The Patron Saint of Liars (45 page)
"Dad?"
He rolled over and squinted at me. "You okay?" he said.
"I'm fine," I said. I stayed in the doorway, my hands against the frame. "I just wanted to tell you I was home and say good night."
"Good night, Sissy," he said.
"Dad?"
"What?"
"What were you two talking about out there? I know it's not any of my business, but I was wondering. You were out there a long time."
"Fishing," he said. "We were talking about trout fishing."
"Not Mom?"
"God, no."
"But he's okay, isn't he? He's a nice enough guy."
"Yes," my father said sadly. "He's a good man." Then he sat up on one elbow. "Give your old man a kiss good night."
I walked into the dark room, keeping my hands out in front of me even though I could see pretty well. I sat down on the edge of his bed and my father held me to him. "You're my girl," he said.
"You bet," I said.
I went into my room and saw the light in my mother's house was still on. Thomas Clinton was up, and I thought about calling him or maybe going back over, even though I didn't know what I would say.
When I woke up the next morning, the first thing I thought was, I've missed him. I didn't get a chance to say good-bye. I threw on some clothes and ran over to my mother's house. I was almost at the door before I realized how crazy it all looked. It wasn't even much past dawn. I didn't know why I was up. My sneakers were soaked through from dew and they made a light squishing sound when I walked. I wanted something, an address, a phone number. If we were both keeping an eye out for her, well, then our chances were doubled, weren't they?
Then Thomas Clinton opened the door. Just opened it, like he was expecting me. He was wearing a different suit now, a darker one. He was wearing a blue tie with a red stripe running through it. He said good morning.
"I'm sorry," I said. "I shouldn't be here so early. I don't even know what time it is. Is it early?"
"Not really," Thomas Clinton said.
"I just woke up and I thought you'd be gone and I wanted to tell you, you know, good-bye and everything."
"I was sitting at the table," he said. "That's why I saw you."
We stood like that for a while. Him inside, me in the wet grass. "Why don't you come in," he said.
"Sure," I said.
He had a little bag, not much bigger than a good-sized briefcase, sitting next to the door. I wanted to tell him that he shouldn't be driving cross-country in a suit, but then I guessed it was his business. "I found some coffee," he said. "In the cupboard. Would you like some coffee?"
"Okay," I said. He had been looking for things, too.
"I wanted to tell you again, how much I appreciate everything you've done. You've been very generous, all of you."
"It's not like you were any trouble or anything," I said. "We don't get many visitors in Habit. We're always glad when people come by." I sounded like the board of tourism.
Thomas Clinton set a cup of coffee in front of me on the table and I knew he must have just washed it out after having his coffee because my mother only had one cup. "Would it be all right if I asked you a couple of things?" I said. "Things about my mother?" I looked down into the cup of coffee and caught half of my own reflection there. "She didn't tell me a lot. I mean, you probably figured that out and everything."
"Sure," he said. "Shoot."
"Did my mother have any brothers or sisters?" I said.
"No."
"Any other family?"
"Some cousins, I think. Joe would know. I'll write his address down for you. He'd be glad to hear from you."
"Did she—" I stopped for a minute because I didn't know exactly how to say this. "Did she want to be anything, do anything special?"
He shook his head. "Your mother loved to drive, aside from that, no, I can't remember anything." Thomas Clinton tapped his fingers on the table, thinking for a minute. "I have something you might be interested in," he said. He went over and brought his suitcase to the table, then he opened it up and took out an envelope with pictures in it. "This was our wedding," he said.
There, in case I had doubted it, was proof that my mother had been married before. She looked so beautiful I couldn't take my eyes off of her. She looked happy in a way I had never seen her look, not even once. She was wearing a slim white suit with two big buttons at the collar and a wide-brimmed hat. Her gloved hands held the arm of a man who was clearly the young Thomas Clinton. He looked even happier. It was a picture of two people who had meant to be married forever.
