Help for the Haunted(71)

“Well, I didn’t expect to see you, either. I prefer my husband talk to you on our behalf. I don’t feel comfortable doing interviews. But I’m afraid you’ll have to see him another time. I will let him know you came by.”

My mother stepped outside, pulled the door shut behind her. She gave Heekin a warm smile and started past him toward the Datsun in the driveway.

“I d-d-don’t understand,” he called after her. “We have an appointment. Where is he?”

“Upstairs in bed. He’s thrown his back out.”

“I’m s-s-sorry.”

“I’m sorry too.”

My mother reached the car, sizing it up as though it were a horse she was wary of mounting. Heekin watched as she went through the keys on her chain, determining which would unlock the door. “You hate to drive,” he blurted, getting the words out all at once.

She looked up at him with her glittery green eyes. “How do you know that?”

“Your husband. It’s on the tapes. The tapes from the interviews, I mean. I remembered him saying that about you.”

“Well, you’re right. It makes me nervous, because I’ve never been very good at it. But I manage fine when the situation calls for it.”

“I could drive you. Wherever you’re going.”

My mother did not answer immediately. She stared at something inside the car, jangling her keys, before looking back at him.

“No interview,” he promised. “Just some friendly chitchat.”

Her errand turned out to be to the pharmacy for my father’s pain pills. My mother explained that on occasion he called in prescriptions under her name, since the one thing he maintained from his former career was his medical license. Other than that, Heekin did the talking, stuttering and rambling despite his best efforts. He told her about his lonely year spent in the air force working as a typist. “Not many p-p-people know this b-b-bit of trivia, but H-H-Hugh Hefner also worked as an air force t-t-t-typist. It’s the only thing that guy and I have in c-c-c-common.”

It was a joke Heekin had told before, one of the few he could count on to get a laugh, but my mother just said, “Forgive me, but Hugh who?”

“Hefner.”

“Heifer?”

“No. Hefner.”

“Oh,” she said. “And who’s that?”

“You know, the head of Playboy magazine.”

Her hand went to her chest. “I’m sorry, Mr. Heekin—”

“Sam. Call me Sam.”

“I’m sorry, Sam. But I’m not familiar with those sorts of publications or the people in them.”

Their time together was off to a bad start. Heekin wanted to rewind things, to begin again. Instead, he told her about his life at the paper, the bland stories he normally covered, and his dream of someday finding a subject worthy of writing an actual book about. All the while my mother sat in the passenger seat, smelling of rosewater like her name, her delicate hands stroking her black leather purse as though it were a cat purring on her lap. Empty soda cans littered the floor, and she nudged them away whenever his Volkswagen made a turn.

When they pulled into the strip mall, she asked if he minded parking around back, since she preferred using that entrance in order to slip in and out more easily. He did as she wanted, and my mother told Heekin she’d just be a moment. True to her word, she emerged in no time, pausing unexpectedly to examine a towering stack of thick, discarded books behind the neighboring hardware store, pulling one off the top and carrying it with her to the car. On the drive back to our house, Heekin made up his mind to allow her to do the talking. Beyond the brief explanation about the book, however—filled with wallpaper swatches, a fortuitous find, she said, since she needed help figuring out what to do about the peeling walls in our kitchen—my mother did not have much to say. Most of the ride was spent in silence, her purse on the floor now, as she turned the pages of that book, looking at all the patterns there, asking now and then his impression of a particular swatch. At last, they turned onto the lane, and Heekin could not help feeling like he’d blown his chance at some connection with her. “Good-bye,” he told her, a disproportionate melancholy stirring in his chest.

My mother thanked him, unbuckling her seat belt and getting out of the car. But in the last moment before closing the door, she surprised him by leaning in to say, “You seem like a nice man. And this story sounds important to you. Uncomfortable as it makes me, I’d like to help. Why don’t you bring your notebook and recorder in for tea?”

“Really?” he said, hearing the childish excitement in his voice.

“Really,” she told him.

[page]Inside, my mother asked Heekin to make himself comfortable while she went to the kitchen. Rather than take a seat, he stood in the hallway, running questions he wanted to ask though his mind. My mother had set the wallpaper book and the small white bag from the pharmacy on a side table by the stairs, and the pharmacy bag was open enough for Heekin to see the jumble of amber containers inside: Tylenol with codeine, Vicodin, others with unfamiliar names. After the whistle screeched on the kettle, my mother moved through the hall with a tray to take up to my father, fetching the white bag on the way.

When she returned, they went to the living room. “So,” she began once they were seated. “What can I tell you that my husband has not?”