Angeles, everybody hopes. He wrote for one of the free weeklies. He even sold a couple of stories to the L.A. Times magazine – a way in. Three or four Christmases went by – she was celebrating with a nice new man, his mother told him when he phoned; she said, ‘Don’t worry about me, I’m happy. Do you know I’m teaching myself to paint?’ She said, ‘Have a great life,’ which he continued to do, not knowing who he was, really, or how Lucy was. By this time it was tacit that she wouldn’t talk about the father, and he wouldn’t ask. They loved each other that much; they understood each other that well, and he went along fine, not knowing. Dan was going along all right, not knowing whether when he went in on Monday, he’d still have his marginal job at the incredible shrinking Los Angeles Times because there was always something else that he could do. He was going along all right, not knowing who his father was, what he meant to her or what went wrong. For Dan Carteret in his twenties, not knowing was like the weather. A condition of life.
He went along fine, not knowing, until it became clear that not knowing was wrong because he didn’t know Lucy was sick until they called from the hospital to tell him to come, she was sinking fast.
2
Dan
Lucy was one of those people who claimed she never got sick, which he believed, until now. She was critical – cancer, stage four and moving fast; it was time to put the central question. When they phoned, she was too far gone for him to press her on names, places, details from her past, but he didn’t know that.
He flew home on the redeye, too anxious and disrupted to sleep. He and Lucy had a lifetime of unanswered questions hanging between them, but this one knifed him in the heart. Oh, Mom. Why didn’t you tell me you were sick? She’d just say what she always said: I wanted you to have your life. He had to walk into that hospital and fix this. He had to badger and charm them into producing the right specialist, the right protocols, and she’d get better.
Then they could talk.
By the time he raced into her room, Lucy was beyond questions. She couldn’t speak, not really. She just beamed, shaking with joy at the sight of him. Grieving, he took her hands; she was too flimsy to hug. If there really had been a new man in her life, he wasn’t anywhere.
There was just Lucy, shining.
Her mouth was working and he leaned close, the way you do for a deathbed confession: Who is he, Mom? If she won’t tell you now, she’ll never tell you. Even when she knows you love her too much to ask.
She struggled to produce sound, but nothing came out. Dan bent closer, closer even, knowing it was much too late to pour out his heart; all he could do was close his hand on what was left of hers and keep murmuring – with love, ‘It’s OK, Mom. It’s OK.’
Listening. It was too late but he listened hard. He could smell death coming out of her mouth, and there was no way to push it back; it wouldn’t matter what miracle drug they fed, infused or injected, she’d never get out of that bed. She couldn’t even speak, but she tried, God, she tried. He loved her, so he tried to smile and pretended that she’d spoken and he understood.
It was awful, watching her try.
He nodded as if words had come out and they made perfect sense. He said, ‘Yes, Mom, uh-huh,’ smiling, smiling, but he didn’t fool her. She pulled him closer so he could hear what she was trying so desperately to say.
Finally he did. This is what Lucy Carteret had saved all her strength to tell her son. ‘I’m so glad you’re here.’
It was awful seeing her like this. ‘Me too.’
They said they loved each other.
You love her and you say so, even though you can never forgive your mother for certain things. The way she put him off that night on the porch, when he asked the biggest question in his life. All she said, in a voice that floated away was, Just a boy I thought I loved.
All these years later, it was still a puzzle and a mystery; she was afraid to tell him. She made him promise not to