The Devil in Silver

“Is that Peter?”

“Ma.”

“Peter Rabbit,” she said serenely.

The automated voice on the phone piped in telling him to add more coins or the call would be cut off. He did. First, the quick little bleeps and bloops, then he was permitted to speak with his mother again.

She asked how he was doing. Pepper didn’t tell his mother where he was. He asked how she liked Maryland. She told him that everyone in the family had his or her own room with a few more rooms left over.

“I know I’m supposed to like it,” his mother said. “But all I do is worry if they can afford it. With the economy and the housing market. It’s always on the news. You know. Where are you living now? Still in the same apartment?”

“Still in Queens,” he said. This was true.

“Still moving furniture?”

“I gave that up for a little while.”

“Trying something else?”

He pulled away from the wall. Soon enough it would be time to take his evening meds. He didn’t want his mother to hear them calling him for that.

“You sound tired, Peter.”

“Maybe I’m a little tired,” he admitted.

His mother breathed on the line, in and out, and the next voice he heard was the damn electronic drone telling him to give more coins, but he was out.

“Mom,” he said so quietly it sounded weaker than a whisper. “I’m going to have to go.”

“Do you want to go?” she asked.

“No, but I’m out of money.”

“Are you at this new job now? Why don’t you give me the number and I’ll call you back? Ralph gets long-distance free.”

The number was right there under the phone’s cradle. He read it to her. A moment later they were disconnected.

Pepper set the receiver back down and waited. He counted to himself and hoped his mother had written the digits down correctly. When the phone rang he snatched it up.

“Anyway,” his mother said, as if they hadn’t been cut off, as if her son weren’t keeping all the particulars in his life mysterious. “I want to tell you a little story.”

Pepper leaned to the right, the receiver still to his ear, and saw the patients forming a line in front of the nurses’ station. As soon as those folks had been dosed, one of the staff would come looking for him. He’d rather hang up on his mother, in the middle of a sentence, than to let her get some clue about the state he was in.

“When your father and I still had the video store,” his mother began, “we used to take inventory of the tapes at the end of each week. You remember?”

“Siesta Sundays,” Pepper said, smiling faintly. Pepper and Ralph would have twenty dollars to spend on whatever dinner they pleased. Did Nehi orange soda and Rolos count as dinner? They did on Siesta Sundays.

“Raymond and I would close up at nine and spend three hours checking to make sure all our videos were accounted for. We were meticulous about keeping track. On the week I’m thinking about, you must’ve been about fourteen or fifteen, we discovered two tapes missing.” She made a faint humming noise as she tried to remember the titles.

Pepper leaned back again, the line of patients was moving forward. Half as long as it had been only a minute ago.

“Tales from the Buttside,” his mother said. “And … Chesty Murphy, Double-D Detective.”

“Ma!”

She laughed on the line. “You remember.”

He felt suddenly exposed. As if his mother and father were in the alcove with him and he had no pants on.

“Your father wanted to turn your room upside down to find them,” his mother said. “Do you know how much the adult tapes were worth to us? This is before the Internet. Nothing made bigger profits for us.”

“I can’t believe you’re telling me this,” Pepper said. But he could believe it. His mother, bless her, had always enjoyed giving her sons a little hell.

Outside the alcove, he heard a staff member call out. “Who’s left?”

His mother, meanwhile, just kept raconteuring. “Raymond would’ve torn your and Ralphie’s room apart, and taken you to small claims court. But I told him to wait a week.”

“Where’s Loochie?” Scotch Tape called out.

“I’m here!” Loochie shouted. “I’m coming.”

“A week later Tales from the Buttside and …”

“Stop saying the titles, Ma, please.”

His mother chuckled again. “A week later those two films were right back where they were supposed to be.”

He brought one hand over his eyes. “Why are you telling me this?”

She cleared her throat. “I don’t know what you might be going through right now, Peter. I wish you’d tell me, but I can’t make you. So I told you that story because there’s something I want you to always remember. You took those tapes, but you put them back.”

“Come on,” Pepper said. “What does that prove?”

“It told me something about your character, Peter. It might sound silly to you, but even those small indiscretions reveal so much.”

“We got one more missing!” Scotch Tape called out. “Don’t make me come looking for you.”