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.
“What will you do now?” Mother said. “For money?”
“Maybe go to college. I’m not sure.”
“Only go to a college with rich men,” Mother said.
“I have a boyfriend.”
“Everyone can fall in love,” Mother said dismissively. “A beautiful woman should never go poor.” Mother didn’t ask questions about Bernard, and Chela didn’t offer more. Bernard wasn’t the kind of man Mother had in mind for her.
“I do not know everything,” Mother said. “But I know these things.” She sounded tired suddenly. For a moment, she sat in silence. “What about him?” Mother said. “Tennyson. Will you stay?”
“A while, I guess,” Chela said. “Until I figure out what’s next.”
“He . . . has been a father to you?” The look in her eye made Chela wonder if Mother thought she was sleeping with Ten.
With good reason, probably. When Ten first brought her to his house, Chela had thought she could marry him one day—or at least get him in bed—but it was best to forget that.
“Yeah, he acts like a dad.”
Chela didn’t say, Too bad for me, as she would have once, but Mother seemed to know her thought. Mother clicked her teeth. “A nice face, that’s all,” she said. “He is too old for you, an old schoolgirl crush. If you must get a man, get a young man. But stand on your own.”
Chela smiled. Mother’s advice wasn’t always perfect, but sometimes it was. And Chela could say anything to her. She’d missed that.
“I don’t need anyone to adopt me,” Chela said.
“Let him sign papers, if he wants,” Mother said, shrugging. “What does it hurt?”
Chela had never expected to hear those words from Mother.
Patrice Sheryl McLawhorn, wherever she was, could go straight to whatever pit of hell was reserved for losers like her. Chela wished she hadn’t agreed to let Ten ask her anything. Chela didn’t need that woman to get permission; she had it from Mother now.
“It has been wonderful to see you,” Mother said. “But stay away now. All right?” She used a voice like she might have used with a small puppy, artificially cheery, an octave higher.
Mother was sending her away. Chela felt a sting, but she could add it to her things to cry about later. The depression phase would be a monster.
Chela grabbed Mother’s cool, nearly weightless hands the way she had Nana Bessie’s.
“Thank you, Mother,” Chela said. For four years, she had sifted through her memories, wondering if she’d ever spoken the simple words. “I would have died out there without you. Thank you for saving my life.”
The rest was a different conversation. The rest didn’t seem as important.
For the first time in Chela’s memory, tears welled at the corners of Mother’s eyes.
I WOKE UP in April’s bed, although I had yet to invite her to spend the night in mine. I’d floated the idea at dinner the night before, and Chela and Marcela had both given me looks. Two weeks after my father was shot to death, they still wanted the house to themselves.
So I opened my eyes to mismatched furniture, a mound of clothes balanced on an exercise bicycle, and a collection of reporter’s notebooks in need of either a file cabinet or a trash can. Her room looked like a college dorm. April’s futon mattress felt lumpy, and she didn’t know anything about bed sheets with a high thread count. What was I doing there?
Then I rolled over and found April sleeping nude beside me, and it all made sense.
My fingertip traced the lines across her back, following her shoulder blade to her spine. April’s brown skin transfixed me, an ocean worthy of contemplation. I nestled my body behind hers and followed my fingertip’s path with soft brushes from my lips. How did she always taste so sweet? Was it her skin itself?
April stirred with a quiet, throaty chuckle, pressing closer to me. Her curves were a perfect fit against my bare pelvis, firm and soft. I kissed the back of her neck and gently flicked my tongue against her earlobe. April made the humming sound I’d missed so much, the one that meant Yes. She reached behind her to pull my head closer, until our cheeks pressed together.
“I love you,” I said.
“I love you, too, baby.”
Her whisper swept through me like an electrical current, warming my body with a gently rising flame. Only April’s words could stroke me like hands, igniting the parts of me no one else could touch. How had I lived apart from her so long?
