CHAPTER FIFTEEN

I did not agree to do it, but I told them I would think about it, and drove home thinking about nothing else, until I remembered Max and Katrin and their grandmother, whereupon I would think about that awful, threatening situation until my mind was drawn back to the other one. Despite the cold air rushing in through the open window, my hands were sweaty on the steering wheel, my grip stiff and tight.

I arrived home a bit after five, the sky approaching full dark, to the alarming sight of the front door standing wide open while an ambulance drove away, its red and blue lights spinning. I leapt from the car, afraid something terrible had happened to my mother, not knowing whether to follow the ambulance or go inside.

From the doorway, my mother’s friend Sylvia called out to me. “Roger, come in here before I freeze to death.”

I rushed to the door, and Sylvia immediately said, “Don’t worry. Your mother’s fine. She fainted, but she was feeling much better by the time the ambulance got here.”

“Where is she? Is she upstairs?” I asked and headed that way

“Calm down, Roger. She’s in the ambulance. She wanted to send them away, but I insisted that she go in for tests, just in case.”

“But why did she faint? Did they say what was wrong?”

“That’s what the tests are for, aren’t they?” she said, speaking to me as if I were a slow child. “Ida asked me to wait here for you, so you wouldn’t worry. You can drive me to the hospital now and take her home when she’s done. I’ll have my grandson come pick me up after we hear what the doctors have to say.”

THEY’D TAKEN her to a hospital in Bethpage, Sylvia told me, a ten-minute drive away. I glanced over at her, silent on the seat beside me as I got back on the Seaford Oyster Bay Expressway, remembered what had flashed through my mind when I’d seen Sylvia standing there in the doorway: She had found out about the pills from Max and Katrin, told my mother that I had killed their friend. I saw my mother grabbing at her chest, collapsing to the floor with the news.

“So, how are things with your new girlfriend?” she asked, turning to look at me after we’d been driving for a few minutes.

“Excuse me?” I said.

“Your mother tells me that you’ve been spending time with Gina Capitano’s daughter.”

“We’re just friends,” I said, gruffly. “Not that it’s any of your business.”

From the corner of my eye, I saw her smile.

“So that didn’t work out either?”

“Thanks for your interest, Sylvia, but I don’t think you have any idea what goes on in a modern relationship.”

She snorted. “You think things are different now? You don’t think I’ve known men like you my whole life?”

“What does that even mean, men like me? Where have you known men like me?”

“Here.”

“What?”

“Turn here, the exit, coming up,” she said pointing ahead.

I made the turn and was glad to let the subject drop when she didn’t pursue it. Sylvia directed me the rest of the way to Saint Joseph’s Hospital, where a nurse led us back through green-tiled corridors deeper into the building, to a small exam room where my mother sat upright on a crisp sheeted bed. A nurse was just wheeling an EKG cart out of the room, and my mother was buttoning up the sweater she wore.

“How are you feeling, Mom?” I asked.

“They’re making such a fuss!” she said.

“You can’t be too careful at our age, Ida,” Sylvia said. “Did the doctor tell you anything yet?”

“I haven’t even seen a doctor! Just all his helpers and nurses,” my mother said just as a sleek, starched doctor entered the room. He was a bit younger than me, looked exceedingly fit, and wore round steel spectacles that matched his neatly trimmed, steel-gray hair.

“Which of you two young ladies is Ida Faber?” he asked, smiling professionally.

Sylvia narrowed her eyes, and though it wasn’t quite audible, I believe she might actually have sniffed in distaste.

“Ah, you must be the patient,” he said to my mother, and I moved away as he stepped toward the bedside. He switched the clipboard he carried to his left hand, and held out his right for her to shake. “I’m Doctor Schneider.”

My mother shook his hand and said, “Would you please tell these two that there’s nothing to worry about?” He ignored her as he looked down at his charts, including a sheet of paper that had obviously just been ripped from the EKG machine. He flipped through a few pages beneath it.

“I understand that you’re on—” he said, and rattled off a few medications.

“Yes, that’s right,” she said, a little anxiously.

“Did you start taking the”—unrecognizable name—“recently?”

“Yes, why?” my mother asked, now sounding a bit alarmed. “Doctor Frankel said that my blood pressure was too high, and that would fix it.”

“You never told me about that,” I said.

“I didn’t want to worry you. It’s nothing … Isn’t that right, Doctor? It’s nothing?”

