Dealing in Deception

by Samantha Joyce

  “Right.”

  Until she’d brought it up, I’d forgotten I was only a client. Sharing a horse a week ago under the sparkling snow had almost made me believe I was something more to her. She had a knack for raining reality on my head at the right time. It was probably why she was so successful at what she did. She knew the parameters of her business—even if a big part of me wanted to break them.

  The double doors at the front of the shelter opened, letting in a wind that whistled down the aisle and forced the eating patrons to huddle closer to their warm plates. The second wave of dinner guests shuffled in, arms hugging their ragged clothes closed, heads bent against the chill.

  “Baxter!” Part of me rejoiced at seeing Connor, but the rest of me slumped. I kept hoping his dad would find a job and they’d never have to come back here.

  “Hey, dude,” I said. “We have ham, scalloped potatoes, and corn tonight. Sound good?”

  “Yum!” Connor rubbed his belly. “I love corn!”

  Connor and Ian got their food and took a place at a corner table. I globbed potatoes onto the plates of familiar and unfamiliar faces alike—until one familiar face made me start.

  “I remember you,” I breathed.

  The woman with Veronica’s eyes tilted her head like she didn’t have the same recollection. “I’m sorry, son, but I don’t know you.”

  I glanced at Rickie and made sure she wasn’t paying attention. She was absorbed in slicing more ham.

  “Are you sure? I was here with a woman named Veronica. You called her Ronnie.”

  “Ronnie?” The woman dropped her tray to the floor with a clatter. “How do you know my Ronnie?”

  I ran around the counter and grabbed her tray. “She’s your daughter, right?” I said, tossing the orange plastic into the dirty bin and grabbing her a clean one and utensils.

  “Yes, once. Not anymore. She . . . she doesn’t want to be.”

  “I’m sure that’s not true.” I walked down the line with her, letting the other volunteers fill her plate.

  “No, it is. And I don’t blame her. I did wrong by her. I did wrong by all of them.” She looked around the dining hall. “This is where I belong.”

  “No one belongs here . . . I’m sorry, what’s your name?”

  “Della,” she said.

  “I’m Bax. Good to meet you, Della.”

  I followed her to a table and set down the food before taking the empty seat next to hers. She shoveled a forkful of ham into her mouth and I studied her profile. Black hair streaked with gray hung in stringy bunches to her shoulders. Along with the eyes, she had her daughter’s nose, and under the grime, her face was free of blemishes. Once, before whatever had brought her to this point, she must have been stunning—like Veronica. Men probably flocked to her armed with jewelry and proclamations of their undying love. Yet something had led her here, had led her daughter to a life where she pretended to be anyone other than herself.

  Della looked up at me, a string of pink meat dangling from the corner of her mouth. “You’re still here?”

  The bitter stench of alcohol wafted from her breath. While Rickie had a strict no-booze-within-the-shelter policy, most of our guests relied on it outside our doors to try to keep warm and numb on the streets.

  “You said you’d done Veronica wrong. I wondered what you meant.”

  She shook her head violently. “Nope. That’s the thing. The thing we don’t talk about. Never. We never talk about that.”

  “Okay. How about Ronnie, then? Can you tell me something about her?”

  The shaking stopped and her lips parted with a small smile, revealing blackened teeth. “A good girl, she was. Always making sure her mommy was okay. Picking up my pieces. Smart as a whip, too. Got straight A’s. Was gonna make something of herself.” Her face glimmered under the dirt with the memory.

  “And?”

  “And—”

  “Bax! We’re getting swamped again! We need you!” Rickie’s voice pierced the hall, and I grimaced.

  “Crap. I need to get back to work. But I can take a break soon, and I want to talk to you more about Ronnie. Would that be okay?”

  Her head jerked in a quick nod. “I’m a slow eater and it’s warm in here. I’m not going anywhere.”

  I arose from the table, and she gripped my wrist with a grime-encrusted hand. “Bax?”

