Getting Sassy (10 page)

“I know.” She sighed. “I do too. In a way.”

But there were days when I hated how much I needed a scotch.

“Some ground rules,” I said, and she nodded like an obedient school girl. “I keep them. You only smoke when you’re with me.” I waited for another nod. “If I hear you’re smoking at Dryden, it’s over.”

“Yes,
Mother,”
she answered.

“I’m serious.”

“I know.”

Neither of us spoke for several seconds. Then she said, quietly, but with some dignity, “I’d like one now.”

“I don’t want you smoking in my car.”

“I understand. If you’ll just drop me off in that park we just passed, I can sit on the bench.”

I gave her a look. The rain hadn’t let up. “We’ll go to my place.” It would be easier to air out than my car.

We drove the rest of the way in silence. I didn’t often bring her to my apartment. I guess I realized it was kind of a sad little place and figured she’d look at it and start telling me what I needed to add, when the truth was I really didn’t want to add anything except maybe more books.

Bix greeted us at the door, wiggling his little terrier butt. My mother scooted him out of the way with her cane. “Aren’t you an odd-looking creature?” she said in the way she did every time she saw Bix, then settled onto one end of the couch. Bix hopped up next to her, found no welcome, and retreated to the other end where he curled himself into a ball.

She regarded the dog, her lip practically curled in disgust, and said to me, “I can’t believe you let this animal on your furniture.”

“It doesn’t bother me a bit,” I said.

“Hmph.”

I dug the pack of cigarettes out of my purse and handed it to her, then went into the kitchen in search of some matches and an ash tray.

When I returned, she had the pack open and one of the long, slender cigarettes wedged between her first and second fingers. I set a small plate on the table next to the couch and handed her the matches.

“Thank you, Robyn.”

I nodded. “The cigarettes stay here.”

She shot me a look, then averted her eyes. “All right,” she said, as though resigned to gruel three times a day.

I opened the two windows behind the couch, then sat across from her in my purple reading chair and watched as she lit up, taking the smoke into her lungs like she was inhaling sweet mountain air. She held it in for a moment, then exhaled in a rush and coughed a couple of times. It was a thick, phlegmy sound, and I tried not to think about what it was doing to her lungs.

She swallowed and said, “You never smoked, did you?”

“No,” I told her.

“You were smart.”

I shrugged. “There are other vices.”

“Oh? You have some?” she said, her tone arch.

“None I’m telling you about.”

For the first time that day, we both smiled at the same time.

Then my mother glanced at her watch. “I suppose it’s too early for a little glass of Chablis.”

I kept my sigh on the inside, and when I stood, I said, “It’s five o’clock somewhere.”

She gave me an odd look. “Your father used to say that.”

“Wyman?”

She snorted a laugh, and a puff of smoke came out her nose. “Hardly.”

Silly me. Wyman didn’t smoke or drink but compensated by screwing the organist. “Yeah,” I said with a smile. “I should’ve known better.”

I returned with a glass for each of us.

“I thought you only drank red,” she said, reaching for her glass.

“It’s early.”

We sat in silence for several minutes, watching Bix, who had fallen asleep on his back with his skinny legs in the air. One paw was twitching.

I was sometimes amazed at how much of her distant past my mother remembered. Her short-term memory was on its way out, but she held onto the past like a jeweler unwilling to give up her most precious pieces. This was what I was counting on. I needed for her to share a few of those gems.

Finally, my mother said, “If Wyman had known about your father—what he was—he never would have married me.”

“Why didn’t you ever tell me about him?”

“You were three years old when I married Wy. How could I expect you to keep a secret like that? And then, well, it never came up.”

That was true. She had seldom spoken of my biological father. I never mentioned him in front of my stepfather, because Mom said it made him feel insecure.

“How did you learn this?” she asked.

I gave her a brief explanation of how I was able to access the Cortez, Colorado obits and found no records of a Robert Guthrie dying there at that time. “And then,” I said, “I found his name on a police report. He robbed a gas station.”

“Yes,” she nodded. “I remember.” She stared off in Bix’s direction.

“Did he do time?”

