Ray starts to cry instead.
23
My phone buzzes and, like always, I grab it, hoping it’s Cassie wanting to come home. It’s not.
“What’s up, Mom?” I ask.
“Can you meet me at the cemetery?”
“Why?”
“Don’t play twenty questions, Nina, just meet me there.”
“It was just the one question.”
Silence on her end.
“Ok.”
When I get there, Mom is setting up one of the flower arrangements beside Dad’s redundant grave. I can hear her talking to him. I hang back, but I listen anyway.
“I’ve arranged flowers,” Mom says. “I’ve made masks. I took out the tarot cards but that just seemed silly. I’m running out of things to do, Nate. Your part of my life is over, and I’m at a loss for how to fill my time.”
I feel like an eavesdropper on everyone else’s life these days.
“I know things weren’t always easy between us,” Mom continues, unaware that I’m right behind her. “But they’re harder now than ever. I know you put on a face for me that wasn’t real. I know you pretended I didn’t spend years breaking your heart. I know all that. I hope you know I appreciated it.”
I clear my throat. I shouldn’t let her go on so personally and privately with an audience.
“Oh, Nina,” she says, her cheeks turning slightly pink. “Can you go back to the car and get the rose arrangement out of the trunk?”
“Sure, Mom.”
She starts talking again, and I know she’s talking to Dad and not me. She talks likes he’s sitting right there, but in that way you would talk to someone who was in a coma. The way you would talk when you felt at liberty to say everything you ever wanted to say, just the way you wanted to say it.
A memory of Lola in the hospital rushes up on me, and my legs get wobbly. This was the way Mom had talked to Lola when she was unconscious after the accident and no one really knew whether or not she would come back to us. It was good-bye talk. And it scared me sick.
It was the way I had talked to Dad in the nursing home when I’d pop by to see him and he was so drugged out that all he did was sleep. I sat by the bed and told him all the things that were happening with Jack and our efforts and failures to get pregnant and then about losing the baby.
I told him about Cassie and my job and how I knew even then both of those things were slipping away from me. At the time, I glossed over Cassie. I know now it was because the loss of her was the worst of it all. I could feel her pulling away, and I wasn’t doing anything to grab hold of her.
I told him I loved him and missed him. I said all the things I wanted to say when he was alive but never did, desperately hoping that he could hear me and that somehow, I could reach through the darkness and pull him back.
I open Mom’s trunk; it stinks of flowers. Stop and be overpowered by the roses. The arrangement is actually sort of pretty, and I wonder if maybe Mom has stumbled upon some hidden talent. I lift it out carefully and walk back to her. I set the arrangement on the other side of the headstone.
“So, imagine this—Ray is staying in town,” Mom says, and I almost think she’s talking to me. “He’s got a job and an apartment. I suspect something’s up, but I don’t know what that something is. I don’t care though. He’s here. He wanted to tell me about something he’s done, and one of my friends said they saw him on that internet, but I’m not going to look. It doesn’t make any difference to me what he’s done. He’s here. He’s back.”
Mom looks at me, suspecting that I know what the something is.
“No matter,” she says to Dad. “Ray feels awful that he didn’t get to say good-bye.”
“Mom,” I interrupt. “Did you need me?”
“Just a second, sweetie,” she says. “I’m catching Dad up on the news.”
I turn away, looking into the distance at the old section of the cemetery, out where Oliver had shown me our doppelganger graves. I half-expect Oliver to turn up again, but he doesn’t.
“Lola is doing well,” Mom is saying to Dad. “Keeping the gaps closed for the most part. It was worth it, wasn’t it? Oh, you will never guess who she’s dating—that guy from the insurance commercials. The ones with that ridiculous jingle and all the crazy stunts. Do you remember those? Or did they start airing after the stroke? I forget. He came to the funeral. Nina says he’s good to Lola. That’s all that matters.”
The cemetery is quiet, the way they somehow always are. Even nature seems reverent—or fearful, the difference is hard to negotiate sometimes.
“Speaking of Nina,” I hear Mom say, and I turn to face her.
“Nate,” she says, but she’s looking right at me. “Your eldest daughter is struggling.”
So here it is. This is the way that Mom can talk to me. I shouldn’t be surprised. Dad had often relayed messages and sentiments. Your mother wants you to know that she loves you. She didn’t mean to forget your ball game. It’s just with all the stress from Lola and everything, she gets overwhelmed. She’s human. We all are.
I look at Mom and raise an eyebrow.
This conversation is a long time coming, but now that it’s here, I’m not sure I’m ready for it.
“She and Jack finally went through with the divorce,” Mom tells Dad. “Cassie has been living with Jack. Nina lost her job and started dating that young guy you liked so much at the nursing home. You know the one I mean, that nice one who was always talking to your roommate, Mr. Cole. Sweet boy. She hasn’t brought him around though.”
“Mom?” I interrupt.
