Woke Up Lonely A Novel - By Fiona Maazel Page 0,125

wanted Earl Grey, just say so. She dropped a spoon, then another while bending for the first, and throughout refused help, saying, apropos of nothing, “Your father’s doing well,” while pointing vaguely at the cockpit. He noticed her hands. The fingers were spindly, the skin thin but loose about the knuckles, and capped with nails corned-beef pink. He noticed the rest. Her cheeks were seasoned brown—liver spots and the bronzer she used to conceal them—and, where once showed the natural crimps of skin from nose to dimples, two ruts trafficked her tears so well, it was like city planning had landed on her face.

“Allergies,” she said, waving him off but accepting a tissue anyway.

“Nice outfit,” he said, and pointed at the TV on which was playing a tape of her giving a press conference the night before, urging the Helix to let her boy go. His mother in California cazh, tea rose ascot and blouse, and his father by her side in a double-breasted jacket. Amazing how their son might be shelving billy clubs in his ass, jailed and terrorized in the omphalos of dissent in America, and still they looked ready to yacht. Assuming they still traveled together, which seemed unlikely, given the spite in her voice every time she said we or us, as though the real resentment here was not so much Ned’s kidnapping as the assault of this crisis on their disunity.

She turned it off. “All I’m saying is: We were trying everything.”

“I believe you.”

“This was hardly your average kidnapping. You can’t buy off a man who asks for nothing; who knew what he wanted!”

“Mom, I know.”

“Oh, I was so worried,” she said.

Not that they had asked, but it was the old guy of the house who’d let him out. Shoved him down a rope ladder with instructions to keep going. And to call the police. Except Ned wasn’t going to do that. Forget the police, forget the feds; all he wanted was to wash the tunnel shit off his face and hightail it to Los Angeles. Because, for all those hours in the Helix House with nothing to listen to but his heart, after a while, he swore he’d heard a second heart. Not Anne-Janet’s, who was nuts and who’d disappeared; not Olgo’s or Bruce’s; but from inside, as though knowledge once cataleptic was now chanting what he wanted to hear most: Your twin is in L.A. That, and news from the PI, who had finally tracked her down.

Ned was ecstatic. He knew that one way to make life winnable despite the duress of physical and spiritual decay that was its chief characteristic was to experience intimacy with and through another human being. Progeny were good for this purpose, barring the financial commitment and moral obligation and opportunities to fail them, which were abundant. Marriage was good, barring its encumbrance and foreclosure on spontaneity. But a sibling, a twin—you could be a part of that for free. The trouble, really, was what came next. The unknown of other people’s feelings. How could you control those? Not even the Helix could make other people love you. Trust you? Maybe. But love you? No chance.

He drank down the last of his tea and stood. “It’s okay, Mom,” he said, and he bent down to kiss her on the cheek by habit before pulling up short. What a disaster. She looked at him, and in the glaze of those blues was a pleading that revolted whatever compassion he was trying to rally in her defense. They were not even related! He turned away, feeling pity and rage in equal measure but, in the main, resentment, because from now on he might always have to feel complicated about her and this was terrible and he was sad. He made for the cockpit. The plane had twin-engine jets, room for eight plus crew, with about three thousand miles before things got fumy.

He stared at the back of his father’s head. The hair—white, cropped thick and sea urchin—was his most resilient feature, so that even as his prostate, liver, and bones were crapping out on him, the hair said: I am virile! And also, apparently, I can fly. Ned had called his parents from Kentucky and told them to come get him, but he had not meant this literally. Six years since JFK Jr., eight since John Denver. Of all the crews to enlist, they chose themselves? Max had heart trouble. He kept nitrates in his breast pocket and some in