What a Mother Knows

by Leslie Lehr

  Michelle spied Drew’s address on a small stone building and took a deep breath. She smoothed her hair in the reflection of the glass walled lobby, then circled her smile with red lipstick. She practiced posing with the pennant, until the doorman opened the door. Then she took a breath big enough to fly into the future. At that moment, with her life waiting seven floors above, it was true. She could live here. She loved New York!

  When the elevator doors groaned open, Michelle’s mouth went dry from nerves. She recognized the muffled music of Coldplay seeping from apartment 7B and gave herself a pep talk. If Drew’s taste in music hadn’t changed, maybe nothing else had either. Their problem was circumstantial, she decided, like the grounds for any manslaughter charge that might be brought against her. Marriage was like religion: a matter of faith. Michelle gathered her courage and knocked.

  A deadbolt clicked, then Drew’s face appeared in the crack. His eyes widened.

  Michelle waved her pennant. “Happy Mother’s Day.”

  His eyes fell to her corsage. “We sent you flowers.”

  “Thanks. Missed you in Key West.”

  Bella’s muzzle pushed through the crack. Drew slipped past the dog into the hall and shut the door, ignoring the barking that followed. He wiped his hands on the dishtowel tucked in his jeans and pounded the door to quiet Bella. The scent of cinnamon clung to him, or maybe she was just giddy from the sight of his gray T-shirt spilling over his beloved rodeo belt. The bandana on his head added a hip touch.

  Michelle smiled. “What’s for brunch? I’m starving.”

  “What are you doing here?” he asked.

  “I love you,” she said. It had just occurred to her—the perfect start. She waited for him to respond, feeling the weight of the world hang from her aching shoulder: the legal documents, the lipstick, the long nights alone.

  Drew nodded to the couple passing behind her to the elevator, then locked his eyes on hers. But he didn’t say “I love you” back.

  “Please, Drew. I don’t want a divorce. I’ll move here.”

  “Does Kenny know you’re here?”

  She shook her head.

  “Your mother sent you, right? You wouldn’t just show up here after—”

  “After what?” Michelle cried. “Where the hell have you been?”

  “Making a living!” he said, and the years rewound as if not a day had passed, as if he’d hit Play on the tape recorder in her head.

  “Right, there are no TV shows in LA, no movies, no union jobs—”

  “You don’t need me. You never needed me.”

  “That’s not true!” Michelle said.

  “You look beautiful,” he said, like a swear word.

  Michelle followed his gaze down from her red lipstick to her chic sundress and high-heeled sandals, and finally she understood. Once, he had been attracted to her strength. Now, he held it against her. Yet it was all a glittering lie, a sparkling facade. How could he not recognize her Oscar-worthy act? She stared at the straps pinching her toes. Her head ached, and her body throbbed from exhaustion. She felt tears on her cheeks, but if she looked up he would see them. He had never seen them.

  “I couldn’t let myself need you,” she said quietly. “How would I have endured all the months you were gone if I did?” She took a deep breath and looked up. He saw her tears and looked away.

  “The batter’s going to burn.”

  “Since when do you cook?” Michelle asked.

  An old woman reeking of roses faltered by on a cane. “Morning, Mr. Mason.”

  Drew saluted. “Happy Mother’s Day, Mrs. Gottfried.”

  Michelle wiped her tears and smiled at the old woman. “Yes, have a wonderful day. So sorry we haven’t met. I’m Mrs. Mason.”

  The woman sniffed, then shuffled past to the elevator.

  “For chrissakes, Drew, aren’t you going to invite me in?”

  He held the door open and Bella barreled at her. At least someone missed me, Michelle thought, squatting to pet the slobbery beast as she looked around. The wooden floors were scratched from Bella’s nails, and Drew’s John Wayne movie posters hung above their old leather couch. But a knit blanket was crumpled on the end, and on the coffee table were pictures of people Michelle didn’t recognize, a life she knew nothing about. To the right, a round table was set for two. Michelle felt a flutter of relief. She stood up and called out. “Tyler?”

  “He’s at school.”

  Then she heard a woman’s voice. “Honey?”

