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I arrived home shortly after nine to find my mother whirling about in my kitchen. Pots, pans, canned goods, and dishes covered every square inch of counter surface. The cabinets, on the other hand, stood empty, every single door flung wide open.
“What are you doing?” I said, slamming the door leading from the garage into the house.
“Rearranging, sweetheart.” My mother paused to survey her progress. “It’s a miracle you can find anything in here, the way everything is in disarray.”
“Disarray?” I echoed, eyeing the mess. She couldn’t possibly believe the current state of my kitchen was an improvement.
“You can thank your lucky stars I moved in when I did. Why, I found this old thing wedged behind some spices.” She held up a can of peeled tomatoes using the tips of her fingers. “The expiration date passed almost two months ago, yet these tomatoes were still sitting there, waiting to be mixed in with some recipe of yours.”
The way my mother squeezed out the word recipe summed up what she thought of my lackluster cooking skills.
I lifted my hand, prepared to drop my keychain into the shallow dish where I kept it before realizing that space now housed a tottering stack of spice jars.
I clenched the keys in my hand and stalked toward my mother. “The date is a conservative recommendation. Canned goods always last longer than the date printed.”
“I’m not sure where you came up with that misguided notion.”
“It’s not a misguided notion,” I replied tersely. “It’s the truth.”
“Did you hear that on MTV, sweetheart?” My mother looked at the tomatoes in her hand. “It says right here, ‘best before February sixteen, 2013.’”
I shoved my keys into my purse and snatched the can from her, placing it on a now-empty shelf. “See, ‘best before’ doesn’t mean they’re bad.”
“Then why even bother printing a date?” She lifted a large canister of instant coffee off the counter and showcased it to me. “And this coffee expired almost two years ago. Surely you’re not offering this to your guests?”
“Derek left it when he moved out, but you never know when it might come in handy.” I plucked the container from her hands and threw it back into the cabinet.
She tilted her head. “But darling, it’s expired.”
My mother reached for the canister, but I shoved it deeper into the cabinet. “Coffee doesn’t go bad,” I told her.
She furrowed her brow, looking disappointed that she wasn’t in a position to dispute my statement. Neither one of us drank coffee, a fact that stymied nonresidents when they found out we lived in the coffee capital of the world.
I picked up more canned goods, slinging soups and beans and jams back into the cabinets. “All these food corporations want you to believe their products will go bad when really this crap could outlive all of us. Some things never go bad, but they’d prefer that you periodically throw everything out and buy new. They make more money that way.”
“Well, I don’t believe it,” my mother huffed. “I distinctly remember watching something on television where somebody mentioned an old can of tomatoes exploding in their kitchen. Now tell me how that happens if tomatoes don’t go bad?”
“Was this on Rachael Ray?” I asked, naming one of her idols. With no other canned goods in arm’s reach, I spun around to face my mother again.
“Of course not,” she said. “Rachael Ray knows the importance of using fresh vegetables.”
“Fruits.”
“Pardon?”
“Tomatoes are fruits,” I said.
She shook her head. “Good heavens, you’re determined to argue over everything, aren’t you? Who ever heard of tomatoes being fruits?”
“It’s true. Meredith learned that in school. It has something to do with the seeds.”
“Seeds?” she repeated. “Now you aren’t making any sense at all. Sometimes, darling, I think you make these things up just to be contrary.”
As my mother started removing the cans I’d returned, I folded my arms across my chest before I succumbed to my urge to either slap her hands away or strangle her.
“It’s a miracle you haven’t poisoned my grandchildren yet,” my mother continued. “You don’t know a fruit from a vegetable, and would gladly serve an expired helping of either for dinner. Why, I wouldn’t be surprised if you thought arsenic was a type of seasoning.”
I watched her step toward the sink and wet a dishrag under the faucet, the appeal of slipping something into her next meal growing the longer I contemplated my new living situation. I wouldn’t need to poison her necessarily. A freshly washed beetle nestled in a bed of spinach or a curdled lump floating in a milk glass might be enough for her to rethink her unwanted residency.
