“Who needs the dark and the cold when you have all this, am I right?” And here, Chaz gestures to the view of the sea Mother drowned in. “You know they shot Top Gun here? Tom Cruise and all that.” Trying to smile. Make this a bit of a nice breakfast. Not just about Mother’s finances. We’re old friends too, aren’t we? Catching up.
I stare at him.
“Look,” he says. And I know what’s coming. Know what he’s going to say. It was when the eggs came that I knew. Hearing him talk is like having déjà vu. “She had some serious debt.” Braiding his hairy hands together. Rings gleaming in the light.
“What do you mean?” I say, though of course I know what he means. I think of Mother’s voice on the phone lately. Giddy like a leg jiggling under the table.
“She took out three loans over the past year,” Chaz says, pouring himself more coffee.
“Three? For how much?”
Chaz takes out a gold pen and dramatically clicks. I watch him scrawl a number onto the back of a bone-white business card and slide it over to me with a somber expression. I look down at the number. All those zeros stopping my heart.
“In total?”
“Each.”
My stomach sinks. Heart pounding now. I stare at Chaz, who stares back at me impassively. Just the messenger here. Don’t shoot. But I do want to shoot. I want to take aim at something and fire. I have a memory of Mother from about three months ago, the last time I visited. Waiting for her to pick me up at the San Diego airport. Staring at the palm trees swaying in the dark and thinking, Shouldn’t have come. The night air was warm like a bath. I was smoking to the performed disapproval of all the people nearby. And then Mother rolled up in a silver Jaguar. The new car didn’t surprise me too much—she’d always had her patrons, men who bought toys for their toy. It was her face that struck me. Unsmiling. So pale, it seemed to glow like another moon in the dark. As I approached the car, I noticed her skin was eerily smooth. She looked like she belonged in one of those old Hollywood films she loved, where the actresses’ faces are made preternaturally flawless by Vaseline smeared on the camera lens. But more than her face, it was her eyes. Shining and blank. How they looked at me like they didn’t know me. Mother, I felt compelled to say, it’s me.
And Mother just stared at me through the passenger-side window. Of course it is, she said in a voice I didn’t recognize. Get in.
But I just stood there staring at her through the window. Mother, you look—
What? And her tone was suddenly terribly eager. Hungry.
Strange, I should have said. Empty. What’s with your face? Your eyes? But I said, Beautiful. As I always had. All my life. She seemed to smile then. Some warmth or recognition bloomed in her face. Like her soul had risen to the surface of her skin and made a light shine there briefly. Her eyes filled with tears. She looked into the ever kind and gentle mirror of me.
I’m so happy you’re here, she said. And then we roared off into the dark. I never asked about the car.
“What were the loans for?” I ask Chaz now.
“Window renovation, apparently.”
Window renovation? “Well, how much could that cost?”
“Can’t say,” Chaz says. “But it does look like she spent it all.” He shrugs, stirs his coffee. It happens. People take out a loan for one thing, then spend it on other stuff.
Suddenly I can’t breathe. I need a cigarette. A shot of something. Anything. Chaz keeps stirring his coffee with a little spoon. He’s loving this, I can feel it. My helplessness. My sudden breathlessness, my flushed face, all of it is giving him a hard-on.
“I’d advise you to sell the condo. Use the equity to pay off the loans. You might barely break even if you do that.”
“I might break even?” I shout this. Everyone’s looking at us now. The waiters, the rich couple at the next table roused from their passion fruit and champagne brunch. I think of my studio apartment in Montreal. Barely decorated but for the skin products lining the walls of my single room. Closet bursting with dresses from work that I never wear. Every day the same black shift. Yet I was content in this little life, I was. In the back of my mind, did I think Mother would somehow save me?
“Well, there’s the Jaguar,” Chaz offers. “You could sell it, although it’s unlikely to be worth much since she dinged it up a bit.”
“Dinged it up?”
“Just in a few places. A few little fender kisses here and there. Some scratches.” He grins as if recalling some past intimacy. “You know your mother.”