Missing Pieces (38 page)

Please, Mike.

You know what? That’s a damn good idea. That’s exactly what I’m going to do. I’m going to wash your mouth out with soap. Then next time you think of getting smart with your husband, you’ll think twice.

No, don’t, please don’t!

What’s the matter? Don’t you like the taste? I bet it tastes better than that shit you were going to serve me tonight, you stupid bitch.

I closed my eyes, tried not to see the bruises along the side of my mother’s mouth the next morning, the red marks on the side of her neck and arms, the angry scratch along her chin.

What did you do to my mother?
I demanded on another such occasion.

Ssh, Kate,
my mother warned,
it’s nothing.

What are you talking about? I never touched your mother. What lies have you been telling the kid, Helen?

I didn’t tell her anything. It’s okay, Kate. I tripped on the carpet. I fell against the side of the door.

Clumsy idiot,
my stepfather said.

She’s not a clumsy idiot,
I told him.
You are.

Even now I can feel the sharp cuff of his hand as it snapped across the back of my head. I’ll never do that, I vowed in that instant. I’ll never hit a child of mine.

“I’m no better than he was,” I told Larry.

“Stop beating yourself up about this,” he said.

An interesting choice of words, I thought. “I’m a therapist, for God’s sake.”

“You’re a therapist,” he repeated. “Not a saint. Kate,
has anything even remotely like this ever happened before? No. It happened once. You were provoked and you lost control.”

He’s not always this way,
I could hear my mother tearfully intone.
There are times when he’s gentle and thoughtful and funny. It’s only sometimes when he’s under a lot of stress. Or I provoke him and he just loses control.

“It doesn’t wash,” I told Larry, as I had told her.

Was violence contagious? Was it passed down from one generation to the next, like some dreaded inherited disease? Was there no escape?

I canceled my appointments for the next two days, barely got out of bed. Sara refused to acknowledge my presence. She went to school, came home, stayed in the den until dinner, ate in silence, then returned to the den when dinner was through. I was the invisible woman, a role that was somewhat familiar to me, although this time was different, because this time my invisibility was something that had been deliberately imposed.

“Can I talk to you?” I asked from the doorway several nights later.

“No,” Sara said. She opened a book, pretended to read.

“I think it’s important that we talk about what happened.”

“You beat me up, that’s what happened.”

“I didn’t beat you,” I began, then stopped. “I’m so sorry.”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Leave her alone,” Larry said gently, coming up behind me and guiding me away from Sara’s door. “You have nothing to apologize for.”

“She’ll start talking to you again as soon as she wants something,” Michelle said.

“Is it time to go home?” my mother asked.

“I’m trying to find somewhere nice for you, Mom,” I
told her, realizing I’d have to make some decisions soon regarding her future. It was increasingly obvious that she couldn’t stay here. “But first, we have a doctor’s appointment tomorrow, remember?”

Of course she didn’t remember. She wouldn’t remember two minutes from now or two minutes after that. She had no idea why I was waking her up so early the next morning, or where we were headed as I drove south along Dixie Highway looking for Dr. Wong’s office.

“How are you feeling?” I asked her.

“Magnificent,” she said. “Where are we going?”

“To the gynecologist. It’s just a routine examination.”

“That’s nice, dear.”

It wasn’t so nice, as it turned out. It was in Dr. Wong’s office that she discovered my twin polyps and promptly removed them. “I’m sure there’s nothing to worry about, but I’ll send these off to the lab, just in case,” she said, as I struggled to bring my legs together. “Why don’t you call my office in two weeks. We should have the results back by then.”

I nodded, opened the door to the waiting room to see my mother rifling through the morning newspaper, a photograph of Jo Lynn proudly displaying her self-bought wedding band occupying a prominent spot on the front page. I felt sick, clutched my stomach.

“I’ll give you some pills for the cramping,” Dr. Wong said. “And no sex for a week,” she advised on my way out.

No problem, I thought, thinking of Robert as my mother and I walked slowly toward the parking lot. I fought the urge to curl into a fetal ball in the middle of the warm gray pavement. Good thing Robert and I hadn’t made those plans for this afternoon, I thought, and almost laughed.

“How are you feeling, Mom?” I asked, securing her seat belt around her.

