Her mother appeared from her room, dressed in a white suit and wearing a big summer hat, as if she were heading to church rather than to court. They said good morning to one another, but neither of them meant it.
When they got to the ferry, Jane left her mother in the car and went up onto the deck to get some air. It was a gray and windless morning and a misty drizzle hovered above the water, making the city ahead appear to shimmer against the dark sky. She stopped by the onboard cafeteria on her way back to the car and purchased two coffees and two blueberry muffins.
Her mother took the coffee, but waved the muffin away.
“You need to eat, Mother.”
“I’m fine. I had my Ensure this morning.”
“That’s not enough.”
Her mother said no more as she sat staring ahead, holding her coffee in both hands as if she were strangling it.
The ferry docked, and Jane waited for the cars ahead to debark, their brake lights flashing brightly and reflecting off the wet pavement. She followed them off and headed up toward the courthouse, driving by memory. She passed the parking garage and pulled up to the entrance and stopped the car. Her mother sat still beside her, not moving to get out.
Finally, she unclasped her seatbelt and said:
“You’re really not coming in?”
Jane shook her head.
“I’m going over to the library. Just call my cell when you’re done, and I’ll pick you up.”
“Don’t you have any feelings for your brother?”
“I’m releasing him with love, Mother.”
“And what’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means I don’t have any energy left for alcoholics and addicts. If he gets help and straightens himself out, I’d love to see him. Until then he’s on his own to pay for his decisions.”
“So you won’t help with bail?”
“No.”
“That seems awfully harsh.”
“It might be the best thing anyone can do for him.”
“Just letting him rot in there with all those criminals?”
“Letting him hit bottom, Mother.”
“But he’s not like them, Jane.”
“He’s no different.”
“He’s my son.”
Jane looked over and noticed that her mother’s eyes were wet. For a moment she saw herself sitting there, remembering her own pain over watching Melody destroy her life. She knew that her brother had always been her mother’s favorite, and she knew that somewhere beyond the denial there must be genuine concern for what he had become—maybe even the same guilt over having caused it that Jane had sometimes felt.
She reached over and touched her mother’s shoulder, a small gesture of compassion, but one that carried the weight of a thousand words unsaid. Her mother reached up and placed her hand over Jane’s, forced a sad smile, and nodded. It was the only act of intimacy between them as adults that Jane could remember. Then her mother opened the door, stepped out onto the curb, and closed it without a word. Jane watched her walk away, her big white hat receding up the steps toward the courthouse, her posture proud, despite the frailty of her thin and wasted figure. Her image blurred away to just a blotch of white as the tears welled in Jane’s eyes.
As she pulled from the curb and drove away, she wasn’t sure if she was crying because she knew that she would lose her mother someday, or if she was crying because she knew that she’d never really had a mother to lose.
Chapter 15
AS HE PEDALED UP THE DRIVE, he saw her standing at the sitting room window, looking out through the fogged glass as if she’d had news of his coming and was waiting for him.
By the time he dismounted the bike and climbed the stairs to the porch, she was gone from the window and the door was standing open. He took off his jacket and shook the rain from it, then put it back on, stepped inside, and closed the door. He stood in the dark and crowded foyer and listened to the creaking from above as she plied her rooms. filled with untold ancient treasures. When she finally descended the stairs again, stepping carefully and using the handrail, she couldn’t hide the smile on her face.
“You found it?” he asked
“I did,” she said.
She alighted from the last step, bustled past him, and led the way down the dim hall to her living room.
The coal remnants of last night’s fire were still glowing in the firebox, and he stirred them with the poker and added fresh wood while she retreated into the kitchen to fetch them tea. When she came out again, he had the fire going, and they sat in front of it in matching chairs—the fabric of hers worn to threads from years of sitting alone, and his with upholstery that was nearly new. They sipped their tea in silence.
“So aren’t you going to show it to me?” he finally asked.
“Oh, all right,” she said, setting her teacup down loudly on the end table. “Lord, help us when your impatient generation is actually running this country.”
She dug a claw deep into the pocket of her sweater and hauled out a small box covered in blue felt. He reached to take it from her, but she pulled it away, wagging her long and bony finger at him. She held the box out in her palm and lifted the lid. Inside was a beautiful yellow-diamond engagement ring, set in platinum and surrounded by smaller white diamonds. The square-cut canary stone shone like a miniature sun in its bed of blue silk. Caleb reached out and plucked the ring gently from the case. He held it up and turned it to catch the light coming in through the window. It was obviously an antique, the quality of its craftsmanship giving away its age, but it looked to be in mint condition, as if it had hardly been worn.
“That diamond was mined in Australia,” she said. “Almost three quarters of a century ago. It was cut and set in Paris.”
He took the box from her hand and carefully set the ring back inside. Then he held the box up and looked underneath it.
Mrs. Hawthorne shook her head.
