In all the years I had been listening, I had pictured my mother as Dechtire and myself as Cuchulainn, victims of Fate living together on a magical glittering isle. And yet I had also seen the wisdom of the waiting Ulster chieftain. I had never stopped thinking that maybe one day my mother was coming back to us too.
My father finished and patted my hand. “I’ve missed you, Paige,” he said. He stood up then and left. I blinked at the pale ceiling. I wondered what it was like to have the best of both worlds. I wondered what it might be like to feel the smooth tiles of the sun god’s palace beneath my running feet, to grow up in his afterglow.
Armed with the wedding photo and all of my mother’s history, I waved goodbye to my father and got into my car. I waited until he disappeared behind the peach door curtain, and then I sank my head against the wheel. Now what was I going to do?
I wanted to find a detective, someone who wouldn’t laugh at me for picking up a missing persons search twenty years after the fact. I wanted to find someone who wouldn’t charge me too much. But I didn’t have the slightest idea where to look.
As I drove down the street, Saint Christopher’s loomed on my left. I had not been into a church in eight years; Max hadn’t even been baptized. This had surprised Nicholas at the time. “I thought you were just a lapsed Catholic,” he said, and I told him I no longer believed in God. “We wan€ eill,” he had said, raising his eyebrows. “For once we see eye to eye.”
I parked the car and pulled myself up the smooth stone steps of the church. Several older women were in the left aisle, waiting for a confessional to become vacant. As the minutes passed, the curtains drew back one at a time, spitting out sinners who had yet to cleanse their souls.
I walked down the central aisle of the church, the one I’d always believed I’d walk down as a bride. I sat in the first pew. The stained glass cast a rippled puddle at my feet, the dappled image of John the Baptist. I frowned at it, wondering how I had seen only the splendor of the blues and greens when I was growing up, how I never noticed that the window really blocked out the sun.
I had given up my religion, just as I told Nicholas, but that didn’t mean it had given up on me. It was a two-way street: just because I chose not to pray to Jesus and the Virgin Mary didn’t mean they were going to let me go without a fight. So even though I didn’t attend Mass, even though I hadn’t been to confession in almost a decade, God was still following me. I could feel Him like a whisper at my shoulder, telling me it wasn’t as easy as I thought to renounce my faith. I could hear Him smiling gently when, in moments of crisis-like Max’s nosebleed-I automatically called out to Him. It only made me angrier to know that no matter how forcefully I pushed Him out of my head, I had little choice in the matter. He was still charting my course; He was still pulling the strings.
I knelt, thinking I should look the part, but I did not let prayers form on my lips. Almost directly in front of me was the statue of the Virgin I’d wreathed as May Queen.
The mother of Christ. There aren’t that many blessed women in Catholicism, so when I was a child she was my idol. I always prayed to her. And like every other little Catholic girl, I figured that if I was perfectly good for the twelve or so years left in my childhood, I’d grow up to be just like her. Once on Halloween I had even dressed up as her, wearing a blue mantle and a heavy cross, but nobody knew who I was supposed to be. I imagined Mary to be very peaceful and very beautiful-after all, God had chosen her to bear His son. But the thing I loved best about her was that her place in heaven was guaranteed simply because she’d been the mother of someone very special, and sometimes I’d borrow her from Jesus, pretending that she was sitting on the edge of my bed at night, asking me what I’d done in school that day.
I seemed to know so much about mothers in the abstract. I remembered when I had learned during a social studies unit in fifth grade that baby monkeys, given the choice, picked terry-cloth figures to cling to, rather than wire ones. Once, in a doctor’s waiting room, I had read of coyotes, who howl if their cubs get lost, knowing they will find their way home by the signal. I wondered if Max would be able to find safety in my voice. I wondered if after all these years I’d be able to pick out my mother’s.
Out of the corner of my eye I saw a familiar priest heading toward the altar. I did not want to be recognized and shamed into penance. I ducked my head and pushed past him in the aisle, shivering as my shoulder caught the strength of his faith.
I drove away from Saint Christoph lin€verer’s to the place where I knew I’d have to go before I left to find my mother. Even as I approached the Mobil station, I could see him from a distance. Jake was handing a credit card back to a buttoned-down lawyer type, taking care not to brush his blackened hand against his customer’s. The man drove away in his Fiat, leaving a space for me.
Jake did not move as I pulled my car up beside the unleaded tank and got out. “Hello,” I said. He clenched and then unclenched his fingers. He was wearing a wedding band, and this made my stomach burn, even though I was wearing one too. It was all right for me to go on, but I somehow had expected Jake to be just the way he had been when I left.
I swallowed and put on my brightest smile. “Well,” I said, “I can tell you’re overwhelmed to see me.”
Jake spoke then, his voice running and low as I had remembered it. “I didn’t know you were back,” he said.
“I didn’t know I was coming.” I took a step away from him, shielding my eyes from the sun. The facade of the garage had been updated with fresh paint and a sign that said, “Jake Flanagan, Proprietor.” I turned back to Jake.
“He died,” Jake said quietly, “three years ago.”
The air between us was humming, but I kept my distance. “I’m sorry,” I said. “No one told me.”
Jake looked at the car, which was dusty from its long drive. “How much do you want?” he said, lifting the nozzle from its cradle.
I stared at him blankly. He unscrewed the cap. “Oh, the car,” I said. “Fill it.”
Jake nodded and started the pump. He leaned against the hot metal door, and I watched his hands, restrained in their strength. Grease had settled into the creases in his palms, the way it used to. “What are you doing now?” he asked. “Still drawing?”
I smiled at the ground. “I’m an escape artist,” I said.
“Like Houdini?”
“Yeah,” I said, “but the knots and cuffs are stronger.”
Jake didn’t look at me when the pump switched off. He held out his hand, and I gave him my credit card.
I had expected the familiar physical jolt that had always flared between us when our fingers touched. But nothing happened. Nothing at all. I wasn’t looking for passion, and I knew I wasn’t in love with Jake. I was married to Nicholas. I was where I was supposed to be. But somehow I expected there to be a little something left from before. I looked into Jake’s face, and his aqua eyes were cool and reserved. Yes, he seemed to be saying,
When he came back a minute later, he asked if I’d come into the office for a moment. My heart caught; maybe he was going to say something to me or let down his guard. But he took me to the machirenn€ cane that validated credit cards. My American Express card had been rejected. “That’s impossible,” I murmured, and I handed him a Visa. “Try this.”
The same thing happened. Without asking Jake’s permission, I picked up the telephone and dialed the emergency 800 number on the back of my credit card. The operator informed me that Nicholas Prescott had voided his old Visa card and that a new one, with a new number, was being sent to his address. I put the receiver down on the counter and shook my head. “My husband,” I said. “He just cut me off.”
I mentally ran through the amount of cash I had left, the chances of my checks being accepted out-of-state. What if I didn’t have enough to find my mother? What if I
When he came back he sat beside me. There was gray in his hair now, just at the temples, and it still hung over his eyes and curled at the edges of his ears. He lifted my chin, and in his touch I felt that easy camaraderie I had felt when I was his favorite little sister. “So, Paige O’Toole,” he said, “what brings you back to Chicago?”
As he drew the outline I filled in with chiseled images and stories the past eight years of my life. I had just told him about Max falling off the couch and getting a nosebleed, when the glass door jingled and a young woman came in. She had dark, exotic skin and eyes that tilted up. She was wearing a tie-died cotton jumper, and she carried a
