Ain't No Sunshine (17 page)

"Matthew Clare?" I asked. I turned to Ruthie. "It's him. He must be using a fake name. And the blonde woman is my mother. I told you she was here with him."

Ruthie opened her mouth to dispute me, but before she could say anything I grabbed her hand and pulled her toward my truck.

"Something strange is going on," I told Ruthie as we drove to my house. I wasn't sure if Matthew and my mother had actually gone there, but I didn't know where else to start looking. "Do you know how old my mother is?"

Ruthie shrugged.
"Forty-five?
Fifty?"

"No, she's only thirty-eight."

Ruthie stared at me skeptically. "She can't be Matthew's mother."

"Exactly," I said. "She's not."

"How did we not notice that?"

I shrugged. "We were just kids."

"So,
your
...our...Theodore has three children from three different women?"

"Looks that way."

"What happened to Matthew's mother?"

"I don't know. But it has to have something to do with why my mother has stayed all these years. Maybe my father killed Matthew's mother and my mother was afraid he'd do the same to her."

Ruthie shivered at the thought and hugged herself.

"I'll wait in the car," Ruthie said when I pulled up to my house. "If Matthew is really in there, which I doubt, tell him to come out here."

I knew something was wrong before I even got out of the car. Matthew's Volkswagen van and my father's white Cadillac were both in the driveway, but the house was eerily quiet. There was no way the two of them could be in the same room without an immediate fight.

When I opened the door, I found the living room completely ransacked.  There were handprints of blood on the walls.  It smelled like…I don't know.  Like nothing I'd ever smelled before.  At first, I thought we had been robbed, but then I saw my mother sitting calmly on the couch.  She was smiling.  She never smiled.  She had finally lost it, I thought.

"Mother, are you okay?" 

"Twenty years.  I'm free.  I'm finally free."  She laughed hysterically.

"Mother, where
is
Father?"  I started to panic.  I wasn't afraid that something had happened to him.  I was just afraid that my mother had done it and that she would get in trouble.

"You don't have to call him Father anymore.  He is not your father."  She was acting so strangely I didn't know what to think.  I knew I couldn't believe her.  It would've been
a dream come
true, though.  But she was obviously out of her mind. 

"And Matthew is not your brother."  Now I knew she was crazy.

"Mother, what are you talking about?  I think I need to take you to a doctor."

"No!" she screamed when I tried to touch her.  "You need to hear this."  She took my hand, pulled me down beside her and continued.

"I was always a very quiet child.  I never associated much with other children.  I never learned how to have friends.  I was in and out of hospitals from age five to age eleven.  The doctors didn't know what was wrong with me.  They finally decided that it was a nervous condition and that the stress of school and public places was just too much for me to handle physically.  So, my parents took me out of school for good and educated me at home.  Soon, though, they realized that they didn't have time to take care of all my needs.  They were California socialites and spent most of their time going to parties and social events.  So, they hired tutors and nannies to take care of me.  I actually got a very good education.  I excelled in math and science.  I was especially interested in brain chemistry," she continued. "I wanted to find out what made me different from other people.  What in my brain caused me to get physically sick at the thought of public affairs and new people?  I found that I had a severe case of agoraphobia.

"When I was twelve, my parents hired Mabel Walker.  She was a twenty-five-year-old struggling actress.  It was very difficult for her to find roles for a Negro woman, so she had to find another way to support herself.  She would still go out and audition for plays and musicals in her spare time, though.  I would even help her rehearse her lines for different parts.  We became very close.  She was the only friend I had and she stayed with me throughout my teenage years.

"When I was eighteen, my brother died of a drug overdose while at a party in Los Angeles.  My parents didn't handle his death very well and decided that they wanted a completely different lifestyle.  They needed to get away from the city.  I couldn't imagine my life without Mabel so I begged her to come along.  She didn't want to leave her dreams of becoming a star, but she saw how much I needed her, so she agreed to come with me for a little while.

"So, we moved here.  My mother met Theodore's mother at a party and right away they began talking about their single, eligible children.  Before I knew what was happening, I was obliged to go on a date with Theodore.  I was so terrified.  I hadn't met a new person in seven years and he was so much older than I was.  I begged Mabel to come with me and she did.

"I think Theodore was very disappointed with me.  He took us to this ridiculous play that I didn't understand.  The more he tried to ask me questions and draw me out, the more I retreated into my shell.  I didn't like him at all.  He was too grand and boisterous and he treated me like I was a stupid little child.  Thankfully, Mabel was there to divert his attention away from me.  She was more on his level.  They were both in their thirties and had similar interests.  They spent the entire evening talking about art, music, and theater -- things I only knew about through Mabel.

"I was utterly shocked when he asked me out again.  I didn't know what he was thinking.  Once again, Mabel came along.  After that, it was a regular event for the three of us to go out on the weekend.  Most people thought that Mabel was the chaperone.  I was so naive I couldn't even see that she was much more than that.  I couldn't see that Theodore was in love with her.  All I knew was that I didn’t like him and I didn't want to keep seeing him, much less become his wife.  I tried to tell my parents this, but they didn't care.  They were just so excited that someone had shown an interest in me.  And when he proposed, they were downright ecstatic.  They had feared I would never land a husband.

