What a Mother Knows

by Leslie Lehr

  Michelle smiled. “Tyler, get yourself a cold drink and I’ll meet you out there.” Michelle waited until Tyler was out of sight, then addressed Frank directly. “Thanks for having us on such short notice. The truth is, I’m looking for my daughter. After that call—I was hoping there was more to it.

  Frank rubbed his beard. “Nikki’s the one who sends thank-you notes written with purple ink?”

  Michelle smiled. “That’s her. Has my mother mentioned anything…amiss?”

  “She’s been worried about you, of course, but she hides it under that regal bearing. She seemed a bit tired this year, but I figured it was the arthritis. What’s up with Nikki?”

  “I haven’t seen her since I got out of the hospital. Since you know everybody in town, maybe you could call around? I’m hoping she called home, then just got nervous. If she is here, I don’t want to scare her off. I just want to see her.”

  He nodded and shut the office door so Sterling could get back to work.

  Michelle headed out to the front porch where she scanned the couples sipping rum drinks. Tyler was sipping a sweaty beer from his perch on the wooden railing by the cat. She swiped the bottle. “Get a couple of sodas, will you? Request a song, if you want.”

  Tyler frowned. “Like what?”

  Michelle rubbed her arm absentmindedly and spotted the pile of cocktail napkins by the tip jar. “Let’s see what other people requested.” She dug out some cash and walked over to the piano. Tyler stopped halfway at the self-serve bar. Michelle made sure Tyler was pouring soda into his cup before turning to Bojangles. “How are you, Mr. B? Holding down the fort?”

  “You got that right, Miss Michelle.”

  “How’d you remember my name?”

  “I’d recognize those eyes anywhere. The windows to your soul.”

  “So I’ve heard.” She stuffed a twenty in his tip jar. “What’s your favorite song?”

  “Happy Birthday.” His long fingers trilled up the keyboard. “Every time I hear it, I know I’m still here.”

  Michelle smiled, but the song no longer made her think of celebrations. It reminded her of the Roadhouse video, of the band singing the song to Nikki. She flipped through the soggy pile of napkins with requests written on them. The first was “Girl from Ipanema.” Michelle held it up, but Mr. B shook his head. He’d played it enough. The next song, “Margaritaville,” was so popular that she didn’t even ask. The next title was more unusual. And it was written in purple ink.

  All at once, Michelle felt the oppressive heat, heard the drunken laughter, and smelled the too-sweet drinks. She wondered if she was having a heart attack. She squeezed her eyes shut, then focused on the words printed on the napkin. This was Nikki’s handwriting, complete with circles dotting the i’s. Michelle held it up to Bojangles.

  He tapped the keyboard, as if the song was right there waiting for him to play. She didn’t recognize the jazzy Jose Feliciano introduction, but soon the music settled into the familiar melody of “Light My Fire.” A drunken woman behind the piano garbled the first line: “You know that it would be untrue…” Michelle’s entire body flushed. She ran inside, letting the screen door slam behind her.

  “Mom?” Tyler called after her.

  Michelle ran through the lobby toward the office. “Frank?” She ran down the paneled hallway past the office to the homey kitchen, where a drunken game of Marco Polo echoed from the pool area in back, and found Frank standing at the back door.

  “Where is she, Frank?” Michelle held the napkin up.

  He waved it away to see a chubby girl in a bikini do a sloppy cannonball. “I’m liable if someone gets hurt.” The goons in the pool were splashing each other now, nearly soaking an elderly couple retiring to their room. “Amigos!” Frank called. “Por favor!”

  Michelle shouted. “Hey, asshole! Knock it off or you’re out of here!”

  The guy gave her the finger.

  Frank pulled Michelle back into the kitchen. “Very effective, thanks. Especially since every room in town is booked and there aren’t any more flights out.” He poured himself a glass of water from a frosty pitcher. “Now they’ll write bad Internet reviews.”

  “Not as bad as the ones I’ll write,” Michelle said.

  He rolled the cool glass against his forehead. “Nikki’s not here.”

  “Don’t give me that bullshit.”

  “I swear—she called last week out of the blue. She needed a place to chill, so I put her up in the annex and paid her to take a few pictures. No good deed goes unpunished.”

