thirty-two

My mother, on Sunday furlough, thanks to Dr. Grovit’s persuasive use of medical jargon, rested comfortably on my attic futon. Katrina lay next to her, a human beach ball with limbs.

“How much is this going to hurt?”

My mother shrugged. “I opted for pain medication, before, during, and after.”

“Yeah, like twenty years after,” I laughed.

Katrina grimaced and rubbed her stomach. I could see that her present level of discomfort had weakened her resolve. “If it gets bad, I might consider taking something.”

“I know this is going to be a home birth,” I said as I tweaked the finishing touches on Cheryl Goldberg’s nose, “but have you decided on the room?”

“The kitchen,” Katrina replied.

“Nice, Trina.” I nodded. “You really don’t want Frank to ever enjoy a meal here, do you?” I brought my completed drawing and the Facebook picture over to the futon for comments. “Drawing first,” I said as I held up my pad. I let Katrina and my mother eyeball a charcoal of Harry Goldberg’s girlfriend/David Goldberg’s wife for a full minute. I had drawn Cheryl looking positively sultry, which I knew would get a rise out of Goldberg. Her scarf and sunglasses gave her image a Marilyn Monroe effect, as if she were hiding from the press. “Now, her actual picture.” I revealed the Facebook photo Cheski had secured.

“The hair is different,” Katrina noticed. “It’s not as poufy.”

“Cheski and Lamendola did a drive-by yesterday. Based on their description, her in-person look is not as dramatic as her Facebook glam shot.”

Katrina propped herself up on her elbows. “So that guy I met at the storage place, he’s having an affair with this woman? This is the lady I thought broke in?”

“Yeah, it’s his cousin’s wife,” I confirmed. “You wasted a jelly sandwich on that loser.”

“What a sleazeball,” Katrina said, grabbing the slanted wall for support to reach a full sitting position. “And the day we saw him dancing around the warehouse, that was a total lie?”

“Can you believe it?” I said. “It was an act. He knew the warehouse was empty, and we think he knew Bob was dead too.”

“Why didn’t he just say so?” My mother was stating the obvious. It was a good question, and one we’d all been wrestling with since the tuba lady had tipped us off to Harry.

“If Harry was actually stuck with the e-waste as a result of the green washing scam,” I explained, “then, unfortunately, he’d have to get rid of it under careful EPA supervision. That would cost him a mint.”

“Isn’t the disposal of a storage unit’s contents the responsibility of the renter?” Katrina asked.

“If he could find the warehouse’s renter, I’m sure he’d sue the renter for the cleanup. But, based on Frank’s investigation, the company that rented the unit was bogus from the start.” I gave my mother and Katrina the low-down on green washing, an eco-unfriendly scam. “I think it was cheaper for Harry Goldberg to pay to have it illegally removed and then feign surprise when the e-waste had mysteriously disappeared from the warehouse.” I handed the drawing to my mother.

“It’s good, honey,” she said, reaching into her pocketbook, “but this is the woman I’m really interested in.” She unfolded the dated newsletter of Dr. Carolyn Corey. “I guarantee this woman was at our house after your procedure.”

I frowned. “I’m starting to lose track,” I said, referring to the ever-increasing number of female faces we were juggling. Between Lizzy James, Carolyn Corey, Bob’s maybe daughter, the skinny jeans lady, and Cheryl Goldberg, I was on visual overload.

I took the picture from my mother and studied Dr. Carolyn Corey. She seemed pleasant enough in the photo, and I noticed she had her arm around Lizzy James. For an office photo, the pose seemed somewhat personal. Were Lizzy and Carolyn friends? They appeared to be an unlikely pair, yet there they were, arm in arm. If it was Carolyn’s job to manage the surrogates, then there must have been a certain level of intimacy in their relationship, although Lizzy James didn’t let on to that when we met her. Was it possible Carolyn Corey felt badly for Lizzy, or was she more like my father, an opportunist on the lookout for an available and hopefully healthy uterus?

I was about to quiz my mother on Carolyn Corey’s visit when Frank entered the attic. I loved seeing Frank in my attic studio, because he always appeared impossibly out of place. He wasn’t artsy, so my canvases and supplies held no interest for him. And then there was his stature; he was too physically large for the space. Given the present company of a pregnant woman and his girlfriend’s mother, he must have had a good reason for making the pilgrimage to my attic workspace. Especially on a Sunday, one of the few days he actually took off.

