The Man Who Went Down Under
EXCERPT
Mom pulled the plug in the sink and the water glugged as it drained down into the pipes beneath. “Did I raise you,” she demanded, turning to look at me, “to be so gullible?”
“I’m telling you what she said,” I stood from my chair.
She pushed me back into my seat. “Pshaw,” she snorted. The kettle built up to a steady whistle and she snapped the gas off and reached for two mugs. “A long-lost brother from Australia?”
“Yes, and she told me that if he didn’t turn up, she’d send me down under to go and look for him.”
“And the diamond?”
“And the diamond.”
She put a plastic cone on one of the mugs, lined it with a paper filter, spooned some coffee grounds in, picked up the kettle, and poured. Steam rose above the cone. “There’s no long-lost brother,” she said as the coffee dripped.
She was my mother; she’d carried me for nine months inside her body, she’d raised me and wiped my nose and changed my diapers and washed my cuts and scrapes and bruises for over twenty-five years, but on days like today I’d had enough and was ready to head out the door and find a family of my own. “That’s what Mrs. Cleaver told me. And it’s what—”
“Quiet,” she exploded. The silence was punctuated by the slow drip of the coffee. She moved the cone from one mug to the other and added water from the kettle. “There is no long-lost brother from Australia, and you’ve got to be smart enough to figure that out. That’s the kind of thing that a dumb white-haired blonde says when she has to come up with a lie because her daughter’s coming home for lunch in half an hour and she needs to figure out something quick quick so she can introduce her new friend.
“I can’t think of all the things that are wrong with this story. From Australia? No one comes back from Australia. People go to Australia, it’s a one-way street, a destination, not a starting point. Long-lost brother? Let’s be real: if a sibling shows up after 25 years, the first thing you think is, here let me trust you with $50,000? And who goes to Australia? Who takes that long trip, but the scapegrace, the ne’er do well, the bad apple? In a word, the last person in the world you’d trust with any amount of money—even a nickel. Her story stinks.”
“Well, then who went to pick the money up?”
“That’s your job to figure out. But my guess is Gary’s her fancy man she’s been keeping on the side and he happened to come in handy. And for whatever reason, she made the decision to pretend he’d just shown up, so she invents the story about the long-lost brother from Australia.”
She placed the coffee in front of me at the table, just the way I like it, cream and two sugar. “Thanks Mom,” I said.
