Maternal instinct, p.11
Maternal Instinct, page 11
‘Do you think he might be in your room?’ Shyla asked.
‘No. I already looked in there,’ Althea said, though of course she had not. ‘Where could he possibly be?’
Shyla was looking more worried as the minutes went by.
‘Maybe he slipped out when the back door was open?’ Grace suggested as she began to sauté the onions in oil with garlic.
Shyla ran outside, covering the patio, the back yard, and the pool area, both around the perimeter and in the water itself.
‘Too bad if he went off into the wild,’ Althea said. ‘Though perhaps that might be more to his liking, to be free in nature rather than cooped up in the cage. Can turtles dig under a fence?’
Shyla treated Althea to a rare scowl (she apparently had still not fully learned her lesson that Althea should be respected) without comment as she flumped herself down on the recliner that Hal favored for watching basketball games.
Now that Grace was no longer concerned with her onions, she repeated her advice. ‘Could he be sick? Did you look in his hut?’
Shyla got up from the chair and went to the cage. The top had been left off after she had filled his food dish, and it still rested against the wall. Shyla peered more carefully into the plastic tiki hut. ‘You know, I think I see something,’ she said, and with her two hands lifted the hut from the cage.
‘He’s all pulled in,’ she said, which Althea took for referring to how tortoises retract their head and feet into their shell. Then Shyla dropped the hut. Luckily it landed at the other end of the cage, not on Gonzo, though it wouldn’t have mattered at this point if it did hit him.
Shyla screamed. ‘His head, it’s bleeding!’
Grace wiped her hands on a kitchen towel and came over to the cage. ‘What d’you mean, he’s bleeding?’ she said, and picked Gonzo up to look at his head.
It was only at this point that it was discovered he no longer had one.
Much too much was being made of his death, that was certain. ‘Can one actually be fond of reptiles?’ Althea asked, innocently enough, she thought. And when Shyla sobbed, causing Grace to enfold her more tightly on the couch, and draw her face to her bosom with what Althea thought was unnecessary drama, Althea said, ‘There’s a long history of biting heads off of things. In the circus they used to be called “geeks”. These, always men, I think, would bite the heads off of chickens for the amusement of carnival goers. And there was a rock band, I didn’t listen to rock and roll very much, even though it was my era as a young girl, I was more into ballads and classical music, but wasn’t there some rock-and-roll star who bit the head off of a bat during one of his performances?’
As usual, she was ignored, this time in favor of Hal, who had come home after going out for gas.
Shyla leapt up from her mother’s lap and into her father’s arms. ‘Dad! Dad! Gonzo is dead!’
‘I didn’t even know he was sick,’ Hal said.
‘He was killed!’ Shyla turned her scowl back at Althea. ‘Ruth killed him.’
‘She did not!’ Althea said.
‘Well then, how did his head get bitten off?’ Shyla said.
‘What makes you think it was bitten off?’ Althea asked.
‘You said. The geeks and all that.’
‘Well, I didn’t mean to imply, I was just providing context,’ Althea said.
Shyla ran her fingers through the wood shavings in the bottom of the cage. ‘And it’s not here. Ruth bit off his head, and then she ate it.’
Althea nodded, as if that might be a likely scenario. ‘Possibly justice was served.’
‘Your cat is disgusting. You should get rid of it.’
Althea could have countered with, ‘What about how Gonzo bit her ear and he had it coming,’ but recognized this was stooping to a child’s level and had enough sense to simply go to her room and shut herself in with the accused cat. Allow Shyla to calm down and consider how, with Clare and Robert, this made three deaths in the house.
TWENTY-EIGHT
Grace sat in the rectory office looking at the Advent wreath with only one candle left to light, trying to get her questions into coherent form. Coming at Monsignor Fogarty in the wrong way could make her look crazy. She took some deep breaths and tried to envision George Constanza’s father shouting SERENITY NOW! Laughing at herself helped more often than not. At least it had before.