“Well …” he said, and looked at the charts again. “Doctor Frankel is where?”

“He’s my internist in Florida.”

“Well, I’m sure Doctor Frankel knows what he’s doing, but I think we need to make a few adjustments in your medication.” He looked up from his papers and smiled at her. “All right?”

“Yes, of course, Doctor,” my mother said, but she seemed flustered and upset now.

The doctor turned to me. “You’re the son?”

“Yes.”

“Could I speak to you for a moment?” He looked briefly at my mother and Sylvia. “If that’s all right with you ladies.” He didn’t wait for them to answer, just walked out into the corridor. I followed.

“Mr. Faber, is it?”

“Olivetti,” I said. “Roger Olivetti.”

“Roger, I’m a bit concerned about your mother’s heart. Her weight is a serious problem at her age, and the EKG’s not excellent. With her low estrogen levels, she’s in the sweet spot for a heart attack. She needs to eat better and start getting more exercise, for starters. I’d like to see her again in a few weeks.”

“Is that why she fainted? Was it her heart?”

“No, not at all. She’s on a new antihypertensive to lower her blood pressure. They brought it down a bit too low, and that brought on a syncope event.”

“A what?”

“She fainted,” he said, forbearingly.

“Will it happen again?”

“I can’t predict the future, Roger. It’s certainly possible. Driving might not be a good idea. Tell me, does your mother live with you or is she still independent?”

“Well, ah, she … she still lives in her own house.”

“Maybe it’s time you thought about moving her in with you, or hiring someone to come in and look after her.”

“Okay,” I said, but he didn’t look up from what he was scribbling on the pad he had taken from his pocket.

“I want her to switch to these dosages on her blood pressure medications,” he said, handing me a stereotype defyingly legible set of instructions. “But you also need to get her in better shape. And for the time being, keep her calm. Try to avoid anything that’s too upsetting. Maybe keep her at home, where you can control the environment. She’s not getting any younger, you know.”

“So, that’s it? We can go now?”

“Don’t see why not,” he said, then gave my hand one quick shake and began to turn away.

“Wait,” I said. “Aren’t you going to say anything else to my mother? She’d really—”

“I’m sure she’d rather hear it coming from you,” he said, and hurried off to his next patient.

I returned to them as my mother was getting off the bed, leaning heavily on Sylvia as she did. As I watched, it occurred to me how often lately my mother would call out from the couch, “Come help me get up,” or else work her way to her feet in slow, clumsy stages.

“Where’s Dr. Schneider?” my mother asked. “Isn’t he coming back?”

“No, he was in a hurry,” I explained. “He told me everything. You’re fine, Mom. We just have to start thinking about how you can be a little healthier.”

“What? What’s wrong with me?”

“Calm down, Ida,” Sylvia said. “If it was anything serious, he would have told you himself.” She turned to me. “This is what happens. You’ll see. They start treating you like a child.”

“I wouldn’t say that, exactly,” I said, but it did seem a bit irregular that I was now somehow in charge.

“Well, what did he say?” Sylvia asked. “Tell us.”

“Nothing, really, but I think it would be good—the doctor thinks it would be good if you started exercising, and thought about, well, losing a little weight. Sorry, Mom.” I held out the doctor’s notes. “Here. He wants you to change the dosage of your medications.”

She took the page from me, looked at it, then back up at me, looking lost, as if she’d discovered she could no longer read.

I reached out, took it back from her. “Don’t worry about it. We’ll go over it together at home.”

Sylvia had opened the tall metal locker against the wall, took my mother’s coat from the hanger, and helped her on with it.

“And maybe we should talk about getting somebody in to help you,” I said.

“What? I don’t need any help!” my mother protested. “You can help me if I need help.”

“We’ll talk about it, Mom. Come on, let’s go home.”

After we straightened out her insurance matters at the desk, I drove Sylvia to Harborside Manor, in North Massapequa, as her grandson had neither answered nor returned her calls. From what I could see, Harborside Manor was, as I had been repeatedly told, very nice. The grounds were pleasantly landscaped and well-maintained; what I could see through the windows of the lobby looked both homey and orderly; and the attendant that greeted Sylvia when she walked through the door seemed to have a genuine smile on her face.

When I finally got my mother home, she was very low-key, maybe a little bit in shock after what had happened. I told her to go sit and read, and I reheated some leftovers for our dinner. While we ate, I casually brought up the matter of a home healthcare aide, but she refused to even consider it.

