Mothers and Daughters: An Anthology

by Deborah Bedford

  “We’re okay, Theia.” This time, his words didn’t sound empty at all. He meant them. “She’s waited for us already. She can wait a little bit longer.” Joe searched the car for something so she could wipe her face. He found a pack of wet wipes in the glove compartment.

  When Theia sat up and leaned against the headrest, he folded one of them to make a cool compress. He pressed it against her forehead, her temple, her other temple.

  “Thanks,” she whispered, shooting him a weak smile. “That’s been coming on all afternoon.”

  “Are you okay to go?”

  She closed her eyes and nodded. “Yeah.”

  They drove another three blocks, his knuckles white knobs as he clenched the wheel. Then in one abrupt motion, he steered them off to the right again and pushed the emergency brake on.

  She stared at him. “Joe? What are you doing?”

  For a long moment, he stared at his hands. Then he turned to her, spoke aloud to her the things he had given over to his Holy Father earlier. “Theia, I’m so sorry for so many things.”

  When she spoke, he heard hurt edging into her voice. “I don’t think this is exactly the time to be discussing this.”

  “Perhaps it isn’t, but we must discuss it soon.” He took her hands. “Right now, there’s something else more important.”

  She lifted her eyes to his. “What is that?”

  “We have to pray. Together.”

  He saw her jaw go tight, saw the line of her lips begin to stiffen and then to tremble.

  “I know.” He touched her face, touched all the pain that he knew she still carried. “I know,” he whispered, as he took her hands in his. He pulled them to him, entwined his fingers with hers, held them there.

  “I can’t pray.”

  He didn’t let her go. “You want to tell me about it?”

  She shook her head. “He wouldn’t want to listen to me.”

  “He would. He does.”

  “I don’t think God cares about me, Joe. How could a God who cares about His children let cancer come into their lives?”

  “I’ve seen it, Theia. I’ve felt it. He’s made me to understand His love better than I’ve ever understood it before.”

  “I can’t see it. I can’t feel it.”

  “What He feels about His children having cancer, He took to the cross.”

  “If He dies on the cross, He died for my sins, Joe, not for my cancer.”

  “All I know is this, Theodore. On that cross, He rendered evil ineffective. He took it upon Himself, and then He crushed it. Disease, sin, bad things, they haven’t ceased to exist, but their power over His children has been broken. Your cancer has not been abolished, but it has been overthrown.”

  Her fingers curled into the safety of his hand. She stared at them there, and he followed suit. His fingers covering hers, their fingers wrought together like sinews of rope.

  At last she spoke. “I was so wrong not to let you come with me today.”

  “I’ll come the next time. And the next and the next. I am your husband. I want to be there.”

  Her two words, only a slight whisper. “Thank you.”

  “Will you pray with me for Kate, Theia?”

  She nodded, tears in her eyes. “Yes, I will.”

  For the first time since she’d been diagnosed with breast cancer, they bent heads side by side, rearranged their clasped hands. “Holy God,” Joe whispered, speaking aloud while Theia joined her heart with his. “Protect our daughter, Father. Keep her from harm. We can’t do it, Lord, but we know You can. Surround her with Your angels. And give us renewed wisdom. Help us to know what to say, where to turn, when we see her. Amen.”

  “Amen,” Theia said, too.

  And thus for the first time in many months, husband and wife, mother and father, prayed together as one voice.

  Chapter Nine

  The fluorescent bulb glared overhead, bathing the sergeant’s metal desk in sterile, harsh light. Theia watched her daughter sit in a wooden chair in one corner, rocking even though the chair was stationary, her hands trapped between her knees.

  “Sergeant Ray Howard,” his nametag read.

  “Which one of you—” Joe wrapped one arm around Theia and held her next to him “—is going to tell us what’s going on?”

  Kate stared at her knees.

  Sergeant Howard flipped a felt tip pen and caught it midair. “That ought to be up to your daughter, Pastor McKinnis. It seems she has a few important details that she needs to pass along.”

