Simply Lies

Chapter 12

I HEAR THE WHISPERS. THE dutiful daughter from somewhere else who comes here on private wings, because Greenville is growing but still small; and someone works at the Greenville-Spartanburg Airport who knows somebody who knows somebody. And the tattle commences like two cans on a string line.

Is Mrs. Leland’s daughter a movie star under another name? A socialite with a Wall Street husband? A TikTok influencer earning major bucks? Or maybe even a high-dollar whore?

I might be all of those things. And more.

She sat in the chair and watched the woman lying in the bed.

The assisted living facility was top-notch, or so she had been told. At six grand a month it had better be.

Indeed, she thought, for that price they better wipe the woman’s ass and give her a daily mani-pedi and feed her with a silver spoon. None of that happened, of course. She had a roof, enough food, aides to dispense her stack of pills — little pearl-like trinkets of sustained geriatric life — afternoon Scrabble, a library with actual books, an ice cream shop with an aged soda jerk, though no one here could manage to digest lactose except the staff, a four-hundred-square-foot room, and the bed. There was a memory center for when you went fully gaga. She knew this because they had given her a tour when it seemed Mommy had reached a tipping point. That was an extra two grand a month because the gagas could get unruly, and really did need to be wiped.

There was a pool table, which was hard to navigate with a walker or rollator or shaky limbs, an outdoor courtyard with picnic tables and cushioned chairs, and an outdoor fireplace where one could sit and stare off at nothing much. She knew this was true; she had done it herself when Mommy got to be a little too much.

There was a cute and cuddly therapy dog that slept all day. There were myriad clubs organized by residents, which only a handful utilized, namely the ones who organized them. Mostly people here sat and waited for visitors who never came.

But I come, once a month.

A timer on her watch went off. She reached into the half fridge and pulled out an Ensure, placed a straw into it, woke her mother, got her to sit up, and helped her drink down the liquid. Her mother was diabetic and had COPD from the cigs, and swollen feet from the same. She was also obese from a life of crappy, fat-laden food, had a tricky liver and failing kidneys, and wore a chemo wig from her last dance with the cancer in her breasts. She was seventy-one and looked a hundred and seventy-one. The tragic irony was her mother had once been a beautiful woman. Many men wanted her. Only one had gotten her. And that man had not been a good one, but so many of them weren’t.

She would probably go straight from here to hospice and bypass gaga land.

Her mother’s given name was Agnes. Of course it was, she thought. Her parents had given their daughter nothing, not even a decent name.

Instead they had bestowed one upon her that sounded like someone trying to hock up phlegm. Thanks, Me-maw and Paw-paw.

Her mother opened her one good and cataract-less eye and said in the hollowed-out, gravelly voice of a Camel smoke queen, “You look too thin. Don’t they feed you?”

“Does who feed me?”

“Your man!”

Post-it note to self: Never ask Mommy another question again. But you know you will because you can’t help it.

“I feel like shit,” said Agnes, not waiting for an answer and probably already having forgotten the question.

“You actually look better than last time.”

“Can I come and live with you?”

“We tried that, remember? You tried to stab me with a cheese knife. Putting you here was actually a pretty fair compromise in lieu of my having you arrested.”

“I forget things,” said Agnes.

“That’s okay. I don’t. Especially cheese knives to the jugular.”

“You look rich. Are you rich? Is my little girl rich?”

“I do just fine. That’s why you can afford to live here. Because of your little girl.”

Her mother would never remember this, because her brain was full of rot, too. But it made her feel good to say it.

“I never thought you’d make anything of yourself,” Agnes said with a yawn.

“You always said I was full of surprises.”

“Did I?”

“No, I’m lying.”

“How’s your father?”

“Dead to us. Over twenty years. We covered this before.” She pantomimed the shotgun to the mouth, pulled the invisible trigger and jerked her head back, although her mother wasn’t even looking.

That was okay because the pantomime had been bullshit.

“I forget things,” said her mother, promptly forgetting it but then surprising her daughter by saying, “Did he treat you nice? Did he love you?”

Clarisse’s fingernail rubbed the arm of the chair she was sitting in. She rubbed it so hard, part of it broke off and fell to the floor. She looked down at the fuchsia-colored piece of herself resting on the cheap, stained carpet and said, “How have your bowel movements been lately? Firmer?”

Her mother sucked down the last of the Ensure and handed the empty to her daughter, who promptly disposed of it.

“Why do you keep coming here?” asked Agnes, licking her cracked lips, caused by oxygen deprivation, caused by the COPD, caused by the Camels. “You hate me and I know it.”

“I’m your daughter. And I am paying for this place. So I like to make sure you’re getting my money’s worth.”

“Do I have other children?”

“Not that you ever mentioned,” she lied.

“What is your name again?”

“Lucretia.”

The older woman sniggered. “That is one funny-ass name.”

“Says Agnes.”

The lips curled back. “I don’t like you much, you little bitch.”

“Yes, you made that quite clear over the years. Not so much the words, but the actions.”

Or, more accurately, inactions.

“You must love me, too, though. To pay for this shit, to come here and give me the chocolate milk and ask about my bowel movements.”

“It’s called Ensure. And I will bury you nice, or do you prefer cremation?”

“Just burn me to ash and be done. I’m almost there now.”

“And sprinkled where?”

“Who gives a shit?”

“I will see you next time.”

But her mother had fallen asleep. That often happened when your body could barely breathe. As she looked down at the wrecked woman, she had to fight back the urge to put a pillow over her face and be done with her and that part of her life.

You’re right, I do hate you. And you earned that. But it also wasn’t all your fault, either. Part of me feels sorry for you. But only part. But you have nothing and I now have a lot, so here we are.

Sometimes life didn’t just suck, it made no sense at all.

Because people often make no sense.

Later, as the plane shed altitude on its way to land, she looked at her Mickey Gibson phone — that, like her notebook, was actually labeled that.

Gibson had tried to call her three times.

You could have been so much more, Mickey Gibson. And you just threw it all away. You had every opportunity, and now look at you. And me? I had nothing. And now look at me. Right on the same playing field as you. Because this is a competition even if you don’t know it yet.

But all the phone call attempts were interesting. She might have found out Pottinger’s true identity now. Other things being equal, that had to be it. Fingerprints from Stormfield was the most likely angle. If she had passed that test, things were about to get interesting.

Mickey Gibson would have her full and undivided attention for the allotted twenty-five minutes, because she had a schedule to keep.

She looked out the rounded window of the Gulfstream as the tarmac flew at her. A few moments later the jolt of landing brought her back to terra firma in more ways than one.

She deplaned, and the waiting car service dropped her four blocks from the place she was using as a temporary residence. She walked the rest of the way.

Later that evening it took ten minutes to type out the message to Senator Wright and append a little attachment that would forever change the man’s life, and not for the better. Yet it would do wonders for her bank account. This was her version of ransomware, only she would never accept cryptocurrency in payment. It fluctuated too much in value from day to day, which was the last thing you wanted currency to do. A wire to bounce-around bank accounts in Zurich and Istanbul would suffice.

With the senator about to receive a gut punch via the “very” personal online account he had provided Angie so she could write dirty to him over the digital ether and hopefully sext him a time or two, she opened her Mickey Gibson notebook, lined up her Post-it notes, stared at the video sectors on her screen, and tapped the speed dial.

Mickey Gibson, Round Three.

She was fully prepared and scripted, but actually hoping that Gibson had a few surprises for her.

Truthfully, after Mommy time, she needed the diversion.