Mystery

He went to the sink and turned on the hot water. Behind his back, Gloria moved around the kitchen turning on the kettle, rattling the cups, opening a box of tea. She seemed to be moving very slowly, and he thought that she was watching him busy himself with the pile of dirty dishes. He heard her pour hot water into the cup and sit down again with a sigh. Then he could not stand the silence any longer, and said, “Mr. Handley wanted me to come to his place after school yesterday, to show me some rare books. But I thought he really wanted to talk to me.”

She uttered some indistinct sound.

“I thought that you asked him to talk to me. Because of my scrapbook.” He turned from the sink. His mother was slumped over the cup of tea with her bright hair hanging like a screen before her face. “There isn’t anything to worry about, Mom.”

“Where does he live?” The question seemed to bore her, as if she had asked it only to fill a space in the conversation.

“Out near Goethe Park, but we didn’t get to his place.”

She brushed back her hair and looked heavily up at him.

“I got sick—dizzy. I couldn’t go any farther. He drove me home.”

“You were out on Calle Burleigh?”

He nodded.

“That’s where you had your accident. I suppose … you know. Unpleasant memories.”

She took in his start—Tom nearly dropped the dish he was drying—with an expression of grim confirmation. “Don’t think that things like that go away. They don’t, let me tell you.” She sighed again, and seemed to tremble. She snatched up the cup of hot tea and bent over it so that again the bright curtain of her hair fell to hide her face. Tom still felt as if the insight she had casually tossed his way had knocked the breath out of his body. He had a quick, mysterious mental glimpse of a fat old woman yelling “Cornerboy!” at him and knew that he had actually seen her on the day of his accident. The world had cracked open to let him peek beneath its crust, then sealed itself shut again. Down below the surface was an angry old woman waving her fist, what else?

An instant before he realized that his mother was crying, he caught, like a sharp, distant odor, the urgent, driven feeling of that day. Then he noticed that his mother had curled down even further into herself, and that her shoulders were shaking.

He wiped his hands on his trousers and moved toward her. She was crying soundlessly, and when he reached her, she pressed her napkin to her eyes and forced herself to be still.

Tom’s hand hovered over the nape of his mother’s neck: he could not tell if she would allow him to touch her. Finally he permitted his hand to come down softly on her neck.

“I’m so sorry that happened to you,” she said. “Do you ever blame me?”

“Blame you?” He pulled a chair nearer and sat beside her. A tingle passed through his body with the realization that his mother was really talking to him.

“You couldn’t say I was much of a mother.” Gloria wiped her eyes with her napkin and sent him a look of such rueful self-awareness that she seemed momentarily like another person altogether: a person he seldom saw, the mother who really was present from time to time, who could see him because she could see out of herself. “I never wanted anything bad to happen to you, and I couldn’t protect you, and you were nearly killed.” She wadded the napkin in her lap.

“Nothing was your fault,” Tom said. “And after all, it was a long time ago.”

“You think that makes a difference?” Now she appeared slightly irritated with him. He felt her focus move away from him, and the person she might have been began to fade out of her face. Then he felt her make a conscious effort of concentration. “I remember when you were little,” she said, and she actually smiled at him. Her hands were still. “You were so beautiful, looking at you sometimes made me cry—I couldn’t stop looking at you— sometimes I thought I’d just melt, looking at you. You were perfect—you were my child.” Gloria slowly reached for his hand and touched it almost shyly. Then she drew her hand back. “I felt so incredibly lucky to be your mother.”

The look on his face caused her to turn away and buy a moment of self-possession by sipping her tea. He could not see her face.

“Oh, Mom,” he said.

“Just don’t forget I said this,” she said. “It’s the truth. I hate being the way I am.”

What he needed, how much he needed it, made him lean toward her, hoping that she would hug him or at least touch him again. Her body seemed rigid, almost angry, but he did not think that she could be angry now.

“Mom?”

She turned her head sideways and showed him her ruined face. Her hair dripped across her cheek, and a strand clung to her lip. She looked like an oracle, and Tom froze before the significance of whatever she was going to say.

Then she blinked. “You want to know something else?”

He could not move.

“I’m happy you’re not a girl,” she said. “If I had a daughter, I’d drown the little bitch.”

Tom got to his feet so quickly he nearly overturned his chair, and in seconds was out of the room.

The day crawled by. Gloria Pasmore spent the afternoon in her bedroom listening to her old records—Benny Goodman, Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Glenroy Breakstone and the Targets—lying on the bed with her eyes closed and smoking one cigarette after another. Victor Pasmore left the television set only to go to the bathroom. By four- thirty he had passed out, and lay back in his recliner with his mouth open, snoring, in front of another baseball game. Tom took another chair, and for thirty minutes watched men whose names he did not know relentlessly score points against another team. He wondered what Sarah Spence was doing, what Mr. von Heilitz was doing behind his curtained windows.

At five o’clock he got out of the chair to change the channel to the local news. Victor stirred and blinked in his chair, and woke up enough to grope for the glass of watery yellow liquid beside the recliner. “What about the game?”

“Can we see the news?”

Victor swallowed warm whiskey and water, groaned at the taste, and closed his eyes again.

Loud theme music, an even louder commercial for Deepdale Estates on Lake Deepdale, which was “another Eagle Lake, only two miles away and twice as affordable!”

Tom’s father snorted in genial contempt.

A man with short blond hair and thick-rimmed glasses smiled into the camera and said, “Things may be breaking on the island’s most shocking murder in decades, the death of Marita Hasselgard, only sister of Finance Minister Friedrich Hasselgard, who also figures in today’s news.”

Tom said “Hey!” and sat up straight.

“Police Captain Fulton Bishop reported today that an anonymous source has given police valuable information leading to the whereabouts of Miss Hasselgard’s murderer. Captain Bishop has informed our reporters that the slayer of Marita Hasselgard, Foxhall Edwardes, is a recently released former inmate of the Long Bay Holding Facilities and a habitual offender. Mr. Edwardes was released from Long Bay the day before the slaying of Miss Hasselgard.” The picture of a surly, wide-faced man with tight curling hair appeared on the screen.

“Hey,” Tom said, in a different tone of voice.

“Whuzza big deal?” his father asked.

“…  many convictions for burglary, threatening behavior, petty larceny, and other crimes. Edwardes’ last conviction was for armed robbery. He is thought to be in hiding in the Weasel Hollow district, which has been cordoned off by police until searches have been completed. Motorists and carriage traffic are advised to use the Bigham Road cutoff until further notice. I’m sure that all of you join us in hoping for a speedy resolution of this matter.” He looked down at his desk, turned over a page, and looked up at the camera again. “In a related story, grief-stricken Finance Minister Friedrich Hasselgard is reported missing in heavy seas off the island’s western coast. Minister Hasselgard apparently took out his vessel, the Mogrom’s Fortune, for a solitary sail around the island at roughly three o’clock this afternoon, after hearing of the imminent capture of his sister’s murderer. He is believed to have been overtaken by a sudden squall in the Devil’s Pool area, and radio contact was lost soon after the squall began.” The newscaster’s eyes flicked down toward the desk again. “In a moment, traffic from our overhead observer, Ted Weatherhead’s weather, and sports with Joe Ruddier.”