The Last Kind Words

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I took out the last photo of Kimmy and me together. We’re at Jones Beach. I’m grinning because I’m with her. I’m grinning because the latest set of burglary charges against me have been dropped due to insufficient evidence. I’m grinning because the night before I scored over a grand from Gilmore’s house while his wife and kids were out at the movies. He thought he was slick, keeping a chunk of skimmed cash at the bottom of an old cereal box. Always check the dates.

In the photo we’re happy. We’d been talking about getting married. Most of the hardness was out of Kimmy’s eyes by then. It would be another couple of weeks before she miscarried and the grief brought it back and shoved us apart. Another month before Collie would be found drinking beer at a corner dive called the Elbow Room, a trail of fire and blood behind him.

3

I woke to see my mother on the edge of the bed, staring at me with her hand pressed to my heart. She had a bad habit of doing that kind of thing.

Dawn sliced through the blinds. I blinked twice into the glare and she was there with the barest lilt to the edges of her mouth, hazel eyes intense and a little solemn. When I was a kid this had felt comforting. When I got older it started to spook me a bit. Right now it felt somewhere in between.

The pulse in her wrist beat back against the snap of my heart. The wash and pound of our blood made for a strange internal music. She shifted and with two fingers plied my gray patch.

“You get that from my side of the family,” she said. She shook out her auburn hair. She was using some kind of dye that brought out the red highlights.

I’d never met anyone from her side of the family. Apparently, after she and my father started becoming serious, her parents asked what kind of a boy he was. She told the truth. They ordered her to stop seeing him immediately. She showed up one last time to pack her belongings and found the pictures of her turned to the wall. She never went home adthith e shobed, stagain.

Except for that one story, she never spoke of them.

I realized with some surprise that I didn’t even know her maiden name. I always wondered why she hadn’t just covered and lied about my father’s occupation. Was it because she knew that the truth would eventually come out anyway? Because she had imagined Thanksgiving dinner at her parents’ house, everybody sitting down to the turkey and, just as the mashed potatoes were being passed around, the cops raiding the house? Her parents with their mouths half full of corn and yams being shoved up against the wall, frisked, billy-clubbed in the kidneys, cuffed, Freeze, dirtbag.

My mother remained a beautiful woman even at an age when such women were often called handsome. Her lips and chin had softened a bit more but she was still lovely, with a natural smile that always made you feel better.

“I started finding gray strands when I was in junior high. I went wild plucking them. My mother would find them all about the house and say, ‘Ellie, being bald is worse than having your face framed by silver.’ ” She curled more of my hair around her fingers. “Looks good on you, Terry, gives you character. If you’re hungry I’ll make you something.”

I was, but I shook my head. Sleep hadn’t done anything to wear away the tension in me. I wanted to burn it off a little. “It’s early.”

We spoke in whispers.

“I just wanted to look in on you.”

“You should go back to sleep.”

“So should you.”

“I’m used to getting up at dawn.”

“So am I. I have to check on Gramp. He sometimes wakes up early and doesn’t do anything but sit and stare until someone at least turns the television on for him. Kids’ shows, if you can believe it. He gets upset with anything else, but you put on cartoons and he settles.”

“Christ, he’s really that bad?”

“The doctors can’t do much. He’s too far gone with Alzheimer’s.” She shrugged, a lissome and graceful movement. “That and being shot in the head.”

“Well, yeah.”

My grandfather had been shot in the back of the head when he was sixteen, and the bullet had never been removed. You could feel the entrance wound, which had never fully scarred over. He’d made everybody do it at least once. When I brought Kimmy home for the first time, she’d grinned, pressed her purple-painted fingernail to his gunshot hole, and said, “If you think nasty thoughts about me now, Old Shep, I’ll know it. I’ll feel them.”

He claimed it never bothered him until he was in his sixties and the headaches started. They grew worse the older he got until they began to fade along with his mind. He’d been getting a touch forgetful and had just started walking in his sleep when I left.

I swung my legs out of bed.

“I’m glad you came back,” my mother said. “I’ve missed you. But I’m sorry it had to be like this.” She shut her eyes and worked her mouth silently for a moment before her voice caught traction. “I’m sorry it was for him.”

“It’s all right.”

“It &it “I#x2019;s not all right. He shouldn’t have… they… he…” She caught her breath and a sheen of tears brought out the flecks of gold in her eyes. “Sometimes I hate him like a poison. I think about what he’s done, what happened, and I wish… I wish they’d hurry up with it. And then I feel guilty for thinking it, and I remember who he is, that he’s my son, and that I love him, and I want him out of there, I want him home again, I want you all home again, and I think, I think…” Her face firmed. “It can never happen, and I’m glad for that. I’m glad we don’t talk about it, even though we’d all be better off if we would. Especially your father. Did he ask you anything?”

“No,” I said.

“Then I won’t either.”

“You can.”

“No, I won’t make you discuss it. You’re like all the Rands, you can’t talk about it. Sometimes I’d give my right tit for one of you to get in a gabby mood, be garrulous just for ten minutes.”

“Ma, listen to me.” I made myself form the words. “Collie, he wanted-”

“Shhh… it’s okay. Now that you’re done with him, you can-”

“I’m not done. He wants to see me again.”

“For what reason?”

“He’s got more to tell me.”

“Don’t listen.”

“I have to.”

“You don’t, and you shouldn’t.”

“I do, I have to.”

“Why?”

There was no way to start talking about it and then stop. You couldn’t just explain a piece of it, unwind one thread from the knot. The little girl, the strangled teen, the nights awake, the miles that lay behind.

My mother loved me enough not to expect an answer. She said, “I understand.”

“It wasn’t just Collie. It was time I came back anyway.”

“For Kimmy.”

“I don’t know.”

“Of course you do.”

Maybe I did. I wanted to ask her if she’d seen Kimmy, heard anything about her or her family. What she was doing, if she was married, if she was still in New York. My chest grew heavy with the number of questions I had, all