  “Tell me about it,” Michelle said, thinking about Noah’s motorcycle.

  “Look, she made me promise. By the time I got your new number and dialed—I thought better of it. I’m not taking sides.”

  “I don’t want there to be sides!” Michelle waved the napkin in his face. “She’s my daughter. You should have told me!”

  “I figured you knew. When she said someone was looking for her, I thought it was an old boyfriend, not you.”

  “Her old boyfriend is—nevermind. You didn’t hear anything on the news? You weren’t curious?”

  “We don’t have television or Wi-Fi for a reason. Folks come here to get away.”

  Michelle was skeptical. “My mother didn’t mention it, either?”

  “She likes her privacy. We respect that—the lifestyle here is about privacy. That’s why she’s so popular. That, and her fabulous mambo.” He struck a dance pose.

  Michelle didn’t have time to hold a grudge. She needed his help. “Okay, I believe you. Maybe I’m the only one who tracked Nikki here. Hope so. But the last thing I want to do is worry Tyler. When is the last time you saw her?”

  “This morning,” Frank admitted. “Sterling held on to her check until she turned in all the proofs. She needed money to leave.” He handed Michelle a glass of water.

  Michelle took a sip. “Are there really no more planes out?”

  “Not tonight,” Frank said.

  “Good. I’ll look for her at the bus depot. What does she look like now?” Michelle was too upset to drink any more. She threw her glass in the sink, and it shattered. “I don’t even know what my daughter looks like!” She burst into tears.

  Frank grabbed her shoulders with both hands. “She looks beautiful. She looks like you.” He wiped her tears, then unpinned a business card from the bulletin board.

  “Take Tyler to Louie’s Backyard. Their pie is actually better than mine. Whatever happened between you and Nikki, let it be.”

  “Let it be what?” Michelle asked, pulling away.

  Tyler appeared at the door with the room key. “Room’s ready. You okay, Mom?”

  “Just tired,” she said, narrowing her eyes at Frank to warn him to keep mum. “A shower will wake me up.” She followed Tyler up the grand stairway to the Deveraux Suite.

  Inside the large room, piano music drifted in from the open balcony. Tyler set his duffel bag on the quilt and looked up through the hanging fringe of the antique canopy. “I need a shower, too. You want first dibs or do you want Dad’s letter?” He pulled a Polo shirt out of his duffel, then handed her a manila envelope.

  “You,” Michelle said, waving him off. She struggled with the clasp, then gave up. Why work so hard for real estate papers or some bullshit apology? Michelle needed to focus, to figure out where her daughter could be. She was too close to let her slip away. She pulled the cord for the fan hanging from the pressed tin ceiling, but the blades merely sliced through the air.

  She unpacked a few things, then stepped out to the small balcony and looked down at the pool. The guests had gone to dinner now; the water was crystal blue. Beyond the piano, the squeals of tourists rose on the warm breeze from Duval Street. Smoke stacks from a cruise ship towered over the rooftops blocking her view of the harbor. The horn blasted, long and loud. Michelle stiffened. She felt her daughter’s presence, as sure as the lump in her throat. Without a car, that ship was the only sure way off the island tonight. Nikki was on that sh
ip.

  “Tyler!” she shouted. “Let’s go!”

  She grabbed the key and careened around the bed, yanking the door open to the hall. “Hurry,” she called, stumbling down the staircase.

  Tyler’s hair was still wet as he bounded down behind her. “Did I take too long?”

  “No, honey, I—forgot about the green flash.” She grabbed his hand and pulled him out. “Come on!”

  They hurried through the happy hour crowd on the porch, down the steps and out to the sidewalk where they joined the tourists streaming to Duval Street.

  Tyler pointed to the daiquiri machines lining an open-air bar like dryers at a Laundromat. “Look, Mom, just like Baskin-Robbins: thirty-one flavors.” Michelle nodded as if she cared, then stepped into the street to avoid a cluster of college students. A trolley clanged for room, so they leapt back on the curb. Michelle wove between women browsing racks of batik sarongs and children jostling to see the blue toucans squawking from the shoulder of a jester on stilts. She waited in front of an art gallery for Tyler to catch up.