It wasn’t long before the door opened and Fogarty emerged with one of the biggest smiles she had ever witnessed. It matched his larger-than-average head, topped by an even bigger topping of white hair, sort of at odds with his thin, almost delicate frame, making him look like the eldest member of a lion pride. But the smile dropped from his face before it had a chance to reach his eyes. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘Rachel told me—’
‘This is her daughter-in-law,’ the receptionist said.
‘My, my, my,’ the priest said, and apparently thought that was a sufficient number of ways to express his feelings.
‘I’m Grace,’ Grace said.
‘Of course you are,’ he said. ‘Is Althea all right?’
‘She’s fine.’
‘Good. Sorry to keep you waiting, please come in.’
Grace followed him into his office, where he gestured to a couple of armchairs on the side of the room rather than inviting her to sit opposite the desk. Less formal that way. She watched him close the door but not all the way, leaving it open a foot. Probably some habit to ensure no hanky-panky was claimed by a parishioner.
When they had both settled themselves into the chairs he said, ‘When I hear the name Deming I just assume …’
‘So you know Althea, my mother-in-law, very well?’
‘Oh my goodness me, yes. Precisely stepmother-in-law. Yes, I know the whole family history, partly because I was there for all of it. I knew Robert’s first wife, his grieving at her death, his marriage to Althea, her grieving at his death … that tragic business about Joan missing, I haven’t heard her mentioned in so many years, was there ever any news?’
‘Not that I know of.’
‘And I know all about you, of course,’ he finished. With Seinfeld still in mind, Grace thought he just might go into ‘yadda yadda yadda.’ He spoke about life and death as if they were all in a typical day’s work, and maybe for him they were. After a pause long enough to acknowledge all that sorrow, the priest stared at Grace the way one stares at something that isn’t staring back. Something lesser than. ‘So. You’re Grace.’
She felt as if he knew bad things about her that maybe even she didn’t know, and wondered what they were. She felt as if she were in a confessional and he was considering whether he could actually absolve her. ‘And you know Hal, too, I imagine.’
‘You’re the one who took Hal from us.’ Smile. ‘Althea told me about you. The reason Hal left the church.’ Smile.
‘She said I was the reason Hal stopped going to this church? But we lived two hours away.’
Smile. ‘Left the Catholic Church.’
Grace couldn’t help herself. ‘The Roman Catholic Church.’
Smile. ‘He was a good boy.’ Smile. ‘An altar boy.’ All those smiles. All said without obvious cruelty, but not avoiding it either, the way only clergy can. Now something occurred to him. ‘Are you sure Althea is well? I saw her at Mass last Sunday and she seemed fine.’
‘Oh, she’s well,’ Grace said, and wondered how to broach the subject of just how well Althea might not be. At least the worst thing about herself was that she had stolen Hal from the capital C Church, like he’d never grown up enough to make that decision for himself. ‘Well,’ she repeated.
‘I’m happy to hear that. We are so blessed to have Althea as a member of the congregation. Robert too was valuable; did you know he was a long-standing usher?’ He didn’t wait for Grace to answer. ‘But Althea. I don’t think there is any born-and-raised Catholic, with twelve years of religious school behind them, who can match the fervor of a convert.’
‘Convert.’
‘What was she before, was it Presbyterian? Baptist? Lutheran?’ He dismissed those denominations and their heresy with a wave of his hand. ‘It doesn’t matter. Their loss is our gain.’
‘Actually, I wanted to ask you about her.’
Fogarty gave her one of those looks that invites one to be totally open while promising to be anything but. Corners of the mouth pulled back enough to register a smile but the eyes politely blank.
Delicate. ‘Have you seen any change lately in Althea?’ Grace asked.
‘What kind of change would you mean?’ he asked in return. He adopted just the right amount of serene concern as he said it.
More sympathetic. ‘Althea seems to, to have become, sadder, somehow.’
‘Well, it has been less than two years since Robert passed. She’s hardly begun the grieving process. You remember they were very close.’
