Lying with the Dead (21 page)

“By the time I came back, Maury was on the floor beside Jack. At first the rescue squad didn’t know how many were dead. Maury and Dad looked like two corpses laid out on a slab. But when they felt for a pulse, Maury went nuts at being touched and thrashed and kicked. It took three of them to wrestle away the knife and pin him down.

“Maury yelled at them, ‘He was hurting her. He was always hurting her.’ The cops handcuffed him, and before I could say a word, they dragged him out of the house and tossed him into a squad car. That’s the last I saw of him until that night in jail. Detectives took me upstairs for questioning. Wouldn’t even let me change my clothes. I was blood-soaked to the skin. Meantime the ambulance crew was in the kitchen working on Jack. But it was too late. I could have told them that.”

“What did you tell them instead?”

“Who?”

“The detectives.”

“They asked so many questions, I don’t recall all I said. Basically it’s what I told you—Jack bellied up to the knife and next thing I knew it was in him.”

“I don’t suppose you mentioned that the knife was in your hand, not Maury’s?”

She rocks harder in a negative shake of her head. “A cop from the squad car rushed upstairs and said Maury already confessed. I saw then how things stood, how they were slipping away from me. The state I was in, the only chance of this situation working out, I thought, was to let things take their course.”

“You mean”—I squeeze her hip to stop her from rocking—“let your son take the rap.”

With a gust of her old belligerence, she asks, “What was I supposed to do? I thought the best thing was to claim Maury was defending me.”

“And what did you expect the police to do? Pat him on the back?”

“I expected them to put him in a mental hospital where he’d get treatment—which he damn well needed. I never in a million years thought they’d indict him for first-degree murder. But the state doctor examined Maury and said he knew right from wrong and could stand trial.”

She flips onto her back, and her voice gains firmness as she goes on. “I went to the pastor and confessed the truth, and he swore he wouldn’t give me absolution unless I set the police straight. So I admitted to them I was the one with the knife. But they didn’t believe me. They accused me of being a good mother, taking the blame for her son.”

I switch from the couch to the chair. My every emotion is undermined by skepticism. I should be shocked, horrified. But how much of her story can I believe? I wouldn’t put it past her to trick me into euthanizing her. “Why didn’t you go public and plead for your son?”

“Jesus, Quinn, that’s something you’d do in a movie. This was real life. I wanted to help Maury, not make a spectacle of myself.”

“You should have helped him by saying he wasn’t a murderer.”

“I did. Every Sunday at Patuxent I said, ‘I love you. You’re not a murderer.’”

“But he still believes he did it.”

“You think it wouldn’t have made him crazier to know he was behind bars for a crime he didn’t commit?”

She doesn’t let me answer; she bulldozes on. “Besides, I had Candy to worry about, and a baby—you!—on the way. I had to scrape together the money for Maury’s plea bargain and a transfer to Patuxent where he had doctors and a chance for parole. Of course you’d have talked to the newspapers, you’d go on TV. And with your gift of gab, maybe you’d persuade people. But then what? Say the cops did believe I killed Jack, I’d have gone to prison. Then what would have happened to you and Candy? Hell, what would have happened to Maury? You think you’d all have been happier growing up in an orphanage or being split up and adopted by strangers? Well, do you? I can’t hear you.” She flaps at her ear. “It’s easy to claim you shouldn’t live a lie, but sometimes lies are all that let us go on living.”

I pitch out of the chair and prowl the room, desperate to set distance between my mother and me. I’m choking on our closeness. Even the thousands of miles between Maryland and London may never be enough to let me breathe again, to let me digest what she has said and make sense of what she goes on saying.

“Day and night all I did was lie. One minute I was lying to the police, the next to Maury’s lawyer, then his head doctor, then the pastor. And the whole time I had to remember what I told this person and that. It was as bad as being a little girl again, down in the cellar with the garbage bucket, hiding it here, hiding it there, scared I’d get caught and punished. Knowing that’s what I deserved. Hating myself for being such a chickenshit. Hating you kids even though I loved you. Terrified by these nightmares where I murdered you and Candy by mistake.”

