Page 91 of Nothing Less than Magic
“How do you know? Did he tell you that?”
“He didn’t have to; I could tell.”
“Because you’re psychic.”
“Fuck you, Lolly.”
This time, she really does laugh. “How was he?”
“Good. He has a nice house that backs onto a golf course and two stepkids and three grandkids. He seemed very content.”
“Content?” she hitches a brow. “He wasn’t angry that you just showed up unannounced, like the great white hope?”
I shrug. “He appeared genuinely happy to see me.”
“Did he talk about Dad?”
“Yes, we talked about Dad. He says he made peace with . . . what he did.”
Lolly doesn’t say anything, just stares down at her manicured fingernails. “Why didn’t he ever talk to us again?”
“He said he was grieving, that it was too difficult, but that he’s sorry.”
She snorts. “I guess his grief was more important than ours. What an asshole.”
“Things aren’t always black or white, Lolly. It was a terrible loss for him, too. He probably just didn’t know what to say to us, how to react.”
“What happened to Gloria?”
“He said last he heard, she’d married a chiropractor and moved to Tucson. That’s all he knew.”
“Weird.”
I look at Lolly as if to say,What’s so weird about it?
“Dad fucks her, blows Mom’s heart out, then swallows his own gun, and she moves to Tucson. Don’t you see the inequity in that?”
“I guess I never really thought of it that way. All my anger has been directed at Dad, not Gloria. What? You wanted her to die, too?”
“No, of course not. You’re missing the point.”
“What’s the point then? Explain it to me.”
“The point is that . . . oh, never mind.” She waves me off, like I’m too stupid to understand.
I don’t let it bother me, because frankly, I don’t think Lolly even knows what she means. She’s just angry. At me, at our parents, at the world.
“So while I was at Al’s, he showed me this photo album he’s kept all this time. It had pictures of you and me, Mom and Dad, and even Gloria. But there was one of this guy, Jim Toomey. Do you remember him?”
“No. Who is he?”
“He worked with Dad and Al at LAPD and died of a stroke. And this is the freaky part, he was in my dream when I was in the coma. He pulled me over for a DUI, made me take a sobriety test, then let me go with a stern warning. At the end, he told me to say hi to Dad, which even in my dream I found strange. Because how did he even know Dad? And if he did, he must’ve known he was dead.” I look at Lolly to see if she’s following me. “Do you see what I’m saying? It’s as if he was telling me I would be seeing Dad because I was dead, too.”
“Maybe you were and then by some miracle, you pulled through?”
“Do you really believe that?”
“No. I was there, Chelsea. You were in bad shape. Very bad shape. But you weren’t at death’s door.”
