Bren’s breath caught. She loved that her daughter had never gotten too old to call her Mommy, but had to admit that hearing the word Mommy coming from her daughter, even at twenty-four years old, even married and a whole continent away, brought to mind skinned knees and Barbie dolls, an eight-year-old Kelsey who would never grow any older.
“Kelsey!” she exclaimed. “How’s Thailand?”
“Oh, Mommy, it’s beautiful. The rain has stopped, and it’s so warm. Perfect, really. We’re getting ready for Loi Krathong here. Do you know what that is? Have you ever seen it?”
Bren scrambled for her telephone pad and pencil, flipped to the Kelsey page, and scribbled down Loy Rithong. “I’ve never even heard of . . . Did you say Rithong with an R?”
Kelsey giggled. “A K, Mommy. A K. Krathong. We make these little boats and fill them with flowers and candles and coins—we’re making ours out of bread to feed the fish, our boat. That was Dean’s idea. Isn’t that a great idea, Mommy, to make it out of bread?” Bren nodded, but there wasn’t time to speak between Kelsey’s breathless sentences. She always got that way, especially when she talked about her new husband. “He’s so smart about things, even though we’re still learning. It’s like he’s lived here his whole life. Anyway, so you float these little boats down the river during the full moon. It’s like an offering, Mommy, but it’s also symbolic. It symbolizes letting go of your hatred and anger and bitterness, and there are lanterns, so many lanterns, and, gosh, it just sounds so beautiful. Doesn’t it sound beautiful?”
“Yes, beautiful,” Bren said, but she’d gotten behind on her notes. “Wait, you have hatred and anger?”
“It’s symbolic, Mommy.”
“Symbolic hatred,” Bren said, writing down the words as she spoke them.
“So what are you and Daddy doing this evening? It must be about dinnertime there. I just woke up. I’m waiting for Dean to get out of the shower. We’re playing hooky and going to the beach today. I’m telling you, Mommy, someday you and Daddy simply must come visit us. We have space. Dean said he would make space, isn’t that the sweetest? He’s so thoughtful that way, you know. Always worrying about everyone else. He would probably give you our bed and would sleep outside on the ground if that was what you wanted. You must come and let him be thoughtful to you, Mommy. It would mean the world to him. And you would be amazed by these beaches. The water, it’s so clear. You’ve never seen water like that in Missouri, I can tell you that much.”
Ah. There it was. The requisite Missouri-bashing that both of her kids had to do on a regular basis, now that they’d moved on to such exotic locales. As if nothing good could have possibly come out of a place so bland as the Midwest. As if they both had not come out of the Midwest themselves.
Bren wrote the word beeche—misspelled, after overthinking that it might have some foreign iteration like all the other things she’d been writing down—then scratched it out and wrote hooky instead, then scratched that out, too, and put down her pen.
“So?” Kelsey asked.
“So what?”
Impatient grunt, followed by a giggle. Kelsey’s signature. The girl moved like a hummingbird, always zooming on to the next thing, the next conversation, the next song, the next location. “So what are you and Daddy doing tonight?” she repeated.
“Oh, that,” Bren said. Her head felt swimmy, stuffed too full of information. She placed her hand over the phone receiver again. “Gary!” Nothing. She went to the garage door and pounded on it with the flat of her hand three times, marital code for get your ass in here. “Gary!”
“Daddy in the garage again?” Kelsey asked. “Still working on that motorcycle?”
“Yes and no,” Bren said. “He’s onto dune buggies now—it’s a long story. I suppose we’re not doing anything tonight. Although I’d hoped to catch up on some of my recorded shows.”
“Well, that’s boring. Honestly, Mommy, you should get out sometimes.”
Bren’s hand went to the back of her head. “I get out. I’m going to the hairdresser tomorrow.”
“The hairdresser? What, are you ninety? I mean get out, get out. Do something fun. Go dancing. You’re empty nesters now. You have freedom!”
Don’t remind me, Bren thought, thinking for the thousandth time what an awful term empty nester was. So lonely, evoking images of things dried and barren. It was bad enough to feel that way without putting a name to it, too.