“I’ve been staring at this picture of Bob’s diorama all morning, and I’m coming up dry,” he said. “It needs an artist’s interpretation.” He handed his iPad to my mother, who held it at arm’s length and squinted her eyes.

“So this piece wasn’t with his others?” my mother asked thoughtfully.

“It’s currently in a storage unit,” Frank said. “Bob has a studio at his house that appears to be his main work area. There are easily eight dioramas at his home studio.”

“Is there room for one more at his home studio?” my mother asked as she scrutinized the photo.

“This piece”—Frank pointed to the picture—“is pretty big, but I’m guessing he could have made space at home.”

“What are you getting at, Mom?”

My mother placed the photo on her lap and addressed Frank. “When CeCe’s father and I started to have problems, I painted the most godawful canvases with painfully transparent messages. I was a one-trick pony, churning out paintings of a screaming woman with her hair on fire.” My mother posed for us by running her fingers through to the ends of her hair and stretching her mouth. “Unlike a diary, a piece of art isn’t so easy to shove in a drawer, so I hid them in the basement boiler room.” She laughed at her own expense. “They’re probably still there.”

“Do you think Bob hid this diorama from Barbara?” I asked

“I don’t know,” she said as she brushed her hair back into place. “Maybe he just ran out of room? Regardless, I do think the change of venue is odd. Usually an artist gets in a groove in a certain locale.” She moved her hand across my workspace to prove her point. My attic was my sanctuary. It’s where it all happened.

Frank nodded. “It’s a very good point, Mrs. Prentice. I wondered why Bob would lay down hard cash for the extra space. It seems out of character for a Freegan opposed to spending money, but if he really needed privacy, this may have been his only option.”

I pulled up an artist’s stool for Frank and cracked the window. In seconds, the room filled with salty breezes moving south off Long Island Sound. I glanced at the farm below, knowing full well we were completely behind schedule. Up until this year, Katrina, her boyfriend Jonathan, and Charlie and I had been able to maintain the rows of vegetables and fruits entirely on our own. Jonathan’s decision to return to medical school, Katrina’s upcoming birth, and my relationship with Frank had left the fields sadly underfarmed over the last few months.

During the winter, Charlie and I had built a portable greenhouse out of recycled plastic tarp and PVC piping. At one hundred pounds, the eight-by-ten-foot house could be lifted by two people and rotated over in-ground crops to extend the growing season. We were testing sweet potatoes this year, which required the painstaking process of cultivating slips, or shoots from existing potatoes. The leggy shoots, soaking in water, should have been in the ground and under the protective sheath of the new greenhouse a week ago. If we let the farm go any longer, we’d be fully dependent on Dumpster diving, a total turnoff to Frank. Worse, I’d have to get a job to generate cash for the basics, like food.

My mother studied the diorama. She pulled it close to her face and then slid it back like the arm of a trombone. I heard her counting. Then she asked Frank to advance the frames so she could look at more photos from different angles. Again, she counted.

“It’s The Last Supper,” she said matter-of-factly. “At least I think it’s Bob’s version of The Last Supper.”

My mother’s revelation was enough motivation for Katrina to sit up again. She grabbed the iPad and counted out loud. “She’s right. There are twelve people in this picture, plus this one guy who seems to be the focal point.”

My mother laid her finger on the man in the velvet cape. “See how his arms are stretched open on the table, and he’s staring into the distance. Now, look at the other twelve people. They all seem to be in clustered discussions, except for this man here.”

We crowded around Frank’s iPad. Frank used the tips of his fingers to enlarge Bob’s rendering of the unknown man. Close up, his face had been sculpted in a wry, almost shit-eating grin. It reminded me of a chess player uttering the fatal word: checkmate.

Frank poked at the photo. “He’s got some pounds on him.”

“Damn,” I said. “What if he’s the doughy man? What if he’s Bob’s betrayer, and Bob knew it?”

Frank panned over to the man in the velvet cape, his palms pointing to heaven. He narrowed in on the figure’s exposed arms, but the photo blurred. “If the one in the cape is Bob, then maybe the other people in the picture are real too. I wonder how close Bob came to depicting their actual features.”

“I feel like Bob wanted this diorama discovered,” I said. “I feel like there are answers in this piece of art.”

Frank stood up too quickly and beaned his head on the tilted ceiling. He pointed to Katrina. “Please don’t have this baby in the next few days. Give me another week of CeCe’s undivided attention.” Then he turned to my mother. “Are you free for an afternoon of culture?”

My mother smiled at her newfound freedom. “Let’s go.”