The Most Dangerous Thing - Laura Lippman [130]
Chapter Forty
Doris watches Tim come and go until it is almost 2 P.M. He does not tell her what he is doing. He barely speaks to her at all. Why? Why is he mad at her? She did what a mother should do, tried to protect her son. It was no different from washing his sheets.
She found the guitar under his bed a week or so after the night of the hurricane. She knew there was no way that Go-Go could have come honestly by such a possession. She didn’t know what to do. He had been through so much. It seemed wrong to ask him about the guitar. She took it away, put it in the attic. And over the years she was the one who made sure they had no reason to go up there. She moved the stepladder to the garage, put the Christmas ornaments in the basement. By the time she was done, the only things up in the crawl space were the guitar, the hockey costume, some old boxes, and the rope ladder. As far as she knew, Go-Go didn’t even remember it was there.
Something bad, she told Tim. She has always known that the guitar stood for something very bad. But how bad could a little boy be, especially Go-Go, who didn’t have a mean bone in his body? Yet it wasn’t long after the discovery of the guitar that the bed-wetting started. Then he showed up with that hockey stuff, also expensive. She pretended to Tim Senior that she bought it, told him she used money from a birthday check from one of her aunts, withstood his criticism for being wasteful when the household needed every dime.
Something bad. The truly bad thing was when Doris told Go-Go about his father, what he had done for him. Her intention wasn’t only to raise Tim Senior up in his son’s memory. She also—oh, what parent feels like this?—yearned to tear Go-Go down a little, let him know of the sacrifices made for him. She was tired of his brooding, his “poor me, poor me, poor me” routine. He had a house nicer than any Doris had ever known, two beautiful little girls, and a good-enough wife.
All she wanted him to say was thank you, or words to that effect. To say that Tim and Doris did right by him, the best they could. To tell her that it wasn’t her fault that he couldn’t get his life together. Was that wrong? She tried to explain herself to Father Andrew yesterday, without telling him all the details. But Father Andrew isn’t as satisfactory a confidant, now that he’s not a priest. She isn’t sure why that should be, and maybe it’s just her own prejudice, but he seems less wise to her now, and much less sympathetic. He’s of the world now. He has lost his perspective. He wears a turquoise ring.
Tim goes out to his car, carrying the guitar. Good. She should have gotten rid of it long ago.
“Are you going to throw it in Leakin Park?” she asks him.
“Throw it—?” He shakes his head. “Sure. Why not? It’s where all Baltimore’s best dead bodies go.”
“Will you be here for lunch tomorrow?”
“It’s Easter. We’re always here for Easter lunch.”
“So you don’t hate me?”
He could be a little quicker in his reply, but when he does answer, he seems sincere. “No, Mom. I don’t hate you. I know you always had Go-Go’s best interests at heart.”
“When I told him about your father—I thought it would make him happy. Well, not happy, but proud. Loved.”
“I know, Mom.” He kisses her on the forehead. “You meant well. You always meant well.”
“You called me the enemy of fun.”
“What?”
Even Doris is surprised by how this old grievance bubbles up. “Your father, but all of you agreed, behind my back. You didn’t know that I knew, but I knew. You thought I wasn’t fun.”
“Being fun isn’t the most important thing in the world.”
“We’ll have fun tomorrow,” she says. “With the girls and Easter lunch. I have all the usual things. Ham and sweet potatoes.”
“We’ll have