I moved to the other side of the kitchen bar counter. Deciding a subject change was in order before I completely lost control, I said, “I met with Harold Earnest this morning.”
My mother regarded me as she wrung out the dishrag. “And?”
“And he said Dad worked with a gorgeous black woman and a college girl.”
She looked down her nose at the limp dishrag, as if it had failed her expectations.
“The black woman was Leticia Robinson.” I watched to see if the name meant anything to her, but her expression didn’t change. “And the college girl was Kathy Smith.”
A moment passed before my mother started wiping out one of the cabinets. “Neither of those sound like promising candidates.”
“Why do you say that?”
“I would get some sort of feeling if one of those women had an affair with my husband of forty-one years.”
I blinked. “A feeling?”
“You might prefer to call it women’s intuition.”
I stared at her, trying not to feel peevish. Did she really think I could rattle off a bunch of unfamiliar names and she would miraculously develop a feeling when I happened to say the guilty woman’s name? Was she willing to invest no effort at all into this investigation while I ran around town interviewing my father’s business associates?
“Well, apparently Dad and Leticia lunched together quite often.” Despite my building exasperation, I attempted to keep my voice neutral so as not to start another argument so soon after our last.
My mother refolded the dishrag. “Your father always did appreciate a good lunch.”
My head started to throb. “And Harold says she was very attractive.”
“The world is blessed with many attractive women,” she added generously.
“That’s not the point,” I hissed, needing to release some pressure before my head burst like a water balloon. “The point is that after spending an hour this morning fishing out information on this woman, you can at least entertain for a few seconds the notion of Dad sleeping with her.”
She closed one of the cabinet doors before turning around. “I did consider it, dear. And to tell you the truth, I have trouble picturing your father with a black woman.”
I threw my hands up. “What difference does that make? I have trouble picturing Dad with you but that doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.”
My mother flushed. “Good heavens, Betsy. When did you become so crude?”
“When my mother moved in and started talking about my father committing adultery!”
She placed a hand over her heart. “Do you need to yell so loudly? With you broadcasting our family business to everybody, your neighbors might see fit to inquire about our personal affairs.”
I took a deep breath and consoled myself with the notion that my mother only had about another twenty years left according to the life-expectancy statistics. “Believe me, my neighbors have better things to do than eavesdrop on a conversation promising to go nowhere.”
“Even so. You should keep your voice down.”
I reminded myself that my mother had rejected forceps so I could be born naturally. Surely I could repay that generosity by humoring her now. “Okay, so if Dad didn’t sleep with Leticia or Kathy, maybe he had an affair with one of your friends instead,” I offered.
“We already discussed this,” she said. “Rick wasn’t sleeping with any of our friends.”
“And yet, he also didn’t sleep with either Leticia or Kathy, his two female business associates.” I recalled my resolve to search for pictures of the women. “Did you bring any photo albums with you? Perhaps flipping through those will reveal a female who inspires a feeling.”
My mother narrowed her eyes. “Are you mocking me?”
I spread my hands. “No, I’m looking into Dad’s supposed affair like you asked me to.”
“Well, I don’t appreciate the tone you used.”
“What tone?”
“When you said feeling just now. You used a tone.”
“I most certainly did not,” I said, my hands compressing into fists. “In fact, I went out of my way in order to not use a tone.”
“So you are mocking me.” She managed to sound both accusatory and triumphant.
“Well, what do you expect?” I snapped. “I just spent the morning talking to Harold so we could start making a list of candidates who could have slept with Dad, and you’ve already dismissed everyone without so much as a second thought.”
My mother tossed the dishrag onto the counter. “You’ve only come up with two people so far. That hardly qualifies as a list.”
“Oh, I’m sorry.” I slapped a palm to my cheek in mock apology. “You’re right, I should have a whole tome of potential suspects by now. After all, at least twelve hours have elapsed since you dumped on me the notion of Dad sleeping around. What a terrible daughter I am to have wasted all those hours tossing and turning on an uncomfortable couch when I could have started investigating immediately.”
My mother glared at me for a moment before her face softened. “I never said you were a terrible daughter.”
My lips parted, the words you certainly make me feel like one on the tip of my tongue. But something prevented me from saying them aloud.