‘I remember. She loved, loves him so much.’
Fogarty gave a decisive nod, his whole head saying ‘yes, you’ve hit it square on.’
‘But it’s something else,’ Grace pressed.
Getting up abruptly from his seat, the priest appeared to be finished with the interview. But he said, ‘Come. Take a walk with me.’
Fogarty opened the door to the office and led Grace to the church. It wasn’t the kind of church you saw in movies, old and dark and musty. This was Florida, so nothing was older than fifty years and nothing could dim the sun’s aggression streaming through the windows. The windows weren’t traditional stained-glass but more clear, with stained accents of grape leaves continuing from one window to the next, as if the congregation was bound by a vine.
‘It’s lovely,’ Grace said, because that’s what you always said when being shown a new church, right?
The priest beckoned to her to follow him up the center aisle. ‘Althea and Robert led the capital campaign to build this church. The windows with the grapevine running through them? From the scripture passage “I am the vine; you are the branches.” They’re based on her idea and she commissioned them.’
‘Lovely,’ Grace repeated, feeling as if she were losing whatever grip she’d hoped to have on this conversation.
Fogarty put his hands in his pockets and all but whistled at the understatement. ‘I wanted to put up a plaque to honor them, but she said please no, she wanted her gift to be anonymous. I don’t imagine she even told Hal.’
‘He’s never mentioned anything.’
Fogarty moved into the first pew on the right and sat down, leaving enough room for her to sit beside him. ‘No, I didn’t think she would. As they say in Al Anon, you do something good for someone else, and if anyone finds out, it doesn’t count. Well, it counts for Althea. The woman is a saint. She humbles me.’
With that said, Grace didn’t think she had anything to lose, no matter what she said. They were both facing the altar, more or less, so it made it easier to say directly, ‘Can saints seem strange? Sometimes?’
Without having to glance at the priest, Grace could feel him stiffen. What they call bristling. He bristled. ‘Do you mean strange in the way of a woman who has had her husband ripped away from her without her choice? In the way of a woman who has been thrown out of her own home? If so, then yes, you could call Althea strange.’
Well, that took a sudden turn. Taken by surprise, Grace heard herself say, ‘I didn’t have anything to do with that, so stop being all judgy, even if you think that’s your prerogative as a minister.’
‘I don’t suppose I’m betraying a confidence, because you were the one who pulled the plug on Robert.’
‘What?’
Fogarty’s voice was so much milder than his words that Grace’s mind had to scramble to put the two together. He said, ‘You heard what I said. Althea told me all about those days when she was contented to take Robert for his dialysis three times a week. She said it was a sacred time for her, in the sense that she felt even in sickness they were somehow blessed for being set apart from the rest of the world. They were happy until Robert let you and Hal talk him into stopping the treatments. I hope you’re enjoying that fine house of yours.’
‘What exactly has she told you?’
‘Everything.’
‘You’re going to have to give me a little more than that. I think I have some catching up to do.’
‘Althea told me how you and Hal took over all the decision-making. How Robert and Hal arranged for you to take in Althea, in exchange for the entire estate and power of attorney.’
‘Well, that part is actually true, and I regret—’
‘I thought so. And while Robert and Hal were taking everything away that Althea loved, you talked to her about letting Robert go as well. How you said to her, “It will be best for us in the long run if we’re on the same page.” Do you remember saying it that way? Talking about her husband’s death as if it were a page in a book that could simply be turned? In the long run, and what that implied? Althea told me it felt like a threat, that you might not be so kind to her if she kept Robert alive. Subtle, but I admit it sounded that way to me, too. I’ve worried about her ever since she told me that.’
Grace couldn’t react at first, feeling benumbed by the accusation. ‘I. Never,’ she said.
‘My child, sometimes it’s difficult to acknowledge our faults,’ the priest said. ‘I trust to never find out that Althea is unhappy … or mistreated in any way.’ He stood up from the pew and finally gave up the smiles, letting his dislike of her show. ‘Are we finished here?’
