Page 60 of Every Sweet Thing Is Bitter

AS I HURTLEpast the state line into Annesville, I spot one news van. There is one more in the Burger King parking lot in Carey Gap. That’s it. My dead mother is only worth two news vans. It would hurt less if there were none here at all.

I stare at myself in the rearview mirror, quizzing myself on every question I think an enterprising reporter might ask, from Annie the dog to why I am dressed for the cold in the dead of summer. Eventually, I have been looking into my eyes so long that my pupils morph into tiny oval slits, like a snake, my irises shifting from tawny to pure yellow.

My car rattles as I drift over the center line. A minivan swerves to avoid me, the bleat of its horn echoing between my ears long after it’s gone. When I look into my eyes again, I see two round pupils shrinking to pinpricks in the sunshine, the way they should.

I need to escape. I need to be someone other than a woman with a murdered mother, and so I take refuge in the quiet of the nursing home. It is removed from time and space, its own galaxy strung together by the distorted realities of the residents. The worlds they inhabit exist only inside their heads, and like the unsung extras in a Broadway show, the nurses quietly uphold the verisimilitude. The televisions are tuned to game shows and black-and-white movies, the reading material divided between word searches and outdated magazines whose covers promise to divulge the secret to keeping the lushest garden on the block. In the common area, teenaged volunteers lead a game of bingo. Two girls at the front of the room alternate announcing numbers at breakneck speed while a handful more whisk from resident to resident, racing to help them scratch off one number before the next can be called.

Gil has graduated from puzzles to chess. Captured pieces stand at attention alongside the board. I watch from the doorway for a moment as he contemplates his next attack, tapping his fingers against an empty can of 7-Up. When he remembers how to correctly move the knight, my heart skips a beat, and I indulge myself in the naïve hope that the Gil I love is not gone forever—just lost in a fog, ready to emerge at any second.

He dashes that hope when he says my mother’s name. “Elissa! You look well. Summer suits you.”

He always said that to my mother when they crossed paths. No matter what time of year, no matter how haggard she looked, he would smile and say the season suited her. “You look well too, Gil,” I say, and I wonder if anyone has tried to tell him that my mother is dead. Is it crueler to let the illusion continue or to shatter it?

“I’m glad you happened by.”

“Do you need a chess partner?”

Gil looks down at the board, his face lax with confusion. He plucks the rook from the queenside corner and closes it in his fist. “I have something to give you.”

“My birthday is in May.”

“Bah. It’s important.”

“Gil—”

But now he is on a mission, rummaging through his nightstand drawers like a raccoon through an open dumpster. He tosses items onto the bed and the floor when he realizes they’re not what he’s looking for. I reach for his elbow and then he yells. “No! No!”

I flinch.

He isn’t going to hit me. But I flinch because my body remembers what happened the last time someone yelled at me like that, and the time before, and the time before. I jump backward, out of his reach, and try to catch my breath. He continues narrating his search like nothing happened. He even cracks a joke when he finds his dentures case. I wait for a nurse or a nosy resident to peek into the room, but no one comes. Like always, no one comes.

Finally, Gil finds what he’s looking for. He presses a bundle of cash into my hand.

“What is this?”

“It’s for Providence,” he says.

I leaf through the bills, all hundreds with a few fifties and twenties mixed in. Ten grand, easy, probably a little more. It is an unfathomable amount of money to be holding in my hand. Even after my best days tattooing, I’ve never had a bundle of cash this thick. “No,” I say, shaking my head. “No. No. I can’t.”

“Even when she gets the softball scholarship, Truman State will still make her pay for the dorms and the food. She shouldn’t have to worry about the debt, Elissa. Not for the firstyear or two anyway. She’s still a kid. Let her play softball and have fun.”

“You can’t give me this much money. What—what about Connor?”

“Connor’s taken care of.”

I thrust the money toward him, but he slides his hands into his pajama pockets with a sly smile. “Tom would kill me. He’d kill you too,” I say. “He won’t accept charity.”

“Then it’s a good thing he doesn’t need to know.”

“Where did you even get all this cash?”

Gil laughs as he returns to the chessboard. The rook he nabbed is nowhere to be seen. “Nothing untoward, if that’s what you’re implying.” He pauses. “Marjorie had a nest egg. I paid off the house, Connor’s got something … I wanted to give a little of what’s left to Providence.”

“I can’t take this.”

“Please, Elissa. I insist.”

I try one more time to give the money back, but he shakes his head and advances the white bishop across the board. I promise Gil I’ll be right back and duck out into the parking lot. My hands tremble so intensely I can barely handle my phone. Connor picks up on the first ring.

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