Bren found herself stuttering, nothing intelligible coming out, as her daughter continued to talk over her with suggestions of things to do—fancy dinners, romantic river cruises, day trips, double dates, clubs—followed by condemnation for sitting around and rotting at home, doomsday predictions of what happened to old couples who didn’t thrive, old people who didn’t leave the house.
“They die younger, Mommy, did you know that? Retired people who get out and do things live longer.”
“We’re not retired,” Bren found herself saying, bewilderedly. “I’m only forty-five. Your father’s not yet fifty.”
“It’s here before you know it,” Kelsey said, in a very sage voice, as if a twenty-four-year-old knew the first thing about the advancement of time.
Bren considered telling her about the Kitchen Classroom job. Or was it the Classroom Kitchen job? And was it even a job? What kind of job could a person have if she couldn’t even remember exactly the name of the company? She hadn’t said a word to Gary about it yet. She hadn’t even really convinced herself that she was going to go through with it, anyway. The further she’d gotten away from that strange encounter with Paula, the more hours that elapsed, the less likely it seemed that Bren could be a teacher of anything. Surely the woman didn’t actually expect her to begin a job that was offered on the sidewalk with no background checks or résumé exchange or anything. What if Bren was a murderer? A kitchen knife–wielding murderer. It could happen.
There was a thundering of footsteps, and Gary came into the room, reeking of grease, wiping his hands on a filthy towel. Grateful for the interruption, Bren sat the phone on the table and hit the speaker button.
“Hey, there, princess!” Gary said, without waiting for an opening. Exactly where Kelsey got the chatty gene, right there.
“Daddy!” Kelsey squealed. If they’d been visiting in person, she would have wrapped her entire self around him, the way she always had. Such a daddy’s girl. Although he’d taken her marriage and moving much more easily than Bren had thought he would.
She’d always had a vague fear that one of her children would move away. Away away, not college away or different town away, or even different state away. Away away, where she couldn’t get to them within a few hours. But she’d never have guessed that one of them would actually go and do it. Not to mention both of them. Where had she gone wrong that both of them suddenly wanted to be away away?
Kelsey was married for exactly forty-six minutes before making her way to the middle of the reception dance floor, grabbing the mic, and announcing that Dean was accepting a new job (pause for polite applause) and that it was a really great opportunity (pause for excited grin) and that they would be moving (pause for hopping on toes) to exotic and beautiful Thailand (pause for confetti and balloons and a goddamned unicorn shitting puppies shaped like hearts and four-leaf clovers). Bren had smiled and clapped with the others, all the while trying to remember if Thailand was a place with big, scary insects or a place with big, scary diseases or a place with big, scary kidnappers. Or maybe all of the above. She was quite possibly the first mother of the bride in all of history to wonder aloud, at the reception, whether her daughter was up-to-date on all of her immunizations.
Oh, Gary had taken it hard at first. But he’d gotten over it so fast. How did he do that? Kelsey had now been gone for six months, and it already felt like six years, but to listen to Gary, to watch him as he putzed around on his dune buggy without a care in the world and as he casua
lly chatted with his daughter on the phone—no pad and pencil required—you would never know the girl had been gone at all.
“How are things down under?” he asked.
This got the usual giggle from Kelsey. “We’re not that close to Australia, Daddy.”
“Oh, does that mean you don’t have a pet kangaroo yet? Well, then I’m never coming to visit.”
More laughter. They were so cute together, those two. It made the bridge of Bren’s nose ache. She pinched it, wondering if she should write down kangaroo. Out of nowhere, her shoulder itched. She shrugged a few times, the friction from the bra strap scratching it.
“How’s Dean-o?” Gary asked, his voice booming, making Bren flinch.
“Oh, he’s just great. His project is going well and it looks like he may get a contract extension, which we’re so excited about. We haven’t seen nearly enough of Thailand yet. We’d like to stay a few more years.”
“Years?” Bren barked, and then slapped her mouth shut. She’d vowed to never make either of the children feel guilty about their decision to live lives separate from hers—even if they were so carelessly breaking her heart—but she couldn’t help it. Years was a long time. Years was long enough for her to miss the birth of a grandchild. Years was long enough to put down roots, real roots, the kind of roots that you don’t want to dig up.