“Although you’re certainly starting to make me wonder,” my mother added, picking up a plastic cup and shoving it into the cabinet.
A heaviness crept into my bones, draining my will to fight. “Why does everything turn into an argument with us?”
My mother didn’t reply as she stacked my dishes. Just when I was about to give up on her answering, she murmured something.
“What?” I prompted.
She twisted her head, tossing the words over her shoulder. “I said, often is the case with two strong women.”
Her observation took me by surprise. “You think I’m strong?”
She rotated one of the plates a millimeter. “Of course. What a ridiculous question.”
“How so?” I asked, suddenly desperate to hear her answer. My mother never complimented me, and this small concession had sparked a need for her validation I didn’t know I still had after all these years.
“Well,” she began, keeping her back toward me as she worked on filling my shelves, “you seem to have done quite well since your divorce.”
“I have?” Hadn’t she been lamenting the unruly state of my kitchen just minutes ago? I would have thought in her mind, letting a can of tomatoes sit for two months after its best-by date would be an indication that I could no longer take care of myself without another person’s assistance.
She turned around and evaluated me before returning to her task. “Your wardrobe could use some work, but you do seem to be holding yourself together quite well. My grandchildren are still breathing, at least.”
I sighed, feeling foolish for hoping she would launch into high praise about how independent and well-adjusted I was. Such an uncharacteristic display would have only engendered doubts about her mental health anyway.
Still, it would have been nice to hear at least once, even if dementia had been her only motivator.
Ironically, Derek’s success and my share of our divorce settlement contributed to the illusion of my independence. Although I’d toiled throughout his school years, once he opened his psychiatry practice in Bellevue—a short commute from our hometown of Seattle—his career took off with a speed surprising us both. Who knew there were not only so many unhappy people in the world, but so many able to shell out hundreds of dollars per hour to talk to someone and receive drugs in return? After a year of establishing himself, Derek earned enough to single-handedly support our family. The profitability of his practice combined with the extra income he brought in from stock investments had allowed me to quit both of my low-paying jobs and become a full-time mother. And although the girls were in school when we divorced, the judge thought all my early sacrifices entitled me to continue with my homemaker lifestyle.
My mother banged a glass into the cabinet, jarring me back to the present. As though she could sense me watching her, she turned around. “Did Harold mention any other business associates of your father’s?”
“Just a James Cantwell,” I told her. “But at the moment I’m assuming Dad’s mistress was female.”
Her lips puckered as if she’d bitten into a lemon. “Good heavens, Betsy. Of course she was female. Your father wasn’t gay.”
I shrugged. “You can’t be too sure. It runs in the family.”
“What on earth are you talking about?”
“Charlie,” I said, exasperated by her insistence on denying the stark truth.
“Oh, for goodness’ sake. Your sister isn’t gay. She dates men.”
“Charlie is a man,” I reminded her.
Her hand cut through the air as though to dispel the notion.
I decided to let the subject drop. “By the way, Mom, I really am interested in seeing those photo albums, if you brought any.”
“I left all our pictures at home,” she said. “And most of my photos only feature you and your sister and my granddaughters.”
My heart sank. “So you don’t have any pictures from Dad’s funeral?”
She gasped as if I’d requested to see closeup shots of my father postmortem. “Of course not. My generation is not like yours, capturing photos of anything and everything as if you have no brains in your heads to remember anything. Pictures were reserved for special occasions.”
“Dad’s funeral wasn’t a special occasion?”
“Happy occasions,” she amended.
I tried not to show my disappointment. Besides, what could I really accomplish by studying photographs of my father’s old business associates? Did I actually hope the sight of my father’s mistress would trigger a feeling?
“Harold did mention that Dad and Leticia pitched the company to potential investors,” I said. “Maybe Dad started seeing one of the people they pitched to.”
My mother continued to work in silence.
“I don’t have any names,” I went on. “Did Dad ever mention anyone he approached, perhaps a woman he found particularly interesting or”—I thought of my father’s own weird attraction to my mother—“overbearing?”
She glanced over her shoulder. “Overbearing?”
