Authors: Elizabeth Berg
In a few minutes, our father came back out of the building and got into the car. His face was a mix of sorrow and mild determination. “I wonder if you could just—”
Sharla put her hand on his arm. “Could we please go home, Dad? You said we could go home.”
He waited a long moment, then drove slowly away from the curb. I looked back up at the window. She was not there.
“She could come to the house and see you, how about that?” my father asked.
“No,” Sharla said quickly.
I agreed with her. The house was our safe place, our father’s place. She had come back only once, to supervise the two moving men who loaded her things onto the truck with Jasmine’s. She had pointed to her closet, to the china cabinet holding the incomplete set of dishes she’d gotten from her mother, to her sewing basket and knitting supplies, to a Queen Anne chair that had belonged to her grandmother. She did not take much, really. But it seemed to me that the house echoed for some time after she left, then fell deeply silent until just recently, when sounds of a normal life had begun there again.
W
hen we got home, our father gave us each the presents our mother had given him to give to us. The packages were identically shaped, large and flat; paintings, I’d guessed. I had no desire to open mine; nor, I suspected, did Sharla. We put them under the tree with the presents we had waiting there, from our father and Georgia—Georgia had already given us Advent calendars, which we had hung over our beds. Then our father made us cocoa with marshmallows and sat us at the kitchen table.
“I want you to tell me what’s so hard for you when you see your mother,” he said. “Maybe we can work some things out.”
“Did she feel bad?” I asked. It came out too bright and eager; I hadn’t meant to sound that way.
“She … yes, it hurt her a lot that you wouldn’t come in. She’s trying, you know.”
“She’s trying too hard,” Sharla said. “It makes you feel weird.”
“She’s having kind of a bad time right now,” our father said.
“She left,” Sharla said. “For no reason.”
No one said anything else for a long time. And then my father said, “I believe she thinks she has reasons.”
“Dad,” Sharla said. “Please, can we just not see her for a while? I need some time away from her.”
We hadn’t seen her very often, only a few visits to her house and the time at the restaurant. But I knew what Sharla meant. Whenever we saw our mother, something always happened that made us uncomfortable. One night, Jasmine had shown up, seeming to surprise my mother. “Oh!” she’d said, after she opened the door. “Jasmine! But … well, the girls are here.”
“Oh, God,” Jasmine said. Then their voices got too low for us to hear. And then Jasmine came into the little kitchen.
I’d forgotten how darkly beautiful she was, how exotic looking.
“How
are
you?” she’d asked us, kissing our cheeks. Her perfume was spicy, overpowering.
“Fine,” Sharla said, staring down at her plate.
“I wish you’d come and visit
me
sometime,” Jasmine said.
“Where do you live?” I asked.
“I’ve got to give you the address,” she said. But she left a few minutes later without doing so.
“We get together quite a bit,” my mother said, sitting down at the table after Jasmine had left. “We do things, you know, movies …”
“Dad got a raise,” Sharla said.
“Did he?”
“Yup.” She loaded up a fork with macaroni and cheese, talked through it. “A big one.” She put more in her mouth, then said, “Ishn’t that good?”
I watched my mother watching her. “Sharla,” she said
finally, and I knew what she meant: Don’t talk with your mouth full.
“What?
” Sharla said.
My mother looked away, said nothing more. I felt sorry for her for a moment; then the softness in my stomach turned to a hard knot of contempt.
When I was out jogging last week, I saw a woman walking a dog. Only it was the classic case of the dog walking
her
. The woman was laughing a bit, taking giant strides in an effort to keep up, but she was clearly embarrassed. The dog strained at the leash; the woman’s arm looked practically pulled out of the socket. I wanted to go over there and jerk that leash out of the woman’s hands, smack the dog’s butt with it. “Don’t let him do that!” I wanted to say. “Why are you letting him
do
that?”
I was a bit surprised by my strong reaction: for one thing, it was none of my business. But I think my response was tied up with things like what I just remembered, that feeling of contempt you have for someone you see is not in control when you want them to be.
It’s funny how, oftentimes, the people you love the most are given the least margin for error. Funny, too, the places where the anger ends up surfacing.