  Michelle froze. She was tempted to take a swing at him with her purse. “You fucking liar!”

  “Michelle?” The voice was familiar now, and not just from the phone call.

  “Is that Sasha?” She let her purse slip to the floor. “My friend? Who used to do my hair? And taught me to knit? Did you know she’s the one who made Nikki up like a slut for the video? Is this revenge for me firing her? Or do you just like fucking my boss’s old girlfriend?” Michelle looked around. “Sasha! Come out from wherever you’re hiding.”

  “Michelle, it’s not like that. We’re not just sleeping together.”

  “Gee, that makes me feel so much better.” Michelle tried to make sense of it all. No wonder her husband couldn’t make love to her. He didn’t love her anymore. “Nevermind, I was supposed to die, right? Sorry to disappoint you.”

  Sasha tiptoed out from the other direction in a cotton bathrobe. A knit cap hugged her head. Then Michelle’s rage dissolved like smoke and she could see more clearly. Sasha’s slow approach wasn’t fearful; it was feverish. Her pallor was gray, and her frame was skeletal. There were no blond tufts peeking from the cap, no silken strands hanging below. Sasha began sobbing. “I’m so, so sorry.”

  Michelle started crying, too. The tears were so close, they came easily. Only the breathing was hard. Michelle leaned to embrace the fragile woman, but she could only raise the one arm. Then Drew stepped between them, and Michelle remembered where they were. And why. He stood a few inches in front of Sasha, blocking her like human armor. He turned and took Sasha’s bony hand. He was best at playing the hero, and from the way Sasha winced as he steered her away, Michelle could see that she needed one. She wondered how much time he got to enjoy when Sasha was a stunner. Where was the line between hero and martyr?

  “Goddamn it, Drew!” Michelle punched his arm as he passed, but he caught it easily. His eyes noted her gleaming gold band, newly repaired for the occasion. He let go.

  Michelle tiptoed after them until she saw the dark bedroom and spied the side table laden with medicine and magazines and a mess of Kleenex. Pillows were piled against the headboard above the wrinkled sheets. The plaid bedspread was smooth on the other side, balancing a lap table with knitting needles and burgundy yarn. A book titled Meditations for Cancer lay beside it.

  Michelle ran back to the living room, past the tiny kitchen, searching for a place to cry. The first door opened to a bedroom with a Yankees pennant pinned to the wall above rumpled twin beds. Michelle backed out and found the bathroom, with towels on the floor and toothpaste on the sink. She looked at herself in the mirror, at her perfect mask of makeup. Then she turned on the faucet and scrubbed it all off.

  Her head was pounding, so she opened the medicine cabinet. She recognized Drew’s silver razor and Tyler’s can of Axe. An asthma inhaler stood next to a near-empty prescription bottle, and she couldn’t help but check the label to see if her son still took the same allergy pills. Without her glasses, she had to hold it close to read the patient’s name. Antianxiety pills. For Drew. She wondered if Drew’s anxiety was better or worse now, whether he could sleep at night. Then she saw the physician’s name: Dr. Braunstein.

  “Drew!” Michelle stormed out. “How do you know Noah Butler’s mother?”

  “We met at his funeral. Nikki introduced us.”

  “Did she prescribe drugs to Nikki, too?”

  “Michelle, please. She was doing me a favor. We didn’t get a chance to speak that morning, as you can imagine, but
she called a few months later as a courtesy, to see how you were doing and—she was nice enough to help me out. She was taking a leave of absence, so she gave me a few refills.”

  “Ever notice a bottle missing?” That would explain the drugs that Nikki had sold in Hawaii. Drew’s dope kit had to be Nikki’s source. Why had Michelle not thought of that when she remembered the fight over that pretty piece of foil? Instead, she’d thought the worst. Nikki had called Michelle a hypocrite. She was right.

  The smoke detector sounded. Michelle followed Drew to the cramped kitchen, where he chucked a burnt pancake and heaved the window open. The smell was overwhelming, so she went to the open window where she could breathe. The traffic reminded her of Drew’s recordings of city sounds: rumbling engines and honking horns and screeching brakes. But there were no crickets calling out to lovers in the night.

