I couldn't help but smile. That's exactly the word for how things were between my parents generally-cool. Not quite involved.
'Same as always,' I answered.
'But they weren't bitching at each other or to you?'
'Nothing different.'
'And how's your dad doing now? Pretty torn up, still?' She'd produced a little spiral notebook from somewhere and was writing in it.
'I mean, my dad-I never really know what's happening with him. He's pretty stoic. But I think we're both fairly much in shock. He kind of suspended most of his campaigning. If he'd asked me, I'd've told him to do more to take his mind off things.'
'Seeing anybody?'
'Hell, no.' The thought of my father with someone else, which several brain-damaged individuals had mentioned in the weeks after my mom's death, inevitably rattled me.
'You getting on okay with your dad?' she asked.
'Sure,' I said. 'Is that what this is about? My dad? Is somebody making trouble for him?'
When I was in the second grade, my father was tried for murder. In retrospect, it always amazes me how long it took for me to comprehend the full dimension of that simple statement. At the time, my parents told me that my father had had a bad fight with his friends at work, like bad fights I had with friends at school, that these former amigos were very mad at him and doing mean and unfair things. I naturally accepted that-I still do, actually. But I realized there was more to it, if for no other reason than that every adult I knew treated me more warily, as if I were suspected of something, too-the parents of my friends, the teachers and custodians at school, and, most conspicuously, my parents, who hovered in an intense protective way as if they feared I was coming down with something terrible. My dad stayed home from work. A bunch of policemen swarmed through the house one day. And eventually I learned, either by asking or by overhearing, that something very bad might happen to my father-that he might be gone for years and years and conceivably could never live with us again. He was petrified; I could sense that. So was my mother. And so I became terrified, too. They sent me to overnight camp for the summer, where I found myself more scared for being away. I would play ball and run with friends but wake up constantly to the reality that something awful might be happening at home. I cried like mad every night until they decided to ship me back. And when I got there, this thing they called a trial was over. Everybody knew my father had done nothing bad, that the bad things had been done by his former friends, just as my parents had been saying all along. But still it wasn't right. My dad wasn't working. And my parents seemed unable to recover a normal air with each other. It came as no surprise when my mom told me that just the two of us were moving away. I had known something cataclysmic had happened all along.
'You think your dad deserves trouble?' Detective Diaz asked.
'Well, of course not.'
"We don't make things up,' she said. I hadn't sat down yet, and she pointed to the chair again, this time with a pen. 'A guy like your dad, he's been around since they started telling time, everybody and his cat has got an opinion. Some people, you know, here and there, they got axes to grind. But that's how it goes, right? Judges, prosecutors, cops, they're always sand in somebody's ointment. But your dad's running for office. That's the main thing. Somebody looked at the file and said, We got to clear this before he takes the oath, answer all the questions.'
She asked me to tell her what happened the day my mom died. Or actually the day after.
'Is that the thing?' I asked. 'Did that seem strange-him sitting with the body for a day?'
She lifted a hand-back to that routine, just doing her job. 'I don't know. My mom, her people was Irish, they put the body in the living room with candles and sat around it all night. So, no, I mean. People lose someone, there ain't no manual for that. Everybody does it his own way. But you know, if somebody wants to make trouble, they'd say, "Now, that's strange. Putting everything away." You know how folks can be: What's he cleaning up? What's he hiding?'
I nodded. That made some sense, although those questions had never crossed my mind.
'One of the coppers has got a note that you said your father didn't want to call the police?'
'He was blanking. That's all. I mean, he's been around long enough to know somebody has to call the cops, right?'
'Seems like that to me,' said Detective Debby.
'Yeah, but it was the situation,' I said. 'I mean, this heart stuff ran in her family, but my mom was in great condition, worked out, stayed fit. Did you ever lose somebody you loved without warning? It's like there's no gravity all the sudden, like everything is just floating around. You don't know if you should stand up or sit down. You can't really think about doing anything. You just need to get a grip.'
'Anything look out of place when you got there?'
There was something out of place all right: My mother was lying dead in my parents' bed. How could this detective really think I'd remember anything else? My father had laid both of her hands out on the covers, and she had taken on a color, pale as water, that by itself left no question she was gone. I don't know how young a kid is when he figures out his mom and dad are headed to the exits before him. But age never seemed to have touched my mother. If one of them was going to just hit the floor, I would have expected it to be my father, who seems a little puffy with age and complains a lot about his back and his cholesterol.
'And when was the last time you were together with your mom?'
'The night before. We had dinner at the house. My girlfriend and me.'
'And how'd that go?'
'It was the first time the four of us had a meal together. Everybody seemed kind of nervous, which was weird because my girlfriend knew my parents before we started going out. But you know, sometimes that makes things harder, changing context with somebody? And, I think my parents have always been secretly worried that I'd end up alone, too moody and stuff, so this was kind of a big deal. Do you have kids?'
'Oh, yeah. All growed up, just like you.' That sounded strange to me, the way she put it. I don't think either of my parents would have described me as all grown up. Truth, I might not have used those words myself. 'My son, he works for Ford, has two of his own, but my daughter, she ain't married and I don't know she ever will be. Like her mom, I guess, wants to go it alone. Her father? That man was an absolute rat, but now sometimes I wish I hadn't of told her so often. She's on the job. Tried to talk her out of it, too, but she just had to do it.' The way she tossed her head in wonder made us both laugh, but she went right back to asking about the night before my mom died.
'How'd your mom seem to you? Happy? Unhappy? Anything stick out in your mind?'
'I mean, my mom-you know, she's been treated for bipolar for years, sometimes, you can see she's struggling. Could see.' I grimaced over the tense. 'I guess that it all seemed pretty normal to me. My mom was a little high-strung, I'd say, and my dad was quieter than usual, and my girlfriend was nervous.'
'You say this was for dinner,' said Detective Diaz. 'Remember what you all ate?'
'Ate?'
She looked at her pad. 'Yeah, somebody wants to know what you ate.' She shrugged, like, Don't ask me, I just work here.
That was the last time I saw my mom, so the night had been on replay for weeks and the details remained incredibly fresh. I had no trouble answering the detective's questions about who cooked and what we ate, but it just made no sense to me, and somewhere along I began to realize I needed to shut up.
'And who poured the wine for your mom while you were eating dinner? Your dad again?'
I gave the detective a look.
'I'm just trying to think of every question somebody could possibly ask,' she said. 'I don't want to have to bother you again.'
'Who poured the wine at dinner?' I asked aloud, as if I didn't really recall. 'Maybe my dad. He has this Rabbit corkscrew my mom never could figure out. But I'm not really sure. It could even have been me.'