She grabs the keys from the hook and shuts the door to the garage closed in Ariel’s face. This time he gets the message and doesn’t follow her.
In Peter’s Prius, she rests her head on the steering wheel for a moment. She’d already emailed a funeral home last night through their online form, during her spate of busyness. When she got off the plane, she saw they’d written back, ungrammatically but swiftly:
Yes, we can accommodate a jewing funeral. Has your loved one past? we can have the burial permit issued within 24 hrs along with an all wood casket.
She thought she had things under control already, or at least had the steps to get them under control. And now Ariel’s taken the whole thing away from her, from all of them. She should be grateful he’s taken this off her list, but isn’t. It’s too easy, she thinks, fobbing the job off to someone else, like it isn’t their responsibility. She wonders whether she can even trust Mrs. Gershon. She vaguely remembers the woman occasionally calling to chat with her mother about this or that function, but the family so rarely went to the synagogue that Maggie doesn’t really know what her mother’s advice was being used for.
Maggie isn’t entirely sure where she’s driving at first. She just knows she had to get out of the oppressive atmosphere of the too-quiet house and that she didn’t want to encounter any of the neighbors by walking around. She realizes soon that she’s heading to the beach. Something she misses terribly in St. Louis is the ocean, after years of taking its proximity for granted. It isn’t a place where she particularly remembers her mother—they didn’t do much together, really, her mother always so busy with work—but it’s the first image that usually comes to her mind when she thinks of the word “home.” She spent long afternoons and weekends with her friends at the beaches, with Anthony, Kyle, Morgan—she hasn’t thought about them in so long—and Gina, the only one from high school she still keeps in touch with. They’d all sit around, both complaining about and celebrating how far they were from the tourists who flocked to LA and San Diego and La Jolla’s beaches. Tourists, she and her friends thought, meant good-looking people who didn’t go to their school or the other school or the other other school. There were a few more, but somehow, it seemed like they always knew everyone, like there was no one new to get excited about. Maggie wonders if everyone feels that way in high school, like they know everyone worth knowing.