  He spooned a few small circles of batter onto the frying pan. Michelle watched the bubbles rise. No wonder Tyler liked boarding school. There were fewer secrets to keep. Then she realized how awful that must have been. “I can’t believe you made our son lie to his own mother! Why didn’t you just tell me?”

  “You had enough to worry about,” Drew said. “It didn’t seem fair.”

  “Fair?” She watched him flip the pancakes and called up his oldest line. “The fair comes once a year.” They smiled at each other, not because the line was so funny, but because it was such a relief to do something—anything—together.

  “I’m sorry, Michelle.”

  She tried not to cry. “Is she the reason you’re in such a hurry to get rid of me?”

  Drew put the pancakes on a plate. “You and I were drifting apart well before the accident. Sasha hasn’t worked in months, Michelle, and she just started chemo. I wouldn’t have rushed this, but a divorce takes six months, minimum. If I marry Sasha, she can be added to my insurance policy. You’ll be fine after the trial.”

  He meant the settlement. Michelle didn’t tell him about her deal with the redheaded devil. She rubbed her temple. “Not if I go to jail.”

  Drew looked up. “Why would you?”

  “If I’m found guilty—or liable for negligence—whatever they call it. What if the jury hates me?” She felt a pang and hurried on. “You’ll probably come off like a saint: hardworking dad, wife in a coma, falls for a sick friend. Fuck you, Drew.”

  Michelle turned to leave, but her eyes caught on Tyler’s report card clipped to the refrigerator door. Drew put the plate down to yank a photo from beneath it. But Michelle was quick with her left hand now. She snatched it back.

  In the photo, Tyler and Nikki were bundled up on a horse-drawn carriage in Central Park. The harness was adorned with Christmas holly. Nikki was red-cheeked and healthy in her sheepskin coat and her purple scarf, with snowflakes dotting her eyelashes as she hugged her little brother.

  Michelle looked up at Drew. “You made Tyler lie about his sister, too? He said she ran away after being suspended.”

  “She did—just not right away,” Drew protested. “We already had airline tickets, remember? You wanted us to have a white Christmas? I thought you’d still want that.”

  “Of course, but…I thought Tyler meant it was just the two of you.” Michelle looked up. “Nikki’s school records show that she didn’t return after Thanksgiving. You let her stay home? Did you give her the Vicodin, too?”

  Drew shook his head. “She was a mess, Michelle. We had to keep the blinds closed from reporters. A bootleg video went viral even before Victor’s cut was on VH1.” He cocked his head at her. “I never pressed Tyler about it, but I suspect he uploaded the video after getting it from you.” Michelle shrugged, so he continued. “Noah had already recorded a dozen songs with the band and leaked them as downloads. His father formed Butler Music to release the first album and cut a distribution deal with Sanddollar Records. Rolling Stone did a cover, the album went platinum, and fans started loitering on the sidewalk and pounding on the door all night.”

  “So Nikki ran away.”

  “When you had trouble pulling out of that last surgery in November, she couldn’t take it. Eating Thanksgiving dinner in the hospital cafeteria was depressing enough, but having instant potatoes instead of your garlic mashed…” He hesitated, then turned away to get his coffee cup. “Once the doctor induced the coma a few days later, there was nothing to do but wait.”

  Michelle pressed the photo to her heart. “She needed me.”

  “I think she felt responsible,” Drew said.

  “For the rain? The accident wasn’t her fault. Didn’t you tell her that?”

  “Of course. You don’t think I blame myself?”

  Drew dumped his cold coffee and poured another cup. He offered it to her, but she wasn’t about to put the photo down to take it. Drew took a gulp, thinking back.

  “I should have known something was up that day we came to say good-bye to you. Just in case, you know…Nikki was jumpy as hell, kept fiddling with those wooden nesting dolls she brought from her room.”

  Michelle looked up. “I thought my mother brought those.”

  “You’re missing the point, as usual. When Nikki said good-bye, she meant it.”

