Уолтер Мосли - John Woman

Finally he nodded slightly and made his way down to the first row of seats.

“Thank you, Professor Woman,” Theron James said over the microphone. Somehow he had made it to the stage. “We appreciate your hard work and good words. We will take your talk with us through this difficult time.”

There was some applause and then the hushed rustle of people rising and filing out.

A few people shook his hand muttering words he didn’t understand. He was thinking about the sudden loss of language and the feeling of release that came with it.

“John,” someone said stridently.

Ira Carmody was standing before him, his bearing assertive, even aggressive. John remembered that Ira was a black belt in something. Looking to the left he saw Pepperdine watching closely.

The angry professor’s hand jutted out and John took it. They shook, nodded and then released. Before John could say any more Annette Eubanks rushed forward and took him by both hands.

“That was beautiful,” she said. “And true.”

Walking up the stairs to his apartment John wondered if Carlinda would be waiting there. When he came in she was sitting at the small kitchen table.

Feeling a wrenching spasm in his chest John said, “Mom?”

At first she just looked at him with equal measures of mirth, wonder and something triumphant. No longer youthful, Lucia Napoli still maintained an aura of beauty. She wore a brown dress with images of violet ribbons writhing upon it. When she stood her breast expanded with an emotion they shared.

She was barefoot: at home in her son’s desert hideout.

Tears flooded her eyes. They came together kissing each other’s faces. Then, gently pushing him away, she said, “I have to get a Kleenex.”

She lifted a green purse from the kitchen table taking out a tissue and lowered into the chair, dabbing her nose and eyes.

“Sit, CC. Sit.”

“Mom?”

“That was the first word you ever said. You were eighteen months and followed me everywhere. If you turned around and couldn’t see me you would holler.”

“You’re really here?” her grown son asked.

“And then one day instead of crying you said, ‘Mom,’ and then a whole lotta baby talk. Your father called it gabbling.”

“I don’t understand,” John said, thinking of his mother and his father together.

“Sit.”

“I saw you in Parsonsville but I knew it wasn’t really you. I wanted it to be so bad but, but... you have the same red hair.”

“Sit, CC.”

Overwhelmed by the impossible appearance of Lucia his mind recoiled toward Herman. He tried to imagine what history would say about his mother’s magical reentry into his life.

History, he wrote later that day, is what is left after all living memory is erased... A living, breathing datum — like my mother for instance — is outside history: an undigested record, a preformed fact...

“Sit,” Lucia said again.

John nodded, moving to the chair opposite her.

“Where have you been?” he asked.

“I can’t tell you that. I mean I was staying in Phoenix for a while before coming here. I was in town one day.”

“You can’t tell me because of the gangster?”

“Filo and I got married six years ago. He’s really a very wonderful man, CC. He was only in with those terrible men because that was all he knew. But that life is behind him now.” With these words she was finished talking about her secret life. “How are you?”

“How am I? I’ve lived my entire life trying to figure out how I got here.”

Lucia took in a deep breath, then she began to speak. “I know it’s been hard, baby. I wasn’t a good wife or mother. That’s why I’m here... to try and make up for some of it.”

“How did you even know to come here?”

“I been living in Venice Beach, California, with Filo the last eleven years. He doesn’t sleep much and watches the TV in the living room pretty late: all these crazy cable-access shows. He says that he likes to see regular people saying things they really believe. I don’t know when he ever started talking like that... Anyway, one night he sees this show with you and an older man. He said that you were a teacher but with a new name and you made mincemeat outta that other guy.”

“He recognized me?”

“I know, right?” Lucia Napoli said. “He only seen you a few times but the minute the camera hit your face Filo knew it was you.”

“That was a year ago. When did he see it?”

“About then. I wanted to come right here but Filo said that we had to be careful because the FBI was lookin’ for him and if they knew you and I were related then maybe they’d have some kinda eye on you. Not like surveillance or anything but just a look now and then.”

“So you’re a fugitive?”

“We live a good life. We got friends, go on vacations. It’s not like me and Jimmy Grimaldi.”

John reached across the table and touched his mother’s forearm wanting further proof that she existed. The yellow posters, public address, the defeat of Annette Eubanks and Ira Carmody were long-ago dreams.

“How did you get into my apartment?”

“I went to the front gate and asked the nice Mexican guard if he would let me in.”

“Hopi,” John said.

“What?”

“Hototo is a Hopi Indian.”

“A real Indian? It’s a wonder out in the west isn’t it? You know me and Filo walk down to the beach every day — every day, even in the rain.”

“What happened to you, mom? You disappeared. I went to your house and you were gone.”

If he could have seen his face the way his mother saw it CC would have observed the pain embedded in his eyes. If he had seen through her heart he would have felt the hurt it brought her.

Lucia took one of his hands in both of hers and peered deeply into their shared ache.

“I love you, baby,” she said. “I might not have been a good mother but I love you, always have.”

“But you didn’t even know about when dad died.”

“I knew, honey. I was there when you buried him.”

“No you weren’t. I put out a chair but you never came. Violet Breen came, France Bickman came but you weren’t there.”

“I was.”

“No.”

“Listen to me, CC. When I heard about Herman I came back to New York. Filo went with me even though he might have been arrested or killed. Your father broke my heart when he kicked me out. I was willing to come take care of both of you. I knew he couldn’t work, that you were doing his job. I was proud of you but what could I do? I knew he’d’a never changed his mind. And if I took you away it would have killed him.”

“You were saying something about the funeral,” John said. Looking at Lucia he felt that she was moving away: that familiar distance.

She must have intuited this feeling because she squeezed his hand very hard. With the pain this distance was quashed.

“I was there but I stayed across the street. I loved Herman, I did, but he was right — I betrayed him. I abandoned you because he needed you more than I did. So when a stool pigeon in Filo’s crew fingered him for the cops I decided that at least I could do something for somebody. I ran with him, stuck by his side through reconstructive surgery, got a job at a movie studio as a makeup artist while he reorganized himself. I’ve tried to be a good woman... I have been.”

“If you were there why didn’t you say anything to me after the funeral?”

“I went to your father’s house and waited,” she said. “But you never came home. I waited three days then went to see France at the Arbuckle. He said your father left you some money and you had probably gone out to start a new life.”