  They crossed to Mallory Square and raced through rows of coconut purses to the waterfront. She pulled Tyler past the tourists applauding a fire-eating savage, but paused at a hanging display of disco ball earrings.

  The crowd was claustrophobic, so Michelle looked up to get her bearings. The sun was huge, a flat yellow circle hanging like a painting in the sky. It appeared to drop lower as she watched. She pulled her gaze away and locked eyes with a gypsy fortune-teller with kerchiefs wrapping her leathery face. She beckoned Michelle to her shawl-covered table, but Michelle shook her head.

  She called to Tyler, who had stopped to watch a magician. He saw her and blessed her with the barest of smiles. Michelle’s heart leapt to her throat so fast, she felt like she was choking. Once you created life, love was beyond your control. A grin could lift you to the heavens; a frown could smash you flat. She waved for him to hurry.

  Tyler caught up and pointed at the taco bar on the boardwalk.

  “I’ll meet you on the dock,” she cried, racing ahead until her heel caught between bricks. She staggered forward, then caught herself. She looked back for her broken heel amid the flurry of tourists.

  “You’re looking for Nikki, aren’t you?” Tyler asked, when he reached her.

  She pointed at his taco. “Do you need to stop to eat that?”

  “No. But if I were Nikki, I bet you’d chew my food and regurgitate it into my mouth.” He took a big bite of his taco.

  Michelle shook her head and shoved her broken shoes into her purse. She looked up to see how much time was left. The sun was rolling across the horizon like a bruised orange. The sky was so golden that it looked as if juice had leaked out. Except to the left of them. There, the ship’s hull blocked the view like a great black wall. The ship gave another honk. Steam rose against the blushing sky.

  “Wait!” Michelle murmured. She ran down the boardwalk through pockets of tourists staring straight up at the wailing ship. Michelle ran across the open cement toward the water, in the dark shadow of the ship. The dock vibrated beneath them. She reached the edge and stopped. The mooring hook was empty.

  “Nikki!”

  With a great groan, the ship motored sideways ten yards, then fifty, then five hundred. Black water roiled between the hull and the enormous tires nailed to the dock. Rows of cabin windows glowed like full moons above. The dock stopped quaking, but Michelle didn’t. The ship was out of reach, and so was her daughter.

  Tyler caught up and pointed at the glowing horizon. Michelle blinked and followed his gaze. The fiery globe sunk in jerks, the curved edges dropping line by line until it was gone. A green tint flashed across the horizon line, then vanished.

  “Did you see that? The green flash?” he asked. “We made it!”

  “No, we didn’t.” She watched the cruise ship shrinking in the distance, then looked up. The sky was periwinkle blue, then deep violet, easing into indigo. But Michelle didn’t care about pretty views.

  Tyler tossed his trash toward the garbage can and missed. “I want to go home.”

  Michelle closed her eyes for a second and took a deep breath. She wanted to disappear and start over. But when she opened her eyes, Tyler was the one who had disappeared. For a moment, it seemed that the earth stopped spinning, and everyone was still. From the corner of her eye, Michelle saw a silver statue move. When she looked over, his eyes locked on hers. Then he covered his mouth with a silver hand…and froze.

  She threw Tyler’s trash into the garbage can and limped back, scanning the crowd. In the next row, a fire-eater sipped a bottle of water and a clown pulled off his nose. The fortune-teller looked up, then away. Michelle was the freak now, the unfit mother.

  By the time Michelle got back to the Curry Mansion, Tyler was in their room stuffing clothes back into his duffel. “I’m sorry,” she said, reaching to touch him.

  He brushed her off. “Sorry is just a word.”

  “If you want, we can tour the Hemingway House in the morning.”

  “I’m going to the airport in the morning.”

  “Fine, I’ll take you, but let’s at least have dinner. Give me a minute to wash up.”

  “No more minutes,” he said, dragging his duffel to the door. “Dad’s right. You’re sick.”

  “I hope you mean sick in a good way.”

  “Sick as in crazy.” He shut the door.

  Michelle stood there a moment. She didn’t think anything could be worse than losing a child. Now she knew better: it was losing them both.

