Tattooed

by Pamela Callow

  The email had been caught in her spam filter for three months. She had been traveling all over the U.S. doing guest stints and hadn’t found it until three weeks ago. She called her mother.

  And here she was.

  Out of any disease to afflict her mother, the general consensus was that Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, or ALS, was a terrible way to go. As Kenzie learned, it was a disease that strangled the body and left the mind to suffocate within its confines.

  The irony had not escaped her. She had felt strangled within the confines of the award-winning home her mother designed. It had been both lauded as “cutting edge and forward thinking” and panned as “unrealistic and unlivable.” Perched near Chebucto Head, it stuck out on the cliff as if it, too, had been carved by a glacier, its surfaces layered with glass and melded with curved steel. The ocean’s turbulence reflected in its window-like walls as if it were a mood ring.

  It was the “unlivable” criticism that had gotten to her mother. “What do they mean, ‘unlivable’?” she’d asked, throwing the magazine on the table. She swept her arm in a fierce gesture, as if drawing to her chest the elements of her house that had both astounded her admirers and provoked her critics. “Do you find it unlivable?” she had demanded of her son, Cameron.

  But she hadn’t asked Kenzie. She was too afraid of what her unpredictable daughter would say. And Kenzie knew that if her seventeen-year-old self had been asked, she would have gladly thrown the critics’ words in her mother’s face and stomped out of the room with the knowledge she had succeeded beautifully in wounding her mother.

  “Be on your best behavior, Foo,” Kenzie said as she parked the car in front of her mother’s house. Kenzie unclipped his seat belt, enjoying the visual contrast of the sensible blue polyester harness against Foo’s spiked-silver leather collar. She knew that most people might find it surprisingly against type for a tattoo artist to buckle her dog into a car seat—they probably found it surprising she had a pug instead of a Rottweiler—but she would never risk Foo.

  He leapt out of the car behind her, his nose at her calf, his walk jaunty. He was unfazed by the otherworldly quality of the house. Kenzie had always thought it unnatural, the antithesis of the kind of home she wanted. She had yearned for a traditional house like those of her friends, with rugs scattered on the floor and overstuffed sofas. Instead, her mother had created an irregular glass rectangle that was accented with steel. There was no corner in that house in which Kenzie could lose herself. Everything was too exposed. Her father, Gus, had seemed displaced, too. He built a covered porch in the back, one with traditional wood posts and patio furniture. Kenzie and her father often retreated there, she with her sketchpad, he with a crossword puzzle.

  Lately, though, the house appeared to have hunkered itself down to the ground. Bracing itself for death’s appearance.

  The Japanese maples by the front entrance had barely begun to leaf. Their spindly branches reminded her all too vividly of decimated limbs. Kenzie scooped up Foo and held him against her chest as she rang the doorbell. A light chime echoed within the house.

  A woman appeared at the door. She peered through the glass. Kenzie straightened to her full height, which was a decent five foot ten. With her hair bunched up on the back of her head and the two-inch heel on her Doc Martens white-leather boots, she topped six feet easily.

  “Kenzie?” the woman said, pulling open the door. “I’m Phyllis. Your mother’s caregiver.”

  “Hi.”

  Foo squirmed in her arms. She put him on the floor, keeping a tight hold on the leash while she glanced around. It was home. And yet she didn’t feel at home, she didn’t feel she could let her dog go or run upstairs to see her mother unless she was invited to do so.

  Phyllis must have seen her glance upstairs, because she said, “Your mother does not use the rooms on the upper floor anymore. She’s moved into the living room.”

  “Oh. Of course.” It made total sense, and it gave Kenzie her first glimpse of how radically her mother’s life had changed. Seventeen years ago, her mother would never have allowed a living room to be used as a bedroom.

  It was sacrilege.

  Kenzie followed Phyllis to the back of the house. Their footsteps were lost in the open space. “She’s in here,” Phyllis said, gesturing to the living area.

  Kenzie paused on the threshold, bracing herself for the bombardment of family memories, but there was no room for those as her brain took in the implications of the scene before her.

  Her mother, whom she had not seen for half of her life, was unrecognizable. Kenzie would have walked right by her if she’d been on the street. She might have glanced at her—yes, she would have—for it would be hard to miss the motorized wheelchair, although it was the awkwardness of the body that would have made Kenzie give a second look. Her profession demanded the ability to create a picture on a curved canvas—the skin covering a limb—and she was intimately familiar with how limbs were angled. Any irregular form always caught her eye.