  “Yes?”

  “My daughter. Is she . . . is she all right? Happy?”

  I cocked my head to the side, remembering Veronica’s stellar performance at the meeting, watching her sleep next to the fire at the Garcias’, her adoration for Connor, for Ari, maybe even a little bit for me. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen her with a drink in her hand.

  “Yes,” I said. “I think she’s getting there.”

  “Good. I just want her to be happy. She wouldn’t listen when I tried to tell her, but I love her. She’s a good girl.”

  The doors flew open again in a burst of snow and wind as a large group of men who played cards at the rec center down the street entered the hall.

  “Bax! Now!”

  “Coming!” I called over my shoulder. I turned back to the woman. “Della, wait here. I’ll be back. I promise.”

  I raced behind the counter and grabbed the potato spoon from Rickie, who balanced it against the giant fork she used to spear the ham.

  “Do you know anything about Della?” I asked.

  “Who?”

  I jerked my head in Della’s direction. “Her.”

  “I know her name’s not Della. She gives a different name every time she comes in.”

  Well, that sealed it. She was definitely Veronica’s relative. “Oh.”

  I stirred the potatoes and greeted the next guest, then the next. Lost in the motion of smiling, serving, and chatting, I didn’t notice Della get up to leave until she was almost out the door.

  “Dammit.” I tossed my spoon on the counter and called to her, but she didn’t turn around. “Be right back,” I told the kid beside me before sprinting between the tables and out of the shelter.

  Della stood on the side of the street, waiting for a break in the traffic. She stepped off the curb as I spotted a red sedan speeding around the corner.

  “Della!” She didn’t even flinch in acknowledgment of the name.

  When the car hit her, it was like the world went in fast forward and slow motion at the same time. I screamed for her and ran forward, but I was too late. There was an awful thud, followed by a screech of tires and the crunch of metal as the car jerked away a second too late and plunged into a pole.

  Della, or whatever her name was, lay in the street, her body splayed at all the wrong angles, her eyes closed. To her right, the car smoked, its hood kissing the traffic pole.

  The driver slowly eased out of the wreckage, his eyes glassy with shock. “She came out of nowhere,” he muttered. “She came out of nowhere.”

  “Someone call nine-one-one!” I pushed my way through the already-growing crowd and knelt beside Della. Her neck yielded a weak pulse against my fingers and I shuddered with relief. She was still alive. That had to be something. “Stay with me, Della. Stay with me.”

  It felt like forever before a siren pierced the murmur of the crowd, and I backed away as paramedics checked Della’s vitals, wrapped her in a blanket, gave her a neck brace, and heaved her onto a gurney.

  “Where are you taking her?” I asked one of the paramedics as they loaded her into the ambulance.

  “George Washington U Hospital.”

  “Can I ride with you?”

  “You family?”

  “No.”

  “Sorry, son. Only family inside the truck.”

  He jumped into the back of the ambulance and swung the door shut. The siren blared again as they took off down the street.

  �
��Shit,” I said. A hand touched my shoulder, and I turned to find Rickie giving me a questioning look. “I’m sorry, Rick, I can’t explain right now, but I have to go. I need to get to the hospital.”

  “Of course, Bax. She’s one of our guests and I’m glad you’re going with her. I hope she’s okay.”

  “Me, too.”

  I stuck my arm out to hail a taxi as I pulled my phone from my pocket. Veronica’s number was already ringing by the time my cab headed to the hospital.

  “Bax? Everything okay?” Her voice sounded thick, like I’d woken her from a nap. “Are you looking for your gym bag? You left it in my car.”

  “No, Veronica. It’s . . . it’s your mom.” Her breathing halted, and she was so silent on the other end, I glanced at my phone to make sure the call hadn’t dropped. “You still there?”

  “I told you, Bax, I don’t talk about that stuff with anyone.”

  “I know, but—”

  “No. I don’t want to talk about my mother.”