“Yes. He was sentenced to eight to ten years.”

“Is that when you divorced him?”

“Yes.”

I waited for her to continue, and when I began to wonder if she was going to, I prompted with: “Is he still alive?”

She was slow to focus on me, and when she finally did, she spoke as though not quite detached from a dream. “No. No, he isn’t. At least that’s what that woman told me.”

And then she told me what else Mary Waltner had to say.

“You know, Wyman could certainly be a pain in the tutu, not to mention a philanderer, but he was a good provider.” My mother sighed. “He was also a very proper man.”

Yes, I thought, he may have been a self-righteous, philandering jerk, but he put up a great front. Too bad he hadn’t been able to cover his final set of tracks.

“If he had known about Robert—and Robert’s difficulties—I’m certain he never would have married me. And I needed to be married. For us.” She looked at me. “I wanted what was best for you.”

I nodded, noting the progression there.

She was silent for a long time, and I didn’t push it. As long as she stayed awake, I figured she could still be gathering her thoughts. Who knew where she had to go to do that.

Finally, her brows scrunched together as though this particular thought had been a painful extraction, she said, “He was a cruel man.”

I felt a chill snake its way up my spine. We Guthrie women had a way with these types. Forcing myself to concentrate on the here and now, I thought of how she’d never had a bad word to say about him before this. And even after my research the night before revealed that he had been an armed robber, well, I still thought he could be decent. I mean, here I was, trying to come up with a means and the wiles to steal thousands of dollars, and I considered myself a decent person. Nice, even. “My father?”

She looked at me slowly as her eyes focused. “Yes,” she said. “Robert.”

“In what way was he cruel?”

Tapping an ash from her cigarette, she took a sip of her wine, making a sour face before returning the glass to the cork coaster.

When she didn’t continue, I prodded with, “Why did Robert rob the gas station?” wondering if it was only about the money.

She blinked and said, “He liked to scare people.”

The image I’d held in my mind all these years shifted a little more and darkened considerably.

“How do you mean?”

“Oh, you know... like a bully.” She nodded to herself and then looked up at me. “He was a bully.”

I tried to read the answer to my next question in her eyes so I wouldn’t have to ask it. From what I saw, she wanted me to keep my mouth shut. But I couldn’t.

“Was he abusive?”

Her lips pressed together and she closed her eyes. I thought she was going to cry and then remembered that she couldn’t. I knew I should go over there, scoot Bix off the couch and put my arm around my mother. But I couldn’t.

“I’ve forgotten so much,” she said, “so much of the good things— why do I have to remember that?”

“Bad things can make us strong.”

“Either it’s made me strong or it hasn’t,” she snapped. “I’d like to forget it now.”

I nodded. “Good point.”

“Thank you,” she said, as though my approval wasn’t at all necessary.

I knew my mother—or at least I thought I did—and I knew how to get her mind out of the sad places. Either make her laugh or make her angry. Just now I couldn’t think of a way to make her laugh. So, I said, “As bad as he was, why didn’t you think I should know about him?”

Faster than a sparrow’s blink, her head shot up and her mouth hardened. “What difference would it have made?” She went rigid with anger, one arm crossed tightly over her chest and the other holding up the cigarette like a flag. “It’s not as though you’ve got his blood in you.”

“Then whose blood do I have?”
And don’t tell me I’m one hundred percent Lizzie.

She faltered, but then the hardness returned to her jaw. “That’s
not
what I meant, and you know it. I-I meant you’re not a violent person. You’re not a thief.”

My next breath caught in my throat. I swallowed and continued. “Didn’t he ever try to find me?”

“As far as I know he never tried to find either of us. Until now.” Her eyes locked onto mine. “You were better off, Robyn.”

When I didn’t respond, she added, “He never saw you.”

That was probably true. He’d been arrested two months before I was born.

“What kind of work did he do?” I asked.

An impatient sigh. “Oh, I don’t remember. I think... I think he was an auto mechanic.”

“He fixed cars,” I said, more to myself.

Her chin puckered again. “Bastard,” she said and tapped her cigarette so hard, part of the burning ember dropped onto the plate.