"Before I knew it we were married. Mabel and I moved into the Phillips' mansion.  He continued to treat me like a child.  I finally started to notice how he was around Mabel.  He followed her around like an obsessed, lovesick puppy. 

"What made it worse was that my parents had moved back to California.  Now that I was married and out of their house, it was like a load had been lifted off their shoulders. I was completely alone.  I was contemplating suicide when Matthew moved in.  He was fifteen and the son of Theodore's college roommate, Titus Clare.  Matthew's parents and his little brother, Stephen, had died in a house fire.  Theodore was in the will as the guardian.

"Matthew was everything Theodore wasn't.  He was kind, loving, thoughtful, and he treated me like a person.  He would hear me crying at night and come hold me.  We opened up to each other.  I told him why I was unhappy and he revealed to me more about his family. 

"Before long, Matthew and I fell in love and had an affair.  Theodore didn't even notice.  He was completely wrapped up in Mabel.

"When I found out I was pregnant, I knew it was Matthew's.  I panicked and threw myself at Theodore so he would think the baby was his when it was born."

I heard everything she was saying, but it still hadn't sunk in.  I wasn't even considering the identity of this baby.  It was enough of a shock to learn that Matthew wasn't my brother and I couldn't even fathom the idea that he had slept with my mother.  

"A couple of months later," she continued, "Mabel confided in me.  She told me that she had never wanted a relationship with Theodore.  She said she enjoyed working on music with him, but wanted nothing else. Theodore, however, wouldn't take 'no' for an answer and had forced himself on her and she was pregnant.

"I felt so guilty. I felt like I had put her in this position.  She could still be in California, launching a successful movie career, if I hadn’t convinced her to move with me.  I hated Theodore even more. I wanted him out of our lives.

"When I gave birth, he didn't even come to the hospital to see me.  Matthew was by my side the entire time. We named you after Matthew's little brother.  When I got home, I decided that I'd had enough.  I wanted him dead.  I drew upon my knowledge of science and the brain to create a concoction that would give him an
intracerebral
aneurysm.  The next morning, when I made him breakfast, I put it in his coffee.  I couldn't watch him drink it so I went to my room, ashamed of what I had done.  But I had to do it.

"When I came out, I saw that Theodore hadn't drunk the coffee, Mabel had.  When she passed out due to the pressure on her brain, he took her to the hospital and she slipped into a coma.  She hung on to life for three days, but when the aneurysm burst they knew she wouldn't make it, so they took the baby out and let Mabel
die
.

"I had killed my own best friend.  I was so distraught that I told Matthew what I did.  I had to get it off my chest.  Theodore overheard and attacked me.  He would have killed me if Matthew wasn't there.  Theodore never forgave me for Mabel's death, and he has made me pay for it every day for eighteen years." 

It was all coming together now.  "Wait, Mother, are you saying that Matthew is my father?" 

She kept going without answering my question directly.  "The night Matthew…
left,
Theodore had come home unexpectedly and caught us in bed together.  He shot Matthew in the shoulder and threatened to kill me if Matthew didn't leave forever.  That’s why Matthew left.  When Theodore learned I was pregnant again, he knew it was Matthew's and he beat me until I lost the baby." 

"Matthew never knew about you.  Neither did Theodore.  He never knew you were Matthew's child.  I was just trying to protect you.  I don't know what he would have done if he found out.  He already hated you enough because you were my child."

"Matthew is my father."  I kept repeating the phrase over and over.

"Yes," my mother answered, thinking it was a question.  Really, I was just trying to convince myself.

"That means me and Ruthie aren’t related!"

"You don't share a drop of blood." 

I was so happy I felt like I could fly.  I jumped up to run out to my truck, but then I remembered that I hadn't found out what happened here.

"Mother, where is
Fath
...where is he?"

"He's dead." 

"What happened to him?"  Just then I saw Matthew come in the back door with a shovel.

"Don't tell him anything.  The less he knows, the safer he is."  Matthew, my father, approached me and touched my face.  "I'm so sorry, Stephen.  I'm so sorry I wasn't there for you.  I didn't know."  He grabbed me and hugged me tight, like a father should.    "I always wanted you to be mine."

I cried like I had never cried before. I wasn't crying out of despair and grief, the only kind of emotions I had known recently. I cried tears of joy and relief.  I cried for a life of pain that was now in the past.  I would never have to know that kind of pain again.

 "Oh, my God," Lieutenant Drake said. "So all this time you and Ruthie weren't related at all?"

I shook my head.

“
Matthew
is your father?”

I nodded.

“It makes sense now. What you said earlier about there being no childhood pictures of Matthew. Why would there be? He wasn’t there as a child.” He leaned back in the chair and scratched his head. "Weren't you mad at your mother? You wasted two years of your life because you believed a lie."