Long Bright River: A Novel (26 page)

They’re back, Mrs. Mahon says, once I have opened the door. She is looking right at me, ignoring everyone else in the room.

It takes all of my effort not to collapse to my knees, to put my head in my hands, to burst into tears.

—Where are they, I ask.

—In the driveway, says Mrs. Mahon. A man’s with them.

I run out the door, ignoring the male officer as he says, Just a moment, ma’am, please.

I fly down the stairs, followed more slowly by Mrs. Mahon, and around the house, and there is Thomas, looking serious, standing off to the side with a detective who is squatting down next to him, her face inches from his, talking to him.

I go to Thomas. I lift him into my arms. He buries his face in my neck.

I scan the driveway.

There is Bethany, crying. Next to her is a young man I don’t recognize. He’s been handcuffed. His face is red and furious.

Later, I will find out that this is Bethany’s boyfriend. That the two of them thought it would be a good idea to go to the mall, to take Thomas with them in the boyfriend’s car, unequipped with any child seat, a car in which the backseat does not even have functioning seat belts. The two of them thought it would be a good idea to do this without so much as a
note or a text. (
I thought you might be mad,
Bethany will say to me, and I will say,
Correct.
) In half an hour, I will fire Bethany, and Bethany will ask me, with no irony or compunction, for a reference.

For this moment, though, I close my eyes. I know people are speaking to me, but I cannot hear them. I hear only my son’s breath, feel nothing but my own heartbeat, smell nothing but, around me, the clean air of winter.

Later that night, another knock at my door makes me jump.

Again, I see Mrs. Mahon’s face peering in at me between the lace curtains that cover the window, too close to the glass, her breath fogging it.

I am tired. I just want to rest, now, to curl up on the sofa with Thomas and watch television.

But Thomas, when he sees Mrs. Mahon, springs up excitedly.

—Hi! he shouts. Since the snow day he spent with her, he has had a special reverence for Mrs. Mahon, and has excitedly waved to her each time we’ve crossed paths.

Now, he runs to the door and throws it open for her, and I say, Come in.

The cold air that gusts into the apartment slams a door in the back.

Mrs. Mahon is carrying, in her hands, two objects: one is a bottle wrapped up in brown paper, and one is a rectangular object in Christmas paper. A little bump protrudes from the center of the latter.

—I just came to check on you both, she says. After your ordeal. And to bring you these.

Stiffly, she holds the bottle toward me, and the present toward Thomas. She speaks formally, and seems nervous.

—That’s very nice of you, I say. You shouldn’t have.

But I take the bottle into my hands.

—It’s only lemonade, says Mrs. Mahon, before I can open it. I just
make it for myself. I just bottle it and keep it in the fridge. If it’s too tart you can add sugar, she says. I like mine tart.

—As do I, I say. Thank you so much.

Thomas opens his package next. When the wrapping comes off, I see that it’s a chessboard and a plastic bag that contains all the pieces. And, for a moment, I falter.

Thomas looks up at me, rather than Mrs. Mahon.

—What is it? he says.

—It’s chess, I say, quietly.

—Chest? says Thomas.

—Chess, says Mrs. Mahon. It’s a game. The best game there is.

Thomas is now delicately removing all the pieces from the bag, in order of size: first kings, then queens, then bishops, then knights, then rooks, then pawns. Mrs. Mahon names them as they emerge. At the sound of these words, I tense. I haven’t heard them said aloud since my adolescence. Since Simon.

Thomas picks up the bishops, holds one up to Mrs. Mahon.

—Is he a bad guy? he says.

He does look menacing: opaque and eyeless, the slit in his hat like a frown.

—They’re bad and good both, all the pieces, says Mrs. Mahon. Depending.

Thomas looks at Mrs. Mahon, and then at me. Mom, he says, can Mrs. Mahon have dinner with us?

I had been looking forward to a quiet night at home with my son. Now, of course, there is no option but to say yes.

—Of course, I say. Mrs. Mahon, will you join us?

—I’d be glad to, says Mrs. Mahon.

—But you should know that I’m a vegetarian, she says.

Mrs. Mahon is full of surprises.

I look in my cabinets, my refrigerator, and my freezer. There is almost nothing to serve. Finally I determine that I can offer her spaghetti and
tomato sauce from a jar, slightly past its suggested use-by date. Frozen broccoli will round out the meal.

Conversation, unfortunately, does not flow easily, and I serve dinner as soon as I can.