I don’t know whether to be appalled or to applaud this bravura performance. Mom’s operatic scenery eating is all the more remarkable because she’s flat on her back, barely moving, a wizened, white-haired woman croaking a last aria that I haven’t a clue how to interpret. She has morphed into a combination of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra—a tragic figure who both sacrificed a child and killed her mate—and yet all the while she remains my mother, a tiny, untidy, loving, hateful, scheming, sad human being.

“Now you’re probably thinking,” she says, “okay, she didn’t confess to Maury, but why didn’t she own up to me and Candy? Well, I figured you had enough to cope with. Why heap on more? And if I told you, I was afraid I’d be left with nothing. It was a long shot, the kind Jack used to lose his shirt on. But considering the odds, I believed I did the right thing. You and Candy haven’t had it so bad, and Maury isn’t doing life in prison. That’s about the best we could hope for. I’m the only one that lost out. Candy stayed with me, but hates me. You boys ran as far as you could get and you hate me too.”

“I don’t hate you.”

“I don’t buy that. I only hope you hate me enough to keep your end of the bargain.” She hands me the pillow.

“I can’t.”

“Yes, you can.”

“Did you make up this story to drive me to murder?”

“I didn’t make up a damn thing. You asked for the truth. Now you’ve got it.” Removing her glasses, she folds them on her chest, interlaced with her nicotine-stained fingers like rosary beads on the deceased’s hands at a Catholic wake. With her eyes shut and her off-white hair in a halo around her head, she resembles a relic in a medieval church, some obscure saint, preserved, yet disheveled after centuries on display. The sight of her, to all appearances already dead, paralyzes me.

“If you won’t do it for me,” she breaks the silence, “then do it for Maury and Candy so they’ll have a little money. Do it for yourself so you can get on with your life and give us grandkids.”

I kneel next to the couch. The wine has churned to vinegar in my stomach. I feel drunk, hung over, and achingly sober at the same time. “Are you sure?” My voice quavers, my hands shake. I don’t have any clue how to play this part.

“I’m sure. Give me peace.”

I’ve witnessed this scene before—an actor delivering the coup de grâce, putting an old woman out of her misery. I’m following stage directions, I’m operating under Mom’s explicit instructions, just as I’ve done so often in the past. I kiss her and tell her I love her, then place the pillow over her face.

The instant I exert pressure, she scissors her legs and flails her arms. She’s changed her mind! Elated, I lift the pillow, assuming this has been some biblical test of my devotion. But she says, “Don’t cover my eyes. I want you to be the last thing I see. Promise me your memoir won’t make me look horrible.”

I press the pillow to her face again and peer into her eyes. It’s not clear what she feels or thinks. It never has been. Do I detect anger in the brown eye and love in the blue one? Or a mixture in both?

That’s how I suspect my eyes appear to Mom as I go about the grim business of extinguishing her life. There’s anguish in them. But there’s love too, and maybe a single poisonous drop of the hatred she has accused me of.

Words, endless words I’ve said to serve the moment. So many half-remembered scripts and scattered quotes. If only I could bring myself to speak straight from the heart, there’s time. There’s so much time. It takes far longer than I imagined. Far, far longer. And never once does Mom look away. Still, I don’t stop, and when it’s over, there’s no mistake about it and not the slightest resemblance to a death on stage or screen.

The color drains from her eyes by degrees until they’re dull and fixed. The pupils dilate and darken into black holes that admit and emit no light. An opposing force that I wasn’t aware of until now eases under my hands. When I raise the pillow, her jaw drops and her mouth gapes at an angle.

I tuck the pillow under her head and close her eyes. Her mouth won’t shut. Then I stumble to the kitchen and wish I had something stronger than wine to drink. Something to deaden the trembling that starts deep inside, then spreads to my fingertips.

When Candy calls from the Hilton and says she’s there with Maury, I almost blurt out what I’ve done. I hurry her off the phone, but she’s caught the alarm in my voice. Minutes later, it doesn’t surprise me—even if it does amp up my inner turmoil—to hear her key in the front door. I rush to her the way Mom described Dad rushing at the knife. “She’s gone,” I say.

“You let her leave?”

“Mom’s dead.” I hug her face to my chest so she can’t see my eyes.

“You said she was asleep.”

“I thought she was. But when I went to check on her, she wasn’t breathing. I tried CPR. I tried mouth-to-mouth.”

