"So explain," I say.
Denny says, "Here's an eye, I think." He says, "So is this supposed to be somebody's face?"
My mom holds one shaky old hand open at me, and she says, "Fred, this is between my son and me. This is an important family matter. Go someplace. Go watch the television, and let us visit in private."
And I say, "But."
But my mom says, "Go."
Denny says, "Here's another corner." Denny picks out all the blue pieces and puts them off to one side. All the pieces are the same basic shape, liquid crosses. Melted swastikas.
"Go try to save someone else for a change," my mom says, not looking at me. Looking at Denny, she says, "Victor will come find you when we're done."
She watches me until I step back as far as the hallway. After that she says something to Denny I can't hear. Her shaky hand reaches to touch Denny's shiny blue scalp, to touch it just behind one ear. Where her pajama sleeve stops, her old wrist shows stringy and thin brown as a boiled turkey neck.
Still nosing around in the puzzle, Denny flinches.
A smell comes around me, a diaper smell, and a broken voice behind me says, "You're the one who threw all my second-grade primers in the mud."
Still watching my mom, trying to see what she's saying, I go, "Yeah, I guess."
"Well, here, at least you're honest" the voice says. A dried little mushroom of a woman slips her skeleton's arm through mine. "Come along with me," she says. "Dr. Marshall would like very much to talk to you. Alone somewhere."
She's wearing Denny's red plaid shirt.
Chapter 14
LEANING HER HEAD BACK, her little black brain, Paige Marshall points up into the vaulted beige ceiling. "There used to be angels," she says. "The story is they were incredibly beautiful, with blue feathery wings and real gilded halos."
The old woman leads me to the big chapel at St. Anthony's, big and empty since it used to be a convent. One whole wall is a window of stained glass in a hundred different colors of gold. The other wall is just a big wood crucifix. Between the two is Paige Marshall in her white lab coat, golden in the light, under the black brain of her hair. She's wearing her black glasses and looking up. All of her black and gold.
"According to the decrees of Vatican II," she says, "they painted over church murals. The angels and the frescoes. They weeded out most of the statues. All those gorgeous mysteries of faith. All gone."
She looks at me.
The old woman is gone. The chapel door clicks shut behind me.
"It's pathetic," Paige says, "how we can't live with the things we can't understand. How if we can't explain something we'll just deny it."
She says, "I've found a way to save your mother's life." She says, "But you may not approve."
Paige Marshall starts undoing the buttons of her coat, and there's more and more skin showing inside.
"You may find the idea entirely repugnant," she says.
She opens the lab coat.
She's naked inside. Naked and as pale white as the skin under her hair. Naked white and about four steps away. And very doable. And she shrugs the coat off her shoulders so it drapes behind her, still hanging from her elbows. Her arms still in the sleeves.
Here are all those tight furry shadows where you're dying to go.
"We only have this small window of opportunity," she says.
And she steps toward me. Still wearing her glasses. Her feet still in their white deck shoes, only they look gold here.
I was right about her ears. For sure, the resemblance is awesome. Another hole she can't close, hidden and frilled with skin. Framed in her soft hair.
"If you love your mother," she says, "if you want her to live, you'll need to do this with me."
Now?
"It's my time," she says. "My mucosa is so thick you could stand a spoon in it."
Here?
"I can't see you outside of here," she says.
Her ring finger is as bare as most of her. I ask, is she married?
"Do you have an issue with that?" she says. Just one reach away is the curve of her waist going down along the outline of her ass. Just that far is the shelf of each breast pushing up a dark button nipple. Just my arm away is the warm hot space where her legs come together.
I say, "No. Nope. No issues here."
Her hands come together around my top shirt button, then the next, and the next. Her hands spread the shirt back off my shoulders so it falls behind me.
"I just need you to know," I say, "since you're a doctor and everything," I say, "I might be a recovering sex addict."
Her hands spring my belt buckle, and she says, "Then just do what comes naturally."
The smell of her isn't roses or pine or lemons. It isn't anything, not even skin.
How she smells is wet.
"You don't understand," I say. "I have almost two whole days of sobriety."
The gold light shows her warm and glowy. Still, the feeling is if I kissed her my lips would stick the way they would on frozen metal. To slow things down, I think of basal cell carcinomas. I picture the bacterial skin infection impetigo. Corneal ulcers.
She pulls my face into her ear. Into my ear she whispers,
"Fine. That's very noble of you. But how about if you start your recovery tomorrow...."
She thumbs my pants off my hips and says, "I need you to put your faith in me."
And her smooth cool hands close around me.
Chapter 15
IF YOU'RE EVER IN A BIG HOTEL LOBBY, and they start to play "The Blue Danube Waltz," get the hell out. Don't think. Run.
Anymore, nothing is straightforward.
If you're ever in a hospital and they page Nurse Flamingo to the cancer ward, do not go anywhere near there. There is no Nurse Flamingo. If they page Dr. Blaze, there is no such person.
In a big hotel, that waltz means they need to evacuate the building.
In most hospitals, Nurse Flamingo means a fire. Dr. Blaze means a fire. Dr. Green means a suicide. Dr. Blue means somebody stopped breathing.
This is stuff the Mommy told the stupid little boy as they sat in traffic. This is how far back she was going nuts.
This one day, the kid had been sitting in class when a lady from the school office had come to tell him his dentist appointment was canceled. A minute later, he'd raised his hand and asked to go to the bathroom. There never was any appointment. Sure, somebody had called, saying they were from the dentist, but this was a new secret signal. He went out a side door by the cafeteria, and there she was waiting in a gold car.
This was the second time the Mommy came back to claim him.
She rolled down the window and said, "Do you know why Mommy was in jail this time?"
"For changing the hair colors?" he said.
See also: The malicious mischief.
See also: The second-degree assault.
She leaned over to open the door and never stopped talking. Not for days and days.
If you're ever in the Hard Rock Cafe, she told him, and they announce "Elvis has left the building," that means all the servers need to go to the kitchen and find out what dinner special has just sold out.
These are the things people tell you when they won't tell you the truth.
In a Broadway theater, announcing "Elvis has left the building" means a fire.
In a grocery store, paging Mr. Cash is a call for an armed security guard. Paging "Freight check to Women's Clothing" means somebody is shoplifting in that department. Other stores page a fake woman named Sheila. "Sheila to the front" means somebody is shoplifting in the front of the store. Mr. Cash and Sheila and Nurse Flamingo are always bad news.
The Mommy shut off the engine and sat with one hand gripping the steering wheel at twelve o'clock, and with her other hand she snapped her fingers for the boy to repeat stuff back to her. The insides of her nose were dark with dried blood. Twisted old tissues smeared with more old blood were on the car floor. Some blood was on the dashboard from when she sneezed. On the inside of the windshield was some more.