I give Cash his reverent moment. Beautiful? Amazing? Luminous?
“Bat-shit crazy. That’s what she was. She was a lawyer, an attack dog in the courtroom. She got an offer from a New York law firm after killing them in an insurance case. She drove a hard bargain and walked away a partner and a rich woman. I followed her here. I was a journalist. There had to be a ton of work in New York, right? I was working freelance but she didn’t think I had a lot of ambition and suggested the Post as a way to be more structured with my life. A real job, she called it.”
“Huh,” is all I can think to say.
“Yeah. Huh. But I did. And we had a spacious high-rise on Fifth Avenue, overlooking Central Park. She worked long hours, so I started working long hours. I proposed to her, to fix it, which is just about the dumbest thing a person can do. She said yes, because, well, I don’t know why. I surprised her at work one night to find her screwing one of the partners in her office. Wouldn’t you lock the door?” He offers a quick glance over. “I’d lock the door. I mean, c’mon.”
“Ouch.”
He sighed. “So I moved out and haven’t spoken to her since. Oh!” He snaps his fingers like he just remembered something. “That’s a lie. I covered a wedding a few years ago, and she was there as a guest. With him. She married that guy. She was all tucked and lifted, her face was a thick cake of makeup. She was like an ice sculpture of Mary. When I said I still worked at the Post, she laughed.”
“What did you say?” I ask, incredulous.
“I asked her if she still fucked her husband in her office. He was standing right there and by the look on his face, I could tell that answer was no.”
I laughed. “So you’re not still hung up on her?”
He’s quiet for a moment. “No, not hung up on her. She was the only woman I was ever engaged to, so sometimes I wonder. Plus, she was such a loose cannon. I find myself sabotaging relationships with other women, that’s all. They’re all so normal. Am I self-destructive? My mother thinks so.”
“Maybe a little bit.” It feels so nice to swing the camera around and focus on someone else’s problems.
“Well, self-destruction seems to be something we have in common.” He turns the radio on, but to a low volume. Something classical. More surprises. “How did you end up on the East Coast?”
The question is tangled up in the things I cannot say. I think of how to be honest, truthful, and not give away all my secrets. For me, the basest act is also the most admissible. Evelyn.
“I was in college. I was in a bad place.” I trace swirl patterns with my fingertip on the cold windowpane. “My adoptive mother, Evelyn . . . she died. I was depressed and too poor to take care of her so I . . . ran away.”
“She was sick?”
“She had cancer.” I try to avoid saying it, that big looming pit of blackness in the corner of my mind. The one that I skirt around with euphemisms and niceties like common burial and state-funded, when I really mean abandoned. Unloved. “So New York was an escape for me. I saw an opening at La Fleur d’Elise and started working there as a glorified custodian. I worked on design at night. Then . . . I met Henry.” My voice drops on the Henry. “The thing is, I left my mother.” I square my shoulders and stare at Cash’s profile, willing him to pass judgment. I see nothing, not a flicker of understanding, even. “In the morgue. I couldn’t afford to bury her. I left her.”
I see comprehension dawning in his eyes. He reaches out, touches my hand. “Are you that same person?”
“No. I was a mess then, running from myself. From other people. I’m only a slightly more put together mess now.” I pat my running nose with a napkin I find in the glovebox.
“Have you tried to go back? Find out . . . what the county did? I can do that for you. You could have a memorial. Have closure.”
“No. I can’t.” I shake my head vehemently. “They did a state-funded burial. That’s what they give to people who are abandoned. The only people who are abandoned in death are those who die unloved. I . . .” I can’t finish my sentence. I can’t even finish the thought, except I push. My brain pushes past the whooshing in my ears and the whir of the tires on the road and the awareness of my body and I think the thought I’ve avoided since I left San Francisco five years ago. “The last thing I ever did to Evelyn was tell her that she was unloved.”