“Well, you tell him we said hello and to keep up the good work,” Gary boomed, as if Bren had never said anything at all. Thank God.
“So I can’t talk for much longer,” Kelsey said, her voice going down at the edges. “Trying to save money where I can.”
“That’s my girl,” Gary said. “Levelheaded.”
Bren shot him a look. As if saving pennies by shortchanging her own parents on phone calls while lollygagging on a beach all day instead of working were a fiscally responsible decision.
“I just wanted to say hi. And to tell you I miss you both bunches.”
“Bunches?” Bren repeated. Her pen scrawled it out of its own accord, but she was drowned out once again by Gary.
“We miss you, too, pumpkin. You take care of yourself down there. Don’t forget to put another shrimp on the barbie.”
Kelsey’s laughter tinkled through the phone speaker again. Bren had more than once wished she could bottle up that laughter, keep it safe, keep it handy. It was a sound of such pure joy. But now it only sounded faraway, dulled by distance. A joy that she could only admire, but never fully experience again.
“Oh, just a reminder, by the by, that Dean and I won’t be coming home for the holidays.”
“Yes, yes, you’ve told us,” Bren said tiredly. Did her daughter have to keep reminding her of that? Did she really think that having her first-ever Christmas apart from her children would be something Bren would absentmindedly forget?
“Got big Christmas plans?” Gary asked.
“Not really. It’s mostly Buddhist here, so not a lot of Christmas celebrating goes on, I don’t think. Plus, the place will just be flooded with tourists, from what I hear. We’ll probably have a quiet dinner. Maybe some noodles, some fish. Just the two of us.”
“Same here,” Bren said. “Just the two of us. Only without the noodles.”
“No Grandma?” Kelsey asked.
“She and Aunt Cathy have plans,” Bren said.
“They’re going to Vegas, those dirty dogs,” Gary added. “Christmas with Elvis and all-you-can-eat steak.” The way he said it made it sound fun, and not like the abandonment it was. Even Bren’s own mother couldn’t be bothered with Christmas this year. Imagine.
“Well, tell them I said to enjoy that! I hope they roll sevens. Or elevens. Or whatever it is that’s good,” Kelsey cried out, right back to her sunny self. “And you two should make the most of your alone time. A romantic Christmas dinner for two, for the first time in, what . . .”
“Twenty-four years,” Bren supplied.
“Wow, twenty-four,” Kelsey said. “You are long overdue.”
“I suppose we must be,” Bren said. She didn’t have the heart to tell Kelsey that their grand Christmas Eve dinner plans involved a cafeteria, nor did she mention the cheese on toast or the pad and pencil with all the foreign words or even her incessant nightly scouring of the Internet for cheap flights halfway around the world.
“That we are,” Gary said, snaking an arm around Bren’s shoulders. She resisted the urge to pull away, though she knew she was going to smell like that damned buggy now even if she did.
Their good-byes were, as always, over so quickly it left Bren’s head spinning. She clutched the pad and pencil, gazing at the words as if trying to memorize the conversation, file it away so she would have it to pull out on her next lonely evening filling out magazine quizzes and listening to the nightly death report.
Gary drifted away, taking the rag and a glass of iced tea with him. Terse, typical conversation, the amiable guy with the big smile and the cute turns of phrase snuffed out like a candle on a birthday cake.
“You eat?”
“Just some cheese toast.”
“Huh.”
“You want me to make you something?”
“Naw, I’ll grab a bite later. Working on the buggy.”
A shuffling of footsteps toward the garage again. “You gonna be long?”
Garage door opening, an echoey answer that drifted into inaudible murmurings, and then a shut door: “Got to get to bed. Meetings tomorrow . . .”
Bren stared at the pad of paper. Bunches was the last word she’d written.
But off in the margin was the sad face that she’d drawn when Kelsey had told them she didn’t plan to come home for the holidays.
