Maureen suddenly noticed that her fingers ached with cold. She blew on them, flexed them, and slipped them back into her gloves. She dusted lichen off her butt. The ice-coated trees crackled with the passing wind. She walked out, unseeing, through her crystal palace, chewing at a fabric of impossibilities and lies.
Magic.
Mystery.
Glamours.
God...damn...Brian!
Chapter Six
"Hello?"
"Hi, Mom, it's Jo."
The phone sputtered like an AM radio, nearly drowning out her mother's voice. She could hang up and try again, or just put up with it. That was the famous Verizon service: it cost more to call Lewiston than Seattle, due to the jacked-up in-state long distance charges. And then she still couldn't get a decent connection.
"Everything okay there?"
Mom's generation assumed a long-distance call meant somebody was dead or dying. Otherwise, you'd write.
"Yeah, sure, I'm fine. How's Dad?"
The pause hung over the line, at about a buck a minute. So Dad wasn't fine. Or he was too fine, in Mom's opinion.
"He's off on another business trip. You know how this new job is."
Yeah. Days in sales offices, evenings in bars, nights in hotel rooms with the random whore. Jo thought that if Mom gave him what he needed at home, he wouldn't drink as much, sleep around as much. But he'd still hit her. The more things changed . . . .
"Mom, it's about Maureen."
Now the silence was deafening. She'd better bull right ahead with it, get it over with. As if she didn't know exactly how it would end.
"She's talking to trees again."
Jo heard more crackling and a whining hiss like a B-grade Sci-Fi movie.
"Mom, you still there?"
"Yes, honey. I don't know what to say. You know she's always been different."
Jo shook her head. Different was one way to put it. Paranoid schizophrenia also came to mind.
"Mom, she was dead drunk, passed out half in her bed when I left for work this morning. When I came back, she'd been out to the woods and talked to her sacred grove. She hit me with another one of her rants. You know how she shoots off her mouth when she's having one of her spells. This time she threw in some crap about witches following her around, even told me a wizard had laid his hands on that junk Toyota of hers and told her how to fix it. I think she's been mixing her drugs again. You see about that fire last night?"
"Oh, dear. Was she downtown when that broke out?"
"Says she was there when it happened, a goddamn strip club! Says it was started by a battle between warlocks."
"Oh."
That was it, just the single syllable. It might be the understatement of the year.
"Mom, I'm scared. David stayed over again last night. Now she's ranting and raving about how I stole her boyfriend. You know how she is about men."
Silence, again. Jo squared her shoulders as if facing a firing squad, waiting for Catholic Mom Lecture Number 25.
"Jo, you shouldn't let a man stay overnight. It's a sin. Sex is for marriage, for children. Have you gone to confession?"
"Mom!"
"Dear, I'm worried about you."
"Worry about Maureen. You know that damned gun Dad got for her? She carries it everywhere she goes. Loaded. God above, I swear she takes it to the shower with her. Why'n hell did Dad ever give that thing to her?"
"Jo, you know he wants her to be safe. She was working nights . . . ."
"Mom, just how safe do you think life is, behind bars in the Women's Center down at Pownal? How safe is it in the Maximum-Security wing over at the crazy house? She's going to shoot somebody, and I'm sure as hell not going to jail to keep an eye on her!"
"Jo, you shouldn't swear like that."
Jo shook her head. If Mom ever heard sweet little Maureen's language . . . . You'd think she'd trained in longshoreman's school, spent four years in the army rather than in college.
"Look, Momma, Maureen is nuts! We all know that. She's dangerous. Can't we get her into treatment again? Make her take that new medicine? I tell you, I'm scared of her. Next time she starts in on me, I'm going to kick her out of here. Before she shoots me."
Jo listened to Verizon static for about a minute.
"Jo?"
"Yes."
"Jo, you know we can't force her into treatment. She's an adult. I can't control her any more. Do you want me meddling in your life? I don't approve of the way you live, either. Please, keep an eye on your sister. Please?"
Jo sighed.
"Mom, how many clinics has she been in? How many different psychiatrists and faith healers and just plain quacks has she seen? Not a damn one of them has helped. And you want me to straighten her out?"
"Jo, please?"
"Momma, I've been watching out for Maureen for twenty years. I went to tech school. She went to college. I've got a good job. She works part-time for minimum wage. I pay the rent and utilities. She sometimes buys food. More often, she buys whiskey. She practically pees her pants if a man comes within twenty feet of her, but when I meet a guy I'd maybe like to marry, she accuses me of stealing him from her. I've just about had it with my baby sister! When do I get to have a life?"
Silence filled the wires again. Jo chewed on her lip until her mother's voice came back, weary with the distance.
"Jo, God gives us burdens to carry. Your father is mine. Maureen is yours. All I can say is, pray for strength. She won't be heavier than you can carry. Good will come of it."
"Momma, I'm just about ready to tell God to carry his own sack of groceries. And if Dad hits you again, I'd suggest you do the same. I just don't give a cold-assed damn about that chunk of theological bullshit."
"Jo!"
"Sorry, Momma, but that's the way it is. I've had it. She's your
