Telling Lies

Chapter Twenty-Four

When I looked up, we were somewhere past Riverside, just at the cusp between new tract house development and open desert. Mike drove, with Casey napping in the front seat beside him. I was in back with Marc, hearing the story of his life. You can learn a lot about a person in an hour. Marc seemed to have a very solid core.

Mike turned to me. “Want to find a telephone?”

“No,” I said. “Stopping would just take time. I know Jaime is fine.”

“You’re sure? We could call the sheriff.”

“No. I’m sure,” I said, touching Marc’s shoulder. “He’s with Aleda.”

Marc had been telling me the story of his life with his mother. I had filled in for him details about my family-his family-that his mother either didn’t know or had misremembered. It was spooky how much he knew about us. He had followed my career from the beginning. He had collected articles Emily had published in medical journals, and the occasional pieces about her and her adventures that showed up in the press. He played the flute, like my father.

Marc’s shadow life with his mother, moving frequently, changing his name between schools, leaving friends behind, had been populated by mythic characters-largely, my family. He was incredibly like his father, my brother, his namesake. I felt I had always known him.

“Why did you keep running?” I asked him. “The government wasn’t very interested in your mother after a while.”

He shook his head. This part of his story wasn’t clear to him. “At first, I think, Mom was afraid the Feds would take me from her, put her in prison. Then, when she sent out feelers to see whether it was safe to come in, someone threatened us and started looking for her. We hid. After a while, it was habit. I can’t explain it. It was just the way we lived.”

“Didn’t your mother know we would have helped her?”

“She was afraid you would be hurt. It was like you were all held hostage.” He pulled nervously at his ear. “It was true, too, wasn’t it? As soon as Mom and Aunt Emily made arrangements for Mom to surrender, look what happened.”

I did look. Emily shot, Rod immolated. To protect whom? From what?

When we drove into Jaime’s gravel driveway, Lupe was on the porch, sweeping. She went to the screen and yelled some-thing. Tires on the gravel made too much noise for us to hear what she said. The collie nosed open the screen and ambled down the steps, with Jaime and Aleda slowly following him. Two uniformed Riverside County sheriff deputies came outside behind them and waited on the porch with Lupe.

Aleda Weston had once been very beautiful, not so much because of her features, which were regular and refined, but because of the grace and confidence of her carriage. People would stop to watch her go by, or listen to what she had to say.

As she came down the steps, there was still something left of the old confidence, just a shadow you had to know to look for. I was looking for it very hard, the way I had looked for a spark of life in Emily’s eyes a few days before.

Aleda was painfully thin. Her thinness added emphasis to the beginnings of a dowager’s hump forming between her shoulder blades. The hump gave her posture a stoop, made her seem burdened. I suspect that anyone seeing her for the first time would see only a rather plain, middle-aged woman.

What had Max said? Everyone had been in love with Aleda. I know I still was. Celeste, no matter how wild her stories were, couldn’t change that. In my heart, Aleda was an echo of my sister, Emily.

I had heard all of Celeste’s invective, her accusations against Aleda. While I had suffered some lingering doubts, as soon as I saw Aleda again, I knew the truth. Mike had said I would. Celeste had created a tower of lies in which to dwell. Now that it had come crashing down around her, I wondered whether she could sort out any truth for herself. Not that I cared in the least.

Aleda picked up her pace when I got out of the car, though her gait seemed pained. She smiled at Marc, but reached for me. I carried a wrapped package under my arm and nearly dropped it to embrace her.

“Oh, Maggot,” she said, tears welling in her pale eyes. The skin of her hand felt dry and thin, like old silk. Like my grandmother’s hand. “Look at you. All grown up.”

I glanced at Casey in time to see her roll her eyes at this comment.

“Aleda,” I said, “this is my daughter, Casey.”

Aleda reached toward Casey. “You look so much like your Aunt Emily.”

Casey didn’t know whether this was a compliment, but she managed a polite smile.

Jaime grabbed Casey around the middle, like the old days, and gave her a spin, albeit a tamer one than when she was smaller. “What happened to my little girl? She’s just a big hunk of junk now.”

Casey giggled.

Aleda pointed at Mike. I know you. You were with Maggot at the jail when I was brought in.”

“Mike,” he said, offering no official title. “I’ve heard a lot about you.”

Aleda laughed. “No doubt.”

The air was clear and crisp. The sky a dusky blue. We all sat on the porch steps to watch the color show of the desert sunset. The package I had brought was wedged between Mike and me.

“I miss Lucas,” Aleda said. “Shouldn’t we have one of his awful hymns about now?”

Jaime smiled. “Where is Lucas?”

“He’s Santa Claus tonight at the shelter Christmas party,” I said. “He’ll be in Berkeley by dinnertime on Christmas day. He promised.”

“I have a Lucas hymn,” Jaime said. “One of his favorites. He taught us when we were in the Alameda County jail for unlawful assembly.”

Jaime began to sing a morbid dirge, and Aleda, laughing, joined in:

Plunged in a gulf of dark despair,

We wretched sinners lay,

Without one cheering beam of hope,

Or spark of glimmering day. A-Men.

Before the last phrase, Aleda began to weep softly. Jaime and I held her between us.

“I feel so bad about Emily”, she sobbed into my neck. “It’s all my fault.”

“How is it your fault?” Mike asked. “Celeste shot Emily. Celeste hired a pro to rig a bomb to do in Rod Peebles. What does it have to do with you?”

“Marc and I were okay where we were. If we had just left things alone, we would still be okay.”

“Okay how?” I said. “You would stay in hiding forever? Marc told me he graduates from college in June. I think its high time you both moved out into the world.”

She didn’t seem convinced. “I knew what Celeste was capable of. Don’t underestimate her power and influence. Or her perversity. She killed Tom Potts because she wanted to. And he wasn’t the only one.”

“Emily knew the risks,” I said. “She must have felt they were worth taking.”

I handed the package I had brought to Marc. “Emily had this made for you. I don’t think you need to wait until Christmas morning.”

Mike was beaming. It was through his efforts that this item had been released-liberated-from the collection of Emily’s possessions the police had found in the trunk of Celeste’s car. Mike speculated that when Celeste broke into Emily’s apartment, among other things, she had taken Marc’s dogtags and had given them, or planted them, on Rod before she sent him to his explosive end. A little detail to add drama to her scene.

Marc hesitated before he began to slowly remove the brown paper wrapping. He refolded the paper deliberately before he picked up the framed photograph inside. He glanced at his mother, confused it seemed, before he held it up for the rest of us. I had given him the enlargement Emily had made of Marc’s snapshot, the one she had airbrushed.

“Where’s Dad’s joint?” Marc asked.

“Purged,” I said.

Aleda was smiling again. “Poor Marc. Right to the end, Emily got the last word.”

“One thing still bothers me,” I said. “Why did Emily get her boobs done?”

Mike laughed and pulled me against him. “Because she wanted to.”