  “And the details are—?” Joe stared at their daughter.

  The sergeant flipped his pen again. “We couldn’t find any insurance information in the glove compartment, for one thing.”

  Theia spoke to her daughter in a gentle, urging voice, the same way a child might urge a kitten down out of a tree. Even as she did, she realized that she and Kate had not talked, really talked, for weeks. “Kate, will you tell us what happened?”

  Joe addressed the officer behind the desk. “What do you mean, you couldn’t find any insurance information in the glove compartment? What glove compartment?”

  “The glove compartment of that antique contraption your daughter calls a car.”

  “Our insurance ought not to be responsible. Whoever was driving ought to be responsible. Whoever owns the car ought to be responsible.”

  Sergeant Howard gave an exasperated little chuff of breath, and as if to say It’s in your court now, girl, he shrugged at Kate.

  “I was driving, Dad.” Kate said it so softly that they almost couldn’t hear her.

  Stunned silence filled the room. Then, “What? What were you driving?”

  “Grandpa’s car.”

  Neither Joe nor Theia had the wherewithal to figure out how they had not noticed that the old Fairlane was gone. It sat in plain sight at the side of the house, where anyone walking past could see it.

  Theia closed her eyes. I’ve distanced myself from my family, Lord. I’ve been so focused on having cancer that I’m living my life as if I’ve lost everything already.

  Joe raked one hand through his hair. “Grandpa Harkin was going to teach you, Kate. He wanted to use the experience to help you grow up and become a responsible person. How could you just throw such a gift away? From someone who loves you like that?”

  She shook her head, and Theia’s heart broke as the tears pooled in her daughter’s eyes. “I don’t know, Dad. I really don’t.”

  “Is the car insured, Pastor McKinnis?”

  “I don’t know. I’ll have to talk to my father-in-law about that.”

  Theia left Joe’s side and sank to the floor beside Kate, laying a hand of reassurance on her daughter’s flank. “He doesn’t have insurance on that old car, honey,” she said to Joe. She turned to the officer. “It isn’t a roadworthy vehicle. He had it out once, about ten days ago. But he didn’t insure it. I’m sure he planned to take care of it before he gave his granddaughter driving lessons.”

  Sergeant Howard scribbled a note on the report. Then another. “The registration isn’t up to date either. We found that out when we ran the license plate number. It hasn’t been renewed in the state of Wyoming since 1989.”

  “Where is the car right now?” Joe asked.

  “We’ve got it out in the impound lot. We towed it in with damage to the left front fender. And here’s a copy of the police report filed by the driver of the other vehicle.” He yanked a copy out of the clipboard and handed it over.

  Joe took the papers but didn’t read them.

  Sergeant Howard ran his forehead back and forth in the flat of his hand. “So let’s go over the charges, shall we? First, driving an uninsured vehicle. Second, driving a vehicle with expired tags. Third, failure to signal a lane change. Fourth, driving without a license. Usually in cases like these, where the driver has borrowed a vehicle from a member of the family, the family elects not to press charges of vehicle theft. But, I—”

  “She’s our fourteen-year-old daughter, Offi
cer Howard. I doubt very much that her grandfather will want to prosecute.”

  “I’ll need to talk to Mr. Harkin about that, I’m afraid. Although he hasn’t phoned us to report the car missing at present time.”

  “He doesn’t even know it’s missing. None of us knew.”

  “Maybe if you kept a closer eye on your children, Pastor, these things wouldn’t come as such a surprise.”

  Joe’s anger exploded. “How dare you accuse me of not watching over my own daughter?” He rose from the chair and advanced on the officer’s desk. “If you had any clue what this family’s been facing, you’d keep your comments to yourself.”

  “Honey—” Theia reached out to him “—Joe.” Lord, I don’t want to distance myself from my own life any longer. I don’t want to be distant from my children, from my husband, from You.

