Lydia Netzer - How to Tell Toledo from the Night Sky

What had her mother been on about? The wild, insane hope charged through Irene that maybe her mother was really a psychic. Maybe her mother had tapped into something cosmic, and George was right, and the stars were speaking, and it was possible that the universe could select her to receive love, could identify her as a worthy candidate, could be such a beautiful place.

Irene sat still and listened to the recording as Bernice let George out the door and said good-bye. And then she heard her mother’s voice from very close to the machine. The voice was calm and low.

“Fuck you, Sally,” she said.

“I need to talk to my mom,” said George. His head was throbbing again.

“We’d like to speak to Sally Dermont,” said Irene. George stood beside her, his hand on her waist.

“Who may I say is here?” the receptionist said.

“It’s me, Rebecca,” said George.

“But who is she?” Rebecca wanted to know.

“Irene Sparks,” said Irene. “I work with George.”

The words coming out of Irene’s mouth were clipped and taut, like she was angry. The receptionist pushed a button on the phone and said a few quiet words into her headset. They sounded angry, too. George didn’t know what was going on, but he was a little afraid to talk to Irene in her current state. He coughed into his hand and then regretted it. His head felt awful, and coughing seemed to send pain thumping through his skull.

“Come get me,” she had said to him. “We need to go talk to your mother. Immediately.” George had asked why, and Irene had hung up the phone.

“Ms. Dermont will be with you shortly,” Rebecca said.

Irene and George took seats on one of the luxurious chairs in the waiting area. George tried thumbing through his e-mail on his phone, but Irene just sat rigidly beside him, her knee bouncing up and down, her teeth clenched. There was no good e-mail. Some data from the old orbiter on the Gould cluster. Some interdepartmental bullshit.

“What’s wrong,” he tried asking her at one point. But she just shook her head and said, “I don’t even know yet.”

They waited there for a full thirty minutes, and George had resorted to playing chess with his phone, when finally he heard the sound of high heels tapping down the hall, and Sally Dermont emerged in the room.

“Mom,” he said. “Hey.”

Her ice-blond hair was sculpted like a helmet around her head. No more hippie dress today. She was wearing a perfect pantsuit in a muted rose, with an ivory scarf wound around her neck. She carried a piece of paper in her hand.

“Yes?” she said curtly. George felt like he was in trouble here, too.

“I want to talk to you,” said Irene.

“About?” asked Sally.

“About George and,” said Irene. “And about Bernice. Bernice Sparks. My mother.”

“I don’t believe I know you,” said Sally. “Who are you again?”

“Mom, she was at the cottage the other night, on the porch, remember? And also at the banquet at the institute,” George explained. “This is Irene Sparks. We’re dating. You met—”

“I don’t even think the banquet was our first time meeting, actually,” Irene cut in. “I am pretty sure I have seen you before. I don’t know where, but I think that when I figure it out, I will realize that I was not awake when it happened.”

George saw Sally’s jaws clench together, and she turned as if to go directly back down the hallway without responding to Irene at all. Then she turned to look back over her shoulder for a brief second, locked eyes with George, and said, “Come on.”

In Sally’s office, Irene sat down in one of the chairs set up on one side of the desk for consultations, square and low, leather and cool metal. Sally stood behind her desk.

“What can I do for you, now, specifically?” she said. She set the piece of paper down on the desk, facedown. “A friend of George is a friend of mine, I suppose. However odd the circumstances.” She forced a smile. “And a bonafide scientist always has my respect. I do remember meeting you now, at the banquet, of course. And on the porch. You are dating my son. I guess.”

He had seen his mother acting like this before. It was the way she behaved to his father sometimes, when he’d been blissed out on pills for three days or had forgotten where he parked yet another car in the city. She’d hate him, she’d rail at him, and then it was as if she’d swallowed a pill that allowed her to tolerate anything. Then she would adopt this horrible, taut politeness. Thinking of pills made George stand up and cross the room so he could rummage in his mother’s cabinet. He located a bottle of painkillers, uncapped it, and knocked two into his palm, slapped them into his mouth. Turning around, he saw his mother and Irene squaring off across the desk.

“I want to know,” said Irene, “if you knew my mother. She seems to have known you. She seems to have known George as well.”

“No,” said Sally. “I don’t know her. I never did know her.” Sally smiled, showing those two rows of perfect teeth. She tapped her fingernails on the desk. “I’m very sorry for the confusion.”

“But you’re lying,” said Irene flatly. George stared at her. Her hair was yanked back into a ponytail, her shirt was buttoned incorrectly, with one extra buttonhole at the collar on the left side. One leg of her jeans was tucked into a white sock. He wanted to take her in his arms, fold her up, press her against his body. Gorgeous creature, how dared she to speak this way to his mother? He was shocked and turned on at the same time.

He went to stand behind her chair, put his hands on her shoulders. And from this position he could see through the windows out onto the balcony. There he saw that the goddess of love, in a beautifully tailored pantsuit, was standing at the railing and looking out over the city.

“Why? Why are you lying?” Irene pressed on.

Sally paused for a long moment with all her fingers spread out on the desk, and then she turned to the window and looked out over all of Toledo. On the outside, on the balcony, George saw the goddess of love tip forward without warning and spill over the balcony. His mother did not see this. She knocked her knuckles against each other and pursed her lips together.

“Mother,” George said. “What’s going on?”

Then Sally finally turned, passing over George and looking straight to Irene.

“I think I know why you’re here,” she said. “But you should know you’re in way over your head with me. I can prove exactly where I was at every minute of the day your mother died. And you don’t want to fuck with me. I’m an attorney. I know what I’m talking about.”

“The day she died? How do you know the day she died?”

Out on the balcony, the goddess of love stood back up at the railing. And she tipped over the edge. Her legs disappeared. Her shoes disappeared. And she stood up again, ready to tip. The balcony was high above the city of Toledo. The goddess of love tipped over the balcony and fell far, far down. And stood up again.

Sally was silent.

“Who are you?” Irene said. “Who were you to my mother? Why was she talking to George as if she knew he was going to fall in love with me? And why was she talking to you on her recording? Was that you in Dark House on the night she died? Were you there, too, looking for my mother?”

“She was nothing to me,” said Sally, but Irene went on.

“How do you know her? What did you do to her? Why should I care where you were on the day she died. On the day she died? Were you THERE?”

“George, you need to leave,” said Sally. “And take that with you.”

“Mother, that is my girlfriend. She is actually … she is my fiancée,” George began.