  Her mother leaned to one side of her wheelchair, her head resting against a curved headrest, hands lying in her lap.

  “Kenzie. You came.” Her mother’s eyes scanned her face. Kenzie had remembered her mother’s eyes as bright and sharp. Always assessing, calculating, ready to find the flaw. “Lives depend on it,” she had once told a five-year-old Kenzie when she had asked her mother why she was always pointing out the “mistakes” on her blueprints.

  The tables had been turned most cruelly on her mother. The structural integrity of her body now depended on others to keep it functioning.

  “Hi, Frances,” Kenzie said, trying to sound casual. For the past three weeks, she had flip-flopped over how to address her mother. “Mom” seemed too intimate given the distance between them; “mother” was too formal and made her sound like an ass. So she had decided to call her mother by her first name.

  Her mother blinked. Kenzie inwardly squirmed. “Frances” had sounded pretentious.

  “How are you?” Kenzie asked. That wasn’t much better. Anyone could see her mother was a train wreck.

  “I’m dying.”

  She swallowed. “I heard.”

  Her mother’s eyes traveled over her face, lingering on the multiple piercings curving up Kenzie’s ear, then headed downward, skimming her long-sleeved distressed leather jacket and low-slung skinny jeans. The weather had been damp—and the chill had really gotten under Kenzie’s skin after being in Texas last week. It was only natural for her to cover up. And yet, if she was being honest with herself, she knew that she wasn’t ready to expose her tattoos, her art—her life’s journey—to this woman who was now at the end of her own.

  Her mother’s gaze fell to Kenzie’s hands, which were unadorned with the exception of a small black tattoo in Asian script on the back of each thumb.

  “This means strength. In Kanji.” Kenzie held out her right hand. “And this one means tranquility,” she said, holding out the other so her hands were extended symmetrically. “Strength” was just two bold strokes, fluid and curved, with forward movement. “Tranquility,” on the other hand, was smaller, with many strokes working together to appear balanced.

  “With strength comes tranquility,” her mother said. “And with tranquility comes strength.”

  Had either of them achieved that? “That was the idea.”

  The quiet of the room was broken by a loud, uncontrolled laugh that burst from her mother’s throat. Frances began to cough. Within seconds, she was choking.

  Kenzie turned and sprinted to the door. “Help!”

  Her mother’s caregiver ran into the room. She thrust a suction tube down her mother’s throat and cleared the airway. Frances leaned her head back against the headrest and closed her eyes. Tear tracks marked her cheeks, her breathing hoarse and rapid.

  “God, Mom,” Kenzie said, and realized she’d forgotten to call her mother by her first name. She sat in the armchair by her mother’s wheelchair, her legs shaking, her pulse racing.
/>   That choking sound…

  It had taunted her in dreams for years. She had never thought she would ever hear it again.

  Foo sat by her feet, leaning against her shin.

  Her mother opened her eyes. They were watery from tears, washed in defeat. “I can’t believe I’m seeing you again.” The words were so painful, and so painfully slow, that Kenzie couldn’t bear it.

  “Foo. Come here, buddy.” Kenzie scooped up the pug from where he sat by her feet, observing these follies of human nature with his usual je ne sais quoi. Her shoulders lost some of their tension at the feel of his solid, velvety body in her arms. Kenzie stepped toward her mother. “You want to hold him?”

  Frances glanced down at her hands. “Please put him on my lap. Help me move my hands first.”

  Kenzie bent over and clasped one of her mother’s hands. The coldness of her skin, the laxness of her muscles, made Kenzie’s throat constrict. She averted her face from her mother’s too-observant gaze. “Right here?” Kenzie asked, placing her mother’s hand on the armrest.

  “Yes.”

  Kenzie gripped her mother’s other hand with the lightest, briefest of touches and placed it onto the arm-

  rest. “There,” she said. She lowered Foo onto her mother’s lap. Her pug met her mother’s gaze with his own, and then sniffed her face. “Hello, Foo,” her mother said. She looked at Kenzie. “Could you put my hand on his back?”

  Kenzie guided her mother’s hand onto Foo’s fur. “He’s soft,” her mother said.

  Foo curled his body and lowered his head onto Frances’ lap. “He’s a lug,” Kenzie said. Foo gave a long, gentle sigh and closed his eyes.

  “Such peace,” her mother said.

  Silence descended on them.

  Shit.

  Kenzie didn’t know what to say. The distance, fuelled by hurt and lengthened by years, was not going to be breached in one visit. Or ever.

