“It does,” she agreed. “But we’ve talked about fairness before here. Life is not fair. Horrible things happen to people, sometimes in disproportionate amounts. And I’m sorry that all of this is converging on you.”
You get what you get, and you don’t get upset; that was one of my mom’s favorite lines. But I always got upset. I’m sure I was as big a pain in the ass as Luke when I was a kid. Though I hope I wasn’t as mean to my mother as he was to Rachel. I don’t think I was.
“Someone who’s ill equipped to deal with it, who has dealt with too much already,” I said. I hated to be whiny, but I was really feeling sorry for myself.
“You are equipped to handle this,” she said. “And I’ll help you, no matter the outcome.”
I hugged one of her big soft pillows to my center and curled myself up deep in the corner of her couch.
“Maybe we can table the discussion of your father for now,” she said. “He has reached out to you. It’s up to you whether you want to communicate with him or not. Maybe now is not the time to make the decision.”
“What does he want?” I asked. “Did he tell you what he wants?”
She released a breath. “You want to address this tonight, with everything else going on?”
I nodded.
“He wants to know how you are. He wants to know if you are healthy and living well. He wants to know if you have managed to put the ugliness of your past behind you, what your plans are after graduation. And he wants to have a conversation with you. He said that there are things he needs to tell you that he doesn’t want to share with me.”
I stared at a painting she had on her wall. It was a soothing oil painting, swirls of gold and pink and white. I was always searching it for shapes. That night I saw a chrysalis with a butterfly folded deep inside.
“It’s to his credit that he sought to reach you through me, rather than finding a way to reach you directly,” she said. “It shows a true and honest concern for you, whatever his crimes.”
“What else?” I could feel it, that other thing hovering in her consciousness.
“His private investigator, Paul Rodriguez, claims to have new evidence,” she said. “Your father wonders if Mr. Rodriquez has reached out to you.”
I didn’t answer, just kept looking at the painting-now an angel, her wings curled protectively around her.
“I’ll remind you that you don’t have to talk to him or to the investigator.”
“He’s not innocent,” I said.
Now I saw a tornado, twisting and turning, decimating the village beneath it, spitting up debris.
“I watched him bury her body,” I said. This was not news to Dr. Cooper. “I sat there as he dug the hole in the ground and rolled her body, which was wrapped in our Oriental dining room rug, into the grave he’d dug. I lied for him, because I was afraid that he’d bury me right beside her.”
She watched me carefully. “I understand,” she said. “We’ve talked about this. You didn’t actually see him kill her.”
“No,” I answered. “But who else? Who else?”
Who else?
My mother had a lover allegedly, according to the defense. Not a fling, or a one-night stand, not a brief encounter that never should have happened and that she lived to regret. She, allegedly, had a long, enduring love affair and friendship with a man other than my father. If it was true, I never knew about it, of course. That’s not a thing one shares with her child, I imagine-not that I know anything about affairs or about parenting.
This affair was the reason, the police concluded, for my father’s homicidal rage. The rage that caused him to murder her, dispose of her body, and then declare her missing. When I think about it, that she loved someone and he loved her, it gives me an odd sense of relief. I’m glad to know that somewhere in her life she was happy. Because she wasn’t happy with us.
When I think back upon that afternoon, what I walked in on when I came home from school that day, my whole body freezes. Sometimes it’s like a puzzle, shiny bright pieces scattered on the floor of my memory. Odd things, like a strange pair of shoes by the door, the tinkling of music coming from my mother’s room. My palms slick and red with blood. The siren of my own screaming. My father standing in the kitchen weeping. I wasn’t supposed to be home; art club had been canceled because our teacher was sick. I often wonder, though I try not to, how things would have been different if I had not come in when I did.
There were dates in her old calendar, including that afternoon, assignations marked only with the initial S. That’s what led them to conclude that my mother was having an affair. But this man, this lover, this suspect for a time, he was never found. They’d been careful, very careful-almost as if they knew something horrible would happen. Or maybe he-the other man-was the only one who knew it. And he was able to disappear without a trace.
It was this man who my father claimed had killed his wife. My father had found her murdered, he finally admitted. Then he hid her body, because he knew that he would be accused. Because he, too, was having an affair.
He has always claimed his innocence, that his only crime was acting in panic and hiding her murdered body. I’ve seen him interviewed; he’s very convincing. And there is a whole camp of people who believe him, have been lobbying for his release for years. Maybe he believes it, too. Maybe, over the years, he has convinced himself that it’s true. The psyche is a powerful thing, it can bend and obscure reality, turn it into exactly what we desire or expect. How much of the world is just a figment of our imagination, and the imaginations of those around us?
That’s the kind of question that would have kept Beck and me up all night. How I wished she were there to talk to. She’d know what to say, how to comfort me, how to make the whole thing seem ludicrous. We’d fire up a joint and smoke it all away. She did like her mind-altering substances, our Beck, and I was certain she’d been the one taking my pills. Who else? Not the prim and proper Ainsley, who had run home to Mommy and Daddy.
“How about I write to him?” said Dr. Cooper. The room was feeling overwarm and I was so tired. “I’ll tell him that you’re struggling with some things right now and you’re not up to a conversation with him or his investigator. That when you are-if you are, at some point-we’ll get in touch.”
That sounded good. It was an optimistic blow-off, a hopeful fuck-you. I’ll get in touch is probably not the sentence someone on death row wants to hear. But then again, we’re all on death row, aren’t we? Most of us just don’t know it. On the day she died, did my mother know it was her last day on earth, did Elizabeth-no pardon, no appeal, no stay of execution?
“Okay,” I said. “That sounds like the right thing to do for now.”
She handed me two prescriptions. “Dr. Black sent these by messenger. He said be careful with these once you get them filled, lock them up. He won’t be able to bend the rules more than once. The street value of these drugs is apparently quite high, so the protocols are strict.”
We talked a while longer. She advised me to stay off Facebook, and, yes, of course call my family attorney and let him know what was happening, get his advice before talking to the police again. She suggested again that I take a little hiatus to Florida, or that I ask my aunt and uncle to come up for support. But how could I? They did so much for me already and I did nothing but cause them trouble, ruin all their holidays and vacations just by being alive.
I was feeling better when there was a hard knock at the door that startled us both.
“Dr. Cooper,” came a voice through the door. She was already up and moving forward. I wanted to call her back. “It’s Detective Ferrigno with The Hollows PD. Do you have Lana Granger in your office?”