What time was it? Three in the afternoon, not good, not good.
Sliding out of bed, which caused a nasty shifting of perspective, she peeked out the side window toward the porch and saw a tableau of three shadowy figures in blinding sun. Her heart froze as she recognized Ray. Two women flanked him. One was tall. Leigh.
So you’re back, she thought. Back to ruin my life. The fury grew, as if it had an existence of its own, had lived independently inside her for many years. They had come like furtive critters who dig up carcasses in the night forest, that bring the soil aboil.
She peeked again from the raised curtain-corner. The two women stood silently along the pathway to the house, having retreated from the porch. Ray had disappeared. Well, she had taken his key away, hadn’t she? What could she expect? Her boy wanted in. He would not be denied.
She would fight. He had no right to violate her space. He was a traitor to the family, no longer welcome.
But he was her darling son. She had lived her life for him.
No more.
Which?
Swaying between emotions, her mind achieved a moment of clarity, and she understood he would attack the weak point of the house, the single basement window, the chink in her battlements.
She ran into the living room and located her sharp knife. She could not allow Ray to bumble around in that basement. She would have to go stop him.
Was there some way to explain away anything Leigh must have told him by now? Could she save him, sacrificing only the peripheral people who did not matter? Padding through the dark hallway toward the closed door that led to the basement stairs, she thought, I’ll just deny everything she says, whatever she told him.
But Ray would believe Leigh, not her. It’s a matter of love, she thought. He has cleaved to his wife and left me. She breathed in the bitterness of his abandonment and it mixed with the anger.
Glass broke. She heard the basement window creak open, the window she expected to open. She had every right to protect herself and-and-her hand shook, holding the knife ready. He was breaking in, all right. I thought it was a burglar, Judge, she thought, her mind swirling. It isn’t always about you, son, some of it is about me, my basic survival, and now when you turn your back after I have given you everything, everything-
Down below, like a big rat scurrying around in the dark, Ray was trying to find his way up.
29
Y our mother attacked me,” Leigh had said in that highway diner to Ray, earlier in the evening, after finishing a cup of strong, steaming hot coffee, “the night I left you. With a chisel.”
Ray stood up. “Have you lost your mind? My mother-I don’t believe this.” The man in the next booth let his paper fall to the table and turned around.
“Please. Ray. Sit down,” Kat whispered. She pulled him back into the booth beside her.
“It’s outrageous. A damn lie! What are you trying to do to us, Leigh?”
Leigh looked him in the eye. “I wish I could spare you this, but I can’t hide what happened any longer. You have to know. I’m sorry but I am telling the truth. She stabbed me in the stomach with a chisel.”
She continued as if an inner propeller had started up and could not be stopped. “I ran upstairs and out of the house, holding my hand inside my shirt to stop the bleeding, to hold myself in one piece. Ray-I heard her coming behind me. I was so terrified. She’s strong when she wants to be, you know. I barely got inside the van, with the door shut, when I heard her whack the rear grille and I started up and drove like crazy. I didn’t know where.
“Once I got to the freeway I looked down and saw my shirt was wet and my hand on the steering wheel was wet. I was bleeding, feeling a lot of pain, so I stopped and asked directions at a gas station.” She ran a hand through her hair. “What amazed me was how calm I felt then just being in my own car, as if I was out of danger. Funny, isn’t it? The guy directed me to an urgent care clinic. I had a towel over my stomach, so he couldn’t see anything, I guess, or maybe he would have offered to drive me or called an ambulance.
“Anyway, they asked what happened, and I said I did it to myself, that I made furniture and had stumbled against a tool in my shop. I don’t know if they believed me, but what could they do about it? They sewed me up, gave me a shot, prescriptions, all that. The gash skimmed along the front of my stomach and if I had been facing another direction I would have taken a hit in my liver and probably would have died.”
Ray’s face was screwed up like a child’s. “You can’t be saying my mother would do a thing like that.”
“She did, Ray. She would have killed me. I’ve thought and thought about it.”
“But why? Why?”
“Isn’t it obvious? Then I tried to think. I wanted to call you. I wanted your arms around me and the safety of our house, but we had fought-I thought you never wanted to see me again. And I felt like-like it would kill you to hear this. Look at you now!”
Kat said, “Take it easy, Ray. Just listen for now, okay?”
“I hate having to talk to you like this. I know how much you love her. I have rehearsed many ways of telling you over the past days, but I can’t make it easier.” She began to sob.
“It’s okay,” Kat told her. She reached across the table to hold Leigh’s cold, trembling hand for a moment. “Just tell us what happened.”