  And yet she couldn’t just leave.

  She had only arrived.

  “Are you happy, Kenzie?” her mother asked.

  Kenzie tensed. She did not want to explore this territory now—at this late stage—with her mother. And yet, she could tell by the urgency in her mother’s eyes, that the question was of vital importance to her.

  “Yes.” There was truth in that answer. She was as happy as she had ever thought she could be.

  “That’s all I ever wanted for you.”

  Kenzie exhaled. Really? Really? It hadn’t felt that way when she was a teenager. Yet her mother now watched her with such obvious concern and love in her eyes that Kenzie almost believed it.

  “I’m leaving you half of everything.”

  That brought Kenzie to her feet. “I don’t want it.” Foo lifted his head.

  “Please.” The laughter bubbled in her mother’s throat. Shit. She was getting her mother upset. “It’s all I have left to give.”

  Too little, too late.

  Kenzie shook her head. She didn’t want this visit to end in an argument, but she didn’t want to give in, either. She didn’t need her mother’s money now.

  She had needed it seventeen years ago.

  And had been rebuffed.

  Phyllis came into the room, carrying a cup of pills.

  “It’s time for your meds, Frances,” she said. She turned to Kenzie. “It will take a bit of time. She has difficulty swallowing.”

  “I should go,” Kenzie said. She stood, trying to hide her relief. “Come on, Foo.”

  The pug sprang off Frances’ lap and trotted over to Kenzie. She clipped on his studded leash. “Good night, Mom.”

  “Will you come back?”

  The question hung in the air. Her mother’s eyes held hers.

  Kenzie’s heart tightened.

  “Of course,” she said. “I’ll call.”

  “I’ll be here,” her mother said. It was a feeble attempt at humor.

  Kenzie knew she should kiss her mother’s cheek. She raised a hand—the one marked with “strength”—and left.

  The other, she shoved in her pocket.

  8

  Kate’s cell phone rang just as she launched—full voce—into the chorus of “What’s Love Got to Do With It.” She scrabbled for the volume dial on her kitchen radio, muting Tina Turner’s throaty call to arms, and snatched her cell phone from the counter.

  She knew who it was. She hated the fact her heart was pounding—and he wasn’t even in the same country.

  “Hello.” She gazed out the window overlooking her backyard. Large drops of water streaked the glass. She had made it home just in time. The rain had begun. The dogs lay on their mats on the floor, content.

  She wished she were a dog.

  “Hi, Kate.” Randall Barrett’s voice was warm.

  “Hi.”

  There was an awkward pause. Kate was used to it. Both of them trod the high wire of their relationship with caution. Kate supposed that was a good sign. Her relationship with Randall had taken so many twists and turns since she’d joined McGrath Woods: from rookie associate on probation versus antagonistic managing partner, to last-hope criminal defense lawyer representing desperate accused. The magnetic undercurrent in their relationship mirrored those twists and turns, vacillating from attraction to repulsion.

  It changed last summer, when they joined forces in a small motorboat on a desperate mission to save Randall’s children from a killer. The undercurrent deepened to an elemental pull. And although they both were caught in its force, the timing was about as bad as it could get.

  In the end, they both came up for air.

  Separately.

  In the first few weeks after the trauma, Kate had dropped by Randall’s home. She had brought Alaska, ostensibly to visit Randall’s daughter, Lucy, who loved dogs.

  But even armed with a husky as an ice-breaker, her visits to Randall’s family had never gotten past, “How are you?” To his children, she was their dad’s lawyer, former colleague and “friend,” someone who had been with them during the very worst time of their lives, been privy to their secrets, their anguish, their pain—and yet didn’t know them. It was an uncomfortable place to be. And neither Randall nor Kate wanted to force an intimacy that wasn’t there. One that would most certainly be rejected.

  That was the first barrier. The other was more difficult to scale, for it came from within.

  Kate understood all the dark niches and secret hiding places of grief, guilt, loss, pain. She understood what had driven Randall to leave, to find peace.

  But the part of Kate that wasn’t ready to abandon the emotional intimacy she had shared with Randall was…lonely.

  And the part of Kate that had only gotten over the pain of her failed engagement with Ethan Drake a year ago urged her to move on. Her heart could only take so much.

  “Did your meeting go well?” Randall asked.

  She pushed a wisp of hair behind her ear. “Sort of.”

  “Mrs. Sloane knows assisted suicide isn’t in the cards?” His voice was low.