Dark Rooms (25 page)

In the car, I tell him about the encounter, what I learned from it if not quite how. “So Nica found out she and my mom had the same boyfriend—hers,” I finish bitterly. “That's why she broke up with him.”

“You can't be sure of that,” Damon says.

“I can't be but I am.”

“You really think that's something your mom would do?”

“You mean, do I think it's in character? Absolutely. She's ruthless—the Queen of Hearts. You get in her way and it's off with your head. And you know from Nica that she never shut up about how wonderful Jamie was. I assumed she meant wonderful for Nica, but I should have known better. She kept everything good for herself.”

Damon's quiet. Then he says, “But Nica didn't seem angry at him when she talked about the breakup. If anything, she seemed protective. If Jamie and your mom really were”—he pauses, groping around
in his mind trying to get his phrasing right—“hanging out with each other”—he pauses again to sneak a look at me—“why would she have cared about his feelings?”

“I'm sure Nica blamed Mom. Thought she seduced him. Saw him as her victim, not her partner. It definitely explains why Nica was fighting with Mom so much before she died. And I thought it was because she had cold feet.” I laugh, shake my head. “Jesus, how dumb can you get?”

“Cold feet over what?”

I tell him about the upcoming gallery show in Chelsea. Then I say, “I figured Nica got shy even though she never did. This makes a lot more sense.”

“But if Nica didn't believe it was Jamie's fault, then why didn't she stay with him?”

“Isn't it obvious?”

“Not to me.”

“He was damaged goods, forever tainted. And I'll bet she didn't tell him why she was dumping him because it was too painful for her to go into. Not to mention embarrassing. She just wanted to forget the whole thing, move on.”

“But—”

I squeeze my eyes shut. “Can we please stop talking about this?”

“Fine,” Damon says, “you don't have to talk about it with me.” And then, after a beat, “But I think you should talk about it with your mom.”

“That's going to be tough considering I don't know where she is and I'm not asking my dad.”

He sighs, reaches for his seat belt. “You won't need to.”

The next morning Damon unlocks the door to Fargas Bonds, puts his skip-tracing skills to the test. By early afternoon he's found my mother. The artists' commune she's living in is located in Brattleboro,
Vermont. Eighty-eight point eight miles north of West Hartford, according to Google Maps. An hour and twenty-seven minutes by car. Two hours and thirty-one minutes if you want to avoid highways.

It takes me an entire night and most of the following day to work up the nerve to use the number Damon gave me. After twenty or so rings, a woman who isn't my mother answers. Mom, the woman says, is in her studio and not to be disturbed. When I don't respond right away, the woman asks impatiently if that's all because. Before she can say because what, I ask for the name of a local coffee shop. With a sigh she gives me one, and I tell her to tell my mom to meet me there at ten the next morning. The woman starts going on about how she's an artist, too, and not Claire Baker's personal assistant or anybody else's. She's still talking when I hang up.

I call Damon to let him know about tomorrow's appointment. He's coming, he tells me, and once he does, I realize that's exactly what I was hoping he'd say. A little voice in my head whispers that if I really care about him, I won't allow him to, will insist on going by myself. What if one of the guys Max has written paper on decides to jump and Carmichael's too busy with his own clients to pursue? Or Max wakes up, asks for Damon and Damon's nowhere to be found? Not one but two compelling reasons for Damon to stick close to the greater Hartford area. I'm afraid, though, that I won't be able to get through the encounter with Mom without him so I don't raise either, keep my needy, miserable little mouth shut. I tell him I'll pick him up at his grandmother's house in the morning, bright and early.

As I replace the receiver in its cradle, I wonder how I'll hide from my conscience till then.

I'm in the Bakery Arts Café in Brattleboro, Vermont, sipping an Italian cherry soda. The table I'm sitting at is flush against a picture window next to a box of underwatered plants. Through the smudged glass I can see Damon. He's across the street, standing in front of a bookstore, browsing through a rack of secondhand paperbacks. As he leans over to examine the spine of a book on a lower rung, the sunlight touches his heavy black hair.