Later on that Christmas Eve when Sharla and I left without seeing her, our mother called us. She asked that Sharla and I each get on an extension. Then she asked if we had opened our presents.
“No,” Sharla said, and I followed quickly with, “We’re waiting for tomorrow.”
“I kind of wanted to be there when you opened them,” my mother said.
Neither Sharla nor I said anything. Georgia was coming on Christmas Day. We had plans.
“I’m sorry you didn’t feel you were able to come up,” she continued. “I’m not blaming you—it’s been awkward. You know, we’re all just going to have to go through this time of transition. It’s hard. I’m sure all of us have said or done things we wish we hadn’t. But we’ll get through this. I want you both to know I love you very much. Nothing you can do will ever change that. We’ll get through this.”
Silence. I remember thinking,
we’re
through it. You’re the only one who’s having trouble.
“Could you maybe open your presents now, so I could at least hear you doing it?”
“I’ll get them,” I said quickly, before Sharla could refuse. I brought Sharla’s gift to her in the living room, took mine back to the kitchen.
“We can open them together,” I said, and started unwrapping my gift, then stopped, listening to see if I could hear Sharla doing the same. She was; I could hear the rustling sounds.
“Thanks, Mom,” Sharla said quietly. “It’s pretty.”
I finished opening my gift. It was a painting of a mother sitting in a rocker holding a baby. The room was furnished ordinarily: a crib, a night table with a softly glowing lamp, a yellow, fringed rug. But where the walls should have been were thin, white clouds against a black night sky, pinpoints of stars were everywhere.
“Thank you,” I said.
“Do you like it?”
My throat ached. I nodded, then croaked, “Yes.” I was so sorry we hadn’t gone up to her apartment. It was Christmas Eve; she was all alone. Nor had we gotten her a present—every time our father offered to take us to get her something, we’d told him we were going to do it ourselves.
“I’ll bring you your present tomorrow night,” I said. Something would be open. Or I’d make something.
“I’ll bring mine, too,” Sharla said. I heard some reluctant sorrow in her voice as well.
Our mother said nothing for a while, breathed into the phone. Then, “Well, you know, I won’t be home tomorrow night. Remember how you were going to have breakfast with me and then go right home? So I … well, I have train tickets for a trip to New York City early tomorrow afternoon. I’m going to stay in a hotel and see all the sights! I’ll bring you back something. What would you like?”
“Who are you going with?” Sharla asked.
But we knew. And in that instant—and I felt it happen to both of us at the same time, as though Sharla and I shared a heart and a brain and a soul—at that instant, we let go of something.
“Jasmine and I are going together,” my mother said. “But if you girls would like to have breakfast with me—”
“Have fun,” Sharla said, and hung up.
“Merry Christmas,” I said, and it seemed so odd to be saying that over the phone, to my mother.
“Ginny?” she said, and I hung up.
I went into the living room, saw Sharla sitting with a canvas in her lap. Her painting was of a bird wearing high heels, pearls, and an apron, sitting chained to a
tree with tiny pot holders for leaves. The sun in the sky was blue.
“Where’s Dad?” I asked. I wondered if he’d heard any of the conversation.
“In the basement. He’s finishing building something. I think it’s a bookcase for us, a fancy one.”
“Did you peek?”
She smiled.
“What’s it like?” I asked.
“It’s beautiful.”
I looked at the painting in her lap. “That’s nice, too,” I tried; but my voice betrayed me.
“It doesn’t make any sense,” Sharla said. And then, looking up at me, “Jasmine and Mom are girlfriends, you know.”
“I know.”
“No. I mean, lesbos. Lesbians.”
I stepped back.
“They are,” Sharla said.
“No, they are not.”
She snorted. “I knew I couldn’t tell you.”
My mind felt crowded with images that wanted in. Somewhere inside, I pulled a curtain. Not yet. Not yet.
I put the painting behind my dresser; Sharla put hers in her closet. We celebrated Christmas with my father and Georgia, who, at the end of January, became his fiancée.
In February, my mother moved back to Santa Fe. We did not see her on the day she left, nor in the weeks before. Our visits to her had fizzled and died. No one fought hard enough to keep them alive. Sharla had told our father about her suspicions regarding Jasmine and
our mother. “What did he say?” I asked, and Sharla said, “Nothing. He must have known.”