“Not everything has a price, young man. My sweetheart purchased it while he was overseas in the navy. He came home and surprised me with a proposal. He was a romantic boy. And he made me a great husband. He never would say how much he’d paid for it, but I know it set him back all his savings and likely half his inheritance, too.”
“Are you sure you want to part with it?” Caleb asked.
“I remarried after he passed, and it just never seemed right to wear it after that. Plus, these old fingers of mine have shrunk up to near nothing but bone. I doubt if it would even fit on my thumb anymore.”
“Don’t you want to pass it on? Keep it in the family?”
“Ha!” She rocked back slightly in her chair. “I’ve outlived two of my kids, and the third is an ungrateful shit who’s been using every trick he can dream up to spend my money before I’m even gone, including taking me to court as an incompetent. But he’ll sure be surprised when he finds out I’m leaving all my property to the state.”
Caleb eyed the ring in its case. It was absolutely perfect for her, and he knew somehow that she would love it: the detailed setting, the cut of the stone. But it was a large diamond, and he knew it must have been expensive, even all those years ago.
“I can’t afford to pay you for it in cash, but I’ll work it off if you’ll let me.”
“I’d offer to give it to you,” she said, “but I know we’re too much alike for you to allow me to. So I’ll hold on to it for you, and you keep coming and working here when you can, and I’ll turn it over as soon as I think you’ve earned it.”
Then she took the case from his hand, snapped it closed, and slipped it back into her sweater pocket.
“You might be under the impression that I’m beginning to enjoy your visits. You wouldn’t be wrong if you are. But I’d like you to know that I wouldn’t allow the fact to tempt me into dragging out your payment. I’ll hand over the ring when you’ve earned it. Not a day after. Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to tend to some frailties of the sort you wouldn’t yet understand and that I hope you never do
.”
She rose slowly from her chair and shuffled off, stopping at the entrance to the hall and turning back.
“I forgot to mention there’s a leak beneath the kitchen sink, if you know anything about plumbing, and if you have time to take a look when you finish sorting boxes today. I know I won’t be here forever, but I’d like to not have the floor rot out from beneath me before I’m gone.”
IT HAD QUIT RAINING by the time Caleb finished his work at Mrs. Hawthorne’s and mounted his bike to ride home.
He found the garage door open and Jane’s car parked inside. He stowed the bike and went into the house, but the house was quiet, and both bedroom doors were closed. Mother and daughter were separated by more than just walls. He considered knocking on Jane’s door, but then thought better of it, grabbed his gloves and headed out to work in the yard while there was still some light left. As soon as he stepped outside, the goat rose from where it lay and started nibbling at the ground, as if it had somehow been caught slacking on the job.
Neither Jane nor her mother appeared at all that night, although Caleb could hear the murmur of Jane’s bedroom TV through the closed door as he sat on the couch and scribbled with pencil on paper, sketching out the lyrics for a song he’d been working on. He made himself two peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for dinner and ate them alone at the kitchen table with a glass of milk. When he finally turned out the lights and stretched out on the couch for the night, he noticed for the first time how his body ached from all the work he had been doing. But it was a good kind of ache—the kind that let him know he was alive and kicking; the kind that made it okay to close his eyes and rest without guilt.
He lay awake for a long time, half in this world and half in the world of dreams, his mind wandering between memories of events already past and hopes of events yet to come. Jane was the subject of every willful thought. He saw her face and the way she always bit her lower lip just before she came. He saw the disbelief mixed with hope in her eyes whenever he told her that he loved her. It made him want to tell her all the time. It made him want to tell her forever. He tried to imagine her surprise when she saw the ring, when she heard his question.
But when, he wondered—
Not now, but maybe soon.
As he drifted off, he could smell her hair and feel her lips and taste her breath, and so real were the imaginings of his dreams that he stirred in his sleep, half believing that she had come to find him on the couch. Had anyone been in the room, they might have even heard him softly calling her name.
Chapter 16
HER MOTHER SHOOK HER HEAD.
“It’s just a shame how you’ve let that beautiful rose go,” she said, her tone shrill and accusing. “You need to prune it at least in the winter, I told you that when I gave to you.”
Jane caught Caleb’s eye and smiled at him knowingly, as if to say: I bet you wished you’d pulled it out now.
They picked their way across the backyard on small paver stones that Caleb had laid out to prevent them from trampling the new grass seed. Jane took up the rear, imagining to herself that they were leapfrogging above a deadly swamp and wishing she had the courage to push her mother off the stone ahead to be mired forever in the muck below.
Caleb stopped and pointed to the northern fence where he had marked off a rectangular patch of yard with railroad ties.
“That’ll be your garden over there.”
“Wouldn’t it get more sunlight if you had put it on the other end of the yard?” Jane’s mother asked.
Caleb just shrugged.
“It’s the perfect spot,” Jane said. “Thank you, Caleb.”
He smiled at Jane and carried on with the tour.