I drag my soda closer, hope the sugar will give me a jolt. All morning I've been tired but wired, percolating with nervous energy. Now, though, the nervous energy's gone, and I'm sagging. I'd had a restless night, thoughts and feelings pulling me every which way. Memories, too. One in particular.

It was morning, winter break my junior year. Nica was laid up in bed, sick with the flu. Mom knocked on my door, asked if I'd let her take a few shots of me curling my lashes so she could finish the session she'd started with Nica the week before. My heart thumping high
and hard in my chest, I said sure, as if her request were no big deal, an everyday thing. I dog-eared the book I'd been reading and followed her into the bathroom. Standing in for Nica should have been a cinch since we looked so much alike except for the hair, and Mom had taken care of that by winding a towel around my head. All I had to do was do what Nica did: act natural. It was that easy, and yet it wasn't easy at all, not for me. As soon as the camera turned my way I stiffened. And the harder I tried to relax, the stiffer I got until I couldn't even fit my fingers into the loopholes of the curler. I watched in panic as first irritation, then disappointment, then boredom crept across Mom's face, listened in dread as the clicks of the shutter became more and more listless, less and less frequent. If I was miserable, though, it wasn't for long. Nica appeared in the doorway, ghost-complected with ringed eyes, none too steady on her feet. Gently she removed the curler from my hand. I stepped back. Looked on as Mom took shot after ecstatic shot.

The bells above the door jingle. I turn. I wasn't sure she'd show, but suddenly there she is—my mother. After Nica died, she lost her looks: the pockets under her eyes puffed up; deep grooves etched themselves between her brows; and her once effortless slenderness became sinewy and gaunt as she was stripped to the bone by grief. She's found them again, though. Is back now to the way she was. Coming toward me in tight black slacks, sleeveless black shirt, cat-eyed sunglasses with white rims, a camera dangling from her neck, her step is light and quick. Nica in twenty-four years. And when she calls out my name in greeting, I find I can't say anything in response. My throat has swollen shut, is aching with her cool loveliness and my involuntary happiness at seeing her.

When she reaches me, I say, “I ordered you a large coffee, house blend,” then twist to the side, put my cell phone in my bag, to avoid a kiss.

She starts to open her mouth.

I head her off at the pass. “Unsweetened. The milk's on the side. Skim.”

“Thank you, baby. You know, I've never been here before.” She removes her sunglasses and camera, lays them on the tabletop, then does what she does whenever she sits down at a restaurant: sweeps her gaze like a lighthouse beam across the room. It's why I automatically gave her the eyes-out seat. I can see her taking in the details: the mugs with the Kurt Vonnegut quotes on them; the sign-up sheet on the wall for the Authentic Movement Workshop; the two girls at the table across from ours, both paint-spattered, one with a shaved head in a T-shirt that says
YEAR OF THE ZOMBIE
, the other self-consciously spearing melon chunks out of a bowl with a palette knife. And I can tell by the twitch of her mouth that she's about to start making fun of the place.

“If there's a category of human being on the planet I find more repugnant than the hipster, I can't for the life of me think what it is,” she says, sipping her coffee, eyeing the two girls. “The clothing with the provocatively worded slogans, the on-purpose bad haircuts, the hopelessly bored expressions on their pampered middle-class faces. They want to be artists, settle for being artsy. If I could, I'd round them all up, ship them off to some deserted island, drop a bomb on the island.” She shifts her glance to mine, eyes twinkling, like her meanness is some delicious treat she's sharing. “Though arguably that would be taking things too far.”

“You're showing your age, Mom.”

She lets out an easy laugh. “Then I better not start reminiscing about the rawer, rougher Bohemia of my day.”

“Better not.”

“Okay, let's change the subject. Do you want to tell me how you're liking Williams so far?”

“Not really.”

That laugh again. “I don't seem to be having any luck here. Why don't you pick the subject.”

After a pause, I say carefully, “Thanks for meeting me on such short notice.”