“Why did you marry him?”

She shrugged and sighed. “He was charming. Handsome. I hadn’t known him very long.” Another shrug. “I made a mistake.”

Wow, did that sound familiar.

She smashed out her cigarette and took a drink of wine. I wondered how long she’d stay awake; wine had a narcotic effect on her. But she lit another cigarette and eventually, through the haze of smoke, her gaze settled on me.

“We all make mistakes,” I offered, as much for myself as my mother.

She cocked her chin and said, “And I thought you were perfect.”

I chose to ignore the sarcasm and asked instead, “The urn, who’s in the urn?”

She coughed twice and then said, “Just ashes from a fireplace.”

All these years and I’d been buying pottery for cordwood remains. The urge to point this out was so strong I could almost feel myself twitching. But, again, this wasn’t about my anger. My issues. I told myself to deal with it later and simply asked, “Why bother?”

“If I could take his grave with me, you wouldn’t ever need to go looking for it.”

Of course. That fit perfectly into the legend of Robert Guthrie. And if I hadn’t saved that box of stuff she had asked—no,
told
—me to throw away, I would never have known to check Cortez records. Still, I couldn’t help thinking of all those pieces of pottery I’d purchased, always picturing the tall, ruddy-faced man in the one photo I had of him. I’d wonder if he’d approve of my pottery selection, imagining that he liked shades of purple and blue—maybe because I do— and curved, flowing shapes with no beginning or end. Now that I realized I’d spent all these years talking to a pile of soot, while my living, breathing father was out there, well, I had to work even harder to keep a lid on the anger.

“Silly, I suppose,” she said.

“That’s okay, Mom.” But it wasn’t. Not at all. “Was his birthday June twentieth?”

“I doubt it.”

Move on,
I told myself.

“What about this woman who came to see you? Mary Waltner.”

She brightened. “Mary. She was quite nice.”

“What did she want?”

“Well, she said she knew your father. And she told me that he died about a month ago.”

“How did she find you?”

She paused. “I don’t think I asked her.”

“Where did this woman live?”

“Oh, I don’t remember what she said. Nebraska, I think.” As though it wasn’t of consequence. I recalled that earlier she had said Los Angeles. The woman was creeping east.

“Who was she to my father?” How strange that a man who was a thief and an abuser had a friend who cared enough about him to cross (at least) two states in order to tell the wife he’d deserted forty-some years ago that he was dead.

“A friend.” She paused. “Or maybe she was his lawyer.”

“There is a difference.”

“I suppose. Well, she was quite a nice woman.”

Lawyer made more sense. And why would a lawyer be there if not to give her something?

“What happened to him? To Robert?”

“I told you. He died. He was almost ninety.”

“No, I mean, what happened after he got out of prison? What did he do? Where did he go?”

“Oh, I don’t remember what Mary told me—you know my shortterm memory. Something to do with used cars.”

My real father—a thief, abuser and now a used-car salesman. I leaned back and sighed. We can’t all be the children of astronauts, I told myself.

“How did he die?”

She gave me one of her looks. “He was older than me by several years. At that point what difference does it make? I believe they call it ‘natural causes.’”

I pushed myself up in the chair, crossing my legs under me. “So why wouldn’t this lawyer—or whoever she was—just call you?”

She took a deep breath and expelled it through her nose along with a trail of smoke. “Robert left me something.”

I waited, barely breathing, and I couldn’t help but think about what Erika Starwise had said. Or, rather, what my rapping father had told me. “What did he leave you?”

“A little money.”

“How little?”

Her jaw trembled and she took several moments before trying to speak. When she did, her voice cracked and broke over the words. “When Robert and I had been married only a few months, he stole some money I had stashed in the coffee can.” She swallowed. “I was hoping to buy a new sofa with it.”

I waited a beat. “How much?”

Twisting her mouth in annoyance, she said, “A hundred and fifty dollars, if you must know.” Then, “I suppose you want me to give it to you. Seeing as I’m not allowed to have anything to do with my own financial matters anymore.”

“No, Mom,” I said, trying to keep my disappointment from showing, “just keep it someplace safe.”