Running all the way back to my hotel room from the parking lot made me swelteringly hot, angry and out of breath. The key card slid through the slot in my door but the little green light didn’t go on. I rattled the handle but it wouldn’t open. Beads of perspiration that had collected all around my forehead dripped down onto my cheek. I brushed them off with the back of my hand.
It had to be at least ninety-five degrees in Philadelphia and the humidity was something I had never experienced before, not in Maine or Boston, or even Florida. The air was so heavy I could almost feel it move to make a space for my body when I walked. Oppressive, that’s what it was. The heat and heaviness were pinning me down in this horrible city, making it difficult to put my thoughts together and think. And right now I really needed to think. I grabbed the handle again and shook the door so hard I could feel the hinges vibrate.
“Let me.” A maid passing by, seeing my frustration, took the card from me and slid it through the slot. Her movements were quick and miraculously the little green light blinked on.
I didn’t bother to thank her, just took the card and pushed the door open so hard it slammed against the wall. Then, because my whole world seemed to be crashing down on me, I shut the door in her face, slumped to the floor and cried.
I thought of Nick and me sitting on a bench in Old Port, eating French fries from a paper container. Our first month together, maybe. It was the first time I had spoken at length about my mother’s death. The endless cycles of chemotherapy. For over two years she put up a good fight but each round made her weaker, less willing to go on. That last trip home from the hospital, my brother and I sat so still in the back seat of our Plymouth Duster, the backs of our thighs sticking to the maroon vinyl seats, afraid to move. We didn’t want to talk or even breathe. We didn’t want to miss any of our mother’s words because they were scarce and precious. All she kept telling my father was that she was tired, so tired that she couldn’t fight anymore. She just wanted to sleep. I thought she just needed to go to bed for a bit, that tomorrow she’d feel better, but that’s not what happened.
I sneaked in and sat there those last couple of weeks, watching her. She did look like she was sleeping, at peace, and I was sure she would wake up when she was all rested, but my father said she was in a coma. I held her hand and talked to her, telling her about my day or what happened at school. I thought she could hear me. I didn’t really understand. I spent hours during those weeks bargaining with God. Take anything away from me at all; just don’t take my mother My deal wasn’t good enough. She died at home with us in her own bed.
Nick took my story in. All of it. I thought at the time I had his rapt attention because of interest and sympathy. But that wasn’t true. He had been contemplating my weaknesses so he could gain some advantage in my life. So he could replicate my story, changing only slight details, and then spoon feed it back to me about his own mother. Like the right key in a complex lock, it worked. It took five years to discover his deception. Five years.
I needed a shower. My clothes were plastered to me and I needed to get under the water, to wash the grime and all these lies from my body at the same time. My clothes, peeled from my skin, were left in a heap where they’d fallen. A torrent of lukewarm water spilled out onto the floor. I hardly noticed.
A will in the event that something happened to me. That’s what the lawyer said. But in the end he’d given me no information about Nick’s mother or why Nick refused the money. McBride refused to tell me where she lived or even her name. Nothing. He’d left me with just fear, confusion, anger. And money. By the time I stepped out of the shower and wrapped myself in a towel I knew I had no choice. I was going to have to find Nick’s mother, who probably lived in the stone house surrounded by woods. And find out if there was indeed a James that might help me end this insanity.
I walked to the window and stared out at the city below. The hotel was centrally located, a quick choice, the first major hotel in Philadelphia listed on the internet. I’d resigned myself to the expense at the time, thinking I’d be here for only one night. Now I wasn’t so sure. Perched on the window sill, I studied the buildings, the people moving along the streets. Was she out there, somewhere, in one of those buildings, having dinner or a drink in a restaurant? Did she know her son was dead? Did she care?
My eyes rested on an older woman walking on the sidewalk across the street. I studied her for a moment. She was wearing green pants and a white sleeveless top, carrying a tan shopping bag. Her hair was grey but she was too far away to discern her features. My eyes followed her until she turned a corner. Was that Nick’s mother? Or how about the woman at the bus stop? Was she the right age? Or the gaggle of women that just rounded the corner, maybe one of them? I rubbed my eyes and watched the figures blur in front of me. Nick’s mother could be any woman between the ages of fifty and seventy. That was a pretty wide range.
Dressing quickly in shorts and a t-shirt, I grabbed a map of Philadelphia from the lobby and got into my Jeep. 4:10 pm, my watch said. Traffic wasn’t heavy yet and besides getting out of that room, I needed to just get a feel of the city. This had been Nick’s home. Part of him was still here somewhere; I just had to find it.
