Missing Pieces (32 page)

“What are you saying?”

“Your daughters would really like it,” he said, smiling widely. “You’ve got a daughter Amy’s age, don’t you? Real attractive girl, if I remember correctly.”

I held my breath.

“And a younger one too. Michelle, right? Maybe one day, you, me, Sara, and Michelle, we could all get together, have some fun. I’ve never had a mother-daughter act before.”

“Bastard,” I muttered.

“So they say.”

“I hope you rot in hell.”

He smiled. “Does that mean you won’t be coming to the wedding?”

I’m not sure what I said next, if, in fact, I said anything at all. I wanted to lash out, to slap that stupid smirk off his face, to pummel him lifeless. Instead I fled the room, as helpless as any of his victims, crying as I raced toward the parking lot, bugs swarming around my face, seagulls screeching overhead, a slight rain starting to fall. By the time Jo Lynn appeared, at just after three o’clock, I was soaking wet, my orange blouse clinging to my arms, like Saran Wrap, my hair plastered against my head, like seaweed.

“The cows were right,” my sister said, unlocking the car door. Neither one of us said another word for the duration of the long ride home.

F
our days later, I stood on the shore of Lake Osborne, watching the police drag the area from small, flat-bottomed boats. A dive team, complete with scuba gear, had been in the water for the better part of the morning.

“What are they looking for?” a woman asked, coming up beside me.

“I’m not sure,” I said, truthfully. Amy Lokash had been missing, and presumably in her watery grave, for almost a year. What could the police hope to find?

Unless Colin Friendly had weighted down her body, or encased it in cement, Amy’s body would have floated to the surface within days of its disposal. No such body had been found, the police were quick to assure me when I reported my conversation with the convicted serial killer.

“He’s just playing with you,” one police officer told me. But they agreed to search the area anyway.

Generally speaking, spectators aren’t allowed close to such a scene, but John Prince Park is a large public area, and easily accessible from a variety of spots. It’s impossible to close off the area entirely. In any event, it wouldn’t have been necessary. It was the middle of the week in the middle of February. There were only a smattering of people in the park: a young mother pushing her toddler on a
nearby swing, oblivious to everything but each other; two men strolling arm in arm, who took off as soon as they saw the police; a man drinking from a paper bag, too far gone to care if anyone saw him or not; several joggers, pausing briefly in their run to ask what was going on, then be on their way.

I wasn’t sure why I’d come. Maybe I was hoping for some concrete evidence that I could present to my sister before it was too late. Maybe I was looking for some closure for Donna Lokash. Or maybe I was just putting off getting on with my own life, which today meant picking up my mother for our scheduled mammograms.

By noon, the divers had returned to the surface shaking their heads, and it was becoming obvious that the police were about to call it quits, not having turned up anything but an old tire and several stray pairs of men’s shoes. Colin Friendly might have killed Amy Lokash, but he hadn’t thrown her body into Lake Osborne. The police were right—he’d been playing with me.

An hour later, I was standing naked from the waist up, watching as expert, but indifferent, fingers placed first my right breast, then my left, between two cold surfaces, and squished them flat as a pancake. Smile for the camera, I thought, as I listened to the buzz of the large X-ray machine.

“Okay, we’re done,” the technician said, releasing my breast as I restarted my breathing. “Have a seat in the waiting room. Please don’t get dressed until I make sure the X-rays are all right.”

I slipped my arms back through the blue hospital gown that hung around my waist, and shuffled into the hallway, over to the waiting area, where my mother sat among four other women, all dressed in similar smocks, waiting for either their turn to be photographed or their permission to get dressed.

“How’re you doing, Mom?” I asked, sliding into the seat beside her, leaning my head back against the cool blue wall, breathing deeply.

She smiled pleasantly, eyes unfocused, staring toward the Matisse print on the wall across from us. “Magnificent.”

I released a deep breath of air. “You’ve had mammograms before, haven’t you?” I stated more than asked.

“Of course,” she said.

“Be sure to let the technician know if she hurts you.”

“Of course, dear.”

“They don’t really hurt.”

“Of course not.”

