The Last Kind Words

“I’m not the one cracking beers with Manson,” I said. She laughed and I pressed my lips to her forehead and cut out.

I caught a few hours’ sleep at home. I woke up late, almost nine A.M. I showered and came downstairs feeling refreshed but a little out of sorts. A lot had happened yesterday and I hadn’t had any time to sort through it.

My mother was cleaning dishes. All she seemed to do was cook and clean dishes and stuff Old Shep with cereal. She was making a big breakfast for the family but no one was around. She said, “Sit. In ten minutes I’ll have pancakes and scrambled eggs. But no bacon, we’re out of bacon.”

“Don’t bother with it, Ma.”

“It’s no bother.”

“Have you eaten yet?” I asked.

“Of course I have. All I do is eat.”

My mother, beautiful as she was, looked tired and too thin to me. The morning light caught in her auburn hair, the red highlights blazing. She gave a soft smile. She was worried about me. She had always worried about me, but now I was back under her roof, within reach. She would share my burden willingly.

“Ma, coffee is good. Leave the-”

“You talk like I need to get to the office, Terrier. As if I have to check my daily organizer first to see if I can fit in making a meal for my son. Sit, drink some milk, eat.” She enjoyed waiting on her children. I knew that every time she turned around and looked at the kitchen table, she’d see Collie in his usual place opposite me.

She poured me a glass of milk and stirred pancake batter. I thought, There’s plenty of money. They could put Gramp in a home. They could hire a nurse. “Did you have a good time with Grey?”

“Yes,” I said, but I’d hesitated a half second too long.

“What happened? Trouble?”

“No. Is he here?”

“No. He stayed out last night.”

“He set me up on a double date. That reporter and a journalist friend of hers.”

“That Vicky.” She nodded and stirred eggs around in one pan with a spatula, then flipped a huge pancake in another. “You’d think he suddenly wanted to be in the limelight, for them to write about us again, after all this time. Maybe he does. It’s attention, and he loves attention. Did they give you a hard time, asking questions?”

“Nothing I couldn’t handle.”

“He should know better.”

“He does know better, but I think he genuinely likes her.”

“Grey doesn’t genuinely like anybody. But she is young, and thare & an an T#t’s a powerful bouquet to a man like him.”

“Who’s ‘a man like him’?” I asked.

“An older man who can’t let go of his own youth, who’s preoccupied by the past. He acts like he’s twenty. Too much silk and not enough sand.”

“Do women like sand?”

“Women love sand.”

“Well, he’s got style anyway.”

“He looks foolish running around with dim girls like that Vicky.”

I’d never heard her say anything like that before. I drank my milk. My mother finished cooking and set the food down in front of me. She pressed syrup in my direction. She didn’t sit but started cleaning up immediately. I wondered about the grandparents I never knew. I tried to imagine what would have happened if my mother had listened to them and stopped seeing my father. She’d be married to a stockbroker and be vacationing every year in Saint-Tropez.

When she’d drained the sink and folded her gloves neatly across the drainboard, I asked, “Why don’t you and Dad ever travel?”

“Travel?” The word appeared to be poisonous in her mouth. “What do you mean? Where would we go?”

“I don’t know. Anywhere.”

“Why would I want to go anywhere?” she asked. It was a genuine question.

“People do. They go on vacation. They visit Europe.”

“But what would we do in Europe?”

“I don’t know what you would do in Europe, Ma. You’d be a tourist. You’d eat European foods. You’d see the sights of the world. The Coliseum. The Eiffel Tower. Go look at the Rhine.”

She pulled a face like I’d just suggested the silliest thing she’d ever heard. Maybe I had. Either way the topic was dead.

She said, “I need you to run to the store for me.”

She handed me a list of items she needed. A lot of green leafy vegetables, bottles of vitamins, ginkgo biloba, and fish oil. Plenty of chicken. Turkey burgers. Salmon. A frozen turkey. I knew I should get used to eating this stuff.

She also had listed a lot of munchies. Potato chips, cocktail peanuts, candy, and mint chocolate chip ice cream, which was my favorite. “I don’t eat this crap anymore, Ma.”

“You’re too thin. Here.” She tried to shove money into my hand but I refused to take it.

“I’ve got it, Ma.”

“Don’t steal the groceries.”

“I’m not going to steal groceries.”

She squinted at me. “I still have to shop there.”

“I’m not going to steal the goddamn groceries.”

I drove over to the market. Out in front were those same nickel rides that had been in the strip mall by Wes’s place. These I’d ridden myself twenty years ago. A rocket ship that went up and down, beeping with lights blinking. Kids were tugged past by their parents. I flashed on Scooter giggling excitedly, with me cheering her on. I thought of Kimmy and Chub bringing her to the Mother Cabrini Feast. It was a tradition when wkne?e were kids, fronted by St. John’s Church. A second-rate carnival that still seemed like something special. Chub and I used to warn the rubes away from the worst of the rigged games.

It took me twenty minutes to get everything on my mother’s list. I hated boiled cabbage, but I would start eating it. I would have to. I picked up bottles of vitamin A and C and E. Flaxseed. They all helped with memory and cognitive function. I’d have to learn to start taking them.

I paid and carried out the bags. I got to the car and was halfway through loading the groceries in the trunk when I saw Higgins coming for me.

Fingers had been too tight to hire another goon. He really should’ve sprung for somebody better, like I’d told him.

Higgins had no cool. He’d taken our fracas too personally and his anger made him stupid. He hadn’t given his foot time to heal. His face was swollen with bruises, and his lip was badly split. He came gimping along on an intercept course with a Glock held down tight against his leg. His new sunglasses burned like twin camera flashes in the sunlight. There were kids around, families walking to their cars.

He started to raise his gun. He wasn’t going to make any kind of a speech or take the time to get off a wiseass tough-guy phrase. He just wanted me iced. I was a little surprised by his single-mindedness.

I did the only thing I could do. I hurled the frozen turkey at him.

It was a huge twenty-five-pounder. It struck him high on the shoulder and I heard his collarbone snap. The pain was so intense he couldn’t quite scream. A choked groan stuck in his throat, his mouth open as he tried to suck air through the agony. His arm went dead and he dropped the pistol. I was shocked it didn’t go off.

I made it to him in three steps and hooked him twice under the heart, then put a forearm into his face. His glasses broke and flew off. I hadn’t noticed before that his eyes were beady and black and too close together. No wonder he kept them covered. I grabbed the gun and dragged him into the space between my car and the one parked next to me. I reached into his back pocket and came up with his blackjack and put him out.

He’d be unconscious for hours. I stuck him in the passenger seat and grabbed up the dropped groceries. At first I was surprised as hell that no one had seen anything, but then I realized the fight had lasted no more than twenty seconds. I pulled out and drove over to the mall, parked close to the main doors, and started roaming various stores and shops. Within twenty minutes I’d clipped three wallets from daddy fat cats who didn’t look the type to ever be