We got letters, but not with the frequency we had at first. And once when she called, when I came into the kitchen to have my time alone with her, I simply let the phone rest on the counter. I stared at it while I made a braid in my hair, then unbraided it. I picked some dirt from beneath my fingernails, counted slowly to twenty-five. Then I hung the phone up. She did not call back.
Time passed. Time passed. My father was happy. Georgia was easy, sunny. I grew to love her in a way that was not compensatory. It amazed me, how easily that happened.
Sharla and I did not write to our mother; we did not call, despite gentle urging from both our father and Georgia. First, we would not; then, it seemed, we could not.
Eventually, we got only postcards from our mother giving us her new addresses. Sometimes we saved them. Sometimes we did not. She eventually settled in California.
And then, so many years after that time of enormous change and loss, so many years later, Sharla called me to say, “Well,
I
got some news today.” And before the week was out, I was on a plane to see her and a mother I’d not laid eyes on for thirty-five years.
And here I am.
T
he walk to baggage claim seems to take forever. I see the two children I enjoyed listening to on the plane with their father way ahead of me, Martha a bit behind me. I slow down, wait for her.
“So. How was
your
ride?” I ask.
“Well, except for the part when I thought we were all going to die …”
“Yeah.” I smile.
“You know, I wanted to tell you,” Martha begins. But then she says, “Oh, never mind. Just … good luck.”
“What? What were you going to say?”
“Well, I was just going to say that it seems one of the things you have to do in order to finally grow up is to let that what-my-parents-did-to-me stuff
go.
”
I say nothing, watch my feet walking.
“But it’s none of my business. Why don’t I just go back to wishing you luck.”
“Thanks.”
Martha slows her pace a bit. I quicken mine.
When I arrive at the baggage claim, I see Sharla right away, dressed in jeans and a black sweater, a black suede jacket over her shoulders. She is wearing a belt with a huge silver buckle and fabulous-looking cowboy boots. She always looks as if she walked off of the pages of a
magazine; I always look as though I am on the way to a meeting with the minister. It’s funny; I always thought Sharla would be the conservative one. But as we grew up, Sharla became the risk-taker, the wilder one.
Now I scan her face, trying not to look anxious, but failing. “Oh, for God’s sake, I’m all
right,
” she says.
I embrace her hard, say into her ear, “Oh, Sharla, I’m so sorry.”
She pulls away from me. “Hey. It’s not for sure, remember? I’ll know on Friday.”
“How can they do that? How can they say, ‘You might be terminally ill. We’ll let you know in a few days.’ How can they
do
that?”
“Well, it’s complicated,” Sharla says.
“What do you mean?”
“Why don’t you get your bags. We’ll talk on the way.”
I remember, all of a sudden, where we are, that we are here to see our mother. “Why am I not surprised that she didn’t bother to pick us up?”
“I told her not to,” Sharla said. “I wanted some time with you first. To get ready.”
“Yeah, well, maybe that was a good idea.” I see my small bag coming out, drag it off the belt.
“That’s all you brought?” Sharla asks.
“We’re only staying three days, right?”
“Yeah, but …” She shrugs. “I’ve got more.” She points to a pile of floral French luggage; there are four pieces.
“What did you
bring
?” I ask.
“I was nervous.”
“So, what, you’ve got bags full of tranquilizers?”
“No, just one vial.”
“Really?”
“Just Valium.”
“Can I have some?”
She pulls a slim plastic bottle from her purse. “One?”
“How many milligrams?”
“Five.”
“I’ll take two.”
“That’s a lot.”
“Okay, one. Oh, never mind. Forget it.”
Sharla puts the vial back in her purse. Then she loads her bags onto a cart. “I’ve got a car waiting.” She pulls her sunglasses out of her pocket, puts them on. If she’s ill, she sure doesn’t look it.
“Did you get a stretch limo?” I ask hopefully. “White?”
“You’re so tacky.”
“Well. That, or honest.”
“Saying you want a white stretch is not honest, it’s tacky,” Sharla says. “Trust me.” She sighs. “Where’d you get that
blouse?
”