Concrete Angel (33 page)

“You know,” Gus, a stocky fellow with muscular arms and short, thin legs, told her bluntly one day, “you’re taking away the one thing he has left. He don’t care about money. He’s got no place to go—nothing he wants to buy.”

But Gus was eventually worn down by the deal’s inevitability, and the promise of a fair share. He wasn’t getting any younger himself and hadn’t had the nerve to tell Mr. Kowalski his salary had needed to be raised for years. No harm in putting a little something in the bank. Not if the cars were going to be sold out from under him.

After both men saw the light, things went quickly. With Bud charging a fee for his role in locating buyers, and a cooked sales slip, they made a tidy sum. Mr. Kowalski didn’t realize their share in the profits was nearly equal to his. He was sad—it was bringing back memories of a happier time, and Eve had to buck him up. Gus settled for a flat sum equaling his salary for the next year or so.

“Kowalski could be dead tomorrow and then where would you be,” Bud reminded him.

“Carol would’ve wanted you to have this little nest egg,” Eve told Mr. Kowalski. “Those cars make you sad anyway. Right? I can see it when you talk about them. You never once pulled out the scrapbook until I asked about it. Didn’t go out to see them either.” She was trying to buck herself up as much as him. She’d grown fond of the old coot.

And soon Charlie Kowalski trusted Eve and Bud to invest his profits wisely, which they did. A month or two later, Eve quit her job as his housekeeper, citing her desire to spend more time with her toddler. She had her nest-egg now and would never hold a regular job again.

I
began to see my mother more clearly after Ryan’s birth—and what I saw wasn’t reassuring. Now it wasn’t just
me
getting pushed, pulled, and manipulated by whatever mood struck her, whatever scam she was putting into place. It was my helpless baby brother on the rack.

Her relationship with Bud Pelgrave really worried me. As bad as Mickey had been, and he’d been a first-class jerk, Bud had the smell of a possible felon about him. He was also a quack. I worried he was pulling Mother into schemes that might land her in jail. Bigger schemes than she’d come up with on her own. Her money-making methods of the past were small-time, and perhaps Bud had more grandiose ideas. If only I had someone to talk with about it. But, like always, I was pretty much on my own in dealing with my mother. I careened back and forth between hoping she’d get caught before things went too far and dreading it.

If Mother went to jail, Ryan might go into foster care since my grandmother would probably be considered too old to raise a small child. I was eighteen but still in high school with no way to support us. I crossed my fingers and began to look at college brochures. Mother would have to do for now. Despite my concern for Ryan, other things began to draw my interest.

Daddy began paying attention to me. I’d reached an age when we could have discussions about adult topics. And since I was no longer my mother’s biggest ally, he could criticize her openly. I might confide my concern about Bud if he approached me the right way—if he gave me an opening.

“I’ll pay for any school you can get into, Christine,” Daddy said. “What about a school in New England? I bet you could get into Harvard or Yale. They take girls now, right? What were those SAT scores again?”

We were out at his house in Bucks County, a place I’d visited no more than a couple times a year since their divorce. But now I was getting to be a regular. Making friends with the people my mother so feared. I was able to handle them too. I found things to laugh about with my grandmother Moran, and especially enjoyed reviving my relationship with Aunt Linda. We had a history, one mostly based on Mother’s absences, but still a history. I went to a dance at the country club, lunched in some of the ritzy New Hope restaurants. The food was spectacular, and Daddy had bought me several of the nicest dresses I’d ever owned. It’s not that this new life, with its intimations of luxury, its hanging with the swells, was all that important to me—it wasn’t. But I loved being close to someone finally and the Morans filled the bill. Having a grown daughter was easier for Daddy than having one dependent on him. Our new relationship assuaged his guilt for the past.

I looked around his place constantly for a sign of a female presence but found none. No extras toothbrushes, no female products. If Mother was the soul of indiscretion, Daddy was not. He must’ve had serious relationships—I knew he almost married once or twice—but he was mum with me. His house, decorated without Mother’s help, was sleek and masculine. He had a single, huge canvass on the living room wall and not a knick-knack of any kind on a table top. The window faced a horse farm next door. Maybe I could get into country life. But there was Ryan to consider. Mother wouldn’t let him come along when I visited Daddy, claiming it was too long a trip.

He poured me a glass of iced tea and passed the sugar and lemon. I took a slice of lemon, shaking my head. “I want to live at home. Ryan’s too young.”

I didn’t have to explain why. Turning Ryan’s complete care over to my mother was impossible. Only last week, she ran out to pick up a package at the post office while he was taking a nap.

“I wasn’t gone ten minutes,” she said, waving a book of stamps in my face when I came home unexpectedly. Did other mothers do this? Had she done this with me? Of course, she had.

“You should go away—you’ve earned it. Ryan’s not your responsibility, Christine” my father said. “Adele will look out for him—she’ll spell your mother when necessary.” He paused and said quietly, half-believingly. “For all her faults, Eve’s not exactly a negligent mother. Or is she?”

But it was too late for these sorts of accusations, so I shook my head.

“No, she’s mostly okay.”

“She’s probably crazy about him. Just like you when you were a tyke.”

I said nothing. Somehow I still had a need to protect her. Or was I protecting myself? Was I unwilling to fess up to the role of her accomplice—the one I’d played for so long? Admit to the times I looked the other way, kept mum.

