The Shortest Distance Between Two Women

by Kris Radish

  “What?” Emma asks back so she can have a moment to wake up, to clear her mind, to flag awake her dormant mother-like receptors, while Stephie sobs into the phone.

  Stephie is on the floor of the closet in her bedroom where she has established a kind of holding pen for herself whenever she needs to escape and when she cannot bring herself to leap through the backyards and long alleyways that separate her house from that of her beloved auntie. She is curled up on her sleeping bag, beside twelve lit candles, and Emma, who has seen the closet escape hatch on several occasions when she’s made a house call during a Stephie crisis, is certain her niece is also clutching the tattered and terribly faded pink-and-blue baby blanket that continues to be her lifelong refuge when Aunt Emma or one of her best friends cannot save her.

  “I am always last!” Stephie bellows. “Just once I’d love for this damned family of mine to do something for me, something that I’d like to do. But no—it’s all about the boys and what my stupid mother thinks is best. I am not even close to my own mother! We may as well be living a thousand miles apart!”

  Emma sits up and turns on the light next to her bed. Saying no to Stephie has always been impossible for her, and in more than one quiet moment she has wondered if something got screwed up during Stephie’s conception because Stephie is so her heart, her mind, so her total love. And Stephie almost—just almost—fills the yearning Emma has clutched against her chest for so many years to be a mother.

  Too late now, Emma tells herself on a regular basis, too late now to be the mother to her own son or daughter. Too late to keep her own eggs perched in just the right fertilization lane. Too late to surrender to the yearning ache she has always felt at the tip of her uterus where the small hands and feet of her baby would slowly grow and then finally reach for the light of day at the end of her womb. Too late to wake at dawn, her breasts heavy with milk, anxious to feel the soft hands of her baby dancing against the side of her face. Too late to watch the first steps, hear the first word, scream over the first tumble down the stairs, cry after the first word is spoken. Too late for the first day of school, for sobbing teenagers, for that last wave when her very own child would round the first real corner of his or her own life.

  His or her own life.

  “Talk to me, baby, I’m awake now. What is happening?”

  Stephie tells Emma that her family is going yet again to the beach for spring break and that she’s sick of always going to the same place and simply doesn’t want to go.

  “No one around here feels or does anything unless my mother approves, and I’m not like them. I feel. I am me. I am not them. I want to fly, Auntie, I just want to fly.”

  Sixteen, Emma thinks. Sweet Jesus. Was I this brazen and brave and wise when I was sixteen? When I was sixteen my mother was just coming out of the desperate, depressing stage of grief that had her manically throwing out anything remotely connected to her now deceased husband. Sixteen, when I jealously guarded my few free moments when my mother was not calling me just so she could hear my voice and know I was alive. Sixteen, when I wished I could be anyone but myself. When for the first, but not last, time I coveted the life of the sister closest to me, Debra—her flippant responses to everyone and everything, the men who seemed to appear out of nowhere and throw themselves at Debra Gilford’s feet, the way Debra always seemed to fit in, to be popular, to be the one no matter what I said or did or how hard I tried.

  “If it helps, I hated my family too when I was sixteen,” Emma realizes and confesses.

  “What family?” her niece moans back.

  “Your aunt Debra. My mother. Your mother, for sure. Aunt Erika for a little while, too. It’s not easy being sixteen, honey, but neither was fifteen and neither will be seventeen. And just wait till you hit forty.”

  “Careful, you are starting to sound like my mother and I so wish you were my mother.”

  “Me too,” Emma whispers so softly that she wonders if Stephie can hear her.

  “Well, that would ruin what we have,” Stephie says firmly. “You know that, Auntie, don’t you? Because the way the world works I’d have to hate you too until I was, what, twenty-eight? Thirty? Eighty-something? You don’t still hate Grandma now, do you?”

  Emma rolls forward so her head almost touches her knees when Stephie asks her this question. She feels a cramp just the long side of a menstrual pain seize the edge of her stomach like a claw hammer. Stephie and her questions are going to kill her.

  “Oh, Stephie, of course I love her! But truth be told, sometimes I want to grab her and shake her until she shuts up and leaves me alone. I suppose a part of me wishes I’d been taken someplace I wanted to go when I was sixteen, too.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes. Really.”

