City of Lies

Katie leaned forward and rested her hand gently on top of her mother’s. At eighty-two years old, her mother had maintained her full cognition and spirit, but her hand had never felt so thin and frail, her blue veins bulging beneath the loose and wrinkled skin.

‘You mean…a wheelchair. I’m not…an invalid.’

‘We could ask for a really crappy one if that would make you feel better. None of this high-speed electric power stuff. You’d wheel yourself. Think of the upper-body workout you’d get. I can even request a bum wheel so it would be like a bad shopping cart if you want.’

Katie was happy to see her mother smiling, but then the smile turned into a laugh and her mother wheezed and then coughed. Her hand moved reflexively to her chest again.

‘Shhh,’ Katie said soothingly.

Her heart. The stroke. The falls. Keeping track of her mother’s ailments required Mensa-caliber mental juggling.

The second her mother caught her breath, she was back on message. ‘No wheel…chairs.’

‘You scare me, Mom. I know you like to think it’s just a fall. But this isn’t something you can play around with. Falls in the elderly –’

Her mother shot her a look of darts.

‘Falls now can be fatal. Do you know how stupid it would be to survive everything you’ve survived, just to go out by falling down? Phyllis Battle is way too tough – and much too smart – to allow that.’

Her mother set her jaw, but she at least wasn’t arguing anymore.

‘I’ve asked Marj to bring a chair up tonight.’ Now her mom shook her head, but still no verbal resistance. ‘Just for you to experiment with. She’ll work with you out in the hallway when the others are listening to a music group that’s coming in tonight.’

‘Horrible, horrible…They call themselves singers. Like someone threw…a cat…in a washing machine.’

‘OK, so when all the old biddies are down there clapping along with the terrible music, you be nice to Marj. I’ll check in with her tomorrow about how it went, and we can go from there.’

Still, her mother said nothing. Progress.

Katie rose from the bed, picked up her purse from the floor, and leaned over to place a kiss on the top of her mother’s head.

‘Good night, Mom.’

Katie had already opened the apartment door when she heard her mother’s quiet voice behind her.

‘I’m…sorry, Katie. For…falling. For…being old.’

‘Don’t you ever apologize. Just be nice to Marj tonight. I want you around for a long, long time.’

On her walk to the F train, Katie retrieved her BlackBerry from the depths of her oversize black leather satchel. Pulling up a phone number, she hit the dial button, only to hang up after one ring. She wanted someone to take her place tomorrow night. With Mom’s latest fall, the last thing she wanted to deal with was tomorrow night.

Ironically, though, it was her mother’s situation that required her to handle this appointment herself. It was only a few hours. She’d get through it, just like she always did.

Chapter Fifteen (#ulink_98c2c1a2-55d0-5f77-91a8-6ffcea720291)

6:45 p.m.

If there was a bar in the East Twenties that epitomized the drinking side of the law enforcement culture, it was Plug Uglies. Where glass-walled martini bars soaked in ubiquitous lounge music had begun to dominate even Murray Hill, Plug Uglies was still a dark wood pub adorned with black-and-white photographs of old New York, dartboards, and a well-stocked jukebox.

The comments began the moment Ellie opened the door.

‘Look alive, Officers. We’ve got a hardened ex-con in our midst.’

‘Call the probation department. Make sure she’s checked in.’

More jokes about the need for a shower, despite the fact that she’d cleaned up hours earlier.

Ellie took a mock bow in recognition of the attention, and someone playing shuffleboard in the back broke out in a round of ‘For She’s a Jolly Good Fellow’.

And then it was over.

‘See, not so bad,’ Jess said, ordering a Johnnie Walker Black for her and a Jack Daniel’s for himself.

Ellie took a seat on the bar stool next to his. ‘So how was life without me last night?’

After briefly shacking up with a self-described exotic dancer for two months last summer, Jess was back on Ellie’s living room sofa again, where he always seemed to spend the largest bulk of his residency.

‘Quiet.’

‘It’s not the first time you’ve been trusted at home alone without a watcher.’

Ellie and Max were taking things slow. Casual. Dating. No relationship talk yet. But she did spend the night with him about twice a week, enough to justify a second toothbrush at his place.

‘Quieter than that,’ Jess said. ‘I was worried about you.’

‘I think you got our roles switched. I’m the worrier. You’re the worri-ee.’ She smiled, picturing her usually stress-free brother alone in her apartment fretting over her.

‘Oh, shit,’ she said, her momentary inner calm destroyed. ‘Did Mom call? I totally spaced.’

With rare exceptions, Ellie called her mother in Wichita every single night. The routine dated back to her first days in New York, where she’d followed Jess more than ten years ago to assuage her mother’s concerns about her only son, and most reckless child, living on his own in a city where a person like Jess could find more than his fair share of trouble. Ellie would call her mother each night because she knew her mother would sleep better once she heard her two children in the big city were safe.

Then slowly what had begun as a sweet habit had become a requirement – minimal validation to lonely, widowed Roberta that the children who’d abandoned her at least missed her from afar.

And now Ellie had forgotten to call. She knew from experience she would pay for it the next time they spoke.

‘You didn’t tell her where I was, did you?’

‘Are you kidding? I didn’t pick up the phone.’

‘Jess.’

‘Sorry, sis. That drama’s your department.’

‘I assume she left an epic message?’

Jess nodded, knocking back a toss of bourbon.

‘Don’t tell me. She did her whole passive-aggressive, I-know-you’ve-got-more-important-things-to-do speech.’