The three of us sit around my small table. I give Mrs. Mahon the seat at the head, and offer the bowl of pasta to her first. Thomas and I sit across from one another. All three of us have glasses of the lemonade Mrs. Mahon has brought. It has fresh mint in it, which Mrs. Mahon says she grows indoors. It tastes like a long overdue reminder that there is a season called summer. Thomas finishes his in three gulps.

Long silences between bites fill the room, and in them I can sense Thomas growing anxious. He wants the adults in the room to get along.

I clear my throat.

—Mrs. Mahon, I say, finally. Have you lived in Bensalem all your life?

—Oh no, she says. No, I grew up in New Jersey.

—I see, I say. New Jersey’s a very nice state.

—It is a nice state, Mrs. Mahon agrees. I grew up on a farm. Not many people think about farms when they think about New Jersey. But I do.

All of us resume eating then. Mrs. Mahon has a large dot of spaghetti sauce on the front of her reindeer sweatshirt, and I feel somehow responsible. I pray Mrs. Mahon won’t notice it, now or later, that it won’t cause her embarrassment.

Thomas looks at me. I look at Thomas.

—What brought you to this area? I say to Mrs. Mahon.

Mrs. Mahon says, The Sisters of St. Joseph.

I nod. I am remembering the class photograph on the wall of Mrs. Mahon’s house, the one I noticed while picking Thomas up at the end of his snow day.

—Did you go to a school they ran? I say.

—No, says Mrs. Mahon. I was one.

—You were one, I repeat.

—Yes, she says.

—A nun.

—For twenty years.

Why did you leave, I want to ask her, but I sense that this might be rude.

After dinner, Thomas sidles over to the chess set that Mrs. Mahon bought for him, and begins to place the pieces on the board.

—Come here, says Mrs. Mahon, patting the sofa, and she teaches him where all the pieces go, and how they move.

As they play, I clear the table and then wash the dishes, slowly, doing them by hand. My shoulders sink and suddenly I realize that I’ve been carrying them up by my ears for months. I feel the specific relaxation of knowing one’s child is being well cared for by someone else. A moment of pure and peaceful inwardness, unencumbered by any guilt.

Afterward, I let Thomas teach me what he has just been taught, pretending not to know already. And then Thomas and Mrs. Mahon play against one another. Mrs. Mahon coaches him through every decision—
Are you
sure
you want to do that?
and
Take that back
and
Wait, wait, think a minute—
until at last, and under entirely false pretenses, Thomas is able to pronounce,
Checkmate.

He celebrates, his little hands going into the air in the touchdown pose his father once taught him.

—I win! says Thomas.

—With help, I say.

—Fair and square, says Mrs. Mahon.

Later, Mrs. Mahon waits on the sofa while I walk Thomas to his bed. At Thomas’s request, I leave a light on low in the corner and hand him a superhero compendium that I gave him for his last birthday.

—I love you, says Thomas.

I stiffen. This is not a phrase I regularly use. Certainly Thomas must know how much I love him from my actions, from the way I care for
him, from the various ways in which I attend to him and his well-being. I have never trusted words, especially not words that are used to describe internal emotions, and something about the phrase feels artificial to me. Phony. The only person who ever said it to me in my life, that I can recall, was Simon, and well. Look how that turned out.

—Where did you learn that, I say.

—On TV, says Thomas.

—I love you too, I say.

—I love you three, Thomas says again.

—All right, I say. Enough. Go to sleep. But I am smiling.

Back in the living area, Mrs. Mahon is dozing lightly. I clear my throat loudly several times, and she sits up with a start.

—Oh dear, she says. Long day.

She puts her hands on her knees as if to stand, and then looks at me, changing her mind.

—Mickey, she says. You know, I’ve been meaning to tell you. I’m happy to watch Thomas from time to time. He’s a nice boy. And I know you’re having a hard time at the moment.

I shake my head. That won’t be necessary, I say.

But Mrs. Mahon is looking at me in a steady, calm way that tells me she is serious, and also that she doesn’t want to hear excuses. She reminds me suddenly of some of the stricter sisters from the first grade school I attended.

—He needs consistency, says Mrs. Mahon. It doesn’t seem like he has much, right now.

For the first time all night, I bristle. There she is: the Mrs. Mahon I expected, the one who tells me how to bag my groceries and how to parent my son.

Mrs. Mahon begins to speak again, but I cut her off.

—We’re fine, thank you, I say. We’ve got it under control.

A silence settles over the room. Mrs. Mahon looks down at the chessboard. She rises, painfully, and brushes at her pants.

—I’ll leave you alone now, she says. Thank you for dinner.

As she opens the door, I surprise myself.