“Magnificent. How about you, dear?”

“I’ve felt better,” I confided.

She smiled. “That’s good, dear.”

I got home, settled my mother in front of the TV in the family room, and crawled into bed. Within minutes, I was asleep, dreams of Sara circling my head, like a plane awaiting permission to land. Mercifully, I don’t remember the particulars. I only remember that at some point we got into a horrible fight and began exchanging blows, Sara’s right fist catching me square in the groin. I awoke with a start, the pain in my stomach excruciating. I ran toward the bathroom, watched as blood leaked into the toilet bowl from between my legs. “Charming,” I said, swallowing another pill, then heading back to bed.

The phone rang. It was Larry. “How’d it go?” he asked, and I told him. “Why didn’t you call me? I would have picked you up.”

“It wasn’t necessary.”

“You don’t have to deal with everything by yourself, Kate.”

“No sex for a week,” I said.

He sighed. What else is new? the sigh said.

“I’ll try to be home early,” he offered.

“No need.”

“Don’t shut me out, Kate.”

“I’m not.” I was.

I replaced the receiver, lay back against the pillow, fantasized about sex with Robert. In my fantasy, we were in one of the recently renovated rooms at the Breakers hotel, a large sun-filled room overlooking the ocean, the waves lapping through the floor-to-ceiling windows toward our king-size bed, as we kissed and caressed one another with the utmost tenderness. That’s as far as the fantasy went, maybe because of the cramps I was experiencing, or maybe because Sara kept pushing her way into the hotel
room, eventually crowding Robert out of our bed, banishing him to one of the older rooms at the front of the hotel, her voice blocking out the soothing sound of the ocean.

I replayed the scene with Sara, reliving every detail of what had happened, the shouts, the sarcasm, the slaps, then played it through again, this time with a different script. In this newly edited version, I kept my cool, refused to take the bait, held my temper firmly in check. Whenever Sara tried to suck me in or drag me down, I stepped aside. I simply explained that we knew the truth about where she’d been, and detailed the consequences of her lies. Ultimately Sara saw the error of her ways and accepted responsibility for her acts. We ended the encounter with a tearful embrace.

How’s that for a fantasy?

At three o’clock, the doorbell rang. I pushed myself out of bed, and answered it, thinking it must be Larry and wondering why he didn’t use his key. But it wasn’t Larry. It was Jo Lynn. Please let this be another dream, I prayed, taking note of her conservative blue pantsuit and tied-back hair.

“I’m in disguise,” she said, reading my face. “The reporters are driving me crazy.”

“Fancy that,” I said, then wished I hadn’t. I had nothing to say to my sister. What was she doing here?

“You look awful,” she said, stepping inside before I could stop her. “You sick or something?”

“I had some unexpected surgery this morning,” I answered. What was the matter with me? Could I never keep my mouth shut?

“Surgery? What kind of surgery?”

“Just minor.”

“Yick,” she said, not interested in the specifics.

“What are you doing here, Jo Lynn?”

“Uh-oh, you’re mad. I can hear it in your voice.”

“You’re so perceptive.”

“You’re so sarcastic. Come on, Kate. Surely you’re not surprised. I’ve been telling you my wedding plans for months.”

“How could you do it?” I demanded.

“I love Colin. I think he’s innocent.”

“I’m not talking about your idiot husband,” I shouted. “I’m talking about my daughter.”

There was silence. “Colin’s not an idiot,” Jo Lynn said.

I groaned.

“So, you like my new name? Jo Lynn Friendly. Has kind of a nice ring to it, don’t you think?”

I said nothing.

“What—you’re not going to talk to me?”

“I’d rather not.”

“Oh, don’t be such a tight-ass, Kate. I needed a maid of honor, you said no, so I asked Sara, and she graciously agreed. It was a joyous occasion, for God’s sake. A wedding.”

“A wedding that took place behind bars.”

“Don’t be so melodramatic.”

“You expressly went against my wishes.”

“You’re making a mountain out of a molehill.”

I took a deep breath. The last thing I needed now was a fight with my sister. “What are you doing here, Jo Lynn?” I asked again.

“I’m looking for our mother.”