  A truck beep-beep-beeped seven floors down. The echo was so loud in the tiny kitchen that Michelle felt like she was the one backing up. Did she really love this man, or did she love the idea of him? Was this painful longing one of loss, or just plain loneliness? She was too tired to tell the difference.

  She started to put the photo back, then decided to keep it. “I’ll sign the divorce papers, Drew. But you have to tell me where Nikki is.”

  “I swear to you, I don’t know!” Drew shouted. “Every night I’m afraid she’s eating out of trash cans. When you came back from Florida, Kenny gave me hell. Those fucking lawyers—Dillenger and his henchmen—were sniffing around here like a pack of coyotes. If I knew where she was, of course I’d tell you. And I’d send her money even if it cost us. And it would cost us plenty, because if I sent her so much as a dime, Dillenger would trace it and haul her in to testify. She knew you saw that seat belt recall—she brought the mail in every day, and I should have remembered and not let you drive the damn car. But Nikki was also the last person to see Noah Butler alive before he got in the car with you. Do you really want her to relive that day?”

  Michelle shivered. “It must have been horrible.”

  He nodded. “It’s better for you, too, Michelle. No matter what happened that morning, Nikki’s words will be used against you. Do you understand? She’s an emotional girl. There are hundreds of millions of dollars at stake for the car company. One of us could go down.”

  He took off his apron and tossed it on the counter. “But none of that would matter if I knew she wanted to come home. She went to a lot of trouble to get that Internet voice mail I couldn’t trace. And to use prepaid burner phones to leave us messages. And to mail you bogus postcards of Australia. So the only thing I do know—and you know it, too, from the recording on the get well card—is that she doesn’t want to see you.”

  Michelle’s chest clutched. “She’s young. She doesn’t know what she wants.”

  Drew went to the doorway with the pancakes. “Then give her time.”

  “Time?” Michelle shouted after him. “It’s been forever!” She grabbed the spatula and threw it at him. It clattered to the linoleum floor as he left.

  After a moment, Michelle picked up the spatula and tossed it in the sink. She drifted out to the dinner table and pulled the divorce papers from her purse. She signed her name perfectly, then waited for Drew.

  “Do you think I’m guilty?”

  He met her eyes and hesitated. “Does it matter?”

  Michelle realized that it didn’t. And that hurt more than any answer. She tore off her Mother’s Day corsage and left a trail of white petals all the way to the door. Drew picked up the I ♥ NY pennant and caught up with her.

  “That’s for Tyler,” Michelle said. She took a long, last look at her husb
and, who no longer fit that description. “I hate New York.”

  ***

  Floor numbers flashed in the elevator like the bright lights of a migraine. Michelle could barely breathe. She rushed out of the building into the blast of exhaust fumes and humanity, then collapsed on a grimy bench where the world blurred into colors around her. Buses screeched, horns honked, and people shouted until her ears split. For the first time, she understood her mother’s craving for white light and the numb promise of peace. Instead, sirens screamed past. They were calling her name.

  31

  Workmen removing the Palmer Clinic sign from the building whistled as Michelle emerged from her car. She waved her bottle of champagne, then hurried across the parking lot past Wes’s nurse, who carried out a box of pictures and potted plants.

  “Am I too late?” Michelle asked.

  “Only if you wanted a cupcake,” Bree said. She waved good-bye.

  Wes was on the phone when Michelle banged through the swinging doors of the treatment room. The weight machines were gone, but a few examination tables remained between storage boxes, and the aquariums still gurgled against the wall. The doctor’s jacket was off, his sleeves were rolled up, and his tie hung loose from his neck. While she waited for the call to end, Michelle walked over to the creatures that inspired his research.

  The spiny arms of the coral starfish stuck out at odd angles in the aquarium. Michelle leaned over the top to see it clinging to a large rock. She held her own arm in commiseration, wondering if Wes would notice how her first laser treatment had begun to lighten her scars. She heard him promise someone he’d be home for dinner, then he hung up.

  “Congratulations,” she called.

  “Thanks. This grant was such a long shot, I can’t believe I got it.”

  “I can. Shall I put on a smock for my last exam?”

  He surveyed the boxes and shrugged. “How about a quickie with your clothes on? So to speak.”