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“No, I don’t know,” I say. “She’s dead.” My voice is not flat and emotionless like I planned.

What I’ve said does not register on her face. She has the look of a pugnacious child even at forty.“Mary prayed for Jesus,” she says with conviction. “My role as her mother—”

“Holy cow, are you kidding me? She’s dead, Mom.” I spit out the word like it’s rotten. “She’s dead.”

Her stare is blank. Blank because she doesn’t get that one half of her twinset has been missing for nine years? Or blank in that she doesn’t care?

“Mary prayed for Jesus,” she repeats like she’s recalling lines to a play, and I feel my eyes fill with tears. I let her talk, but I lack the energy to listen.

She doesn’t say that she’s praying for me. I am not a factor in her new identity. It has nothing to do with me…or Piper. She likes how it feels to have a dead kid, it makes her special. People treat her nicer because of it.

I tell myself I’m waiting for a break in conversation to bring it up, but I’m stalling. She might not remember what I’m here to ask her. She might lie, or ramble incoherently.

“I was thinking…” I begin. “About that time Piper asked you to get her birth control…remember when you told me about that…?”

I was in a fog of shock and grief after Piper was kidnapped. I can’t locate the exact memory, only a handful of words said over the phone when she was high.

She shrugs. “Sure. She was at that age—I started younger than her.” She laughs, and I see the dark gaps in her mouth. She’s loosening up now, acting like the mom I knew and hated. I press on.

“But when she asked you for birth control, she was super into church stuff. So why would she need it?”

Her face lights up in amusement. “Are you stupid? You think people in church don’t fuck?” She lets out a guffaw. I get a whiff of something sweet and rotten on her breath.

She may not be using, but she’s definitely drinking. Prison hooch instead of meth, praise God!

You have no room to judge, dry swallower of Xanax.

“Did she mention the name of a boy?”

“Try man.”

She still hasn’t asked a single question about her grandson. Did I really expect her to spit out information about my sister from nine years ago? If Piper had told her anything back then, it went in one ear and out the other.

I make to stand up, and she looks shocked.

“Where are you going?”

“Home to my son. I came here to tell you about your mother, and now I’m done.”

“She’s an old lady, Iris, what do you want from me—tears? She has to die eventually.”

I need out of here fast. The one thing I don’t tolerate is Gran slander. I’m to the door and waiting for the guard to open it when she yells out my name followed by a man’s. The name hits me hard. I’ve heard it.

“The name of the guy…”

She’s still sitting at the table when I turn around. Grinning. She wants me to come back and be her audience. Her face says she thinks I’m coming back, but I have what I want.

I turn away again. No need to waste another word. I have the name. I have confirmation.

“She was my daughter! A mother never forgets…” Her voice has reached an ugly pitch: wet and accusatory. She needs me to believe that she loves Piper more than I do, like it’s a competition for who owns the largest portion of grief.

The guard says, “Coming or going, lady? You need to sit down or leave…”

“A mother never forgets…”Her words are bouncing around my brain.

Neither does a sister.

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