Such was the extent of most of my mother’s discourse these days. Still, it was more than my sister had said to me since our return from Raiford. I’d tried to tell her what had transpired while she was out of the room, carefully repeating the things Colin had said, then had to sit and listen while she rushed to his defense, as I’d known she would—I’d provoked him, deliberately misunderstood him, put words into his mouth. I told her she was crazy; she told me I was jealous. We hadn’t spoken since.

The technician appeared, clipboard in hand. She was tall and thin, with long, stringy red hair pulled into a ponytail, and she looked no older than Sara. I realized I hadn’t really noticed her before, despite the intimate nature of our encounter. To me, she was just a pair of hands, as no doubt, to her, I was just a pair of breasts. We took from each other only what we needed, no more, no less. So easy, I thought, to separate the part from the whole.

“Mrs. Latimer?” The technician looked around the room, which was small and windowless, though not unpleasant. My mother said nothing, continued staring dreamily into space.

“Mrs. Latimer,” the technician repeated.

“Mom,” I said, nudging her arm. “She’s calling you.”

“Of course.” My mother rose quickly to her feet, didn’t move.

“Follow me, please,” the technician told her, then looked at me. “You can get dressed now, Mrs. Sinclair.”

“The tests were negative?” I asked hopefully.

“Your doctor will discuss the results with you,” she said, as I’d known she would. “But the X-rays are fine. I don’t have to redo them.”

Thank God, I thought, watching as my mother followed the technician to the door.

“I’ll wait here, Mom,” I said.

“Of course, dear,” she answered.

I changed back into my street clothes, a white cotton sweater over gray pants, fixed my hair, reapplied my lipstick, returned to my seat in the waiting area, and closed my eyes. Immediately, I pictured Colin Friendly’s mocking smile, and opened my eyes again, grabbing the latest issue of
Cosmopolitan
from a nearby end table, and concentrating all my attention on the latest Cosmo girl. She was wearing a royal blue negligee against a royal blue background; her hair was long and dark, her eyes brown and sultry, her cleavage deep and bountiful.

I remembered when Sara was about ten years old, and I found her standing in front of the bathroom mirror studying her naked chest. “When I grow up,” she asked seriously, “am I going to have big breasts or nice little ones like yours?”

I told her the odds favored the little ones, not the last time I’ve seriously misjudged my older daughter, whose breasts have been known to enter a room a full five seconds before she does. I used to joke that had I had big breasts, I could have ruled the world. Kidding on the square, my mother would say, and she’d be right.

When my mother reentered the waiting area, she immediately
began removing her hospital gown, exposing herself to the startled women in the room. The women looked away, pretended to be coughing, reading, elsewhere.

“Mom, wait,” I said, rushing to her side, tugging the gown back up across her shoulders. “Didn’t the technician tell you to wait until she was sure the X-rays came out?”

My mother smiled. “Yes, I believe she did.”

“Then why don’t we sit down for a few minutes.” I led her to the row of upholstered navy chairs. “How’d it go?”

“I didn’t much care for it,” she stated, and I laughed.

“Did it hurt?”

“I didn’t much care for it,” she repeated, and I laughed again, because she seemed to be expecting it.

“I didn’t much care for it,” she said a third time, and we lapsed into silence until the technician appeared and told my mother her X-rays were fine and that she could get dressed.

“You can get dressed now, Mom,” I repeated when she failed to respond.

She immediately began pulling the gown from her shoulders.

“Not here, Mom. In the changing room.”

“Of course, dear.”

I led her toward the small changing room, my heart heavy, as if I’d swallowed something undigestible and it was sitting there in my chest, refusing to go down. I knew what was happening. By this point, I’d done quite a bit of reading about Alzheimer’s disease, and my reading had told me roughly what to expect. The long and the short of it was that my mother was becoming my child. She was regressing, gradually losing pieces of herself, shedding her identity as a snake sheds its skin. Soon there would be nothing left of the woman she once was. She would forget everything—how to read, how to write, how to speak. Her
children would become strangers to her, as she would become a stranger to herself. One day, her brain would simply forget to tell her heart to breathe, and she would die. It would remain for the rest of us to try to salvage the pieces of her she’d discarded, to fit them back together, to make her whole again, at least in our memories.