  I gripped the side of the speeding cab. “She came into the shelter again. I knew who she was immediately. The first time, when she called you Ronnie, I knew.”

  “Bax—”

  “No. Just listen to me. I’m on the way to the hospital. She was hit by a car outside the shelter. It doesn’t look good, Veronica.”

  “That woman’s not my mother.” The crack in her voice betrayed the falseness of her words.

  My cab screeched to a halt outside the emergency entrance of the hospital and I blindly tossed the driver some dollar bills before getting out.

  “Look, I don’t know what happened between you two, and to be honest, I don’t care. But your mother is here at GWU hospital, and I have no idea if she’s going to make it. If she doesn’t, and you’re not here, you’ll regret it.” I jogged through the automatic doors, searching for Della.

  Nothing but silence greeted me on the other end of the line. I spotted the paramedics from earlier rolling the gurney down the hall, and I headed for them. “Fine. Do what you want. I’m going to see how she’s doing. I hope you can make it.”

  • • •

  They operated on Della for a couple hours, and when the doctor came out and asked for her family, I lied and said I was her son. He proceeded to tell me she had a punctured lung, a bleeding brain, and a broken hip. She was in a coma, and she’d probably never come out of it. That was assuming she’d live through the night, which, he said, didn’t look promising.

  I stretched my legs out from the chair beside Della’s bed and stared at the machines attached to her mouth, her nose, her chest. Her face was black and blue, her head wrapped in a bandage. A respirator breathed for her, echoing through the room in a creepy Darth Vader kind of way.

  I texted Veronica for the fiftieth time.

  They don’t think she’ll make it through the night. You should hurry. Room 1263.

  No reply.

  A nurse brought me a pack of crackers and a day-old paper. I finished the sudoku and crossword. I read the sports pages and entertainment. I brushed cracker crumbs off the apron I’d forgotten to remove. I waited for a woman I barely knew to die, simply because I refused to let her be alone when she did.

  I sat up at the click-clack of heels on linoleum coming down the hall. They paused outside the door. Walked away. Came back, stopped. Moved away again. I went to the hallway to investigate.

  “Veronica?”

  The click of her heels halted just outside the elevators as she turned to look for me. I closed the distance in four strides. “Your mom’s room is down the hall.”

  “She’s still . . . ?”

  “Alive? Yes. But they don’t think it will be much longer. She’s getting weaker.”

  She bit her lip and pulled her onyx peacoat tighter. The black and white miniskirt wasn’t exactly hospital appropriate, but at least she had a coat on.

  I touched her shoulder. “Come on. Let’s go see her.”

  “No, Bax, I don’t think I can. I’m sorry.” The elevator button glowed red under her finger as she pressed it.

  “You made it all the way down here. Of course you can.”

  “I can’t, Bax. I need to get out of here. Why is it so hot?” She undid the buttons of her coat and flapped it open and closed to fan herself.

  “Veronica, it’s just down the hall. I can come with you, if you want.”

  I wrapped my hand around her wrist and started down the hall, but she pulled away, planting her feet on the floor.

  “No, you don’t get it. I can’t see her.”

  “Enlighten me, then.”

  She shook her head.

  “She’s your mom, Veronica. You only get one. And she’s probably not going to be here tomorrow. Whatever happened, I’m sure you can put it aside and—”

  “Oh my God, Bax, you don’t get it!” She tugged at her hair. “She killed my little brother, okay? I can’t just forgive her for that!”

  “She . . . she what?” I managed through my suddenly dry mouth.

  Veronica collapsed into a plastic chair, and I lowered my numb body into the seat beside her.

  “My mother has dissociative identity disorder. Multiple personality disorder, as you would know it. She’s had it since before I was born.”

  “I’ve heard of it, but I don’t know much about it.”

