“So let’s,” she said.
“Okay.” He stood up to go inside.
“No.” She took off her robe and spread it on the deck like a blanket. “Here.”
He looked at once surprised and amused. Crow was usually the one who pushed for innovation, while Tess was inclined toward a series of greatest hits.
“The neighbors might hear us,” he pointed out.
“Only if you do it right.”
He leaves when they start making love. He doesn’t need to see that or even hear it. Which isn’t to say he’s jealous. Quite the opposite. He feels sorry for her, sad that she has settled. Her boyfriend is just that, a boy. He knows, once he claims her, they will enjoy a closeness she has never experienced with anyone. Their lives are already intertwined, even if she doesn’t realize it. And she, better than most, respects destiny. She will welcome him, embrace him, be grateful for him. She understands so much-trajectories, physics, probabilities. What she doesn’t understand, he will teach her. Tides, toxins, the number of places that remain uncharted and unmapped in a world ruled by measurement.
No, he leaves because he has to go to work. Luckily, this job will take him down to Anne Arundel County, and he can go see his mother when he’s done.
The Western Shore was a compromise. She wanted someplace closer to home, which was totally impractical. They kept the house on the island, leaving it vacant, and he set her up here, near the Severn River. She complained about the lack of a view. She said he had promised her a water view, which he never did. She said he had told her she would get free premium cable, and that the stove would be gas, not electric. He doesn’t know where she gets these ideas.
Lately, however, she doesn’t complain at all, and he finds he misses her querulous laments. She is shrinking, becoming fearful and small. She isn’t even fifty-five, but she looks much older than her neighbors here. Then again, they had cushier lives. She hasn’t made friends, which is probably a good thing, but it makes him sad and angry for her. She’s a lovely woman, his mother, but her background makes her shy. She’s probably right to be shy around these snobs. Real rich people-and he knows something about real rich people now, has realized in hindsight how rich Becca’s father was-are much nicer than these folks, who made middle class by the skin of their teeth. Real rich people don’t worry about losing what they have.
His mother doesn’t have to worry about money, at least. He has made sure of that. But she worries anyway. She, who was so brave and calm, is anxious about everything.
She is sleeping when he lets himself into the house and enters her bedroom. Her hair is thinner but still brown. Does that mean his own hair will never turn white? He smooths it back from her forehead, says her name. Ma. Ma. Wake up, Ma. Ma. Ma.
She wakes with panicky eyes. “Who-what?”
“It’s me, Ma.”
“Oh.” She squints at him, as if to make sure. “What time is it?”
“Not quite seven. I had a job down this way.”
“Did it pay well?”
“They always do.”
“Don’t be afraid to ask for more.”
“I’m not.”
“I mean, just because you’re in business for yourself, doesn’t mean you don’t feel inflation too. And with gas going sky-high-”
“I do better than most, Ma. You don’t have to worry.”
“I saw something on the news last night.”
He sighs, knowing it could be something on the news last night, or a week ago, or a month ago. It’s possible it was never on the news at all.
“They found bones, in this forest. And they could tell who it was. A woman went out to buy milk on New Year’s Eve ten years ago and never came home. And all they had was bones, but they know she was shot and dumped there. Because there’s a nick, see, on one of the bones. It’s amazing, the things they can do.”
“Yes,” he says, wanting to be agreeable.
“No secret ever stays kept. Everything comes up. Nothing stays buried or lost, the way you might think.”
“Some things do.”
“But even in your work, you’ve said, sometimes-”
“Sometimes. But that’s usually someone else’s fault. Not mine. Other folks get greedy, or careless. They think they don’t need me, they try to do it themselves, they don’t take precautions, they don’t realize when a place is tapped out. Those are the ones who get caught, Ma.”
Her brows knit. She struggles to a sitting position. She won’t travel much farther today. From sitting here to sitting in her little living room. She is willing her body into atrophy. What does it matter if the stove is gas or electric? She lives off prepared food and microwaved dinners. Horrible things, microwaves. He’d never choose to live with one.
He admires his mother in a way that her doctors can’t, or won’t. Animals know when death is coming for them. Why shouldn’t his mother? But he can never decide if this new fear is for the past, and what lies there, or for the lack of a future. Does she look forward to death because she thinks it will put an end to these fears? She was so strong when he needed her, so capable. He owes her everything. That’s what the doctor could never understand. She’s a good person, sweet and kind. She gave him life twice. How boring it was, how banal, to be quizzed about her. She was not the problem. She was the solution.
He fixes her breakfast, cereal made hot with boiling water, a sliced banana on top. She has all her teeth but she prefers soft, mushy food. When will he have to feed her a spoonful at a time? Five years, ten years, twenty years, thirty? And then what happens? How can he spare her the final indignities of life? He makes her a cup of Sanka. Hideous stuff. He wonders if she’s ever read the label. Then he gives her some Hydrox cookies, which she will dip into the Sanka until they too are soft.
Her doctors have told her to watch her fat intake. She has a fierce sweet tooth, and if she can’t bake five-layer cakes anymore, she wants to have her Hydrox. Hydrox, not Oreos, never Oreos. And Hydrox are getting hard to find. He has to go on the Internet, buy them from some Texas company that tracks down disappearing foodstuffs. He rather likes the woman he deals with, so peppy and full of enthusiasm for her job. There are so many needs to be filled in this world, so many people, like her and him, filling them. The Endangered Snack Act, he thinks, that’s what the country really needs. Something to protect Hydrox and Hostess Snowballs and Charleston Chews.
She holds the cookie down in the Sanka, dunking it until it almost falls apart, then pops it in her mouth. He turns on the television, the program with the silly morning men, the ones who make people sing “Manic Monday” at the start of every week. A small trail of brown saliva dribbles from the corner of her mouth, and he dabs it for her. More and more, she has trouble swallowing, although the doctors say there’s no reason she should. She has perpetual heartburn.
“Everything comes up,” she says absently, her eyes on the screen. He’s not sure if she’s talking about her food or the past. “Everything comes up.”
“I know, Ma. I know.”
CHAPTER 9
Tess sailed out into Tuesday morning, optimistic about life in general and hopeful about her work in particular. It was the kind of fresh spring day that made everyone but T. S. Eliot feel hopeful. She just felt in her bones that today’s homicide, the one with the skimpiest file, was likely to yield the greatest dividends.
That feeling vanished when a dead woman opened the door to her home and invited Tess in for tea.
The brick Cape Cod in far northwest Baltimore County was absurdly small, but so was its tenant. The woman behind the storm door was not even five feet tall. The doll in this dollhouse had long dark hair, wide blue eyes, and pink-white cheeks. She looked delicate and fragile, the type of woman who inspired solicitous feelings in men and women alike.
But she was undeniably, indisputably alive, so Tess first assumed she must be a relative or friend of the deceased.