1.

A policeman was blocking the front door when I arrived. Serious sunglasses, snug short-sleeved shirt, stiff slacks, arms locked across his chest. The splotchiness of his freckled skin could only be seen when you were immediately in front of him. Probably because his forearms glistened with smooth layer of sweat–a necessary reaction to the burn of the desert sun, still brutal at minutes after five PM.
“I’m here to see my mother,” I must’ve said.
He frowned. Or his frown intensified.
I was expected, I presumed. According to my mother, I was the first person she’d called, as soon as she got off the phone with “the 9-1-1.” And if Leslie, her now former husband, was indeed dead–dead “as a clubbed seal,” as she said twice before clicking over to take another call–I was her next of kin, as I had been intermittently for most of my twenty-nine years.
So I was needed–badly; at least, that’s what I told myself during whenever traffic in the fast lane slowed to less than five mph during my three-hour trek to the Caliente Springs Active Living Gated Community in Indio from Encino. And now, upon finding what appeared to be a crime scene at my mother’s home, my accumulated confusion, frustration and grief entirely must’ve been entirely evident in my voice, triggering all sorts unpleasant possibly Oedipal associations for this poor officer, doomed to the sad task of controlling a crowd that didn’t exist.
He grunted and groaned and unlocked his arms to show me a palm, as if deciding–reluctantly–to stop oncoming traffic at the last possible moment.
Then he leaned forward slightly, ready to lunge.
I was about to retreat into a crouching tiger, hidden dragon position when the officer pointed a hostile, bent pointer finger towards my mother’s Jaguar on the driveway.
The engine was running. My mother in the passenger seat–her mouth and hands alive in conversation. Some man in a tie leaning over the steering wheel in the driver’s seat. Some plain woman in the backseat. Both taking notes. Detectives, I reckoned, even in my agitated state.
I muttered thanks and bowed several times as I backed away. Then I took the long way round the car–ignoring the license plate frame that read, “I’m not spoiled, just very well taken care of”–to arrive at my mother’s head protected by one very shiny car window.
I tapped, gently.
The window rolled down swiftly and steadily. A miracle of Anglo-Saxon engineering.
Tears had turned my mother’s eye make-up entirely into runoff–a black Spackle that revealed the unlikely contours in her surgically re-enhanced face.
“Be my angel, Linda,” she said. “Get us Starbucks. Use that gift card I sent you in June.”
My gaping mouth and suddenly weepy eyes were enough to contain her.
“Kidding, dear. Get in the back seat, please.”
Every lock on the car popped up. I pulled the door open and stepped in. Instantly a blast of frigid air lulled me. I closed the door shut and tried to sink into the leather seats but felt a belt buckle invading my rear. I adjusted myself and muttered a mild, “Hello.”
“I must introduce you Officers to my daughter, my only daughter, if you don’t count steps, or ex-steps.”
The detectives nodded hellos as the doors locked themselves automatically.
“Linda, these are detectives, Arce and Gold.” She pointed at heads to supplement her introduction. Arce was the man. Gold the woman, a starer. “They’re investigating Leslie’s tragic death. Linda and Leslie never got along. She has never suffered male authority, something she learned from her mother, I’m afraid.”
“Well, we’re just dotting the Ts here, Ms. Stern–“
“She’s a Weissberg, Detective. A real Weissberg,” my mother said, as if her abstruse allusion to my father and his ilk made sense to anyone but the two of us.
“Of course, Mrs. Stern, Ms. Weissberg,” Officer Arce said. “But I’m afraid we’re going to need to speak with you alone a bit more, Mrs. Stern, m’am.”
The female detective’s body positioned herself so that she could stare at me more effectively. As blank a stare as I’d ever seen in my life. I imagined actual gears inside her brain.
“Please, Detective, go on. My daughter can handle anything. She’s becoming a psychologist. She works with Hassid heroin addicts for Jimmy Carter’s sake.”
“Used to,” I said, “work with Hassidic people, some of whom are recovering addicts. My first internship.” I have an obsessive fear of lying to people with subpoena power or handguns.
“We’re probably should go down to Command to continue this conversation,” Arce said.
“Shall I lawyer up, Detectives?” my mother asked. The question was so earnest and dumb that it seemed that the only aspect of her nightly episode of Law and Order that sank into her brain was the occasionally snappy dialogue.
