She sets down her cup and licks her lips. “I’ve never heard anybody suggest that before. I certainly never heard Duncan suggest it. And I don’t want you to ask him about it, either. No good could possibly come of that. Not after all these years. My Lord.”
“That’s why I’m asking you, not him.”
She looks at me for a long time without speaking. In this moment I feel I’m living up to the idea that children are a burden.
“Do you believe there’s anything to the story?” she asks.
“Max told me that it was a case of mistaken identity. That Dad was the intended target. The killers were waiting near that hairpin turn to run him off the road, and in the rain they couldn’t tell it wasn’t him.”
Mom closes her eyes, and her lips move as though she’s praying in silence. “Dear God, I hope that didn’t happen.”
“I do, too. But I fear that it did.”
She takes a quick sip of coffee the way a prisoner might, as though protecting it from a thief. The gesture makes me strangely anxious.
“When I met your father,” she says, “he was a wounded man. Losing Eloise and Emily is what started this whole nightmare of alcoholism.”
Eloise and Emily. To me these are but names. To my mother they were real people.
“Oh, he drank before that, but in moderation. I talked to a lot of his colleagues at that time, even to his mother. I started at the Watchman as a reporter, you know. I was twenty-two, fresh out of the W. Didn’t know a thing.”
She means the Mississippi State College for Women. “How many years did you work there?”
“Six. I was working the night of the accident. And nobody ever suggested it was murder. Because of the storm, I suppose. But I know this: losing his wife and daughter changed Duncan forever.” Her eyes are fixed on the table with unsettling concentration. “Once we started seeing each other, I threw my whole self into healing him. And he came a long way back to the world. After you and Adam came along—while you were both here—Duncan was whole again, or just about. Then . . .”
“You don’t have to talk about Adam. I’ve been thinking about him a lot over the last two days.”
She pushes her cup away and looks into my eyes. “I want you to understand one thing. Losing Adam the way we did sent me into depression, but eventually I was able to work through it. You never get over losing a child—you know that better than most—but you can live with it. If you’re lucky. But for Duncan . . . it was different. He’d come so far after that first tragedy, but the wound was still raw underneath. When Adam drowned and was never found, it was like somebody took a knife and drove it into that old wound, then twisted until it severed something.”
Mom’s face becomes distorted by the pain of recollection. “No matter how much time passed or what I tried, I couldn’t reach that part of him. He couldn’t heal. It seems incredible to think that thirty-one years wouldn’t be enough to get over something, but I’ve learned that time means nothing in some cases. And the greatest tragedy is that he let it destroy his relationship with you.”
“Mom, I understand where he is. It’s all right.”
“No, you don’t,” she counters, sounding angry. “You don’t understand how proud he is of you.”
“Mom—”
“I mean it!” She grips my hand. “I’ve never bothered you with this, because it’s so painful. And I know how skeptical you are. But he’s about to be gone. You know that TV in there? That big flat-screen television. Why do you think he bought that? He hates television news. He bought that TV to watch you. No other reason.”
I heard her words, but I can’t find it in myself to believe them.
“You know how tight Duncan is,” she says. “But the day you became a regular guest on MSNBC, he drove to Walmart and bought that set for cash money.”
This revelation leaves me mute at my mother’s table.
“I know it’s too late for you two to have a real relationship,” she says. “But don’t you think you’ve punished him enough?”
Her question stuns me like a slap across the face. “Me? You think I’ve punished him?”
She doesn’t answer my question. “If you two could have even one civil conversation before the end, a real talk, where you tell each other how you feel, not how hurt and angry you are—”
“Mom, if he gives half a damn about my work, why has he been the way he has all these years?”
“Envy,” she says simply.
“What?”
She squeezes my hands as if trying to physically channel her feelings into my heart. “You’ve gone so much further in your career than he ever did, it’s hard for him to live with it. Every upward step you take reminds him that he refused to get up after fate knocked him down that second time. The stronger you get, the weaker he feels. It’s wrong to be that way, but . . . I suppose it’s human.”
“Tell me something, Mom. Why did Dad never write any stories about the Poker Club’s corruption? He didn’t hesitate to go after certain kinds of evils. Why not that one?”
She looks genuinely puzzled. “That I don’t know. We knew those men socially, of course, or their fathers. But Duncan knew a lot of the men he attacked during the civil rights trouble, and he didn’t let that stop him.”
“That’s what I don’t get.”
She shrugs wearily. “We’re not put on this earth to know everything.” The smile that follows this statement must have taken a lot of fortitude to summon. “I’m just glad to have you under our roof. I hope your air conditioner stays broken for a month.”
I reach out and squeeze her hand. “I’m glad to be here, Mom.”
She rubs the inside of my wrist for a while with her fingers.
“I don’t want to discuss this now,” she says, “but I suppose the time is coming when we’ll have to consider finances.”
I feel simultaneous anxiety and relief. For months I’ve been trying to get her to intercede with my father, but he’s clung to control of the books like a man guarding a terrible secret.
She lowers her voice to a whisper. “Do you have any idea what the Watchman might sell for today?”
I’ve dreaded answering this question. “If we’re lucky? Ten percent over its real estate value.”
Her eyes widen, and then she goes pale. “You don’t mean that? I knew values had been falling, but . . . I thought surely it would still bring two or three million.”
I shake my head sadly, then squeeze her hand. “Six years ago it would have sold for nine times EBITDA. Today—”
“What’s EBI-whatever?”
“Earnings, basically. Nine times annual earnings. I tried to get Dad to sell then, but—”
She holds up her hand. “Water under the bridge. He couldn’t give up control. That was the last vestige of his masculinity. And he couldn’t let you see what a mess he’d made of things. Today is all that matters.”
“The question is debt, Mom. I know Dad borrowed heavily to buy out Uncle Ray.”
She shuts her eyes like a woman praying for strength. “The worst decision we ever made. Duncan also bought the new press right after that. That cost nearly two million dollars. What could we get for it now?”
“You can’t give away presses today. Consolidation of printing has killed their value.”
She takes a deep breath and looks into her coffee cup. What can it feel like, after so much duty and sacrifice, to face this final insult? To confront widowhood and old age in need, when it could so easily have been avoided?
“The trick is to wipe out all the debt we can,” I tell her. “But no matter what happens, I’ll take care of you. Don’t worry about that for even one second.”
Relief and despair fight for control of her face. “I don’t want you to have to do that.”
“I’ve been hoping you would come up to Washington and live with me.”
She clears her throat. “That’s very kind. But all of my friends are here.”
“Well, you can stay here. I’m not pressuring you.”
“You could look after me a lot easier if you lived here, too.”
For a couple of seconds I struggle to come up with a reply, but then I see that she’s teasing me.
She gets up and washes out her cup. Looking over her shoulder, she says, “Marty Denis told us you had a date to that party at the Aurora last night. He said you took Nadine Sullivan.”