“Eccentric, I mean.”
My mother shook her head, not bothering to turn around this time.
“Maybe we can locate some candidates in Dad’s address book,” I suggested. “I flipped through it yesterday, but didn’t see any unusual entries. If you took a peek, you might notice something I overlooked.”
“Your father doesn’t like me looking through his things,” my mother replied.
“Mom, Dad isn’t here to complain, remember?” I said. “And if you want to get technical, he probably wouldn’t appreciate us trying to identify his mistress either.”
She rotated around, her nostrils flared. “Then he should have thought of that before he started running around on me.”
“Exactly my point.” I balled my hands into fists, caught myself, and relaxed them. “Anyway, couldn’t Dad have fallen for one of these rich women asked to back Track-It?”
“I suppose it’s possible,” my mother conceded, picking up a can of olives. “Although I would think she would have invested if that were the case.”
I mulled over my mother’s assumption. Would a failed pitch preclude my father’s involvement with the woman who had rejected the investment potential—and, in effect, him—or would my father have viewed the woman’s professional disinterest as irrelevant? Having never considered his romantic interest in anyone but my mother until now, I really had no idea how he would have reacted to such a situation.
My mother, on the other hand, had been pondering over who was involved with the man for years. I should be encouraging her to help define the mistress’s likely qualities. Once I had a good idea of her character traits I could then pursue locating someone similar.
“What type of female physical attributes attracted Dad?” I asked.
My mother peered at me. “Female physical attributes?”
“You know, did he like high breasts, flat abs, firm legs?” I remembered what Harold had said about Leticia. “Maybe he preferred a certain ethnicity or hair color.”
My mother stiffened. “Good heavens. What a silly question.”
“What about wealth and status? Or power?” I pressed, thinking of the female investors my father might have encountered when pitching Track-It. “Did Dad admire professional success in a woman?”
“Your father wasn’t sexist.”
“I mean, did that type of success turn him on?”
My mother dropped the can in her hand. “Of course not. You make your father sound like some sort of common pervert.”
“I’m trying to get at whether Dad would have been more prone to have an affair with a female investor he only met a few times, or Leticia or Kathy, young women he saw at least several times per week,” I explained.
My mother frowned. “With this line of questioning, it sounds more like you’re attempting to desecrate his memory.”
“We have to narrow down the mistress candidates somehow, Mom,” I said, succumbing to the irritation overtaking me. “I can’t be running all over town investigating every woman in the greater Seattle area.”
“Now it sounds as if you’re trying to paint your father as an indiscriminate playboy,” my mother scolded.
“You were the one who wanted me to look into his affair,” I said. “How do you propose I do that without coming up with some suspects? Even if you don’t know any of these women, you were married to Dad for forty-one years. You must have noticed at some point the type of women he responded to.”
“Rick didn’t respond to women,” she countered, spinning around so she could resume restocking my cabinets.
I gaped at her back. Maybe her already enormous capacity for denial had somehow expanded over the last few years, enlarging into a giant black hole swallowing anything true or logical.
“Well, if he took up with one of them, he must have.” My voice rose as my frustration mounted. “What were you envisioning when you accused Dad of having an affair? A naked woman spontaneously appearing in his bed?”
“Obviously she was some sort of predator,” my mother announced. “Your father was at a very vulnerable time in his life. He had just turned sixty the year before he died. He traded his sedan in for a motorcycle that year, for goodness’ sake. This woman probably met him while he was attending to Track-It’s business, recognized his susceptibility, and preyed upon him.”
Her calm delivery of this bizarre scenario shocked me into silence. Did she actually think some woman had calculated the entire pursuit alone? And what had happened to yesterday’s indignation? When faced with actual candidates, she had evidently absolved her husband of any culpability.
But her observations did seem consistent with a man experiencing a life crisis. The motorcycle he’d purchased that year had certainly taken me by surprise.
I took a deep breath. “Okay, assuming Dad was going through a midlife crisis, he probably would have pursued a younger woman. A woman your age wouldn’t do much to clear away his doldrums.”
My mother leaned against the counter. “Good heavens.”
