Later

51

When I got home, my mother was making salmon the way we like it, wrapped in wet paper towels and steamed in the microwave. You wouldn’t think anything so easy could taste good, but it does.

“Right on time,” she said. “There’s a bag-salad Caesar. Will you put it together for me?”

“Okay.” I got it out of the fridge—the icebox—and opened the bag.

“Don’t forget to wash it. The bag says it’s already been washed, but I never trust that. Use the colander.”

I got the colander, dumped in the lettuce, and used the sprayer. “I went to our old building,” I said. I wasn’t looking at her, I was concentrating on my job.

“I kind of thought you might. Was he there?”

“Yes. I asked him why his daughter never came to visit him and didn’t even come to the funeral.” I turned off the water. “She’s in a mental institution, Mom. He says she’ll be there for the rest of her life. She killed her baby, and then tried to kill herself.”

My mother was getting ready to put the salmon in the microwave, but she set it on the counter instead and plopped down on one of the stools. “Oh my God. Mona told me she was an assistant in a biology lab at Caltech. She seemed so proud.”

“Professor Burkett said she’s cata-whatsit.”

“Catatonic.”

“Yeah. That.”

My mother was looking down at our dinner-to-be, the salmon’s pink flesh kind of glimmering through its shroud of paper towels. She seemed to be thinking very deeply. Then the vertical line between her eyebrows smoothed out.

“So now we know something we probably shouldn’t. It’s done and can’t be undone. Everybody has secrets, Jamie. You’ll find that out for yourself in time.”

Thanks to Liz and Kenneth Therriault, I had found that out already, and I found out my mother’s secret, too.

Later.