“I’m saying that you don’t need to make up for what your mother didn’t give her little girl-you-by overcompensating with Victory. That doesn’t make you a better mother. A child needs a whole and healthy mother, someone separated from her to a certain degree. Otherwise, when she naturally starts to move away, she will feel as though she’s taking something from you. She’ll feel that you need her too much. It will cause her pain, guilt, impede her emotional development. Does that make sense to you?”
I made the appropriate affirming noises, but I didn’t see how a mother could love her child too much. Seemed like only a man could imply such a thing.
That afternoon, after the detective’s visit, while Victory is still in school and Gray has gone off to do whatever it is he does in a crisis situation, I move my stash to a locker at the bus station in the downtown area.
It’s a small and seedy place about a
Everything that happened next happened so fast that I remember it like a landscape passing outside the window of a moving train. Believe it or not, my mother succeeded in getting Frank a new trial. The young death-row appeals lawyer she found was hot to make a name for himself; a high-profile case like Frank’s was exactly what he needed. After a few phone calls back and forth, and my mother scurrying off to the post office with newspaper clippings and the research compiled by the private investigator, he agreed to bring Frank’s case before a judge.Between the dirty arresting officer and new testimony from the deceased eyewitness’s ophthalmologist, who claimed that the old woman’s vision was so poor she wouldn’t have been able to see much of anything at night, this lawyer was able to convince a judge that Frank deserved a new trial.I came home one day to find my mother on the steps of our trailer surrounded by reporters. They flitted arou
When Gray takes me into his arms, my anger fades and is replaced with guilt for lying, for doing what I did. I’m suddenly unsure of myself, of this flight response I’m having to the threats I perceive in my world. The worry on their faces reminds me that it could be real or all of it could be imagined.“We were wondering if we could have Victory for the weekend, Annie,” says Vivian from the table. She is a big, strong woman, but beautiful and feminine, with a neat steel gray bob, flawlessly smooth skin, and square pink fingernails. She’s always in silk and denim. “It will give you and Gray some time to yourselves.”I don’t say anything but my anger and annoyance creep back. There’s always this implication that I need time away from Victory. Or is it that they think she needs time away from me, her crazy mother? If I protest, it makes me seem selfish or unstable or both.“Just tonight and tomorrow night,
He walks over to the bookshelf and lifts a snow globe up to the light. He stares into the orb at the pre-9/11 skyline of New York City. He is all hard angles, a dark tower against the sherbet-colored plush of toys and downy blankets. His silence is my answer.Gray’s working with his father represents a kind of cease-fire. After a troubled adolescence and many years of estrangement in adulthood, Gray and his father have finally come to a demilitarized zone in their relationship. I think Gray likes it there; he doesn’t want to go back to war. I understand this, but I resent it, too. We fight again and again about it, with no resolution.“You know, I’m not crazy,” I say, apropos of nothing, after a few minutes of silence, each of us isolated by our private, angry thoughts. I just feel I have to assert this.“I know that,” he says, returning to sit beside me again. He has a look on his face that reminds me he’s s
Motherhood changed that for me. Victory forced me into the moment. She demanded that I focus on her needs, that I live by her schedule. When I was with her-feeding her, changing her-just looking at her or playing with her, everything in the past and the future fell away. I was aware that we would be together like this for only a short time, that in a heartbeat she’d be walking away from me, living her own life. I didn’t want to waste a second thinking about what might have been, what might be. Love makes you present. So does mortal fear.I am fully present as I race up the stairs to the bridge. I burst through the door and am confronted by the body of the captain who waved to me earlier. He has a bullet hole between his eyes and an expression of profound peace on his face. I step over him to get to the control panel and nearly lose my footing. The floor is slick with blood. Another body lies in a pile of itself by the door. I register all this but don’t have
My mother’s face paled. “You need to get out of here right now,” she said softly. I saw her eyes dart around, checking to see if anyone was watching them. “You have no right to be here.” Janet Parker didn’t give way and didn’t lower her hand. Finally my mother released an angry breath and snatched the photo. I could see that her fingers were shaking as she held it up, squinted at it in the dimming light of evening. “My daughter was a good person who died a horrible death,” Janet Parker said as if she’d practiced the words a thousand times. “She didn’t deserve to die like that.” My mother tried to push past her, but Janet wouldn’t let her, grabbed hold of her wrist. “Frank Geary killed her,” she said, her voice climbing to a quaking yell. “He beat her, strangled her, and raped her as she died.” She paused a second, tried to compose herself. Her voice was hoarse as she went on. “Then he dumped her body in a sinkhole.” She stopped again, her whol
When I return from my appointment, the house has an aura of emptiness. There will be no mealtime negotiations (Eat three pieces of broccoli, Victory, and then we can have dessert), no bath-time adventures (the race between Mr. Duck and Mr. Frog continues), no quiet time in Victory’s room before she drifts off to sleep. All the comforting rituals of the day have been suspended.As I pour myself a cup of coffee - not that I need any more caffeine - I hear Esperanza in the laundry room. I call her name, but she doesn’t answer. I decide to wait awhile before I tell her she can have the rest of the evening off. I don’t want to be alone, knocking around this house that never feels quite like home unless Victory is in it, too.Gray has gone to the offices of Powers and Powers, Inc., in the city just forty minutes away - for what, I don’t know. I have been there myself only a couple of times. It’s a small space with an open floor of cubicles and a
My airways are constricting, and there’s a dance of white spots before my eyes. It’s a full-blown panic attack. I try to breathe my way through it, like my shrink has taught me. I turn on the car and blast the A/C; the air is hot at first, then chill. I start to calm down. I catch sight of myself in the rearview mirror. My face is a mask of terror.“What is wrong with you?” I say aloud. “Pull yourself together.”After a while, when I can breathe again and the inner quake has subsided, I drive home. My headache has reached operatic proportions.Gray is waiting for me at the kitchen table when I return home.“Where’d you go?” he asks with false lightness.I’m sure he knows I moved the things under our bed. I sense he’s worried about me and what I might do. What I love about him is that he always gives me my space, gives me the benefit of the doubt.“To the store,&rdq
During the awkward dinner the four of us shared on Frank’s first night home, my mother doted, Marlowe stared at the table, and I watched Frank with a kind of numb horror as he piled food onto his plate and ate with gusto.“We’re a real family now,” my mother said as she sat beside Frank around the cramped Formica table in our trailer.“That’s right,” Frank said, patting my mother on the arm. She nuzzled up to him like a house cat.I was too depressed even to be a smart-ass about it. All I could do was stare at Frank’s hands and think about Janet Parker’s mournful wailing, about the way her daughter had died. I’d never once believed that Frank was innocent. His trial had hinged on the charges against the investigating officer, the suppression of evidence that officer claimed to have found at Frank’s house, and the testimony of the ophthalmologist who the prosecutor claimed had been paid off. Basica