“I’ve got a place set here for an island flowerbed to break up the grass, and I buried low voltage lines in PVC so I can wire your fountain. I saw they had some at the hardware store if you want to pick one out.”
“I hate the sound of running water,” Jane’s mother said.
“Well, Mother,” Jane replied, “it’s a good thing you won’t be here to hear it then, isn’t it?”
Caleb ignored their bickering and continued on.
“I’ve cleared all the blackberries and poisoned the ones that were trying to return. You can see the grass already coming up there on the creek bank. I even built a little enclosure there for your presidential goat, and he seems much happier now that he’s free of that chain.”
“I haven’t heard him scream once all week,” Jane said.
Her mother huffed.
“Seems foolish to waste good money feeding a pet that can’t learn to even fetch a ball, but that’s just my opinion.”
Caleb cast an apologetic glance at Jane, then turned to her mother and addressed her directly for the first time.
“That goat earned his keep here, unlike some people.”
It was Sunday morning, and her mother had been in her house for an entire week. Jane could see that her constant chiding was wearing Caleb’s nearly unending patience thin. He had avoided her as best he could, but when she wasn’t in the city making busywork over her son’s upcoming trial, she was here making Jane and Caleb’s lives miserable. Jane had noticed Caleb was spending more evenings over at Mrs. Hawthorne’s place, and she couldn’t help but think that it was largely to escape her mother that he went. But the worst part by far was the way they had to sneak around in her own home, pretending to hardly know one another during the day, and settling for covert rendezvous in her bedroom at night. She longed to go back to the time when they were stripping off one another’s clothes and making love all over the house.
Caleb finished their tour and saw them back to the door, claiming that he wasn’t hungry and that he had more work to do instead of joining them inside. Jane and her mother went to the kitchen alone, and Jane prepared them breakfast.
As she watched her mother pick at her eggs, and nibble at her toast, Jane wondered how it was she had any weight on her bones at all. After a long time her mother finally spoke.
“How long have you two been shagging?”
Jane froze, her fork loaded with eggs and suspended above her plate. She looked across the table at her mother.
“Excuse me?”
“Well, that’s what we called it when I was young.”
Jane set her fork down and folded her hands in her lap.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Of course, you do. You might think a lot of things about me, and some of them might even be true, but me being stupid isn’t one of them.”
Jane nodded.
“That’s true.”
“I see the way you look at him, and I see the way he looks at you. I’m surprised you two can even manage to keep your clothes on and your hands off of each other until I go to my room at night. You’d think you could wait until I’m gone.”
“Mother!”
“Mother is right. And we wouldn’t have dared do anything of the sort when my mother was around, I’ll tell you that. And don’t you think he’s too young anyway?”
“I don’t think age has anything to do with it.”
“Well, other people might.”
“I don’t care about what other people think.”
“Maybe you should start caring. Have you ever considered that? Or have you always been so selfish?”
“I don’t know, Mother. Was I selfish as a little girl? Or can you not even remember, you were so drunk all the time?”
“That has nothing to do with anything. He’s too young, and it’s too soon.”
“What do you mean: it’s too soon?”
“I mean Melody’s hardly even in the ground, and you’ve gone and painted over her room, and you’re already sleeping with a boy her own age. It’s shameful, Jane. It really is.”
Jane sat staring across the table at her mother, her hands clenched into fists in her lap. Her mother stared back, a glint of enjoyment in her eyes, as if she were relishing her daughter’s discomfort. Jane closed her ey
es and counted slowly to ten, just like her sponsor had told her to whenever she felt rage coming on. Then she counted again, backwards. When she opened her eyes, she looked directly at her mother and spoke calmly.
“I want you gone by tomorrow morning.”
Her mother’s look of conquest changed to a look of fear.
“Your brother needs me here.”
“Then stay at a hotel in the city. You can afford it.”
“You wouldn’t put your mother out like that.”
“I would, and I will. I want you packed and ready to go by eight in the morning. I’ll take you as far as the ferry.”
Jane slid her chair out and stood, looking down on her mother where she sat. She looked to Jane like the face of evil, thinly erect in her kitchen throne.
“You’ve never been enough of a mother to me to earn the right to even mention Melody, or how I should or shouldn’t feel about her. And if you ever so much as speak her name again in a way that’s meant to hurt me, I’ll write you off for good, and you’ll never see me again. You got that?”
Then she turned on her heel and walked from the kitchen without bothering to wait for a response.
An hour later she was lying on her bed when she heard the cab pull up. The front door opened and shut; then she heard the thud of luggage hitting the trunk, the clap of the cab doors closing. She lay there looking at the ceiling in a trance, listening as the cab backed from the drive and pulled away, carrying her mother off with it.
Thirty minutes had passed, or maybe an hour, it was hard for Jane to know, when he tapped lightly on her door. Without taking her eyes from the ceiling, she called for him to come in. She heard the door open and then softly close, and she felt the mattress give as Caleb sat on the edge of the bed.
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