“Well, after the clinic, I-was still feeling very shocked and pretty battered. I needed to think and the cabin at Idyllwild seemed like a logical place to rest and take some painkillers. I drove up there and collapsed. The next day, even though I was still in some pain, I got worried you might think of the cabin and follow me there, so I moved on. Maybe I wasn’t thinking straight, but I thought you didn’t love me anymore. I thought I had lost your trust forever. And still, I didn’t want to hurt you any more than I already had.”
Ray said, “Leigh, you have it all wrong. Martin was right about one thing. I drove you away from me. Ever since you started talking about having a child-I got so scared. I drove you to him. You needed to be loved and I took my love away. And then I wanted to blame you for everything! I could see myself-hurting you back. Hurting you more.” Ray closed his eyes and shook his head. “I wanted you to go. I’m afraid you felt that.”
She nodded. “That’s why you called your mother and told her about Martin and me. I can only imagine what you said. And she-she got so angry at the hurt I caused you, she wanted me to die.”
“No! No! I didn’t call her! I wouldn’t do that! She didn’t know until Sunday!”
“Are you sure?” Leigh said. “It’s all right, I don’t blame you.”
“I didn’t! She didn’t know until after that night! You’re all messed up! None of this is true!”
“Wait,” Kat said. “Keep your voice down, Ray. Sssh. Ray, think about the shirt we found.”
Ray put his face in his hands.
“Leigh, go back, just explain again. You left the Topanga house. Why would you drive to Whittier?”
“I was going to my parents’ house,” Leigh said. “But just as I got to town I saw Esme’s inhaler lying there on the car seat, you know, the one she needs for her asthma. I saw that and thought, oh, damn. She’s running out.”
“She used one while I was there on Sunday. Must have been the same one,” Ray said.
Kat asked, “But why did you have the inhaler, Leigh?”
“Esme called the house on Friday morning, but Ray had gone in to work early, so I got the call. Her local pharmacy had run out and wouldn’t get any until Monday. She asked me to ask Ray to pick it up in L.A. and bring it on Sunday, during our regular dinner. I offered to bring it over instead.
“I just thought I’d drop it off. It was only a few more miles, and then I’d go stay with my folks. I got to Close Street, but I couldn’t raise her. She didn’t answer the door, so I went in the kitchen because I know she leaves that door unlocked sometimes when she takes out the trash. I called out-getting more worried. Then I saw the basement door open.”
“She keeps it locked.”
“Right. I thought maybe she had an asthma attack down there, or slipped down those steep steps. So I went in and ran down the stairs. It was so weird.” She paused, narrowing her eyes, remembering.
“What, Leigh?” Kat said.
“Well, I came down fast. She whirled around, and there was an instant there when I’d swear she was deciding this was exactly the right thing to do, then she stabbed me with the chisel. I dropped the inhaler, which was still in my hand in a bag, and I stumbled back up the steps. She followed me, but I guess the situation got her worked up. I could hear her wheezing, trying to catch me.”
Ray had kept his hurt, shocked eyes on Leigh. “A chisel?” he interrupted. “Why would she be in the basement with a chisel?”
“I don’t know,” Leigh answered. “Trying to get something open? Do you know what she keeps down there? I mean, it looked empty to me.”
“Working on the pipes?” Ray said. “You know, the sink was leaking upstairs. Probably the water had drizzled down there. I warned her about that. It could weaken the walls or even flood the place.”
“Old people have a lot of problems that might change their personalities,” Kat said, straining for a reasonable explanation.
“She really did this to you? Really?”
Leigh broke down again. “It’s true.”
“She isn’t old. She isn’t senile or crazy,” Ray said. “My mother knows how to control herself. Oh, she sure does. But hang on. That was true up to a few days ago. But she has been drinking over the past few days, a lot I think, like binge drinking, and it started very suddenly. Was she drunk?”
“She was stone cold sober,” Leigh said.
“Do you think she-is she taking drugs? Methamphetamine? Cocaine? PCP?” Kat said.
“My first thought was, yeah, she’s on something. She ran toward me like a ghastly character in a movie. I could almost hear the music.”
“She hates drugs,” Ray said. “She hates having to use the inhaler sometimes for her asthma. She won’t even take an aspirin.”
Kat bit her lip and looked at him. He was back with them, but the expression on his face was so sad she could hardly stand it.
“Ray,” she said, “your mother must have known about your fight with Leigh. It’s the only explanation for her attack on Leigh, and it’s wild enough.”
“I didn’t call her, Leigh,” Ray said. “I swear to you, I didn’t.”
Kat said, “Could she have been-eavesdropping at your house?”
“But I drove straight to Whittier like a bat out of hell and there she was,” Leigh said. “She couldn’t have beat me.” She looked at the table. “Then why? She must be mentally ill. But-”
