“Enjoy,” she says.
I take the plate. “You cleaned my house because you aren’t allowed to clean your mother’s, am I right? The hoarder. You clean when you want to feel in control. So don’t say you did this for me.”
“Eat your fucking sandwich,” she says, and then leaves my house.
After a few minutes I cane my way to the window and confirm that her car is still in my driveway. She must have gone for a walk wearing only her jean jacket, which is entirely inadequate for this kind of cold.
When the sun begins to set, I open a bottle of wine and pour a glass, but after my two-day drinking binge, I just don’t have the stomach to take a single sip.
Portia Kane returns shortly after dark looking a bit pink and sweaty, picks up the full wineglass, downs it, refills, carries the fresh pour into the kitchen, and begins making dinner.
“Did you walk down to the lake?” I ask. “Albert Camus loved the lake. Although we had a hard time doing that in winter. Cane and a dog leash are a tough marriage in snow.”
She doesn’t answer but prepares asparagus, snapping off the ends and then coating them with olive oil, salt, and pepper before popping them into the oven.
From the dining room table I watch her bring water to a boil, dump in wheat pasta, and heat a small pot of red sauce over a low gas flame.
“I can’t remember the last time someone prepared me a home-cooked meal,” I say as she sets the table.
She doesn’t respond, but pours herself another glass of red.
When the meal is ready, we eat in silence.
I can tell that Portia Kane is very upset with me, but what can I do about that? How could I begin to fight twenty years’ worth of mythmaking and romanticizing the past? Even if I wanted to—which I don’t—I could never live up to her expectations for me now. I start to pity her. To think, this is all because of those stupid little cards I used to give my seniors at the end of the year.
Official Member of the Human Race.
Ha! A lot of good that ever did any of us. Why does she even still have hers? She must be a hoarder like her mother.
As Portia Kane clears the table, I find myself saying, “The kid who knocked me out of the teaching racket—Edmond Atherton was his name—they let him out of the nut house last year. I hear he attends college now in California. Received a letter from an old teaching buddy. Mr. Davidson, if you remember him. Maybe Edmond Atherton will go on to lead a fulfilling and productive life. Isn’t that nice?”
No response.
Portia Kane cleans my dishes by hand, even though I have a dishwasher.
“You’re not going to leave, are you?” I say.
“I made a promise to your mother.”
“My mother?” I squint at her. I haven’t spoken with my dreaded mother in years. This is getting seriously weird. “How do you know her?”
“We met on a plane just almost a month ago.”
“What?”
“A bit of a coincidence, although she’d call it divine intervention. I prefer coincidence, because I’m not really sure whether I believe in God. Full disclosure—I was drunk at the time, so I don’t remember much about our initial talk. But she gave me her address, and we began corresponding. I sent her my contact info in a letter, and then she called my cell phone out of the blue and I began to visit her. We talked. She confided in me. And I eventually ended up making her a promise that I intend to keep.”
“What did you promise her?”
“That I would save you.”
As I sit at the table, Portia Kane dries my dishes.
Could this day get any more ridiculous? She’s clearly insane, I say to Albert Camus in my mind, and then I chuckle like hell.
“What are you laughing at?” Portia Kane says.
“Everything,” I say. “And I can’t wait to see how you ‘save me.’ Do you even have a plan? Did Mother send you up here with some sort of Catholic idol, rosary beads, and a bunch of prayer cards? Maybe a flask of holy water? A swath of some saint’s jockstrap? Did she tell you about her ‘visions’? What a crock of shit. All of her religious mumbo-jumbo hasn’t made a bit of difference in my life, or anyone else’s so far. But what the hell? How is my dear old mother anyway, the righteous, self-indulgent ancient bitch?”
“She’s dead. I attended her funeral yesterday.”
CHAPTER 11
“My mother. She’s really dead? Dead dead? You’re serious about this?”
She nods solemnly. “I’m sorry.”
“Why didn’t anyone contact me?”
Portia tosses down the dish towel and tries to soften her face, but this just makes her look even angrier. “When’s the last time you checked your PO box? Because it’s full of letters from nuns—a few from your mother. She’d been working on your salvation for years—and not just your soul, but you here right now in this world too. Her words, not mine. We quickly found that we had a common goal: we both wanted to resurrect you.”
It’s been months since I’ve been to the post office. I prepay my bills for electricity and water six months in advance, I pay my yearly property taxes in full down at the town hall every February, my retirement checks are direct deposit. I do all my banking in person, I own no credit cards, and everyone else who does odd jobs for me—like the plow guy and handyman—I pay in cash. I have to admit, I’m curious now as to what the old lady wrote. I have a sudden desire to go to my PO box, a feeling I haven’t felt in many months. I have so many questions now, and pressure is building in my throat. It feels maybe a little like regret, even though I didn’t do anything wrong and was perfectly entitled to cut her out of my life after she laid that easy religious mumbo-jumbo on me when I needed her most—her, not some ideas about the origins of mankind and some fairy-tale benevolent spaceman controlling our destinies. Her earthly leader wears flamboyantly large hats and extorts money from the poor and uneducated while living in a palace, probably eating off plates made from gold, even though his own god said it was harder for a rich man to enter into heaven than for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle. But I digress.