  “Basically, it’s like she has a group of people living in her head, and they all take turns controlling her, living her life. When I was growing up, she had at least six distinct personalities in her, maybe more. They were all so different from each other. One would be shy, while the other was a slave for attention. They were different ages, had different names. She would switch from one to the other without warning, and not all of her personalities were good with kids. In fact, one was a kid herself. A six-year-old named Gwen. Even though I was a child, too, I sometimes found myself taking care of her on the days Gwen emerged. Cooking dinner, making sure she dressed herself.”

  “Jeez, that’s a lot for a kid to handle. And your dad just left?”

  She swallowed. “Actually, I never knew my father. My mother had no idea who he was. One of her personalities went out partying and came home pregnant. The thing was, the personalities were not really connected, except through her body. They didn’t remember what the others had done. It was like she had permanent blackouts all the time. Like, we’d wake up and the furniture in our apartment had been rearranged and she swore she didn’t remember doing it.”

  “That’s horrifying. How does something like that happen?”

  “She was abused as a kid. Doctors said it was a response to that. Every time someone hurt her, she’d become a new person so she wouldn’t have to deal with it. Even meds and therapy didn’t help. It was something we just lived with. I’d come home from school every night not knowing who would greet me at the door.”

  I read the tiny writing on the hand sanitizer dangling from the wall across from us, trying to process what that must’ve felt like as a kid. It was like being a foster kid, but worse. Your mom looked like your mom, but she wasn’t always that person. It must’ve been terrifying.

  “You . . . you mentioned your brother. I thought you didn’t have any siblings.”

  “I don’t . . . anymore.” She scraped at her nail polish with one of her nails. Flecks of metallic blue floated like feathers and dotted the white floor at her feet. “She got pregnant with Danny the same way she did with me—meaning she couldn’t tell me how. She came home with him in her belly a little before my tenth birthday. I didn’t really care how it happened, though. I was happy to have someone to keep me company on those nights she didn’t know who I was.”

  Veronica stopped as a doctor rushed to the elevators, his stethoscope banging against his chest in a rhythmic thump.

  After he disappeared behind the whoosh of the metal doors, she took a dee
p breath and continued.

  “Danny was a good kid. Our apartment was small because our mom couldn’t work and only got disability checks, so he and I slept on the pullout couch together. I’d read him stories at night, and comforted him when he couldn’t understand why our mom wasn’t acting like our mom. When she was herself, she doted on him. She actually had times when she was a great mother. One of her personalities, Della, was our favorite. She was very maternal.”

  “I met Della today,” I said. “She wanted to talk about you.”

  Veronica paused and studied my face. “Yes, well, Della was who we most identified with as our mom. One night, I got invited to a party. I was sixteen. I’d never been to a party, because I was afraid to leave the house too much. But Della was so excited. She took me to get a new dress and my first pair of heels. She painted my face with makeup and did my hair. When she insisted I go, I went. I mean, I deserved it. I wanted to be with friends. To have my first drink, my first dance, my first kiss. And I did all those that night. It was incredible. Then I came home to the ambulances.”

  I cleared my throat. She stared ahead, her jaw tight, as though clenched against every bit of hurt she’d seen.

  “They said she put Danny in the bath and went to grab a facecloth or something. And in those ten seconds, Della left, and another personality—one of the younger ones that forgot she even had kids—took over. A neighbor knocked on the door because she smelled something funny and she heard loud music coming from our apartment. She found my mom dressed in my clothes, listening to Zeppelin and smoking a joint. Danny was still in the bathtub.”

  I recoiled as nausea clawed through my stomach. “Oh God . . .”

  “They tried to revive him, but he’d been under more than a half hour. He had a lump on the back of his head where he’d hit the side of the tub. They think he tried to get out by himself when she didn’t come for him, and slipped. She didn’t even know. That’s when social services arrived. I knew where they brought kids like me. I’d had classmates from foster homes, and there was no way I was letting strangers decide how I was going to live my life. While the social worker dealt with my hysterical mother, I snuck off to my room to get a bag of my stuff and climbed out the fire escape. And I never looked back.”