Her eyes open and settle on me, the fine skin underneath newly crosshatched and gray. “A mother wants the best for her daughter. That is all. Can we just be quiet for a few minutes?”
Deborah wanted things for Liv, too. Different things. The pageant career she blew when she had Liv, for one. Living in the Northeast stunted that, since pageant culture is more foreign to New England than sweet tea and hush puppies. Then there was the virtuous persona that Liv resisted. When we were thirteen, Liv got the idea to meet this guy she liked and ride the T into Boston to see a free concert. His name was Stevie Something, and he was seventeen. Which doesn’t seem old now, until I think about a guy around my age dating a thirteen-year-old. Liv told Deborah she was going to my house, and I told Mom the reverse, and we took a bus to Parlee, the next town over. We met Stevie Jerkface and a friend, Nameiforget, who was supposed to be my “date” except that I don’t think he was expecting a flat-chested child. Stevie Jerkface was drunk or high, and Liv giggled nonstop while we waited on the platform. Once we got on the train, the Jerky twins shared nips that smelled like pinecones. I refused, got called a word I’d never heard, and we were abandoned at the next stop—Savin Hill, or as the locals call it, Stab ’n’ Kill. At which point a large homeless woman in a dress boarded the train and wandered around the car. When she bent over, we saw she wasn’t wearing underwear. And that she’d been using newspapers as toilet paper, because they were still stuck there. I vomited in my mouth. Liv buried her face in my sternum. The story ended when we begged a T cop to ride the train home with us to Parlee and called Mom, throwing ourselves at her mercy.
So when Mom suggests Liv is a questionable influence, I can’t deny it. But together we have history. An undeniably funny history.
Mom slides off the stool and digs through her bag for Advil, twisting the cap with her teeth and knocking back two. “I think it’s important that we see Dr. Ricker together. Sort through all your questions. She thinks your obsession with the case is getting in the way of your progress.”
“Actually, Dr. Ricker is on board with my approach. She even wants to hypnotize me to regain my lost memories.”
Mom looks sideways at me.
“It’s either that, or play with dolls,” I add.
“That sounds a bit … regressive.”
“Regressive would be hanging around with my friend from elementary school.”
“Alice has always been good to you,” Mom protests.
“I believe you mean good for you.”
Mom pops a third Advil. I wish she would laugh.
“Let’s talk about Deborah again. She’s beside herself about the girl in the woods,” I say. “To the extent that she could have been her mother. That would have been upsetting.”
Mom chokes. I slap her back, fearing I might break every fine bone through her shirt. She waves me away. I pour her a glass of water and continue. “Also, the news will take away from her Catholic Woman of the Year announcement, which is clearly a competing local news item. I don’t know how WFYT is going to decide which to cover.”
“Try to cut Deborah Lapin some slack, please,” Mom rasps as she pads across the kitchen and eases a glass from the hanging wine rack. “You’re not being respectful.”
I serve the meal that neither of us wants, tonging soggy salad onto our plates. The suction sound of Mom opening the wine fridge is the tearing off of a figurative bandage: a natural marker for a scene change.
So I go there.
“What happens if the woman in the woods has some connection to Donald Jessup?” I ask.
“Then the police will find that out. And hopefully, her family will have some closure,” Mom says, filling her glass to the top with pale wine. “But that’s not a story you have to follow. It doesn’t have import for you.”
“Kind of hypocritical, don’t you think? Criticizing me, given you’re someone who spends your whole life questing for knowledge.”
She moves her wineglass in a slow circle. “You make my life sound like a Homeric epic.”
“A scientist’s mandate is to question,” I say.
“Not when the question is irrelevant,” she says.
“Relevance is an elusive concept. Its meaning is impossible to capture through logic.”
“Something is relevant to a task if it increases the likelihood of accomplishing the goal. Your task is healing; your goal is to be well.” Mom swirls the straw-colored liquid. “Trying to make connections between yourself and Ana Alvarez is not healing, and it will not make you well.” The windowpane above the sink rattles in its casing.
“I take it you’ll be drinking your dinner this evening?” I rise and stack her full plate on my empty one.
Mom points with her glass. “Maybe everything’s not as complicated as you think it is.”
“You’re the one who taught me to think critically. That most stories are not black and white.”