  Sergeant Howard slapped the clipboard on his desk the same way a judge would clap down a gavel. “She’ll be scheduled to appear in Juvenile District Court two weeks from today, in front of Judge Terry Rogers. You are welcome to hire a lawyer or let Kate plead her case on her own. It makes no difference really. The outcome is generally the same.”

  Theia waited outside Kate’s bedroom, her hand on the doorknob, her forehead leaning against the wooden door. Faint pop music played inside her daughter’s room.

  At last she gave a timid knock, once, twice, not knowing if Kate would invite her to enter or not.

  “Hm-m-mm?” came a sleepy voice.

  “Kate? It’s Mom.”

  “Come in.”

  Kate was curled up in her single bed, propped up by pillows, reading a paperback novel.

  “How are you doing in here?”

  “Okay.” Kate flipped a page of her book and kept reading.

  Theia shoved her arms inside the big pockets of her bathrobe, touched one toe of her slipper to the other. “I just came to say good night. To tuck you in if you wanted me to.”

  Another page turned. “You haven’t tucked me in since I was eleven years old.”

  “I know that. I thought maybe it was time to start it again.”

  On Kate’s stereo, the CD player made a whirring sound and a click before it started playing another song. “I don’t want to talk about today, Mom.”

  “It’s okay.” Theia didn’t move toward her daughter. She stood in the middle of the room, feeling stranded. “I don’t think I want to talk about it either.”

  Outside, gauze clouds stretched thin across the stars, and the moon shone transparent against the sky as though someone had tried to erase it. Theia’s sense of loss settled someplace deep inside her rib cage, growing hard and heavy and cold there.

  “I need to apologize to you, Kate.”

  “No, you don’t.”

  “I’ve been a pretty crummy mom for the past few weeks.”

  Kate laid the book upside down, the pages forming a tent on her belly. “You haven’t been. You’ve been fine.”

  “Even though I’ve been in this house with you, I’ve been far away.”

  “I can understand it, really. You’ve had some pretty crummy things happening to you lately.”

  Theia moved toward her daughter and sat on the edge of the mattress. The mattress creaked as it bore her weight. “There’s no reason that you and your sister and your father should have to live through crummy things right along with me.”

  “Yes, there is.” Kate rustled around in all the pillows and blankets until she could sit straight up beside her mother. “We’re your family.”

  Another minute of silence passed. Kate pitched her book on the floor and flopped back three layers of covers. She patted the bed beside her. “Would you get all the way in bed with me, the way you used to do, Mom? Back in the days when we used to read stories?”

  Theia touched her daughter’s cheek and swallowed so hugely that they both heard it. “I don’t know if there’s room for both of us anymore. I haven’t done this since you were—”

  “Eleven years old.” Kate smiled.

  “We’re both bigger than we used to be.”

  “That doesn’t make any difference.”

  Theia crawled into bed with her daughter, turned on her side so they fit together like spoons. The Creator had cut them from the same family cloth. Their hips fit. Their bellies and their backs curved like instruments at the same places. Their shoulder bones jutted at the same angle, shadow images like limbs of the same tree, one alongside the other.

  Kate moved over to give her mother more room. Theia scrunched around until she got the comforter adjusted. The bed felt wonderful. At last she could give in to the weariness that sapped her strength.

  “Knock-knock,” Kate whispered into the darkness.

  “Who’s there?”

  “Little old lady.”

  “Little old lady who?”

  “That’s funny. I didn’t know you could yodel.”

  Theia shook her head at her daughter.

  “Didn’t you get it? Little old lady who.”

  “I got it.”

  “I have another one.”

  “I’m almost afraid to ask.”

  “What did Snow White say when she took her film in to be developed?”

  Theia couldn’t help herself. She started to giggle. “I don’t know. What did Snow White say?”

  “She said, ‘Someday my prints will come.’ Get it? My prints.”

  That was all it took; they both dissolved in laughter.

  They laughed until it hurt, pressing their faces into the pillows to keep from waking everybody else. They laughed until they cried. When they finally flopped over backwards, their bellies sore and their hearts lighter than they’d been in weeks, Theia rested her fingers on top of Kate’s head.

