The next time I saw her would be in the mental ward of a hospital in Sicily.
9
The moment I step into the apartment, my mother asks, “Where were you?”
“I went to see Maggie.”
“Why on earth did you...?”
“To apologize. You might want to do the same thing, Mom.”
“I have no need to apologize to your former wife.”
“Annie hit her with a hammer,” I remind her.
“What!” Aaron says.
“Annie did no such thing.”
“Okay, Mom, fine. Let’s just keep pretending Annie is the girl next door, okay? Let’s just keep doing what we’ve been doing all along, pretending Annie isn’t sick, allowing her to believe she isn’t sick...”
“That’s right, she isn’t.”
“Yes, but she is, damn it! We should have got help for her right after Georgia.”
“Georgia,” she says, and waves it aside. “That was almost comical.”
“It wasn’t comical, Mom.”
“Urinating on a cop? I think that’s comical,” she says, and tries a laugh that dies abruptly in her throat because all at once she sees the dead serious expression on my face, and knows I’m not here to provoke laughter, kiddies, you can count on that.
“She was talking to people who weren’t there,” I say. “That isn’t comical, Mom.”
“According to that black girl, yes,” my mother says. “A drug addict.”
“She wasn’t a drug addict, Mom,” Aaron says.
“Who knows what drugs they were using, your sister and her so-called musician friends.”
“Mom, she was hallucinating,” I say. “First she thought a waitress was spying...”
“What waitress? Aaron didn’t tell me about any waitress. What’s this got to do with the fire house? Sometimes I think you’re as...”
She cuts herself short.
“What waitress?” she asks.
“In Atlanta. Annie slapped a newspaper out of her hands and then shoved her off a stool.”
“Why didn’t you tell me this, Aaron?”
“I did, Mom.”
“I don’t remember anything about a waitress. Why would Annie attack a waitress? She’s not a violent person.”
“Mom, she hit Maggie with...”
“If we’re to believe Maggie.”
“Yes, well, I believe her.”
“If you believe her so much, you shouldn’t have divorced her.”
“Mom, I think Annie is a danger to herself and to others. I think we should call the police.”
“No.”
“Yes, before she...”
“We should have called them seventeen years ago,” Augusta says.
My mother turns to her, puzzled.
“When she stole the thousand bucks from us.”
“That is a lie!”
“It’s the truth, Mom,” Aaron says. “Kelly saw her taking the money.”
“Kelly,” my mother says, dismissing her.
“My daughter. Mom.”
“Your daughter,” she says, dismissing her yet again. “You bring me two grandchildren from...”
She shakes her head.
“Never mind,” she says.
“No, let’s hear it,” Augusta says. “Two grandchildren from where, Mom?”
“From who knows where? Instead of...” She cuts herself off again. “Never mind,” she says again.
“Instead of what, Mom?” Aaron asks. “Instead of having two kids who might turn out to be nuts?”
“I do not have...”
“I’m talking about the twins Augusta was carrying. This was after Georgia, we knew all about Georgia. Do you know what the odds would have been?”
“I don’t want to hear odds, save your odds.”
“If either of your parents has schizophrenia, your chances of getting it are ten percent,” Aaron says.
“Oh? Do you and Augusta have schizophrenia?”
“Mom, we knew Annie was nuts! The odds on...”
“Enough with the odds!” my mother says. “What time does the first race start?”
“She doesn’t believe anything we say,” Augusta says. “What’s the use, Aaron?”
“That’s right, Miss, what’s the use? I don’t believe my daughter stole money from you, and I don’t believe she went after Margaret with a hammer, either. Margaret tripped and fell, that’s how she got the bruise.”
“I’m calling the police,” I say, and start for the phone table.
“You want them to lock her up, is that it? You want them to lock up a person who’s as sane as you or I? My daughter has never in her life tried to hurt anyone.”
“She hit Maggie with a hammer,” I say, more evenly this time, stressing each word.
“No, she did not. Margaret probably fell. They’d been drinking wine, she probably...”
“No, Mother, Annie hit her with a fucking hammer!”
“Don’t you dare use that language in my house!” my mother yells, and for a moment I fear she will slap me, but instead she clenches both hands, and turns away from me. I watch her silent struggle for control. She is trembling with rage, her knuckles white where she presses her hands together, her thin shoulders shaking. All at once, she seems so very small and slight. I almost want to take her in my arms and comfort her. She shakes her head, as if suspecting I might try to embrace her, and warding off any such motion beforehand.
“If you all want to believe Annie’s crazy, fine,” she says, “believe it. But I don’t think it’s wrong for a mother to help and encourage her own daughter...”
“You haven’t helped her,” I say.
“I’ve done everything I know how...”
“You’ve enabled her, is what you’ve done. She needs real help.” My mother is shaking her head. I am talking to a stone wall. “Mom, she hears voices!” I say. “She talks to voices. You said so yourself.”
“I said she was murmuring, mumbling, whatever. That’s what people do when they’re thinking out loud. What’s so terrible about that? Don’t you ever think out loud?”
“No, never, Mom.”
“Never,” Augusta says.
“Don’t you ever talk to yourself?”
“Never.”
“Well, I do.”
“That’s not the same as hearing things.”
“Hearing things is just another way of saying talking to yourself. You talk things over with yourself. You pose a question, you answer it. That’s not so unusual. Everybody does it.”
“I don’t,” Augusta says.
“I don’t, either.”
“Inside your head is what I’m saying. Even if Annie did hear someone talking to her, that doesn’t make her crazy. She heard a voice, she talked back to it. That isn’t so unusual you know. I don’t know why you’re making such a big deal of it. If Annie ran away, it wasn’t because any voices told her to. It’s only because I wouldn’t give her the money.”
“What money?” I ask at once. “What are you talking about?”
“The fifty thousand dollars.”
“Fifty...”
“It’s my fault she’s gone,” my mother says. “I told her to leave.”
“What!”
“I told her to go, I told her to get out.”
“Oh, Jesus, Mom.”
“Don’t look at me that way! Do you know what living with her is like? You try it sometime! You try living with a goddamn lunatic!” she shouts, and suddenly she is in tears. “You try... you try...” she stammers, and then collapses onto the sofa again, and covers her face with her hands. “I’m sorry,” she says, “oh dear God, I’m so sorry. I should have given her the money, oh please God, let her be all right, I was only trying to help. But it... it... I didn’t know what to do. I just... didn’t know what to do anymore. All at once, it... it got to be... too much for me... all at once. I... just couldn’t bear it any longer. You don’t know what it was like. You don’t know what it was like.”