“That points to Leticia and Kathy as the most likely candidates,” I said. “Most women looking for an investment opportunity would be older and more financially established.”
My mother didn’t respond, grabbing the dishrag to wipe off another shelf.
“You know, Mom, you may know more than you realize,” I said. “I find it hard to believe Dad never mentioned the women he worked with.”
My mother’s hands stilled. “He did talk about his coworkers early on, when Track-It first started. Back then he was so eager to be a part of something new. But later he stopped mentioning the company at all. Whenever I’d ask him about it, he would change the subject.”
“He probably felt guilty talking about Track-It once he started fooling around with someone there,” I surmised. “Which once again points to either Leticia or Kathy.”
My mother’s posture slackened. I wondered if she was having second thoughts about identifying my father’s mistress now that we’d located several candidates.
I experienced a twinge of remorse then, not only for coming up with actual names but for my budding interest in solving this mystery—assuming my mother’s suspicions were correct. Now that I’d recovered from the initial shock of thinking about my father with another woman, the adventure of locating his mistress had generated a spark of excitement and purpose.
“What about that other person you mentioned?” my mother asked, setting the dishrag on the counter.
“What other person?”
She waved her hand. “Their investor. James Something-or-other.”
“James Cantwell,” I confirmed. “What about him?”
She looked at her hands. “Perhaps you were right about the person in the car not being a woman. Perhaps Rick had been with James.”
I stared at her, flabbergasted by this change of heart. “You mean you really think Dad had been gay?”
She lifted her chin. “No, of course not. What a ridiculous thing to say.”
“You said yourself that Dad didn’t respond to women,” I mused.
“I meant, your father did not . . . leer after the fairer sex. He had been a gentleman in every way.” She crossed her arms over her chest. “What a way to twist someone’s words, Betsy. Do you honestly think I wouldn’t know if my very own husband couldn’t be . . . influenced by women?”
“Okay, so you think he might have been bisexual,” I amended.
She unfolded her arms and sagged against the counter. “Good heavens.”
I exhaled. “What are you suggesting then?”
“I’m merely considering that maybe you were right about Rick not having an affair with the person in the car that night.”
I dug my fingernails into my palms, her comment rekindling my frustration. “You can’t be serious. Yesterday you were telling me how you’ve known about Dad’s affair for years—that ‘a woman always knows,’ remember that?—and now you’re saying he might not have had a mistress after all? If you thought that, why didn’t you say anything earlier, before I spent this morning talking to Harold?”
“I gave your theory some thought last night,” my mother said, seeming unmoved by my speech, “and you may have a point.”
“What theory?” I said. “I don’t have a theory. All this was your theory.”
“Your theory about the lip balm,” she clarified. “About men using lip balm as well as women.”
I didn’t reply, surprised anything I’d suggested yesterday had gotten through to my mother. Maybe she was more open-minded than I gave her credit for, or perhaps she even valued my opinion but had trouble expressing herself. The notion lifted my spirits and caused me to feel strangely grateful toward her.
“Thinking about that dog on the loose, I had trouble sleeping,” my mother continued. “So I turned on the television and started watching Friends. Or possibly Frasier. Maybe Will and Grace.” She shook her head. “I watched so many programs last night. Anyway, at one point one of the lead characters pulled out some lip balm and applied a smidgen to his lips. That started me thinking about the possibility of a man being in the car that night.”
My gratitude vanished in a poof. “Wait a minute. You only started accepting that men can use lip balm because you watched a single episode of some comedy rerun? So my suggestion had nothing to do with your change of heart?”
“You planted the notion to begin with, of course,” she said.
I threw my hands up in the air. “But at the time you argued. You completely dismissed the idea. Then you turn on the TV for a second and suddenly you see things from my point of view? That’s hardly a compliment!”
“I didn’t realize you were fishing for compliments,” my mother said, her haughty tone resurfacing. “I thought you were engaged in order to help identify the person in the car with Rick that night.”
“Of course I’m engaged!” I shouted. “Why do you think I spent this morning talking to Harold? Because I like to hear men hubba-hubbaing about women’s racks?”