Knowing that she couldn’t deny the charges in a way that would satisfy Fogarty and make him see Althea as she did, Grace left the church. She felt humiliated and ashamed, and was almost impressed that he could do that to her in such a short time.
TWENTY-NINE
Grace had two houses to see to before she could go home and kill Althea, and that was probably for the best. As she waited for the plumber to install a new garbage disposal in one of the kitchens, she had time to think about what Althea had made the priest believe and her own reaction. Was she overreacting? If so, was that because she felt guilty for the part she had played in all of this, even if the part was unwanted? Could she be more sympathetic?
Nah. Uh-uh.
When she returned home, she marked where everyone else was before finding Althea. Shyla had come home from school and was fixing herself a protein smoothie in the blender before or after her laps, whenever she did that. When she asked Shyla where Hal was, Shyla said he was still sleeping.
Sometimes it’s difficult to acknowledge our faults. How long would it take to get that out of her head?
Althea was in her room, her lips moving in time with her fingers on her beads. When Grace interrupted with, ‘We need to talk,’ Althea opened her eyes and held up the beads in a not-now gesture. When Grace didn’t respond to that, Althea said, ‘Can it wait?’
‘No. It can’t.’
Althea gave an imitation of stifling a sigh and let the beads rest in her lap, her index finger and thumb grasping the bead where she stopped praying, as if it were a page in a book she would return to shortly. The gesture felt dismissive, a sign that Althea wouldn’t be giving either much time or attention to what Grace had to discuss. It made Grace’s ire rise and she skipped the gentler preamble she had rehearsed in the car on her way from her last house.
‘I paid your Father Fogarty a visit this morning,’ Grace began.
‘What did he say about me?’ Althea asked with unfeigned interest.
‘He says you’re a better person than I am.’
‘That’s sweet of him. But you, you’re the kind of woman I would have become if I hadn’t sacrificed myself to Robert and his children. Strong. Resilient.’
‘Why does that not seem like a compliment?’ Grace refused to be sidetracked. ‘He said you told him that I had forced you to pull the plug on Dad. That was the phrase, “pull the plug”. How could you, Althea?’
‘Oh, so now it’s Althea? You say Dad, but I’m Althea? So much for blended families.’
‘Stick to the point.’
‘All right, I will. Don’t you remember what you said, dear?’
‘I don’t remember anything of the kind because it didn’t happen.’
‘Those modern psychologists, they say we don’t actually recall things, we invent our memories as we go,’ Althea said.
‘That may be, but I didn’t invent that event, you did. I never once said or even hinted the things you told that priest. Something about it being better in the long run if we were on the same page?’
‘That saddened me greatly,’ Althea said. ‘Speaking of Robert’s life that way.’
‘I never said it! I never once suggested you should let Dad die. Just like you, he was the only thing that stood between—’
‘Life with me in the house and life without me in the house? You are too cruel.’
‘And you’re … you’re a pathological liar,’ Grace said, finding the unfamiliar words a relief. She thought of the book she had ordered and, well, not read the inside yet, but the description on the dust jacket. That’s where she’d seen the term. Right now all her effort was in keeping her voice soft so it wouldn’t drift into the kitchen or up the stairs. ‘Fogarty says you’re a saint, but I know better.’
‘Well, I don’t think I’m a saint, but neither am I as evil as you imply. Are you suggesting I’m mentally ill? Or perhaps, though good at heart, I’m inhabited by a demon. But there you are, and here I am, and we both appear to have to, as you said, make the best of this situation.’
THIRTY
Grace huddled on the bed, coiled up as if she was just another pillow or blanket. She looked at the row of pills on the edge of her nightstand, extending out from a small glass of water. A long one, two round ones, two other long ones but bigger. When the pounding of her heart woke her in the night, she could feel for which one she wanted by size and shape, without having to turn on the light.
She remembered when she and Fiona had talked about this. Fiona asking as always how she was doing, her answering as always, ‘I’m fine. I’m pretty good.’
