Chapter 45
After the cake burned in the hearth, Mother marched out of the house, and Doctor Lobo went after her. I burn through two cigarettes in the parlor before Lobo returns. Alone.
“Where’s Mother?”
He sinks onto the sofa with a heavy sigh. “Why couldn’t you just say it wasn’t true? The whole business with the damned cake?”
I shake my head. Already an ache edges between my temples. “I won’t keep lying to her. You shouldn’t, either.”
He regards me with a cool analytical expression. Then he says, “Just get some rest. Sleep off the alcohol. I talked to her, she’ll be fine, but I’ll be taking her with me for the night. She needs fresh air. It is best for you both to be separated for a bit. To get some perspective.”
My nerves tighten all through my body. “You’re taking her with you?”
“Yes.”
“Like Hell you will.”
His lips form a joyless smile. “I’m going to try to fix this mess that you created because you refused to tell one little lie. She’s displeased with you right now and she doesn’t want to come back to the house at all, do you understand? We can’t let her wander off into the night alone.”
I picture Mother meandering in the dark woods like a sleepwalker, thinking she’s nineteen. A kind Samaritan picking her up only to discover she thinks the year is 1877. She’d end up in the asylum.
She’s displeased with me, he says. But she is the one who hit me for no reason.
“I haven’t done anything wrong.”
“You said the wrong thing.”
“I said the truth. I’m not to blame for whatever my father did twenty years ago. Why can’t you just convince her to come back inside?”
“I tried, it was to no avail. She insists on going home.”
“This is her home—”
“You know what she means. Her mother’s house.”
My gut twists. “She can’t.”
“I know, I know. That’s why I’ll take her to my house.
I’m a physician, who better to take care of her than me?
I’m going to try that mesmerism technique I mentioned earlier.
It might help the memories resurface. In the morning, she’ll be rested and you’ll be sober, and she can come back.
Trust me, your mother was in the grip of death and now she walks and lives and breathes, thanks to me. ”
“Someone lives and breathes, but it sure isn’t Mother.”
He tilts his head. “What do you mean?”
I’m too drunk to explain to him the difference between Strange Madalena and Mother right now. And what difference will it make? He doesn’t know Mother.
My head hurts when I try to think, clouded by the fog of liquor.
I could go out there and talk to her. I know I could persuade her to come back inside, but only by impersonating my father.
I loathe the notion. If by some miracle her memories do return, how will she feel about me having playacted as my father, encouraging her romantic delusions? She won’t like it one bit.
But without lying, silence is my only recourse.
I reach for the glass of liquor and he snatches it from my hand. He drags a blanket over my shoulders and I lean against a cushion, feel my lids closing. Maybe I’ll allow my eyes to close for five minutes, that’s all.
“You can try the technique here,” I mutter as my eyelids grow heavy. “I’d sooner have her sleep in the stable than at your house.”
“Very well”—he pats his vest and puts on his hat—“I’ll set up a nice bed for her in the stable.”