Candy breaks into deep racking sobs that spread from her core to her extremities, like the shaking in me. I dread letting go of her, and she doesn’t seem to have any desire to leave my arms. We’re more than willing to postpone whatever comes next and stay locked together in grief and relief.

Finally, though, a priest, an undertaker, Maury, and Lawrence have to be notified. I phone Lawrence, while Candy goes into the living room to have a last look at Mom. I call the local funeral parlor, but can’t bring myself to dial the Hilton and break the news to Maury.

Candy comes back from the living room dry-eyed and purposeful, behaving with the same ritualistic calm as she does in her role as a Eucharistic minister. Taking the telephone from my hand, she calls the church and almost immediately a young, smooth-skinned Filipino priest arrives and begins administering what used to be referred to as extreme unction or the last rites. He calls it the anointing of the sick. It doesn’t matter that Mom isn’t sick; she’s stone dead. The priest thumbs oil from a gold container and dabs it at her ashen skin. Candy and I station ourselves on either side of him. She responds to his prayers while I, the former altar boy, act as little better than a dumb witness.

Then two sturdy fellows, black-clad and solemn, show up in a hearse and shoo us out of the living room. Over my shoulder, I catch sight of them unfolding a zippered body bag. I can’t bear to see more. In the kitchen I shamelessly slug down the last of the wine. It’s not enough. Nothing will ever be.

By the time Lawrence arrives, aromatic of aftershave lotion and crisp winter air, I’m quite drunk, not just from pinot noir, not only from all the booze I’ve swilled today, but from the magnitude of the moment, the enormity of what I’ve done. At last I break into tears, and find myself crying on Lawrence’s shoulder. He comforts me, murmuring, “There’s nothing worse than losing your mother.”

Meanwhile Candy takes charge. She thanks the priest, discreetly palms an offering into his hand and promises to get back to him about the requiem mass. She escorts the undertakers as they wheel Mom on a gurney out to the waiting Cadillac. Through the venetian blinds, I watch my sister assure the neighbors that nothing is wrong except that a very old woman has passed away.

When she returns, I’m still sobbing and have an excuse not to discuss practical details. As soon as I can decently do so, I say that I have to leave. “I want to tell Maury in person.”

Candy doesn’t object. She appears as eager as I am to be on her own.

My dazed drive to the Hilton has the quick cuts and illogical leaps of a dream. There’s no continuous landscape, just a chaos of flashing lights, billboards, street signs, and franchise names. It’s a miracle I keep the car on the road. For an instant I question why I do. But I reach the hotel, climb out of the Chrysler, and slouch against the front fender. For a time—I can’t estimate how long—I gaze at the acre of asphalt. When the yellow lines of parking places start strobing in my watery eyes, I go inside.

The swipe card turns the red light green and I step into a room that smells of congealed grease. Maury, in his Windbreaker, waits on the sofa like an expectant schoolboy. On a tray in his lap there’s a half-eaten hamburger, an untouched plate of French fries, a Coke, and a lengthy menu of cable channels. He hasn’t turned on the TV.

“I have some bad news.” Careful not to crowd him, I sit at the far end of the couch. “Mom’s dead.”

“I didn’t do it,” he exclaims.

“Of course you didn’t.”

“I don’t know what she told you and Candy. But I never hurt her.”

“Calm down, Maury. No one’s accusing you. She took a nap and just quit breathing. We should be grateful she died in her sleep.”

Maury’s agitation grows. He has to set the tray on the floor to prevent his food from spilling. “She asked me to kill her. But I couldn’t. I wouldn’t!” Desperation pours off him like a desert flash flood races over rock.

“I understand.” As much for myself as for him, I wish he’d let me touch him, let me slide an arm around his shoulder.

“She didn’t want assistant living,” he says.

“No, she didn’t. Mom lived a long time and had a rough life. Now she’ll rest in peace.”

I hear a faint buzz in my ears. Is it the sound of my inner shaking? Or one of the noises Maury makes?

“I need to get down on the floor,” he says.

“Go ahead. I don’t mind.”

“I need to be alone,” he says.

I withdraw into the hallway. When he starts moaning, I walk to an alcove where a soft drink machine and an icemaker hum a lonely lullaby to each other. I’d like to lie down on the floor myself. I’d like to sleep, never to wake. Instead, I dip into the ice bin and press a fistful of freezing nuggets to my face.