Eve had little interest in Ryan—didn’t Daddy know that? It was me who lavished love on him. It was me he came to when he fell or was sick. But he’d never experienced the manic-mother side of her—the Eve of the Supermom years. She hadn’t tried to seduce him as she had me. I came along when she needed such a helpmate. Ryan came after she had one—me. And perhaps Bud too. She could probably be honest with Bud in a way she hadn’t been with either Daddy or Mickey. Was that good or bad?

It was possible when Ryan got older and could be of some help to Mother, her feelings for him would change—intensify. If I left home at some point, his value to her would increase. But I didn’t intend for such a thing to happen—I was glad there was some distance between them—that he was not completely in her thrall. My brother wasn’t going to end up in some courtroom telling a judge some one-night stand had tried to strangle his mother so he had to shoot him. He wouldn’t lie so often he forgot what the truth was. He would have friends, be normal.

I wondered for the hundredth time why my father had never asked me outright what actually went on in our apartment on the night Jerry Santini died? Not once in the six years since had he questioned my story, indicated there were some disturbing holes in it, said he was surprised his daughter would have fired six bullets into a breathing person. Didn’t it occurred to him murder was something Eve might do, but not me? Didn’t he remember her acuity on the gun range.

I was sure my mother now believed the lie we invented—that I shot Jerry Santini to save her—was the truth. The “saving her” part of it
was
God’s truth. I hadn’t saved her from Jerry but from jail.

“Don’t sell yourself short, Christine,” Daddy said, drawing me back to the present. “At least go to Penn. You can commute there as easily as Temple or a Penn State campus.” He drained his glass. “If Ryan’s your primary concern, get an education that will enable you to support him. Sooner or later, your mother’s going to do something—well, you know.” I nodded. “So far, I’ve been able to protect her from serious trouble, but she may up the ante on her hi-jinks. This Bud fellow…” Daddy shook his head. “I’ve no idea what he’s up to.”

“Me either.”

“He’s a creep.”

I nodded.

M
other was interested in my future too.

“It might pay off if you study business,” she’d said only last week. “I could use some help with the new company Bud and me are starting. You could advise me where to invest money. Things are starting to take off. ”

“What new business?”

My stomach clenched. Did I truly want to hear it? Wouldn’t a deeper knowledge of her schemes make me her accomplice again? Would she suck me in like she had in the past? But she’d grown nearly as mistrustful of me as I had of her. She felt the growing chasm too.

“I don’t want to jinx it by talking about it too soon,” she’d said. “The start-up money’s there. Those cars earned us a tidy fee.”

I’d only the vaguest idea of what she meant and didn’t ask for clarification.

“Jinx it, jinx it,” Ryan said from the floor. He was playing with a Fisher Price farm set. He said it five more times, creating a little song.

Mother stared at him. “Isn’t repetition a sign of something bad? Some kind of mental retardation?”

Shooting her a lethal look, I turned to my brother. “It
is
a funny word, Ryan.” I crouched to give him a hug. “That’s what he means. Right, Mother.” I demanded confirmation. “It sounds like music, right.”

“You could talk in complete sentences by two.”

I felt like strangling her. “He does speak in complete sentences if you bothered to listen.”

He was watching us with a worried look on his face. A two-year old shouldn’t have to worry, but I remembered worrying at two. Did he already know what his mother was? What was it like when the two of them were alone? Did she pay any attention to him at all?

“I still say something’s not quite right with the kid,” Mother continued. “He’s like a parrot.”

“He’s supposed to do that,” I practically shouted. “He’s two. That’s how he learns new words. And don’t tell me what things I did at two. You were a nutcase, so I can’t rely on your observations.”

Now it was her turn to steam. “I was fine when you were two,” she said. “And I thought we had an agreement about reminding me of those awful times. I’m the one who suffered. You’ve no idea what those places were like.”

“Your life has been nothing but awful times—but mostly because of things you did. I was there. Remember? I was the one who had to watch you when I wasn’t actively participating in your shenanigans.”

“Watch me? That’ll be the day.”

But she knew she had me by the throat, drawing my attention to Ryan’s presence whenever a college catalog for a school more than a few miles away arrived in the mail.

“Ryan would probably grieve if he couldn’t see his big sister. You’ve let yourself become too important to him.”

I couldn’t believe the things she was capable of saying. She made it sound like he was my kid. That I was considering abandoning my own child—like she’d abandoned me.

I
enrolled at Penn the following fall, living at home. Between my grandmother and me, Ryan was taken care of. Grandmother had mellowed through the years and was as approving with Ryan as she’d been disapproving with Mother and, to a lesser extent, me. Perhaps she favored boys. But I was glad for it. Mother was increasingly preoccupied with Bud and the schemes he’d dreamed up. I didn’t ask; she didn’t tell—knowing my fealty was weaker than it once was. It was not a good time for her to murder a soda pop salesman. I wasn’t sure she could count on me and she wasn’t either.

O
ther than my brief friendship with Neil in high school, I’d yet to have a boyfriend. Or any kind of friend. It was complicated. My mother had demanded most of my attention for sixteen years, and then Ryan came along. Bringing anyone home had always been fraught with problems, and Mother was jealous or suspicious of any activity taking me away from her. At an early age, I got used to it, got used to spending my time with Mother.