  She experienced at that moment an almost excruciating sense of the beauty, the texture, of life. She combed through silky strands of Kate’s hair, reveling in the blend of its colors together, chicory brown and golden, sheening like water. She smelled her daughter’s fragrance, sweet and fresh, like field clover tossed by a breeze. Even the bed linens exploded onto her senses, the entwining of the cotton threads, crisp and soft at the same time, a gift.

  She thought of Heidi dancing in the studio, skipping across wooden honey floors, laughing at her missteps, her hair tucked behind one ear, her body pirouetting with joyful abandon before the mirrors.

  The girls were each so beautiful and young and talented and…and blessed.

  The world and all of heaven awaited her daughters.

  How dearly she loved the two of them. She loved them fiercely, completely, to a depth that proved unbearable.

  I HAVE LOVED YOU WITH AN EVERLASTING LOVE, THEIA. I HAVE DRAWN YOU WITH LOVING-KINDNESS.

  Her entire body quickened. Here, in this quiet place, lying in bed with her daughter, she could hear without distraction or debate. No other voices plagued her. Only the gentle, quiet declaration that delved deep, winnowed her spirit to its very core.

  BELOVED.

  He came to her, an audible voice out of the stars and the darkness and the breeze outside the window. She rose up in response to the waves of warm certainty and love that enveloped her spirit.

  Lord? Lord, is that You?

  Her heart waited, poised for an answer. It didn’t come in the form she’d expected. It came as the seed of something deep and new, a jewel of wisdom, embedded securely in her soul.

  All at once she understood something about herself that she hadn’t understood before. All at once she held in her hand a freeing truth.

  In the midst of her struggle with cancer, she’d spent the last weeks methodically counting the cost in her life. The time had come now to take the same careful account of every blessing.

  Theia wound a strand of Kate’s hair around her pointer finger, unwound it, and rewound it again.

  I’m afraid, Lord.

  LET GO.

  Father, it scares me to let go.

  MY ARMS WILL CATCH YOU. MY ARMS WILL HOLD YOU. DON’T YOU KNOW?

/>   I know, but I don’t know. Sometimes it seems so hard to believe.

  There are times when the most eloquent prayers to the Father are the ones that contain no words. Theia took a deep breath, reveling as the air rushed into her lungs. Surely, she wasn’t alone. None of this had to be faced alone. She didn’t have to figure it out or understand it. She curled up in the bed beside Kate and gave herself up, gave up all the burdens of her heart, her shame, her terror, her anger, her faithlessness, to the heavenly Father who already knew her heart to its very center.

  And as she did, she knew something else. She knew her Lord’s love. She felt Him holding her. She grasped the knowledge for the thousandth time and for the first time. She tasted how wide and how long and how high and deep was His love for her. He loved her, cared for her, more than her husband or her own daughters. All those earthly blessings were only a reflection of the love that He wanted her to know from the depths and the heights of heaven.

  The love for her that He had carried to the cross.

  After a long while she whispered, “Kate, I’m so glad to be your mother.”

  Kate nestled even closer against her in the single bed. “I’m glad you’re my mom, too.” A long pause, and then, “I know why I drove Grandpa’s car today. I drove it to show you how independent I could be. I drove it to show that no matter what happens with you, I can manage on my own.”

  “Your dad and I both know you’re growing up.” But this went much deeper than just recognizing that Kate was maturing, and Theia knew it. “I’m here for you, sweetie. You can talk about all this stuff with me.”

  “I get really scared, Mom, when I think that something might happen to you.”

  It was what Theia had expected all along. Put the right words in my mouth, Father. Please. I don’t know what to say to her about this.

  Magically, miraculously, the words began almost to speak themselves. “Growing up doesn’t mean that you have to grow independent, Kate. God wants you to rely on Him, no matter what happens. He wants you to know that, no matter how difficult things become, you’ll never have to manage on your own.”