Bob thought: That hundred-thousand-dollar policy must be worth a lot more now; Matt’s father had died so long ago. He said, “Do you know the value of the policy now?” And Matt just looked at him with apparent puzzlement. Bob said, “Do you have statements from the bank?”
Matt glanced at the piles of papers on the table and shrugged. “No idea. If it came to my mother, I never opened it.”
“Tell me about your employment history,” Bob said.
Matt said he had worked at the ironworks, starting when he was twenty, for thirty years; he had retired when he was fifty to be there more for his mother; his mother had been living in an apartment, but then she came back to the house so that Matt could care for her. He said, “I figured I’d apply for Social Security when I’m sixty-two, I’m only fifty-nine right now.” He yawned openly, then said, “Sorry, I haven’t been sleeping since they found her.”
“So what have you been living on?”
“My savings, my pension. And my mother. She would write me out a check every month for three hundred dollars.” He paused, then said, taking off his glasses and rubbing his eyes, “She was sort of cheap. She made me take coupons to the store each time I went.” And then he added, “But she hadn’t been raised with much money at all, so you can understand why.” He put his glasses back on and looked around and said, “This house was paid for in full years ago, back when my father was still living here. My father had a successful accounting firm. So we didn’t have a mortgage or anything.”
“What was he like?” Bob asked, and Matt only shrugged.
—
Bob opened his laptop and typed some notes into it. Then he looked at Matt and said, “Listen. About the will. Let’s pretend for a moment that you and I did not have that conversation.”
“What do you mean, you mean lie?” Matt asked.
“No, not lie.” Bob felt offended. “I just mean we’re going to let it sit there for a while and you are not to mention it to anyone until I tell you to.”
“All right.” Matt gave a small shrug.
After a few moments, Bob said, “Can you tell me about your childhood? How did you feel about your mother?”
“I loved her,” Matt said, and then he added, “She could be a little difficult at times, but I loved her. She saved my life, you know. When I was ten years old, I had leukemia and she saved my life.”
“How did she save your life?” Bob asked, sitting forward in the chair.
“She took care of me. And it seemed only right that I would take care of her too.” He shook his head. “But my sister hated her. And I haven’t heard from my brother in ages, he moved to Oregon. He’s my half brother, you know. My mom had him when she was sixteen, but then my father married her when Tom was almost two years old.”
“Who was the father of Tom?” Bob asked, and Matt shrugged. “Dunno,” he said.
“You don’t know?”
“Nope.”
“Does your brother know who his father is? Was he ever curious?”
Again, Matt shrugged. “No idea.”
Bob typed these details into his laptop.
Matt looked around the room and he finally said, quietly, “In the last few years, it was almost like taking care of a baby. I’ve never had a baby so I don’t really know, but I would, you know, change her, feed her, take her into the shower.”
Bob waited but Matt did not continue, he just looked down at his fingers, which only now did Bob notice had been picked raw, each of Matt’s fingertips was red. Bob said, “Okay. No more talking to anyone without me. Understand?” And Matt nodded.
—
“Can I look around your house?” Bob pushed his chair back. “Remember that I’m your lawyer. I am on your side.”
“Sure, sure.” Matt stood up quickly and held out his hand in a gesture to indicate that Bob could go anywhere.
—
It was on the second floor that Bob came across the paintings. Two sizable, connected rooms appeared like a painter’s studio. There were two easels set up, and on each easel was a large canvas of a nude pregnant woman. “Jesus,” Bob said. “You’re good.” The paintings were done in different colors, and the figures, with their large middles, were really things of beauty. Leaning along the walls were more paintings, each done in a different stage of a woman’s pregnancy.
“Seriously? Do you think so?” Matt asked.
“I’m very serious. These are fantastic, Matt.” Bob almost said that they should be in a gallery in New York, but he did not say that—although he could easily picture them there. He kept staring at them: They were sort of abstract, the women’s faces not done with realism, the bodies not done with realism, but they were, to Bob, stunning. He looked carefully and understood that a variety of brushstrokes had been used, and the colors were subtle yet astonishing. “Where did you learn to do this?” The room smelled of oil paint and turpentine and seemed to have a freshness that the rest of the house so distinctly did not.
Matt went over to the corner of the room and showed Bob a tall stack of large books each about a different painter. The books were clearly old, their covers were torn. Matt said that for years he had studied what the artists did and how they did their different strokes, and then he had practiced, it had been his obsession. “Has anyone ever seen these?” Bob asked.
Matt looked puzzled. “No. My mother wouldn’t look at them because they were nudes. Oh wait, yeah, my sister has seen them. She’s always been nice about them. You know, encouraging to me.”
“Nobody else?”
“No. Well, just the models, and they don’t really care.”
—
A small bedroom downstairs, right next to Matt’s bedroom, was the room his mother had lived in. Even now, so many months later, Bob detected a smell: not of urine, exactly, but a smell of decay, is what went through his mind. The single bed was carefully made up, but when Bob opened the closet door there were no clothes in there.
Matt said, “I threw it all away. It just spooked me out after a while seeing her stuff, so I finally threw it away. There wasn’t much.” He added, “I just kept hoping she’d come home, but I somehow knew she wouldn’t, so I threw her stuff away.”
Back at the dining room table Bob opened his laptop again. “Matt?” He felt uncomfortable with this question. “Ah, Matt, do you have any friends?”
And the poor man looked down right away. He said, quietly, “I didn’t really have any time for friends all these years with my mother.”
