Felton was still fog-free, the air at the bus stop still scented with sunbaked redwood litter, but the sun had dropped behind a ridge, and Pip’s childhood bird friends, the brown towhees and the spotted ones, were hopping on the shadowed lane as she walked up it. As soon as she could see the cabin, its door flew open and her mother came running out to meet her, crying “Oh, oh!” She wore an expression of love so naked it seemed to Pip almost obscene. And yet, as always, Pip couldn’t help returning her mother’s hug. The body that her mother was at odds with felt precious to her. Its warmth, its softness; its mortality. It had a faint but distinctive skin smell that took Pip back to the many years when she and her mother had shared a bed. She would have liked to bury her face in her mother’s chest and stand there and take comfort, but she rarely came home without finding her mother in the middle of some thought that she was bursting to express.
“I just had the nicest conversation about you with Sonya Dawson at the store,” her mother said. “She was remembering how sweet you were to all the kindergarteners when you were in third grade. Do you remember that? She said she still has the Christmas cards you made her twins. I’d completely forgotten you made cards for all the kindergarteners. Sonya said, that whole year, whenever anybody asked the twins what their favorite anything was, they answered ‘Pip!’ Their favorite dessert—‘Pip!’ Their favorite color—‘Pip!’ You were their favorite everything! Such a loving little girl, so good to the smaller kids. Do you remember Sonya’s twins?”
“Vaguely,” Pip said, walking toward the cabin.
“They adored you. Revered you. The entire kindergarten did. I was so proud when Sonya reminded me.”
“How unfortunate that I couldn’t remain eight years old.”
“Everyone always said you were a special girl,” her mother said, pursuing her. “All the teachers said so. Even the other parents said so. There was just some kind of special magic loving-kindness about you. It makes me so happy to remember.”
Inside the cabin, Pip set down her things and promptly began to cry.
“Pussycat?” her mother said, greatly alarmed.
“I ruined your cake!” Pip said, sobbing like an eight-year-old.
“Oh that doesn’t matter at all.” Her mother enveloped her and rocked her, drawing her face to her breastbone, holding her tight. “I’m so happy that you’re here.”
“I spent all day making it,” Pip choked out. “And then I dropped it on the dirty floor at the bus station. It fell on the floor, Mom. I’m so sorry. I got everything so dirty. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”
Her mother shushed her, kissed her head, and squeezed her until she’d expelled some of her misery, in the form of tears and snot, and began to feel as if she’d ceded an important advantage by breaking down. She extricated herself and went to the bathroom to clean up.
On the shelves were the faded flannel sheets that she’d slept on as a girl. On the rack was the same tired bath towel that her mother had used for twenty years. The concrete floor of the tiny shower had long ago lost its paint to her mother’s scrubbing. When Pip saw that her mother had lit two candles by the sink for her, as for a romantic date or religious ceremony, she nearly fell apart again.
“I got the smoky lentils and the kale salad you like so much,” her mother said, hovering near the door. “I forgot to ask if you were still eating meat, so I didn’t get you a pork chop.”
“It’s hard to live in a communal house and not eat meat,” Pip said. “Although I’m no longer living in a communal house.”
While she opened the bottle of wine she’d bought for her exclusive use, and while her mother spread out the bounty of her New Leaf employee discount, Pip gave a mostly fictitious account of her reasons for leaving the Thirty-Third Street house. Her mother seemed to believe every word of it. Pip proceeded to attack the bottle while her mother reported on her eyelid (not spasming but still feeling as if it might spasm again at any moment), the latest workplace incursions on her privacy, the latest abrasions of her sensitivities by New Leaf shoppers, and the moral dilemma posed by the 3 a.m. crowing of her next-door neighbor’s rooster. Pip had imagined that she might hide out at the cabin for a week, to recover and to plan her next move, but despite her supposed centrality to her mother’s life she was feeling as if her mother’s miniature universe of obsession and grievance was sufficient unto itself. As if there was, actually, no place in her life for Pip now.
“So, I also quit my job,” she said when they’d eaten dinner and the wine was nearly gone.
“Good for you,” her mother said. “That job never sounded worthy of your talents.”
“Mom, I have no talents. I have useless intelligence. And no money. And now no place to live.”
“You can always live with me.”
“Let’s try to be realistic.”
“You can have the sleeping porch back. You love the sleeping porch.”
Pip poured the last of the wine into her glass. Moral hazard allowed her to simply ignore her mother when she felt like it. “So here’s what I’m thinking,” she said. “Two possibilities. One, you help me find my other parent, so I can try to get some money out of him. The other is I’m thinking of going to South America for a while. If you want me to stay around here, you have to help me find the missing parent.”
Her mother’s posture, fortified by her Endeavor, was as beautifully vertical as Pip’s was crappy and slouched. A faraway look was coming over her, almost a different kind of face altogether, a younger face. It could only be, Pip thought, the face of the person she’d once been, before she was a mother.
Looking into the now-dark window by the table, her mother said: “Not even for you will I do that.”
“OK, so I guess I’m going to South America.”
“South America …”
“Mom, I don’t want to go. I want to stay closer to you. But you have to help me out here.”
“You see!” her mother cried, still with her faraway look, as if she were seeing more than just her own reflection in the window. “He’s doing it to me even now! He’s trying to take you from me! And I will not let that happen!”
“This is fairly crazy talk, Mom. I’m twenty-three years old. If you saw where I’ve been living, you’d know I know how to take care of myself.”
Finally her mother turned to her. “What’s in South America?”
“This thing,” Pip said with some reluctance, as if confessing to an impure thought or action. “This kind of interesting thing. It’s called the Sunlight Project. They give paid internships and teach you all these skills.”
Her mother frowned. “The illegal leak thing?”
“What do you know about it.”
“I do read the newspaper, pussycat. This is the group that the sex criminal started.”
“No, you see?” Pip said. “You see? You’re thinking of WikiLeaks. You don’t know anything about the Project. You live in the mountains and you don’t know anything.”
For a moment her mother seemed to doubt herself. But then, emphatically: “Not Assange. Somebody else. Andreas.”
“OK, I’m sorry. You do know something.”
“But he’s the same as the other one, or worse.”
“No, Mom, actually not. They’re completely different.”
At this, her mother closed her eyes, sat up even straighter, and began to do her breathing. It always happened when she got too upset, and it put Pip in a bind, because she didn’t like to disturb her but also didn’t want to spend an hour waiting for her to resurface.
“I’m sure that’s very calming for you,” she said. “But I’m still sitting here, and you’re not dealing with me.”
Her mother just breathed.
“Do you want to at least tell me what really happened with my dad?”
“I told you,” her mother murmured, her eyes still shut.
“No, you lied. And you want to know something else? Andreas Wolf can help me find him.”
Her mother’s eyes sprang open.
“So you can either tell me,” Pip said, “or I can go to South America and find out for myself.”
“Purity, listen to me. I know I’m a difficult person, but you have to believe me: if you go to South America and do that, it will kill me.”
“Why? Lots of people my age travel. Why can’t you trust that I’ll come back? Can’t you see how much I love you?”