—Why did you leave the order, I say. I’ve been wondering since Mrs. Mahon mentioned it. And apparently we’re getting personal now.

—I fell in love, says Mrs. Mahon, simply.

—With who? I say.

Slowly, she closes the door again.

—With Patrick Mahon, she says. A social worker. A very good person.

—What was your name before it was Mrs. Mahon? I ask.

She smiles. Looks down. She walks to the sofa and, with effort, sits down. I join her there.

—I was born Cecilia Kenney, she says. Then I was Sister Katherine Caritas. Then I was Cecilia Mahon. Am, she says.

—How did you meet Patrick Mahon? I say.

—He worked for St. Joseph’s hospital, she says, which our order helped to run. He shepherded families who came in with sick children. Poor families, you know, she says. Or families who didn’t speak English, or parents suspected of abuse or neglect. Those were the hardest cases, she says. He worked around the clock there. I got to know him while I was assigned to care for the babies in the NICU. My training was as a registered nurse. A lot of us Sisters were nurses.

She pauses.

—We fell in love, she says again. I left the order. We got married. I was forty years old.

—That was brave of you, I say, after a pause.

But Mrs. Mahon shakes her head. Not brave, she says. Cowardly, if anything. But I don’t regret it.

I am afraid to ask what happened to him. To Patrick.

—He died five years ago, says Mrs. Mahon. In case you were wondering. We lived together twenty-five years, there in that house below you. This, she says, gesturing around at the apartment, was his studio. He painted, you know. Painted and sculpted.

—I’m sorry, I say. I’m so sorry for your loss.

She shrugs. So it goes, she says.

—Are those his paintings downstairs? I say.

She nods. She puts a finger on a rook and moves it two ahead. Two back. She looks at me over the top of her glasses.

—They’re very nice, I say. I like them.

—Do you have family, Mickey? she says.

—Sort of, I say.

—What does that mean? says Mrs. Mahon.

So I tell her. There is less at stake, somehow, with Mrs. Mahon. I tell her about Kacey and Simon. I tell her about Gee. About my mother and father. About my cousins upon cousins who live both near and not near. Who do and don’t know me. I tell her everything that I have always been afraid will scare people away. The burdens I carry that are almost too much for anyone to bear.

Mrs. Mahon is motionless as I speak, her eyes focused, her posture alert. I feel more heard than I have ever felt.

I have a memory of making my first confession as a six-year-old, before making my First Holy Communion: the terror of it, Gee telling me to be quiet, to calm down, to just shut up and invent something; and then being shoved inside a little booth, confessing my nonexistent sins to a disembodied voice. The ordeal of it. The shame.

This version of confession, I think, would have been much more appropriate. Every six-year-old should have a Mrs. Mahon to speak to on a comfortable couch.

By the end of my story, I am so at ease, so wonderfully understood, that it’s as if I’ve entered another dimension, almost. It has been many years since I’ve felt so calm.

—Mrs. Mahon, I say. Do you still believe in God?

It’s a silly question, a frivolous one, something I’ve never asked anyone except for Kacey, when I was younger, and Simon.

But Mrs. Mahon nods slowly.

—I do, she says. I devoutly believe in God, and in the work of the Sisters. It was the great tragedy of my life to leave the convent. But it was the great joy of my life to marry Patrick.

She waggles her hand, looking first at the front, and then at the back.

—Two sides of the same story, she says.

I do as she does, inspecting my hand. The back of it is hard, weathered, scaled by the cold of the season. This happens every season, working the streets. The palm is tender and soft.

—You know, says Mrs. Mahon. I’m not a nurse anymore, but I still volunteer at St. Joseph’s. Ever since Patrick died. I go every week, twice a week. I cuddle the babies, she says.

—You what?

—The babies born to addicted mothers, she says. More and more babies in this city are being born to mothers who never stopped using. And then they don’t come around. The mothers and fathers, I mean. They go back to the street the minute the baby is born. Or they aren’t allowed to come around, in some cases. So the babies go into withdrawal, and they need holding, she says. Being held reduces their pain.

I am silent for so long that Mrs. Mahon puts a hand on my shoulder.

—All right? she says.

I nod.

—It might be nice if you came sometime, she says. Would you be interested?

I say nothing.

I am thinking of my own mother. I am thinking of Kacey, as a baby.

—Sometimes helping others gets the mind off its own problems, says Mrs. Mahon. I find, at least.

—I don’t think I can, I say.

Mrs. Mahon looks at me appraisingly.

—All right, she says. Let me know if you ever change your mind.