“I don’t want a stranger in my house, Roger! I don’t need one. I have you.”

I HAD never really given much thought to my mother’s health. Husbands dropped dead on her, left and right, but she had always plowed steadily forward, like a broad and ponderous cruise ship, slowly and unstoppably cutting through the waves. I knew, of course, that this could not go on indefinitely, but her death had always seemed so far in the future that it had no relevance to the present. If you’d asked me that morning, and I’d been forced to think about it, I would have guessed she had another ten years at least, possibly twenty.

I know I might have presented myself as unsentimental, but when all is said and done I am subject to the same emotional calculus as anyone else, the inverse square law that left you unmoved by the death of a distant stranger, while it was impossible to escape the pull of those who were close to you. I did not want my mother to die.

In the diner, when Steve and Nicolle had threatened to speak to her, tell her the things I had done, I had been worried about what she would think of me, how upset she would be. I could attempt to explain it all to her, of course, explain that I had never really had any choice. I could attempt to explain, even, that none of us have any choice, that we were all carried along by an infinite number of intersecting currents, unseen beneath the surface; that we shouted our intentions into the wind and thought we heard assent when they blew back in our faces; that we dipped our paddles in attempting to steer, but at best avoided capsizing. I could explain all that, but I could not expect her to understand, could in fact count on her not to. “Stop saying nonsense things!” she would say. “You killed my friends!”

But now Steve and Nicolle weren’t just threatening to upset my mother, to tarnish her picture of me, they were threatening her life. A failing heart and the sudden revelation that your son is a serial killer do not pair well. I had been appalled when Lisa proposed I consider cold-blooded murder for money, and was not tempted when Steve and Nicolle offered to pay me to kill Larry, but this wasn’t about money any longer. This was a matter of protecting my mother, just as killing Mary Mahoney had been something I’d done to protect myself.

And Larry was, really, exactly as they had presented him. He was a racist and a misogynist, and ultimately a thug, a criminal. Even if he’d never committed a violent act himself, he was complicit. He had gotten where he was through his conscious association with people whose tactics involved the extralegal application of violence.

I’m not going to pretend I’m not also complicit in violence. We all are. Anyone who lives in a stable society enjoys that stability only because of the implicit violence of the state. The state is made of violence; violence is its very substance. Laws are obeyed because if they are not, the state will effectuate some tiny amount of that unrealized violence and bring it to bear against you. We can only go about our lives, rubbing up against each other with all our conflicting goals and inevitable conflicts, because we have agreed to turn violence over to the state. We are protected by that violence, and thus we bear responsibility for it, but we have given up the right to decide to be violent ourselves.

People like Larry, his colleagues in New York, were like rats in the woodwork of society; staying just hidden enough to go about their violent business unregulated and unhindered. But by living the sort of life he lived, stepping outside the laws that took the option of violence away from individuals, Larry had declined the protection of those laws, voided the user agreement we all opted into by default, and made himself fair game.

And, okay, if I’m being completely honest, I had never quite reconciled myself to the awfulness of his writing. There was a time not that long ago when being a writer was something special. My novels might not have been successful, but they exhibited a certain level of skill and professionalism, and just as importantly, a knowledge of literature and the humanistic values it conveyed that came from years of thoughtful reading. Now, someone like Larry, someone who had probably never read anything that didn’t gain depth when it was made into a Hollywood movie, churned out book after book, self-published them, and called himself an author. I will never stop finding that galling, and while the case against him was written in his character and his actions, it could be found just as clearly in his writing.

That was beside the point, of course. You could not justify killing someone just because he was an awful writer—the streets would run with rivers of blood. The only real question was whether his life outweighed the risk of letting Steve and Nicolle tell my mother something that might put her in her grave. It was his life or hers.

What were my options? Turn them in? They had not done anything the police could act on. It was their word against mine, and there was a good chance that reporting them would end with me in jail, which was no less likely to kill my mother. Kill them instead? That was absurd, and surely ending Larry’s life was the lesser wrong. Simply run away? There was no guarantee that if I did they would not tell her about me anyway.

I had been hoping to leave and start over somewhere else with the money I got from Brad. I had been ignoring it, didn’t want to let it influence me, but I was not unaware that with what I might get from Steve and Nicolle on top of that, my new life in a second-rate city would start out that much better.

I picked up the phone and dialed. When Steve answered, I asked, “How much?”