Just One Thing (5 page)

If Sam, or anyone, had wanted to know the whole of my story, I’d crumple under the weight. But telling it in dribbles, well, it was like deflating a balloon. It released just enough that I could let it go and adjust to my new dimensions before going out the next week and letting some more out.

“A girl friend, or a guy friend?” Connie asked.

“A guy, but—”

“Friends. Is that all?” she teased.

I must have looked . . . well, I’m not sure how I looked, but Connie’s teasing stopped abruptly and she said, “I’m sorry, Mom. You know, you have every right to date,” she added in one fast sentence, as if she felt she’d better say the words quickly in hopes I’d listen.

“Right doesn’t always matter, does it? If what was right and fair mattered, then I wouldn’t be here, would I?”

“Mom.”

Then my daughter, my beautiful daughter, hugged me. She hugged me as if I were the child and she the mother. Only my mother would never have hugged me like that. Not that she didn’t love me. My mother just never knew how to show her love the way my father, or even my daughter, could.

“Would you like to know something . . . one thing about your grandmother?” I asked Connie.

“Sure, Mom.”

I took her hand, this daughter of mine, and whistled for Angus. We started back toward the cottage. The woods were dark, but they were my home now and I knew the way.

Then for the first time, I shared one-thing with someone other than Sam. “I spent most of my life not knowing my mother could laugh.”

Lexie and her mother stood next to a large, black headstone in the middle of Laurel Hill Cemetery.

Lexie had no idea what was the proper thing to say about a headstone. “It’s beautiful, Mom,” she tried. To be honest, she found it disconcerting that her mother had her name and birth date already put next to her father’s. All that was left was filling in the date of her death.

Lexie didn’t tell her mom that she wasn’t sure she liked that part. Her mom, being her mom, would simply say that it was expedient. That it made sense.

Lexie knew her mother believed in making sense.

“I prearranged my funeral with Kloecker’s Funeral Home, where we had Dad—”

“I remember, Mom.” Did her mother expect her to say
thank you
for taking care of it? Lexie didn’t know, and she was saved from gracelessly fumbling when her mother added, “Oh, of course. And I bought a third plot when I bought ours.”

“What?”

“It was here, all by itself, so the cemetery made us—” She stopped short and corrected herself. “Me. They made me a deal. You never know . . .”

Lexie lost track of her mother’s words as she spun around and walked away from her father’s grave. Her father would have understood how her mother’s particular brand of expediency bothered her. She’d always had a particularly rocky relationship with her mother. She was not the daughter her mother had dreamed of, but unfortunately, she was the daughter her mother got.

“Alexis. Wait for me.”

So Lexie stopped. She’d have loved to just keep on going. To walk away from her mother. To quit trying to please her, when it had long since become apparent that her mother would never approve of Lexie’s choices. But she couldn’t. It would have broken her father’s heart.

Her mother put her hand on Lexie’s shoulder. “I’m sorry. I know you hate this kind of thing. I do my best to shelter you from it, but you’re all I have left now. When I die, you’ll be the one trying to take care of the arrangements and I wanted to make it easier on you.”

“Easier on me?”

Lexie tried to tug away from her grip, but her mother didn’t let go. “Alexis, I . . .” She stopped, then started again. “The kids are in school until two thirty, right?”

“Right.”

“Then we have a few hours. Come down to the peninsula with me.”

Lexie loved the peninsula. Presque Isle was a small spit of land that jutted into Lake Erie, creating a sheltered bay on the Erie side, and rocky beaches on the lake side.

And to the best of her knowledge, her mother had never gone there with her. Lexie had gone with her father, with friends in school, with Lee and the kids, but never with her mother. “Uh, sure.”

Her mother drove with clipped efficiency down Sterrettania, which turned into Peninsula Drive, and finally drove out to Beach Five. Her mother drove past the tourist hotels and restaurants as if she came this way often.

“You’ve been out here before?”

Her mother turned and gave Lexie one of her famous mom-looks. The one that said, I don’t know what goes on in your head. “Alexis, I’ve lived in Erie all my life. Of course I’ve been out here.”

“Oh.”

When her mother parked the car, she took off her Marc Jacobs heels and her trouser socks, then cuffed up her Michael Kors pants.

Lexie only knew about Marc and Michael because her mother always introduced her clothes, just as she might a colleague. “Look at my new Marc.” Or, “What do you think about these Michaels?” Lexie knew her mother had probably
told her the name of her blouse’s designer as well, but she couldn’t remember it. Designer names meant nothing to her. She spent her days working with clay and paint. She shopped generic brands, not designer names.

Ready for the sand, her mother took off up the beach.

There was nothing left for Lexie to do but follow.

Her mother walked at the water’s edge and occasionally leaned over to pick up a piece of beach glass, or wave-polished stone.

