Getting Sassy (9 page)

“No,” was all I could manage.

She nodded. “Afraid so. She used to be a smoker, didn’t she?”

“Before I moved her in here. But that’s been more than two years.” Of all the things to worry about, the one that had not occurred to me was my mother sneaking smokes in her room.

Sighing, she twisted her mouth as she shook her head. “It happens sometimes. Maybe she bummed one off a resident.”

“How many residents smoke?”

“Not many. But there’s a hard-core group and, believe me, they know who’s carrying.”

I couldn’t imagine anyone would give my mother the time of day, let alone a cigarette. She wasn’t exactly in the running for Miss Congeniality.

“Did you say anything to her?” I asked Lorena.

“‘Course I did. And she acted like I’d accused her of boiling babies. Got all indignant.” She gave me one of her rare smiles. “You know how she can be.”

I assured her that I did and said I’d talk to her.

“You understand,” Lorena continued, “this rule was in place long before the state made it illegal.”

“I know.”

“And the fine has to be high to make the point.”

“I completely understand,” I assured her. And I did. “Thank you so much for telling me. And not April.” Who, at this point, might not fine us, but would have one more reason to see my mother leave. “I’m taking her out to breakfast, and I’ll talk to her.”

Just then I noticed that my mother had gotten off the elevator and was watching Lorena and me have our little chat. Her sparse brows were pulled together as though trying to recall an errant thought.

I gave her a little wave, thanked Lorena again and walked over to collect my mother.

“Blueberry pancakes?” I straightened the collar of her blue sweater.

She watched as Lorena walked past the reception desk and out of view, still searching for that thought. But then she finally looked up at me and smiled, hooking her arm in mine. “I think I’d like bacon today too.”

“I can arrange that.”

While signing her out, I took a minute to check the register of Dryden’s guests from the day before.

At Malone’s Pancake House, as I reached out to open the door for my mother, I said, “Smoking or non?” I was certain that she could not remember that Illinois had removed all options.

Her beatific smile, no doubt inspired by the warm, sweet smells, faded into a tight frown, and she drew herself back, removing her hand from my arm. “Why would you ask such a thing?”

“Smoking or nonsmoking?” I repeated.

“I haven’t smoked in years.”

“Nonsmoking,” I said to the hostess, who gave me an odd look but grabbed a couple of menus and showed us to a table.

As soon as we were seated, my mother picked up the menu and held it like a laminated curtain in front of her face.

Once the busboy filled our glasses with water, I said to a photograph of the triple cheese omelet with salsa, “You know why I asked, don’t you?”

“Asked what?”

“If you wanted the smoking section.”

“I’m sure I have no idea.”

“Mother, lower your menu, please.”

After a few seconds, she lowered it only far enough for me to see a pair of pale blue eyes sparking with anger.

“I’m sure I have no idea,” she repeated.

“Don’t give me that, Mom.” I rested my folded arms on the table’s edge. “Lorena says she smelled smoke in your room.”

“Well, that’s ridiculous. I don’t know why she’d lie like that. I thought Lorena and I were friends.”

The fact that she sounded genuinely hurt attested to my mother’s latent acting abilities.

“She’s just worried,” I said. “Not only is there a thousand dollar fine for smoking, but smoking in those rooms is dangerous.”

When she continued to smolder, I asked, “Don’t they have someplace outside where you can smoke?”

Making a sour face, she folded her menu and set it beside her. “Oh, just a little area in the garden. The way the wind whips through there, it’s a wonder anyone can keep a match going long enough to light up.”

I pictured those elderly women, standing around the garden, the edges of their coats flapping in the breeze, hands cupping matches to their cigarettes, and it was my turn to hide behind the menu.

Then my mother muttered, “With what I pay for that room, I should be able to smoke.”

I remembered the rule was if a resident was caught smoking in her room twice, she was out. And for a fleeting moment, I thought I had
my
out. If my mother was the reason she would have to move into a less appealing place—if she did it to herself—then I could shed a little of the guilt. But the moment that bubble surfaced, it burst, and I knew it was wrong. All wrong.

I lowered my menu and saw that she was sipping her coffee, which was pale with cream.

While she still hadn’t admitted that she did sneak a smoke, I conceded that I wasn’t expecting a mea culpa. I just wanted to make my point. Besides, she was going to have plenty to feel defensive about in just a few minutes.

We both stuck to neutral ground as we chatted. She told me about the lecture they’d had on migratory birds that would pass through northern Illinois in a month or so, and I told her about an article I was writing on a woman who collected kaleidoscopes. She told me she
thought a woman in her forties shouldn’t be wearing her hair as long as I did; I told her that the rules had changed. Then she conceded that it wasn’t the length that bothered her so much as the fact that I often wore it in pony tail. It was easy, I told her, fully knowing she would next mention that if I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life alone, I needed to put more time into my appearance. She didn’t disappoint. But this time she added, “You’re not getting any younger, you know.”
By the minute,
I said to myself, almost looking forward to our imminent confrontation.

I waited until the waitress had delivered her stack of blueberry pancakes and rasher of bacon, then watched while my mother poured a generous quantity of syrup over the pile. I even let her take a couple of bites and commented on how good my scrambled eggs and dry wheat toast were.