“Your invitation was so mysterious how could I resist? Like something out of a spy movie. I almost wore my trench coat with the collar turned all the way up.”

“Not possible.”

“Why? Because you think I'm too vain to cover my face?”

“Because I know your trench coat's still hanging in the downstairs closet.”

Her gaze—light, amused, faintly mocking—doesn't waver. “Is it?”

“In between Dad's parka and an old windbreaker of Nica's.”

“That's a raincoat, actually.”

I envy her coolness and hate it at the same time. Trying to keep my emotions in check, I lift a piece of the toast I'd ordered, slowly and meticulously spread marmalade on it. “I don't suppose you're coming back to pick it up, are you?”

“Not any time soon, no,” she says.

“That's it then for you and Dad? The marriage is over?”

“Looks like.”

“So you stay with him just long enough to screw up his life royally and then split. Nice.”

“What are you talking about? Screw up his life how?”

My nasal passages begin to prick and burn, and I realize with horror that my eyes are filling with tears. “How do you think?” I say, ashamed of the sound of my voice but unable to control it, everything coming out in the same snotty yet wounded tone. “By making him turn down Chandler's severance package. He could have started over somewhere new. But, oh no, you couldn't leave the school. Who knows why. Some weird spite thing probably. And then something better came along and you couldn't get out fast enough. Now because of you he's stuck.”

Her eyes widen. “No, baby, you have that backward.
He
made
me
turn down the severance package.”

I stare at the toast in my hand without recognition, put it back on the plate. “What?”

“If he's stuck, he only has himself to blame.”

I feel a wave of panic rising. I try to quell it, telling myself that Mom's lying, that she forced Dad to stay at Chandler. I know this to be true. And yet when I try to remind myself exactly how I know it, the reasons aren't so clear in my mind.

Mom leans into the table, anger jerking at her features. “My daughter was murdered at Chandler, Grace. Murdered. You think I was interested in hanging around? Admiring the chalk outline of her body from the kitchen window? I wanted out. But your father refused. It was the one time in his life he put his foot down with me and it's a big part of the reason I left. He wouldn't move forward. Wouldn't or couldn't, I'm not sure which. All I know is that back was the only way he wanted to go, and the past was the only place he wanted to be. And if I had to stay in that house—if I had to stay with
him
—for another second I—” She breaks off, breathes shakily. When she continues, it's in a more modulated tone: “I didn't mean to run down your father. He's a good person, and everyone deals with grief in his own way. He did what he thought he had to do, just like I did what I thought I had to do. I needed what you had in college. I needed an escape. And when I found one, the Brattleboro fellowship, I took it.”

She's looking at me, and I can see that she's expecting a response, but I'm too disoriented to give her one. She's telling me the truth. I can't know it for a fact because I can't hold up my memory of that horrible spring to hers, compare the two, since the period between Nica's death and Jamie's party is, for the most part, a hideous blur to me. Yet I can feel the truth in her words. And, casting my mind back, I realize that Dad's never actually said that Mom was the one who told Chandler to take their offer and shove it. I'd just assumed. And this
assumption was a keystone for me, a foundation, the block of certainty upon which I'd piled all sorts of other assumptions. And now that it's been removed, I find myself teetering dangerously.

A short silence becomes a longer one. Finally she says, “I've missed you, you know.”

I stare at the napkin in my lap. “Yeah, right.”

“I have, Gracie.”

“That must have been why the phone was ringing off the hook with calls.”

“I didn't call because I didn't want to talk to your father, confuse him, get his hopes up. Not because I didn't want to talk to you.”

“I have a cell phone like every person in America besides you. You could've called that.”

“It's true. I could've. But I told myself that you were getting ready to go to college, move on to a bigger and better phase of your life. That I'd only remind you of what you were trying to forget. That you'd want to talk to me someday, but that, for now, you'd want your space.” She pauses, as if she's considering her words carefully or as if they're hard for her to say. “I thought I was making things easier on you, but I see now that I was making things easier on myself. I'm sorry.”