“Almost,” I tell my mother now. She watches me fold the last of my dresses into my suitcase. “What is it?” I ask her.
“Nothing,” she says, watching me snap the suitcase shut. She helps herself to a croissant. “You’ll call when you get home?”
“Yes.” I won’t. Not for a long time.
I watch her break the croissant in half, pick at each half until it’s flakes, then eat it like it’s dust. “Mom? Is there anything I should know?”
My mother looks down, begins to gather crumbs by pressing the pads of her fingers into the plate.
“About what?”
How you can’t breathe, for a start. How you can’t feel your feet. “About you,” I say.
“Me?” My mother shrugs. Shakes her head. Refolds her arms on the table. I notice that underneath her linen coverall, she’s wearing the same shapeless black shift dress she’s been wearing almost every day since I got here. Stained with the sauce from last night’s mussels. Her feet are still encased in the withered Keds. The only thing she’s varied from day to day is a bolero of black lace and her costume jewelry. The violet set, made of blown Italian glass, lies in a small heap on the place mat. She looks shorn without it. With her spikes yet to be slicked, her hair looks shaggy around her face and lighter, almost auburn. She licks the rose petal jam quickly off the butter knife, presses the pads of her fingers into her plate to gather more crumbs but there are none.
Years after she dies, when I’m on vacation in a small seaside town, I will think I see her in an outdoor café. A woman in black wearing Jackie O sunglasses. She’ll look exactly like my mother except she’ll be thin. Seated alone at a table for two. I’ll watch the afternoon sun lick her black hair red for I don’t know how long, her nose tilted into an open book. Elegant sips of espresso, each one leaving a plummy lipstick imprint on the china. Ignoring a chocolate torte right in front of her. I’ll look at her with my mouth open and tears in my eyes until she’ll suddenly get up and leave. I’ll follow her from the café to a butcher shop and then to a flower shop and then to a market and that’s where I’ll lose her. I’ll turn circles in the midst of the stalls for what seems like hours before giving up and walking back to my hotel.
“Just you’re beautiful,” she says now to the empty plate. “Just I’ll miss you.” She reaches out, runs a hand along the side of my face, brushing a lock of hair back from my eyes. She tucks it behind my ear. There.
Fit4U
She took the dry cleaning ticket from me and disappeared behind the plastic shrouded coats and yellowed wedding dresses I don’t know how long ago. I’m standing by the counter, smoking in her gutted aquarium of an establishment, trying not to breathe in the scent of chemicals and old clothes people should have thrown out, given away, maybe burned a long time ago. I’m feigning interest in the ugly walls, the dubious certificates, waiting for whatever it is my mother brought here a few days ago and never picked up.
I found the dry cleaning stub in her knockoff Gucci purse, which I picked up from the police station. It was in the swampy main pocket along with some loose change, one Chanel lipstick, and a worn leather wallet full of cards. The ticket was carefully folded, its corners nicked here and there with her uncapped plummy lipstick. Fit4U, the ticket says. Pick up after 5:30 Mon to Fri. Pick up 2:30 Sat. There’s an address and a number underneath stamped in red ink.
I found Fit4U in a mini-mall on the outskirts of town, between a holistic center that looked closed and a Thai massage parlor that looked very open. A narrow storefront of murky glass. A small statue of a fat Buddha leering through the barred windows beside a profusely flowering fake plant. A woman behind the counter with hair and eye shadow out of John Waters, a worn tape measure around her neck. Glasses perched so far down the bridge of her slender nose, I wonder how she can possibly see out of them. She was wearing a sweater patterned with Christmas trees even though it was June. Her palms were pressed hard into the countertop like there could be a shotgun beneath it. There was a man sitting absolutely still on the rust-colored love seat beside the counter with his eyes wide open. Maybe she’d killed him. This is what I sincerely thought until I saw him blink.