I took a sip of the strong, hot coffee, set my mug on the edge of the red paper placemat, and said, “I need to talk to you about my biological father.”

Barely glancing in my direction, she dabbed a chunk of pancake in the syrup and thrust it into her mouth.

“Robert,” I added, then pressed on. “Maybe you could start by explaining why you told me he was a mailman who died in the line of duty.” I paused and waited for her to look at me. When she didn’t, I said. “Neither is true.”

She stopped chewing and glared at me, her jaw locked.

I pressed on. “And you were living in Cortez, Colorado, not Colorado Springs.”

Nailing me with her frostiest look, she said, “You were born in Colorado Springs.”

“You moved there from Cortez.”

Her hand trembled slightly as she picked up the mug of coffee and took a sip. I waited for her to return it to the table.

“Mom, I just want to know why you lied.”

She carefully chewed a bite and didn’t make eye contact with me
until she’d washed it down with another swig of coffee. I was always a little surprised at how her watery blue eyes could harden and turn flinty.

“What difference could it possibly make?”

“He was my father.”

“You never knew him.”

“So?”

I’d already decided I wouldn’t tell her about the séance. And after my night of research, I didn’t think I needed to. “He was my father. Don’t I have the right to know?”

She just glared, and now the little muscles around her mouth were working.

“Didn’t you think I’d
want
to know?” I pressed.

“You never questioned me.”

“Why should I? You tell me my father was a mailman, why would I doubt you? Why would I think you were feeding me a lie?” I took a deep breath. And then another. If I lost it now, I’d regret it.

“What did he do,” I asked, “that made you think a lie would be better?”

“Who did you talk to?” she asked.

“I found your divorce papers in the box of stuff I’ve been keeping for you.”

She drew in a deep breath and released it slowly. “The one I asked you to throw away?”

“Don’t change the subject.” I hurried on. “You were divorced in Cortez. I wondered why I’d never heard you mention Cortez. Once I Googled Robert Guthrie in Cortez, I learned that you haven’t been very forthcoming about him. For one, he didn’t die there.”

Her mouth twisted into a bitter smile. “And what else do you
think
you know?”

The way she stepped on the word “think,” I knew she was angry. Probably more angry than upset at this point. Which was good, because once she started to make her little sobbing noises, I’d have to stop.

“Well, that woman you talked to yesterday...”

She drew back, and though some of the anger left her features, I couldn’t quite read what replaced it. “I won’t discuss that.”

“I need to, Mother. I need to talk to her.” Then I added, “And I will.”

“Well,” she broke off an end of crisp bacon and popped it into her mouth, “you’re going to have a hard time doing that without her name.”

“It’s Mary Waltner.”

Her eyes narrowed, and I could hear the bacon crunching in her mouth. “So,” she said, “now you’re spying on me.”

“No. All visitors to Dryden have to sign in.”

She glanced out the window, which was covered in fat raindrops. “She won’t tell you anything you want to hear.”

“Yeah, well, maybe it’s something I need to hear.”

She studied me for several moments, and I tried not to cringe under her glare. Then she dabbed her lips with her napkin, and set it beside her fork. She kept her hand on the cloth, gently kneading it. “I see,” she said, with a sigh.

“What do you see?”

“You didn’t take me to breakfast because you wanted to visit with your mother.” A brief, chilly smile was offset by her eyes, which had softened and turned moist. “You wanted to make me talk about things that are hard for me to talk about. I don’t have much of my life left, Robyn. We both know that. And I don’t want to spend it weeping over my past. I see too many of the women do it at that place.”

“Mom—” I put my hand on hers, but she snatched it away, then reached for her purse.

“I’d like to go now.”

“Come on, Mom. I’ll drop it.” For now. “You’ve hardly touched your pancakes.”

“I don’t have a taste for them anymore.” And her look added “thanks to you.”

She was slipping her arm into the sleeve of her sweater, and I knew there was no turning her around. I fished a twenty out of my wallet and dropped it on the table.

“I don’t want to go back there just yet.”

We’d been driving in a silence I was determined not to break.

“Where do you want to go?”

She didn’t speak for another minute, and then she said, “I’d like a cigarette.”

I glanced at her, but she kept looking forward.

“You know they’re bad for you. You’ve got COPD.”

After a moment, she said, “What does that stand for again?”

“Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease.”

She sniffed. “Fancy words.”

“For a long time there, you weren’t smoking at all. I thought you’d beaten it.”

She looked at me sharply, “I will choose what I want to beat, thank you.”

The light drizzle had intensified, and I moved the wipers up a notch. “I don’t want you getting sick again.”

With a sigh, she said, “Everyone has to die of something.”

I didn’t need to tell her that suffocating in your own body had to be an awful way to go; she knew that.

“I miss them,” she said, as though she were talking about some friends who had moved away. “They calmed me.”

Another half mile down the road was a convenience store. I pulled into the lot.

“Virginia Slims, right?”

She nodded without looking at me.

When I got back to the car I was reeling from sticker shock and thinking if she were to keep this up, I’d have to add a couple thousand per annum onto the amount I needed to steal.

I settled into the driver’s seat and looked down at the beige and gold pack I held. My mother was watching me, expectant, but not willing to snatch them from me. “I hate these things,” I said.