Later

9

As we approached the unmarked police car (I knew what it was, I’d seen it lots of times, parked in front of our building with the sign reading POLICE OFFICER ON CALL on the dash), Liz held open the side of her parka to show me her empty shoulder holster. This was a kind of joke between us. No guns around my son, that was Mom’s hard and fast rule. Liz always showed me the empty holster when she was wearing it, and I’d seen it plenty of times on the coffee table in our living room. Also on the night table on the side of the bed my mother didn’t use, and by the age of nine, I had a pretty good idea of what that meant. Death Swamp of Roanoke included some steamy stuff going on between Laura Good-hugh and Purity Betancourt, the widow of Martin Betancourt (pure she wasn’t).

“What’s she doing here?” I asked Mom when we got to the car. Liz was right there, so I guess it was an impolite thing to say, if not downright rude, but I had just been jerked out of class and been told before we even got outside that our meal ticket had been revoked.

“Get in, Champ,” Liz said. She always called me Champ. “Time’s a-wasting.”

“I don’t want to. We’re having fish sticks for lunch.”

“Nope,” Liz said, “we’re having Whoppers and fries. I’m buying.”

“Get in,” my mother said. “Please, Jamie.”

So I got in the back. There were a couple of Taco Bell wrappers on the floor and a smell that might have been microwave popcorn. There was also another smell, one I associated with our visits to Uncle Harry in his various care homes, but at least there was no metal grill between the back and the front, like I’d seen on some of the police shows Mom watched (she was partial to The Wire).

Mom got in front and Liz pulled out, pausing at the first red light to turn on the dashboard flasher. It went blip-blip-blip, and even without any siren, cars moved out of her way and we were on the FDR lickety-split.

My mother turned around and looked at me from between the seats with an expression that scared me. She looked desperate. “Could he be at his house, Jamie? I’m sure they’ve taken his body away to the morgue or the funeral parlor, but could he still be there?”

The answer to that was I didn’t know, but I didn’t say that or anything else at first. I was too amazed. And hurt. Maybe even mad, I don’t remember for sure about that, but the amazement and hurt I remember very well. She had told me never to tell anybody about seeing dead people, and I never had, but then she did. She told Liz. That was why Liz was here, and would soon be using her blipping dashboard light to shift traffic out of our way on the Sprain Brook Parkway.

At last I said, “How long has she known?”

I saw Liz wink at me in the rearview mirror, the kind of wink that said we’ve got a secret. I didn’t like it. It was Mom and me who were supposed to have the secret.

Mom reached over the seat and grasped me by the wrist.

Her hand was cold. “Never mind that, Jamie, just tell me if he could still be there.”

“Yeah, I guess. If that’s where he died.”

Mom let go of me and told Liz to go faster, but Liz shook her head.

“Not a good idea. We might pick up a police escort, and they’d want to know what the big deal was. Am I supposed to tell them we need to talk to a dead guy before he disappears?” I could tell by the way she said it that she didn’t believe a word of what Mom had told her, she was just humoring her. Joshing her along. That was okay with me. As for Mom, I don’t think she cared what Liz thought, as long as she got us to Croton-on-Hudson.

“As fast as you can, then.”

“Roger that, Tee-Tee.” I never liked her calling Mom that, it’s what some kids in my class called having to go to the bathroom, but Mom didn’t seem to mind. On that day she wouldn’t have cared if Liz called her Bonnie Boobsalot. Probably wouldn’t even have noticed.

“Some people can keep secrets and some people can’t,” I said. I couldn’t help myself. So I guess I was mad.

“Stop it,” my mother said. “I can’t afford to have you sulking.”

“I’m not sulking,” I said sulkily.

I knew she and Liz were tight, but she and I were supposed to be even tighter. She could have at least asked me what I thought about the idea before spilling our greatest secret some night when she and Liz were in bed after climbing what Regis Thomas called “the ladder of passion.”

“I can see you’re upset, and you can be pissed off at me later, but right now I need you, kiddo.” It was like she had forgotten Liz was there, but I could see Liz’s eyes in the rearview mirror and knew she was listening to every word.

“Okay.” She was scaring me a little. “Chill, Mom.”

She ran her hand through her hair and gave her bangs a yank for good measure. “This is so unfair. Everything that’s happened to us… that’s still happening… is so fucking fucked up!” She ruffled my hair. “You didn’t hear that.”

“Yes I did,” I said. Because I was still mad, but she was right. Remember what I said about being in a Dickens novel, only with swears? You know why people read books like that? Because they’re so happy that fucked-up shit isn’t happening to them.

“I’ve been juggling bills for two years now and never dropped a single one. Sometimes I had to let the little ones go to pay the big ones, sometimes I let the big ones go to pay a bunch of little ones, but the lights stayed on and we never missed a meal. Right?”

“Yeah yeah yeah,” I said, thinking it might raise a smile. It didn’t.

“But now…” She gave her bangs another yank, leaving them all clumpy. “Now half a dozen things have come due at once, with goddam Infernal Revenue leading the pack. I’m drowning in a sea of red ink and I was expecting Regis to save me. Then the son of a bitch dies! At the age of fifty-nine! Who dies at fifty-nine if they’re not a hundred pounds overweight or using drugs?”

“People with cancer?” I said.

Mom gave a watery snort and yanked her poor bangs.

“Easy, Tee,” Liz murmured. She laid her palm against the side of Mom’s neck, but I don’t think Mom felt it.

“The book could save us. The book, the whole book, and nothing but the book.” She gave a wild laugh that scared me even more. “I know he only had a couple of chapters done, but nobody else knows it, because he didn’t talk to anybody but my brother before Harry got sick and now me. He didn’t outline or keep notes, Jamie, because he said it straitjacketed the creative process. Also because he didn’t have to. He always knew where he was going.”

She took my wrist again and squeezed so hard she left bruises. I saw them later that night.

“He still might know.”