Grief bubbled inside the pleasure; either bad memories or a premonition or both. Sadness cinched my arm around her more tightly as I cradled her warm, petite waist. I touched every part of her I could claim, vowing I would never let her go.
When April turned to face me, my body rejoiced so much that my toes curled. We held each other’s scalps so tightly while we kissed that our faces had no beginning and no end. Our tongues spoke a secret language. Her hand roamed between my legs, sure and practiced, cradling me like treasure.
We both wanted to taste each other at once, our bodies sliding into place. April felt nearly weightless on top of me. We licked each other in concert. When her mouth swallowed me, I fell away from myself, my lips apart, my eyes closed. The pleasure was acute, as sharp as pain. When my mind returned to my body, I flipped over until April was beneath me, and my mouth was eager to return the sensation.
April’s fingers clawed for her sheet, and she stiffened, trying to muffle her first orgasm.
We were both drenched in perspiration and each other’s fluids when I nudged myself between her taut thighs and found her wet, welcoming embrace. April was as snug as a virgin. Our bodies joined slowly, her natural tightness parting for my size bit by bit with my careful probes. Every quarter of an inch filled us both, until our bodies were pressed tight. We rocked together, hissing and moaning our improvised song. When we couldn’t keep our song’s rhythm syrup-slow, we thrashed and bucked until I forgot my own name.
Making love was still a novelty to me. Afterward, gasping, I could only stare at the ceiling with wonder. I must have dozed off, because April’s touch woke me.
“Baby?” April said, fingertips propping my chin. “Let me see your face.”
“Hmmm?” I said, still fumbling for thoughts and speech.
“Your eyes look red all the time. Do you think that’s from the tear gas?”
Back to reality. My eyes were red because they hurt like hell. I had started wearing my dark glasses indoors because light hurt my eyes. I also wasn’t sleeping well, although I was always tired. My eyes could have been red from fatigue. I had my pick of ailments. I had lost ten pounds since Dad died. The smell of food often made me feel sick, and my appetite was zero. All of that was in my eyes, too.
“As long as I can see, they’re still working,” I said.
“Ten, you should make two appointments: an eye doctor and a therapist. For you and Chela. Maybe Marcela, too. You need to face this.”
I rolled bac
k to face the opposite wall, a pillow over my face. I was surprised at how angry I felt. I missed our old rules, suddenly. Conversation felt like a betrayal.
April seemed to take my silence as careful thought. “What happened was a big thing,” April said quietly. “This is why police departments have therapists. Your father was murdered practically in front of you. I went to therapy, and there was nothing in my life like that.”
“You?” I said. April’s life had been close to idyllic, except for me. “When?”
“When I first got back from Cape Town.” She sighed. “I was depressed.”
We didn’t talk about our last breakup often. A year before, I had cut my visit with her at a Stellenbosch bed-and-breakfast short after she told me we had to be friends. I might never have called Sofia Maitlin for the job if my relationship with April had turned a different way.
“You were sad,” I said. “I was, too. That’s natural, April.”
“Not sad—something else,” April said. “A feeling that wouldn’t let me go, following me everywhere I went, making me doubt everything about myself. I never wanted to get out of bed, but I couldn’t sleep. I ate junk food all day. I needed a therapist. I needed to talk it out.”
“I’m sorry you went through that,” I said, “but no therapist is going to relate to this.”
“I already found one who would,” she said, smiling. Her dimple melted my irritation away. Damn, April was cute. “He works out of Pasadena. Very well respected. He treats drug addiction, sex addiction, PTSD. He does more than you need. He’s been on Oprah. My coworker whose brother was injured in Afghanistan told me about him.”
Drug addiction, sex addiction, PTSD. If danger was a drug, he was tailor-made for me.
“How would that help Chela?” I said.
“He does family and individual counseling. You see him separately, sometimes you see him together. Therapy helped me—I know it can help you. It won’t change what happened, or bring your dad back, but it helps make sense of things.”
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