The two detectives made eye contact and, I assume, had the same sort of instantaneous, silent conversation that they’d had dozens of times of times before.
“That’s your choice, Mrs. Stern,” Detective Gold said.
“Am I the only suspect?” my mother asked, as if flattered.
“Honestly, unless you’re about to admit to something here, Mrs. Stern, we’re not looking at this as a crime,” Detective Arce said. “But you asked and the answer to ‘Can I have a lawyer?’ is always yes. The Supreme Court and my Sergeant certain of that–” He added the word, m’am,” to conclude his sentence. Standard operating procedure.
“This is all so terrible,” my mother said. “I’ve never had the right to remain silent before.” No one stopped her to explain that that wasn’t quite what she was doing, and if anything she said could be used against her in a court of law, she should’ve been incarcerated long agi. “Christ, I’m going to cry again.”
My mother hunched over to gurgle out a few tears. Detective Arce placed a hand on her back lightly to offer some sincere but formal consolation. Ms. Detective Gold was still staring at me. I tried to glance away from the two bland blue eyes stupidly studying me, but looking elsewhere was even more awkward that returning her gaze.
“Hi,” Detective Gold said again, in a manner that suggested that most basic social cues were lost on her.
More gurgles from my mother. I figured I’d better at least touch for support. I reached out a hand toward her and found her back. Not knowing what to do, I patted her a couple of times.
“As soon as we remove your husband, Ms. Stern, you can go inside and freshen yourself. Then we’ll head down to Command,” the male detective.
He turned his head to look at the front door.
As if cued, the sunglassed officer standing guard stepped aside to make a way for someone in a lab coat backing out with one end of a gurney in his hands. Another lab-coated man handled the other end, trailed by a third lab coater. The struggle with the weight of the body was evident. Leslie was a large man–a very large man whose massive stomach immediately forced a person to consider the feed and wheelbarrows manned by zoo workers it would take to maintain such an achievement. But these lab coaters prevailed against gravity, inertia and their spines to successfully force what had been Leslie out the door, down the driveway (just adjacent to the Jaguar, which compelled my mother to hide her eyes between her knees) and into a van, which had arrived at the curb.
My mother looked up just in time to see her eternally beached husband being shut into the back of domestic vehicle, forcing her gurgles into a sob.
I sat back to give her room.
I wanted to close my eyes. I can’t watch anyone when they’re too emotional. True sarcasm does not pause for pity. Detective Gold was still studying me like I was the instructions for her Clairol Medium Blond dye.
“This must be hard,” Detective Gold said. She was speaking to me, which was beyond uncomfortable.
“It’s the worst,” I said, trying to not to sound deadpan.
“Let’s get you inside, Mrs. Stern,” Detective Arce said. He got out and walked around to my mother’s car door, which my mother opened for him. She shut the car off and the air conditioning with it. He offered my mother his hand and she accepted it gracefully, looking as if, despite her spackled tears, she’d been waiting for such a decent offer her entire life. “We’ll be right back,” he said meaning, .
Then I was alone–alone with the starer.
“May I ask you a question, Ms. Weissberg?”
I was going to tell her to call me Debbie, but she was so odd or behaving so oddly that normalizing the situation was probably the worst thing I could do. So I just nodded.
“Is your first name, Debbie, Deborah?”
I nodded again.
“Did you go to Taft High School?
More nods.
She covered her mouth with a fist then pulled it away quickly. “If I believed in coincidences, this would be, perhaps, the most profound, most amazing coincidence of my entire life.”
“Excuse me?” I had no idea why she knew so much about me and what the fuck it had to do with my mother or Leslie.
“I’m sorry. I’ve been waiting twelve years to say this. But, God, I’m so sorry. I’m really just ridiculously sorry.”
“He was just my step-father, barely.”
“No, I’m sorry about that, too. But what I’m really sorry about is what I, what we, did to you in high school. This is just amazing that I got the chance to say that.”
“Amazing?”
“I’m Donna Gold. Do you remember me?”
It hit me. I knew exactly who this bitch was.

To be continued…

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