I felt sick. I had no trouble believing it, seeing it. I saw it all too clearly. And I understood why she never told me about this, had simply, kindly, refrained. 'So you left me there.'
'I hadn't really intended to. I dropped you at her house just for the afternoon, to go to the beach with some friends, and one thing led to another, they had some friends down in Ensenada, and I went, and it felt wonderful, Astrid. To be free! You can't imagine. To go to the bathroom by myself. To take a nap in the afternoon. To make love all day long if I wanted, and walk on the beach, and not to have to think, where's Astrid? What's Astrid doing? What's she going to get into? And not having you on me all the time, Mommy Mommy Mommy, clinging to me, like a spider...'
She shuddered. She still remembered my touch with revulsion. It made me dizzy with hatred. This was my mother. The woman who raised me. What chance could I ever have had.
'How long were you gone?' My voice sounded flat and dead in my own ears.
'A year,' she said quietly. 'Give or take a few months.'
And I believed it. Everything in my body told me that was right. All those nights, waiting for her to come home, listening for her key in the lock. No wonder. No wonder they had to tear me away from her when I started school. No wonder I always worried she was going to leave me one night. She already had.
'But you're asking the wrong question,' she said. 'Don't ask me why I left. Ask me why I came back.'
A truck with a four-horse trailer rattled up the road toward the highway. We could smell the horses, see their sleek rumps over the rear gate, and I thought about that day at the races, Medea's Pride.
'You should have been sterilized.'
Suddenly she was up, pinning me by my shoulders to the tree trunk. Her eyes were a sea in fog. 'I could have left you there, but I didn't. Don't you understand? For once, I did the right thing. For you.'
I was supposed to forgive her now, but it was too late. I would not say my line. 'Bully. For. You,' I replied dryly.
She wanted to slap me, but she couldn't. They'd end the visit right now. I lifted my head, knowing the white scars were gleaming.
She dropped her grip on my arms. 'You were never like this before,' she said. 'You're so hard. Susan told me, but I thought it was just a pose. You've lost yourself, your dreaminess, that tender quality.'
I stared at her, not letting her look away. We were the same height, eye to eye, but I was bigger-boned, I probably could have beaten her in a fair fight. 'I would have thought you'd approve. Wasn't that the thing you hated about Claire? Her tenderness? Be strong, you said. I despise weakness.'
'I wanted you to be strong, but intact,' she said. 'Not this devastation. You're like a bomb site. You frighten me.'
I smiled. I liked the idea that I frightened her. The tables were truly turned. 'You, the great Ingrid Magnussen, goddess of September fires, Saint Santa Ana, ruler over life and death?'
She reached out her hand, as if to touch my face, like a blind woman, but she couldn't reach me. I would burn her if she touched me. The hand stayed in the air, hovering in front of my face. I saw, she was afraid. 'You were the one thing that was entirely good in my life, Astrid. Since I came back for you, we 've never been apart, not until this.'
'The murder, you mean.'
'No, this. You, now.' The gesture, the attempt to reach me, faded like sunset. 'You know, when I came back, you knew me. You were sitting there by the door when I came in. You looked up, and you smiled and reached for me to pick you up. As if you were waiting for me.'
I wanted to cut through this moment with the blue flame of an acetylene torch. I wanted to burn it to ash and scatter it into the wind, so the pieces would never come back together again. 'I was always waiting for you, Mother. It's the constant in my life. Waiting for you. Will you come back, will you forget that you've tied me up in front of a store, left me on the bus?'
The hand came out again. Tentatively, but this time it lightly touched my hair. 'Are you still?'
'No,' I said, brushing her hand away. 'I stopped when Claire showed me what it felt like to be loved.'
Now she looked tired, every day of forty-nine years. She picked up her shoes. 'Is there anything else you want? Have I fulfilled my end of the bargain?'
'Do you ever regret what you've done?'
The expression in her eyes was bitter as nightshade. 'You ask me about regret? Let me tell you a few things about regret, my darling. There is no end to it. You cannot find the beginning of the chain that brought us from there to here. Should you regret the whole chain, and the air in between, or each link separately, as if you could uncouple them? Do you regret the beginning which ended so badly, or just the ending itself? I've given more thought to this question than you can begin to imagine.'
I never thought I'd hear the day my mother, Ingrid Magnussen, would admit to regret. Now that she stood in front of me, shaking with it, I couldn't think of anything to say. It was like watching a river run backwards.
We stood there staring out at the empty road.
'What are you going to do when you get out?' I asked her. 'Where are you going to go?'
She wiped the sweat off her face with the collar of her dress. Secretaries and office workers and COs were coming out of the brick administration building. They leaned into the hot wind, holding their skirts down, heading for lunch, a nice air-conditioned Coco's or Denny's. When they saw me with my mother, they drew closer together, talking among themselves. She was already a celebrity, I could see it. We watched them start up their cars. I knew she imagined herself with those keys in her hand, accelerator, gas tank marked Full.
She sighed. 'By the time Susan is done, I'll be a household icon, like Aunt Jemima, the Pillsbury Doughboy. I'll have my choice of teaching positions. Where would you like to go, Astrid?' She glanced at me, smiled, my carrot. Reminding me which end of the plank and so on.
'That's years away,' I said.