"I have a couple of them," he said. "This is her graduation picture from high school. This is her, in front of the apartment building we lived in when we first got married. That's San Diego. This one, here, that's in Marina del Rey."
There were half a dozen of them. A picture of my mother in front of the Pacific Ocean, waving. Her hair was wet, she must have just been swimming. She was wearing a suit that was covered in flowers. No one was ever so beautiful.
"I like to travel with these," he said. "So I can show them to people. Ask if anyone had seen her." He tapped the one of her standing in front of an apartment building he told me was in San Diego. "That one," he said. "That's my favorite."
There were two pictures of Helen, my mother's mother. In one of them she was young and looked very much like my mother, only a little bit smaller, more delicate somehow. In the other she was older. She was sitting in front of a Christmas tree with a man. His arm was around her waist. "That's Joe," Thomas Clinton said. "Helen's husband."
I wanted to look at the pictures forever. They seemed to make up for everything, secrets and lost time. Here I could hold her in my hand and look and look, like I was drinking her. I could stare at her the way I always wanted to but didn't because she would catch me and put her hands on her hips and say, "What?" like I wanted something. But I didn't want anything. I really wanted only to watch her.
"You can have one," he said. "I'll have copies made for you when I get home, but if you want to have one now, you can."
I couldn't pretend. I couldn't say, oh no, really, that's okay. I wanted one. I wanted the wedding picture, but I thought that would be wrong. I wanted one I could show to my father. "This one," I said, taking her high school picture. It was the best one for me. It was the picture before either husband, when she was just herself.
Thomas Clinton nodded. "That one's nice," he said. He drew the others neatly toward him and put them back in their envelope. "I left my number by the phone," he said. "You'll call me if you hear anything? I won't come back. I don't want you to worry about that. I'd just like to know."
"Sure," I said. "You do the same." I was pretty sure I understood better than he did that she wouldn't be coming back, even if I'd only been without her a week and he'd been without her for years.
I walked him out to the car, the picture of my mother in my shirt pocket. "I should say good-bye to everyone," he said. "It's just so early."
"I'll tell them," I said. I could see that he wanted to get going. He didn't want to face us all together again.
"Well," he said, and held out his hand to me. I shook it. "It was nice to meet you, Cecilia."
"You too," I said.
Thomas Clinton got in his car and drove down the road toward the Green River Parkway. He put his hand out the open window and waved to me, and for some reason I had such a tightness in my chest when I watched him go. Maybe I was just tired of all the leaving, or maybe it was his sadness I felt as he went back toward California alone. At least it was daylight and he had said good-bye. Then all of a sudden I remembered I didn't know what my mother's maiden name was. All this time I'd thought it was Clinton. The car was already gone. I would have to write to him.
I wanted to sit down in the middle of the road and stay there for the rest of my life. Whenever someone came by and said, Hey, Cecilia, what're you doing there in the road, I'd tell them, missing people was a full-time job, being sorry about what was gone was going to take every waking minute now, so much time and energy that I had no choice but to stay right on that spot until they all decided to come back. I meant it as a joke at first, but then I looked down at the gravel and I really thought about it. I couldn't wait for them. They weren't coming back. I'd been trying all my life to figure out what was going on, with my mother, with all those girls that come and then go away. But now I wanted to forget. Right then I decided, as much as I'd wanted to know before, from here on out I didn't want to know at all.
Over near the shed I could see my father working on his shutters, down on his knees, scraping away. I waved to him but he didn't see me. As I was walking up toward Saint Elizabeth's, I started thinking about Lorraine. Don't ask me why, but I had this sudden picture of Lorraine and her baby staying on and me taking care of them. Lorraine was in the guest room and I was walking through the kitchen of our house, holding the baby on my hip. It all looked so real in my mind, not like it was going to happen, but like it had already happened and I was only remembering it. And I knew then that that was the thing Lorraine had been talking about, her sign from Saint Theresa, the thing that would work itself out if she just had faith. It was me. I was her sign from God.
Table of Contents