My mother’s brow furrowed. “Hubba-what?”
“Never mind.” I sighed, wishing I could shake this heavy sense of disappointment. “It doesn’t matter. The point is you seem open to the idea of a man accompanying Dad in the car. That opens up some of our options at least.”
My mother studied me before clearing her throat. “Don’t misunderstand me. I still maintain that your father cheated on me, but those names you mentioned don’t give me any feelings. So, at the moment I’m willing to consider that a man had been in my Buick.”
“In that case, the lip balm could have been Dad’s.”
Her head jerked like a marionette’s. “Absolutely not. Rick didn’t use lip balm, and he certainly wouldn’t have chosen cherry.”
“Okay,” I conceded, not wanting to argue. Besides, I had never seen my father use ChapStick either. During my younger years, he had always treated his dry lips with Vaseline. “But why would Dad need to meet with James Cantwell that night? Track-It had already folded by then.”
My mother didn’t say anything for a moment. When she looked at me, I felt a tingle of apprehension.
“James was not happy about Track-It’s fate,” she said, drawing out the words.
“Of course he wasn’t happy. Track-It’s failure meant three million of his dollars down the drain.” I thought back to my conversation with my father’s business partner. “Harold pretty much said the same thing, that James had become disillusioned with the company toward the end.”
“It was more than that,” she said. “He had it in his head that he’d been cheated.”
“Cheated how?” I asked. “Like Dad and Harold misrepresented themselves when presenting their business proposal?”
She pursed her lips. “I’m not sure of the details. Rick never talked to me about it directly, but once I overheard him arguing with James on the phone. When you mentioned his name earlier, it brought back that memory. Rick had repeated his name a few times, trying to calm him down.”
“Okay,” I said slowly. “So it’s possible James was with Dad during the accident. Maybe Dad agreed to meet with him to explain why the company didn’t make it. But then why would James run away after the crash? I can see why a mistress might be afraid to be caught with her illicit lover, but what motive would James have for fleeing?”
“Perhaps he caused the crash,” my mother said quietly.
My blood chilled. “Are you suggesting that James murdered Dad?”
She tried to shrug, but the gesture came off shaky. “I don’t know.”
“All right,” I said, willing to play with the idea myself. “Harold indicated that James had become pretty demanding toward the end of Track-It’s life. Dad had to meet with him quite often to provide updates.”
“At night, Rick often held hushed phone conversations behind the closed doors of his home office,” my mother concurred. “I assumed he had been chatting with his mistress, but maybe on some of those calls he was trying to soothe James.”
“But if James wanted to punish Dad for Track-It’s failure, why would he choose to crash a car that he too was inside? That sounds awfully risky to me. He’s too likely to be injured—or killed—himself.”
My mother absently fingered a canister of salt. “I suppose you’re right. It doesn’t make sense.”
“But it’s an option to keep in mind,” I said, not wanting her to feel as disheartened as I had when she’d dismissed my men-using-lip-balm supposition. “In fact, why don’t I look up James Cantwell’s number and ask to meet with him?”
My mother’s head snapped up. “The man was angry, Betsy. You didn’t hear him on the phone that night.”
“Track-It went bankrupt three years ago,” I reminded her. “Any anger he had toward Dad has to have worn off some by now.”
“Even so. If he killed Rick, he could feel threatened by your questions.”
I figured she was right to be cautious. “I’ll arrange to meet him somewhere public, where he won’t be able to do anything without someone witnessing it.”
“Perhaps I should go with you,” my mother suggested.
“You mean as my bodyguard?” The idea made me smile.
She smirked. “No, because two people are safer than one.”
I stepped away from the counter. “That’s okay with me. I’ll go look up James now.”
“What makes you so sure you can find him?” my mother asked.
“For one thing, he’s likely in Dad’s address book. If not, a big-shot investor like him is bound to be noted in online news articles.” My gaze traveled over my kitchen. “I’ll tell you what, I’ll guarantee to have James tracked down before you have this kitchen back in order. Otherwise, I won’t protest you taking over my bedroom for another week.”
My mother spun around and began throwing things back into the cabinets. “Deal.”