  A jazz trumpet wailed from Duval Street. Michelle picked up the Dodgers plate that Tyler left on the bed and fanned herself, but it was no use. She stepped out on the balcony again. The air was too steamy, the music too loud, the tourists too goddamned happy. She whipped the plate over the pool, like a Frisbee. It cut through the sticky air until it dropped into the water with barely a splash, then sashayed to the bottom, a dark polka dot in the glow of the underwater light.

  Michelle went inside and sat down on the bed. She tore open the envelope with her teeth and dumped the papers beside her. She gasped. She’d seen a lot of legal documents over the past six weeks, but this one was new: Petition for Dissolution of Marriage.

  She felt the lure of the liquor downstairs, but her foot throbbed too much to walk. She pictured her mother curled up here, eating bonbons beneath the canopy, a monogrammed bed jacket draped around her shoulders. Madame Deveraux, Frank had called her. Michelle wondered if his father had told him that it was a miracle that he ever met Elyse, a miracle that she had survived. Michelle reached for the gilded phone on the bedside table and lifted the handle to her ear. Then she dialed her mother.

  That was the funny thing about mothers. How you still wanted them, even when they’d shown time and again that they couldn’t help you. It was enough to drive anyone crazy. Michelle laid back and watched the fan whirring above her. Surely her mother had lain here. Had she noticed how the blades slashed through the air like a guillotine?

  Michelle hung up. If her mother said that she was crazy, it just might be true. And she wasn’t ready to face that possibility. Not while Nikki was still missing.

  27

  The doorbell rang repeatedly in Michelle’s dream. She pulled the pillow over her head to block out the noise. The crickets had kept her awake with their mating calls since her return from Key West, and she needed rest to clear up this divorce thing with Drew. It had to be some kind of legal maneuver. Or was he lying about the woman who answered the phone? Maybe it didn’t matter. Maybe that was him pounding on the door.

  Michelle blinked until she could see beyond her wrinkled nightgown. The floor was littered with papers and plane tickets, lists of places Nikki might go. There were stale pizza crusts and a box of Lucky Charms with the marshmallows gone. There were also photographs of Nikki that she had been keeping under the mattress.

  Michelle reached for her phone in the charger, to see if Drew had called, but her elbow knocked over
the nesting doll on the nightstand. The shooting pain reminded her that her hand was useless. She rubbed it and ignored the clatter of the wooden dolls spilling to the floor. She squinted at the blank phone screen, then looked under the nightstand. Sure enough, the power cord dangled above the dolls.

  The doorbell rang again.

  “Coming!” She jammed the plug into the wall and cranked the volume on the phone before staggering through the mess to the bathroom. She recoiled at the unkempt woman in the mirror and scooped up her robe from the floor where she must have dropped it in a melancholy daze.

  By the time Michelle reached the foyer, the tang of lemon sliced through her stupor. Cathy wasn’t the last person she wanted to see, but she was high on the list. Michelle opened the front door and saw Kenny. Damn. He was on top of that list.

  “Welcome home,” he said, already headed to the dining room table.

  Cathy set her plate of lemon bars next to the dried out plant. “I thought orchids last forever.”

  “Nothing lasts forever,” Michelle said. “Did Drew send you?”

  “No,” Kenny said, shuffling documents. “Ms. Rodriguez from Pacific Auto Insurance has been trying to reach you.”

  “You look thin,” Cathy said.

  “Thanks,” Michelle said.

  “I didn’t mean it as a compliment. Eat something.” Cathy nudged the plate forward. “Kenny insisted,” she said.

  Michelle started to object, but Kenny interrupted. “She’s just trying to help.”

  “Me?” Michelle asked.

  “No, me,” Kenny said, kissing his wife’s hand. They exchanged looks, then he turned back to Michelle. “Something has come up. Rodriguez is having complications with her pregnancy. She’s on bed rest.”

  “How scary,” Michelle said.

  Kenny nodded. “For both of you. She won’t be available to defend the insurance company for the civil trial in June. Her second chair is preparing a motion to continue the trial—to move it back.”

  “Good. That is good, right? More time for me to remember?”