At the time, it felt as if my mother’s deterioration had occurred very suddenly, but, looking back, the signs had been there for years. She’d often seemed vague, occasionally confused, her conversations cheery but essentially empty. She forgot things, mispronounced words, occasionally forgot them altogether.

Didn’t we all? I’d told myself, not paying particularly close attention. And if talking to her was sometimes like talking to the woman on the weather channel, well, so what? Weather, food, constipation—these were probably hot topics in assisted living communities. She’d had enough turmoil in her life, I rationalized. If she wanted to speculate endlessly about the weather, she was entitled.

And, of course, there were times that she was rational, witty, and seemingly normal, when flashes of her old self would appear to remind us that she hadn’t disappeared completely, that part of her was still hanging on, fighting to get through. A piece of her here, a piece of her there. She tossed them toward me, like bread crumbs to a hungry bird. Maybe, like Hansel and Gretel, she was trying to leave a path, a way to trace her steps back home, back to the self she had lost.

“Are you ready?” I asked after several minutes, knocking on the door to the changing room.

There was no answer, so I knocked again, gently pushing the door open. My mother was standing in the middle of the tiny cubicle, totally nude, arms protectively covering her sagging breasts, her ribs clearly delineated, her flesh mottled, heavily veined, her skin the color and consistency
of skim milk. “I’m cold,” she said, looking at me as if it were my fault.

“Oh God, Mom, here, let me help you.” I stepped into the tiny changing area, closing the door behind me, tried to gather up her clothes from the floor.

“What are you doing?” Her voice was edgy, on the verge of panic.

“I’m trying to find your underwear.”

“What are you doing to me?” she demanded again.

“Ssh, Mom,” I cautioned. “It’s all right. I’m just trying to help.”

“Where are my clothes?” she shouted, spinning around in the cramped space, knocking me against the wall.

“They’re right here, Mom. Try to calm down. Here are your panties.” I held out a pair of voluminous pink underpants. She stared at them as if they were a foreign object. “You just step into them,” I said, directing first one foot, then the other, inside the legs of the panties, then pulling them up over her hips.

Fitting her inside her brassiere took another five minutes, as did getting her into her ivory-colored dress. When we finally emerged from the cramped cubicle, I was soaking wet and breathing hard. “Are you all right, dear?” my mother asked as we exited the building. “You look a little peaked.”

I laughed. What else could I do?

“You look a little peaked,” she repeated, then waited for me to laugh again, and so I obliged, although the joy was gone, another piece lost.

“Jo Lynn called me last night,” my mother said as I was driving her back to her apartment.

I tried not to sound too surprised. Time had become a relative concept to my mother. Last night could mean anything—last night, last week, even last year. “She did?”

“Said she was getting married next week.”

“She said that?” This time there was no disguising my surprise. Or my dismay.

“I thought she was already married.”

“She’s divorced.”

“Yes, of course, she’s divorced. How could I have forgotten?”

“Jo Lynn’s been married three times,” I reminded her. “It’s hard to keep track.”

“Yes, of course.”

“She told you she was getting married next week?”

“I think that’s what she said. Daniel Baker, she said. A nice boy.”

My shoulders slumped. I tightened my grip on the steering wheel. “Dan Baker was her second husband, Mom.”

“Is she marrying him again?”

“Are you sure she told you she was getting married next week?” I pressed.

“Well, now, maybe I’m not. I thought that’s what she said, but now I don’t know. Whatever happened to Daniel?”

“They got divorced.”

“Divorced? Why? He was such a nice boy.”

“He beat her up, Mom.”

“He beat her?”

“Yes, Mom.”

Tears filled my mother’s eyes. “We let him beat her?”

“We didn’t have much choice. We urged her to leave him. She wouldn’t.”

“I don’t remember,” my mother said, pounding her fists against her lap in obvious frustration. “Why don’t I remember?”

“It’s over, Mom. It happened a long time ago. They got divorced. She’s all right now.”