Page 75 of An Immaculate Deception

“You’re just going to stand there silent?” Her voice rises. “Letting him speak on your behalf? Coward. You were full of sweet words the day we saw the circus together, when you led me to the cliff and put a child in me!”

“What?”

“I am with child!”

“It’s not mine!”

Her features contort into a hideous grimace, and in a flash she’s struck me hard across the face. My cheek starts stinging. A burning feeling climbs up from my gut and squeezes my chest. Why did she hit me? The unfairness of it burns through me.

She tosses the cake into the open flames. I see it unfold as if in a dream: the cornmeal, partly disintegrated already, grinds to ash quickly amid the flames. Silence falls as we all watch it burn, like revelers watching the bonfires on the eve of São João. The occasional pop and crackle, the vague smoky scent.

But Mother doesn’t remember. It’s not her fault.

45

After the cake burned in the hearth, Mother marched out of the house, and Doctor Lobo went after her. I burn through two cigarettes in the parlor before Lobo returns. Alone.

“Where’s Mother?”

He sinks onto the sofa with a heavy sigh. “Why couldn’t you just say it wasn’t true? The whole business with the damned cake?”

I shake my head. Already an ache edges between my temples. “I won’t keep lying to her. You shouldn’t, either.”

He regards me with a cool analytical expression. Then he says, “Just get some rest. Sleep off the alcohol. I talked to her, she’ll be fine, but I’ll be taking her with me for the night. She needs fresh air. It is best for you both to be separated for a bit. To get some perspective.”

My nerves tighten all through my body. “You’re taking her with you?”

“Yes.”

“Like Hell you will.”

His lips form a joyless smile. “I’m going to try to fix this mess that you created because you refused to tell one little lie. She’s displeased with you right now and she doesn’t want to come back to the house at all, do you understand? We can’t let her wander off into the night alone.”

I picture Mother meandering in the dark woods like a sleepwalker, thinking she’s nineteen. A kind Samaritan picking her up only to discover she thinks the year is 1877. She’d end up in the asylum.

She’s displeased with me, he says. But she is the one who hit me for no reason.

“I haven’t done anything wrong.”

“You said the wrong thing.”

“I said the truth. I’m not to blame for whatever my father did twenty years ago. Why can’t you just convince her to come back inside?”

“I tried, it was to no avail. She insists on going home.”

“This is her home—”

“You know what she means. Her mother’s house.”

My gut twists. “She can’t.”

“I know, I know. That’s why I’ll take her to my house. I’m a physician, who better to take care of her than me? I’m going to try that mesmerism technique I mentioned earlier. It might help the memories resurface. In the morning, she’ll be rested and you’ll be sober, and she can come back. Trust me, your mother was in the grip of death and now she walks and lives and breathes, thanks to me.”

“Someone lives and breathes, but it sure isn’t Mother.”

He tilts his head. “What do you mean?”

I’m too drunk to explain to him the difference between Strange Madalena and Mother right now. And what difference will it make? He doesn’t know Mother.