Lexie expected a talk, or a lecture, but instead they walked in silence until a giant dog came barreling toward them, splashing in the leading edge of the waves.

“King,” someone farther down the beach yelled.

It was too late. King honed in on her mother and practically knocked her down with his very affectionate greeting.

“Hold on, Mom, I’ll get him.”

“He’s fine,” she said, laughing. “You’re fine; aren’t you, King?”

Lexie stood there watching her mom, someone she’d always thought of as remote, playing with a dog in the water, ruining her designer clothes.

King’s owner finally caught up and retrieved the dog, while offering her mother profuse apologies. “It’s fine,” she said graciously. “I love dogs.”

She laughed out loud and stroked the sopping, soggy dog.

Lexie couldn’t remember ever hearing her mother laugh, at least not like this. Joyful. That was the description.

She knew her mouth was hanging open, but she just couldn’t seem to adjust her reality to this mother . . . this laughing mother.

After King’s owner left with the dog, Lexie said, “Mom, you hate dogs.”

She’d wanted a dog when she was growing up. She’d wanted one so badly. She remembered pretending her neighbor’s yappy poodle was a giant Saint Bernard.
Her
giant Saint Bernard. Lexie had begged and pleaded, but her mother always told her no. Her father made her stop bugging her mother, saying that her mom wouldn’t be able to deal with the mess a dog would create.

Yet, here was her mother, soaking wet and covered with dog kisses.

“I don’t hate dogs, but your father was allergic,” her mother said quietly. “He didn’t want you to blame him . . .”

“So, he let me blame you?”

Mom shrugged. “You were always closer to your father.” Before Lexie could protest, she added, “It’s okay, Alexis. I know I’m not very . . .” She paused and with a small smile filled in, “Cuddly. You were five when you told me that. I knew you needed someone who was more approachable. I was always glad you had your dad.”

“Mom.” Lexie wanted to hug her, but she settled for simply placing her hand on her mother’s very wet arm.

“You know what?” Her mother looked determined. “Your father is gone. I’m still here. And I’m getting a dog. Want to come help me pick one out?”

There was her mother. Standing up to her ankles in the water, wet paw prints on her normally impeccable outfit, and she had never looked more beautiful.

Connie grinned. “And that’s when Grandma got Jazz.”

“Yes. I found Bernie there, that same day.”

“I remember when you brought him home. He was ugly and we couldn’t figure out why you got him. But you always wanted a Saint Bernard.”

“Every time I looked at him, I remembered my mother, standing in the water, laughing as a dog kissed her. He reminded me how much she loved me. She loved me enough to let me blame her for my lack of a dog growing up. She did it because she wanted my dad to remain my hero. I hadn’t realized how deep her love ran then, but I know now.”

Connie had tears in her eyes. “I love you, Mom. And I’ve never doubted how much you love me.”

And Connie hugged me. I’d worked so hard to have a different relationship with my kids than my mom had with me. At that moment, I thought I’d maybe succeeded.

We walked back to the cottage and I offered Connie the bed, but she took the couch. Sometime in the middle of the night, she came in, just as she had when she was little, and slipped into the big king-size bed with Angus and me.

Monday came and I set out for the bar with a different sense about the trip.

Normally, I went because it had become part of my routine. It was how I justified telling the kids I sometimes left the cottage. But tonight, I wanted to go.

I wanted to see Sam and even Jerry.

It was a beautiful evening. The sky was very, very blue, without a whiff of a cloud. In some parts of the country they talk of endless skies, but here in northwestern Pennsylvania, the sky ends abruptly at the edge of tree lines, or over the crest of a hill. Blue butted up to trees, houses, and roads. But as I stood at the top of Mackey Hill, looking down, I was high enough that I could see much farther. The sky wasn’t exactly endless, but it was huge and brilliant. It seemed to match my anticipatory mood.

I smiled
as I entered the bar. It was familiar . . . a haven. “Hi, Jerry,” I said as I passed him and made my way to my stool.

He looked surprised, but echoed my greeting.

I took my seat. “Hi, Sam.”

He smiled at me. “Hi,” he replied as he handed me my beer in its iced glass.

“One thing,” he said.

“One thing,” I echoed almost cheerfully. “I didn’t get my first dog until I was in my thirties.” I told Sam about adopting Bernie, an already-aging Saint Bernard who could produce the most prodigious amount of slobber. I told him about the time we took Bernie to camp and discovered that I’d bought a dog who couldn’t swim, and how Lee had to jump into the small, spring-fed pond, fully clothed, and rescue him.

Then I told him that Bernie had passed peacefully in his sleep and now I had Angus, the less-slobbery Irish wolfhound.

After that, I’m not sure why, I looked at Sam and said, “One thing?”

He looked startled.
I
had changed the rules this time.

For a moment, I didn’t think he was going to respond, but slowly he said, “I was in the army.”