Philadelphia looked worn and grimy, a hodge-podge of old and new, quaint and dilapidated. The city was built low, squat, with a smattering of larger buildings sprouting up as an afterthought. Old colonial had eventually given way to the needs of the more modern. It was all disjointed, haphazard and dirty looking but homey. Like a small town in a big city.
I sat at a traffic light at 16th and Market, listening to the hum of endless rows of cars. People milled about dressed in summer clothes. A statue of a man, William Penn, was perched atop the City Hall building overlooking the city. He wore an enormous Philadelphia Phillies t-shirt. I stared in disbelief and amusement. The end of the baseball season was apparently here. I hadn’t noticed.
The Red-Sox games had been a part of my childhood that died with my mother. From April through October my entire family arranged schedules around baseball. One of the most precious memories left to me was when we’d pile into the car and trek to Fenway. My dad tried to get seats near the green monster. The stadium was small, crowded, sometimes cold, the smell of beer and hotdogs all around us. Screaming until we were hoarse, long lines to the bathroom during the seventh inning stretch, falling asleep in the car on the way home, it was all part of the ritual. I squinted up again at the statue in the baseball shirt; his back was to me. Philadelphia did rally around their sports teams. I could appreciate that.
A car horn blaring behind me let me know that the light had changed. I waved and moved with the cars in front of me. Circling the downtown area at least four times, I memorized the layout, the urban sprawl between the two rivers, the street names, the art museum near the water. I pulled into the parking lot near the old waterworks buildings and watched the crew teams scull down the Schuylkill River. The long thin boats cut neatly through the water leaving small waves in their wake. Nick never told me what section of the city he’d grown up in, what school he’d gone to, or even the name of the street. I had nothing to go on but teeny fragments of information. Wealthy. Large stone house set back from the road. Woods. It had to be somewhere outside of the city proper. I sat there in the car, looking at the tiny ripples in the water, unclear what to do next.
My eyes cast downwards across the car seat and in that split second, I saw it. Nick’s personal effects that were taken from him that night at the hospital. A clear plastic bag I’d tossed carelessly into the side compartment of the passenger side door, left there for weeks. I’d forgotten. In all the haze following his death and funeral, I’d forgotten it. Samantha had driven me back and forth to the funeral home when they were preparing his body for burial. I wanted him to be buried with his wedding band so I’d just grabbed the entire plastic bag and then shoved in into the side door pocket, unthinking. Until now.
I ripped it from the compartment, dumping all the belongings he’d had on him that night onto the seat next to me. His wallet, keys, a scrunched up five dollar bill, some loose coins, a wad of smashed papers, and his cell phone still covered in dried blood, scattered across the seat. I tore at the dark brown leather wallet dropping the contents onto the seat. His driver’s license, insurance card, various business cards-all from the Portland area, a receipt from Home Depot for piping and tools when he’d fixed the sink in the upstairs bathroom a few months ago, and a phone card, fell out.
It was the generic kind of phone card you’d buy at the drug store to use at a pay phone. He had a cell phone. He had no need for a phone card. Unless he didn’t want to answer questions about strange numbers showing up on our telephone bills, or at work. I dialed the access number on the back and then punched in the pin number underneath. An automated voice told me I had 26 minutes left. He’d used 74 minutes. Over one hour. Talking to someone he obviously didn’t want me to know about.
I dropped the card onto the seat and picked up his cell phone. Dried blood flaked off onto my hand. An image flashed through my head that made my whole body shudder. The hospital, his body, smashed and broken being rushed by me on a gurney. Someone leading me away, to a seat, to wait. Handing me his things sometime later in the plastic bag. “His cell phone was in his pocket,” the nurse said. “It’s probably broken…” The voice faded away. I opened it and tried to turn it on. The outside cover was cracked. Uncharged or broken, it didn’t respond. I flung it away from me with my fingertips and pulled out into traffic.
My head throbbed. The traffic flow was becoming heavier and I’d driven as much as I could stand when I realized I was back at the law office. The curb near the front of the building was empty so I cruised in and turned off the engine. McBride was the key to this whole thing. He’d been so removed but I could tell he was protecting something or someone. A massive wall of granite behind that big littered desk. Impervious to begging or pleading or even tears. Warning me to go away.
I dug the business card from my purse and dialed the number to the law office. If I had to make out a will, I would use the appointment as an excuse to get the information I wanted. The Whitfield address, the phone number, something. I wasn’t going to leave this city until I did. And then Nick’s mother and I were going to have a little conversation.