The End Game

“No,” I said. I looked at Fiona, tried to curry a little sympathy for the torture, but she was enjoying this far too much. There’s not a lot of sympathy that exists in Fiona.

“Was it FedEx?” Loretta said. “Or those brown people?”

“That’s them,” my mother said. She jabbed her cigarette at me in affirmation. “UPS, right, Michael?”

My mother would have made an excellent counterterrorism operative. You want to stop a terrorist cell from pouring polonium into the water supply? Need to stifle an assassination plot? Have to secure a booby-trapped bridge? Just drop my mother into the center of activity and by day’s end she’d have guilted every single person into passivity.

“That’s right, Ma,” I said. “If you have a package I can deliver, why, Loretta, you just leave it on the trunk of my car and I’ll make sure it gets where it needs to go in twenty-four hours or less, or I’ll refund your money.”

“I’ll do that,” Loretta said. She looked over at the Charger, back at me, briefly at Fiona, and then paused with a finger to her upper lip, seemingly confounded by something just out of her mental reach, which, if pressed, I’d say was the majority of human knowledge. “Would you like me to see if there are any openings in the mailroom where my son works?”

“That’s okay,” I said. “I love my job.”

“That car is a hazard. And the gas prices you’re paying, well, you’re leaving quite the carbon footprint.”

“I’m fine,” I said.

“My son, he’s an accountant. He could look at your finances.”

“Is he single?” Fiona asked.

“Oh, no,” she said. “He likes women with some meat on their bones, not you South Beach types.” Loretta reached over and gave Fiona’s waist a pinch, causing Fi to emit a high-pitched squeal. People have lost the ability to walk for less. “If you turn to the side, no one can see you. No offense.”

“None taken,” Fi said, but it was in a tone of voice that indicated to me that we were all about ten seconds away from being party to a homicide.

I gave my mother a look meant to alert her of that very thing, but she was already in motion. “Loretta was just leaving,” Ma said, and gave her new neighbor a slight push on the small of her back, like you would a puppy who wasn’t getting outside fast enough.

“I thought we were going to play canasta,” Loretta said.

“Can’t you see my son is here? We’ll play some other time.”

We stood on the porch and watched Loretta walk across the street, which was a long and arduous process.

“She seems nice,” I said.

“She’s a pill,” my mother said with absolutely no emotion at all. She reached down and picked up one of the boxes. “Is this the act of contrition or is it the other one?”

“I bought both of them prior to lunch,” I said.

“Well, bring them in and I’ll make some coffee while you apologize to me.”

Two hours, a fixed halogen lamp first purchased when men in Miami were wearing pink T-shirts and white blazers, the systematic removal of spoiled food from the refrigerator (my mother had a veritable museum devoted to discontinued Swan-son chicken TV dinners deep in the permafrost of her freezer) and two bags of leaves raked from the backyard later, and I had served my penance.

All while Fi and my mother sat on the sofa, reading magazines and watching Gary Coleman’s E! True Hollywood Story.

“He hated his mother, too,” my mother said, pointing at the television.

“I don’t hate you, Ma,” I said. Though I was now covered in sweat and smelled vaguely like a mixture of freezer burn and mulch, which didn’t exactly turn on the warm part of my heart. It was a little too much like when Nate and I were kids and we’d wake up to find a to-do list on the kitchen counter that consisted of the sort of chores perhaps best done by a crew of adult men.

You’ve not lived until you’ve fallen from a palm tree with a saw in your hand.

Even then, I didn’t actually break my leg.

“I feel… frustrated… occasionally by you, but that’s not hate, Ma.”

“I wanted to talk about that,” she said.

This was about to be bad news.

“Ma,” I said, “I’ve got a busy week ahead of me. Right, Fi?”

“I’m not privy to your intimate plans, Michael,” Fiona said.

My mother ignored us both. “I’ve made us an appointment.”

“I’m not going to any more therapy appointments,” I said.

“This isn’t therapy,” she said. “Loretta said she and her son really connected after seeing this woman.”

I looked at Fiona for support, but she wasn’t giving any indication that she cared. She was back to being riveted by Gary Coleman. “What a strange little man,” she said. You grow up in Ireland, the easiest things capture you.

“You said yourself that woman is a pill.”

“But she and her son have a wonderful relationship.”

“So do you and Nate,” I said.

My mom frowned.

I know how to speak more languages than a translator at the UN. I can shoot someone between the eyes from half a mile away. If I’m shackled to an anchor and dropped overboard in the Caspian Sea, provided the currents are light and I’ve got a paper clip, I can be free and swimming the backstroke in thirty seconds.