Suddenly the cheese toast looked congealed and disgusting, postsurgery fleshy. She could feel the bread perching at the base of her esophagus, coiled, ready to launch as soon as she lay down for bed. She could practically see little orange pustules of grease popping into the pores around her mouth, on her cheeks, her forehead, suffocating them, making her skin dull and cheeselike itself. The very thought made her tongue curl back in a gag.
She got up and carried the plate to the sink, snatching up the remote control and turning off the TV as she went. The room hummed with silence. The sun had fallen.
She padded back to the bedroom, where her black long-haired cat, George, lay waiting for her, curled at the bottom of the bed. He made a brrr noise as she slid headfirst into the bed, and moved so his hind end pressed warmly into her side.
It was barely seven o’clock, but Bren Epperson went to bed anyway, thanking God, as she drifted off, for the short days of autumn.
CHAPTER FOUR
Bren closed her eyes, concentrating on the shush of the water and the warmth that spread itself over the crown of her head, the feel of Nan’s fingers snaking over her scalp. She always kept her eyes shut during the washing, the better to ignore how irregularly long the sinks made her neck feel, and how scrutinized she felt in that position—stretched backward, throat bared, skin tags laid out for anyone to assess or attack. Plus, hairdressers could see right up your nose when you were under the faucet. Nan probably knew more about Bren’s nasal cavity than Bren did. Mortifying.
Of course, she’d been going to Nan long enough to go through the washing in silence. Nan recognized a good, quality neurosis when she saw one and understood when to go ahead and humor it. Before Bren had found Nan, though, she’d endured innumerable washing sessions filled with yammering, the stylists raising their voices to be heard over the water—Can you believe this weather? I didn’t even need a jacket today! Do you have kids? Yeah? How old? What are their names? Blah, blah, blah. From what Bren could tell, nobody particularly enjoyed this routine; they simply put up with it. Anything to keep everyone in the room from acknowledging the truth, that you were a grown-ass woman who’d just washed your own hair an hour before, because you were perfectly capable of
washing your own hair, and because you were too vain to go anywhere with greasy comb marks in your limp tresses, even to the hairdresser.
Or maybe these were just the things Bren thought about when lying back, giraffe-necking the sink, earlobes squished against the washbasin, expensive shampoo scent fog around her head, until Nan let the nozzle snap back into place and cradled her head with a towel, urging with her hands for Bren to sit up.
Then and only then would she allow herself to open her eyes. But she was never quite pleased with what she saw in the mirror. Especially these days. Her neck looked squat and squeezed under the collar of the brown cape. She looked, to herself, like someone who’d been buried chin-deep in mud. Or maybe at this point it was more chins-deep. Plural. The snap of her jeans jabbed into her gut as confirmation.
“So,” Nan said briskly, combing Bren’s hair into straight chunks around her shoulders, “Turkey Day’s in nineteen days, huh?”
“Oh, is it?” Bren asked. “I had no idea.” Out of the corner of the mirror, Bren caught Lucy, the impossibly young desk clerk, so skinny Bren would have worried if she’d been the girl’s mother, stepping up onto a stool to pull down the orange and black Halloween garland that had been strung across the shop’s front window.
Nan nodded. “And you know what that means.”
Bren frowned, then, seeing her hideous frown lines in the mirror, quickly released it before pasting on a pleasant little grin. It was totally fake, but much nicer to look at. “No,” she said.
Nan stopped brushing, met Bren’s eyes in the mirror. Really, Bren thought, Nan had terrible hair. Frizzy, overworked, bleached within an inch of its life. And Nan was forever fiddling with it. Bren imagined she could hear Nan’s follicles cry out in terror every time the woman picked up a teasing comb. “It means”—dramatic pause for effect—“only forty-eight days until Christmas.” Nan laughed as Bren groaned. “Have you started your shopping yet?”
“No,” Bren said, though she didn’t elaborate, that there wouldn’t be any shopping this year. Not really. Everything these days was so impersonal. Gift cards and money, money and gift cards. Even her nephews couldn’t think of anything they wanted; her sister-in-law had told her, Just get them gift cards or money. And then she’d done that thing that wannabe-rich people so often did when conversations turned to money—the knowing-laugh thing—and added, Money’s always one size fits all, amIright?
The Hundred Gifts Page 3
