Read Online Edge by Michael Cadnum - Free Book Online Page B

you want,” she said, in a way that made me put down the phone and look away from it. I sensed that the relationship between Mom and Sofia was not important right now, in my mom’s estimation. Dad was all that mattered.
    She made no move to unlatch the suitcase. “You forgot my toothbrush, too: The toothpaste. You brought me those rhinestone pumps Webster bought me as a joke and forgot the mouth-wash.” But she put her hand out to me, her fingers searching, patting mine: never mind what I’m saying.
    â€œOpen the suitcase and find out,” I said. It was like volleyball—we had to keep the conversation in the air. “I brought you that purple thing and a pair of white gardening gloves.”
    That purple thing was a dress she had ordered custom made by a designer in Corona del Mar, flying down for two fittings. It had arrived looking like a grape with all the juice sucked out of it. “The shapeless look,” my mother kept telling me the only time she had worn it, pacing the living room, waiting for Webster to take her to see Madame Butterfly . It had become a catch phrase. “If you don’t shut up I’ll put on that purple thing.”
    If you didn’t know any better, you would think we were having a fight. We weren’t. In a weary, amiable way, my mother and I were firing on all cylinders, getting along fine. But what we were really doing was trying to act normal, people remembering their usual roles, actors with Alzheimer’s. “I forgot all about tooth stuff,” I said.
    â€œWalgreen’s is closed,” she said.
    I used to think motels were fun, staying with my dad on collecting trips to Palm Springs for the Yucca moth and to Ashland for a new species of pine borer. I was crazy about ice, using the big metal scoops in the ice machine, filling the plastic container from the dresser, even though my dad did not drink cocktails and didn’t need three pounds of ice for the glass of cold water he liked to drink before going to bed.
    â€œI bet you forgot your own things,” she said, kindly, complaining out of compassion for me. She has a way of putting a hand on her stomach when she talks and shaking her head a little, a little extra editorial spin: don’t mind what I’m saying.
    My roll-out bed was a mattress on spindly wheeled legs. The wheels squeaked. It folded out into what looked like a piece of lawn furniture, a bed for someone who wasn’t committed to sleeping. It accepted my weight with a fine, wheezing steel whisper, like a screen door creaking open.
    Mom had always believed Dad would drift back to her. I think she secretly continued to think of herself as Flo or Renny, Dad’s pet names for her in those old days, when he had time for us. I wondered what he called Sofia.
    Mom was in the bathroom, the door open a crack. She was smearing something on her face, and I could see her making expressions in the mirror, silent shrieks, fiendish grins, keeping those muscles taut.
    Then she was in the room with me, leaving the bathroom water running, sitting oh the bed, face goop all over her forehead, her cheeks. She did not say a thing, just sitting there.
    I turned off the water in the bathroom and brought out a towel. I have no idea how people get the gunk off their faces. She took the towel but made no move to use it.
    She had attended weekend seminars: Smile Your Way to Millions. She had taught classes: A Positive Attitude, Your Winning Number.
    I called the hospital. The hospital voice said that she would transfer my call to the Intensive Care nursing station, and I froze. This is it, I thought. News. I sat down on the edge of the bed.
    Mom saw my expression and stood up with the towel in her hands, draped so she could cover her face with it.
    â€œCan I ask to whom I am speaking?” asked the next voice I spoke to, a male nurse or one of the detectives.
    I told him I was Theodore Madison’s son and gave him my name,