I glanced toward the family room. Our mother was sitting in exactly the same position in which I’d left her hours earlier. She hadn’t moved, even at the sound of Jo Lynn’s voice. “Mom?” I asked, walking quickly toward her.

On the television, an impossibly good-looking young couple were arguing about their father’s impending remarriage
on one of the daytime soaps. Our mother seemed to be watching, her hands folded neatly in her lap, her feet placed firmly on the floor. Her eyes were open and her jaw slack, a small spittle of drool trickling toward her chin.

“Is she dead?” Jo Lynn asked, leaning over me as I leaned over our mother.

“Mom?” I asked, holding my breath, touching her shoulder.

Her eyes flickered briefly, then closed. The breath in my lungs escaped with a relieved whoosh. I gently wiped the drool from her face, then backed into Jo Lynn’s arms. I quickly extricated myself, stepped aside. “She’s asleep.”

“She sleeps with her eyes open?”

“She drifts in and out.”

“Creepy.”

I reached for the remote-control unit, about to turn off the TV.

“Don’t do that,” Jo Lynn squealed. “That’s Reese and Antonia. Their father is about to remarry his second wife, who they’ve always hated because she’s a former stripper who once tried to kill them by setting their house on fire. But she’s okay now. She went back to school, became a psychiatrist. You got any coffee?”

I flipped off the TV. “No.”

“Then make some.” Jo Lynn plopped herself down on one of the wicker chairs in the breakfast nook. “You know you’re dying for a cup.”

She was right. I walked to the kitchen and did as I was told.

“It’s amazing what goes on on some of these soaps,” Jo Lynn said without a trace of irony. She nodded toward our mother. “So, what’s the old girl’s prognosis?”

“So far, the doctors haven’t found anything physically wrong with her,” I said, too weary to do anything but let
this visit run its course. “How’d you know she was here?”

“I tried her apartment and was told the number was no longer in service. So I checked with Mrs. Winchell.”

“Why the sudden interest in our mother?”

“I can’t be interested?”

I shrugged, watched the coffee as it dripped into the glass pot.

“So, aren’t you going to ask me what it was like behind the watercooler?” Jo Lynn squirmed in her seat.

“No,” I said.

“Come on, you’re dying to know.”

“No, you’re dying to tell me. There’s a difference.”

“It was fabulous,” she said. “Well, maybe not fabulous in the technical sense. I mean, it was pretty cramped behind there and we were pretty rushed, but that made it all the more exciting, in a way. You just know that under the proper circumstances, Colin is a dynamite lover.”

What was taking the coffee so long? I wondered, my eyes widening, willing the coffeemaker to pick up speed.

“You think we should wake the old girl up?” Jo Lynn asked.

“What for?”

“I want to talk to her.”

“What for?” I repeated.

“Do I need your permission to talk to my own mother?”

“Of course not. It’s just that anything anybody says to her goes in one ear and out the other.”

“Maybe,” Jo Lynn said.

“Not maybe. That’s the way it is. I’m the one who’s with her all the time. I’m the one who talks to her.”

“Maybe you’re not saying anything very interesting.”

I sighed, shook my head. She was probably right. “Can I ask what it is you want to talk to her about?”

Jo Lynn pursed her lips, twisted her mouth from side to side, as if weighing the pros and cons of taking me into her confidence. “I guess I can tell you since it was your idea in the first place.”

“My idea?”

“About going to law school.”

“What?”

“I’ve thought a lot about what you said, and I’ve decided it might not be such a crazy idea after all.”

“You’re serious?”

“I
do
listen to what you say, you know,” she told me. “Occasionally.”

“And you’ve decided you want to go back to school,” I repeated numbly. Surely, this conversation wasn’t really taking place. Surely, I was back in bed, the covers up around my ears, my insides cramping to protest the surprise pruning of internal weeds. On Saturday, my sister had married a serial killer; today, she was applying for law school. Fantasies had given way to hallucinations. I was as nutty as the rest of my family.

“I think you were right,” Jo Lynn was saying. “It’s the only way I can really help Colin, get him out of that terrible place.”

“It won’t be easy,” I warned her.

“I know it won’t be easy. First, I have to finish my degree.”

“First you have to apply.”

“I know that,” she said impatiently. “But I’m determined, and you know what I’m like when I’m determined.”