  Emma drops her head into her hands and thinks what it must be like to be around Joy, Stephie’s mother, and her manic and obsessive ways all of the time. Joy, who for as long as Emma can remember has acted more like the reigning queen than a nice older sister. Joy, who probably keeps detailed records on everything from her children’s and husband’s eating habits to what she does for the family reunion—which is mostly order people around. Emma has been absolutely biting a hole in her lips for thirty years to keep from telling Joy that her nickname, even among her so-called friends, is “Her Bitchiness.”

  Her Bitchiness when Joy always dumped her laundry off at their mother’s house and Emma had to do it.

  Her Bitchiness when Joy stood up her best friend and left with the rest of the gang for a road trip just before she finished college and Emma had to tell the best friend.

  Her Bitchiness when Stephie and her brothers were babies and Joy simply assumed Emma would babysit without pay.

  Her Bitchiness twenty years ago when she handed off almost all of the reunion planning to Emma the one time Emma could not make it to the initial planning session.

  Her Bitchiness now when Stephie should be allowed some young adult choices.

  And then Emma is temporarily saved by the sound of her sister’s voice. “Stephie, Stephanie, are you in the darn closet?” she can hear Joy yelling and then Stephie’s hilarious and very teenage response, “I wish I was in the closet, Mother, I wish I was a lesbian so you could tear your hair out and put me in some kind of reindoctrination program, which would mean that at least I could be sent away and get the hell out of here!”

  “Stephie,” Emma pleads into her phone. “Don’t yell at her. Stay calm. Just tell her you are talking to me.”

  “What?” Stephie yells back into the phone, forgetting who is who, and which person she is supposed to be angry with at this specific moment.

  “Honey, please be quiet. Just tell her we are talking. Do not get angry, especially if she has been drinking.”

  But Stephie cannot be quiet. Many parts of her are really, really, really sixteen—almost seventeen—and she cannot help it. There are hormones upon hormones stacked up in every corner of her terribly beautiful body. Beyond the piercings and the hair and the interesting selection of mostly secondhand clothes, Stephanie is a natural dishwater-blonde, hazel-eyed beauty who has inherited the light Scandinavian highlights of skin, hair and eyes from her Gilford mother and the delightfully dark undertones of the same features from her paternal ancestors. Stephanie and her bright yellow hair are about to pass from that gawky almost-woman stage where she constantly finds herself tripping over nothing, spilling everything, and always bruising her thighs on pieces of furniture, to the graceful “Have you seen my legs and breasts?” young woman who does not so much walk as float.

  “Auntie Em, my mom hates it when we talk. She gets jealous.”

  Emma’s heart stops in total amazement. “What?”

  “I didn’t want to tell you but Mom thinks you are like brainwashing me and every time I do something she doesn’t like, well, she blames you. Did you hear how she yells?”

  “I have been hearing her since the day I was born, my sweet girl.”

  “She’s crazy.”
<
br />   “We are all crazy sometimes. Is she still there?”

  “No, she left, I think, unless she has a glass to the door and she’s listening. If she thought I was on the phone with you for a long time, she’d break down the stupid door.”

  “Come on—”

  “She’s done it twice.”

  “Serious?”

  “More like serial for God’s sake. Is she on something?”

  Emma cannot believe that even Her Bitchiness would be jealous of a lovely aunt-niece relationship.

  “Auntie?” Stephie asks with just a wobble of terror in her voice.

  “I’m here, sweetie.”

  “Sometimes I really think she is crazy, Auntie Em.”

  “Well …” Emma holds on to the word well so long it’s almost like a song because she is trying to figure out how to dispute her very smart young niece. “I think it’s hard to watch a child grow up and to know they are going to go away,” she finally says. “She loves you and I think there is some unwritten rule that says mothers and daughters are supposed to hate each other and stay as far apart as possible during this specific period of time.”

  “Does it ever frigging end?”

  Hell no is what Emma thinks she should say. Absolutely no damn way. Your mother is a fruitcake who freaks out too much, can’t let anyone else—child or otherwise—think or be or do or live, and it is, yes, quite possible that she is on something. Booze. Drugs. Sex. Rock and roll. A hard blow to the head. Something an evil neighbor slipped into her drink when she was your age. A wrong turn twelve years in a row. Your mother is certifiable, sweet Stephie, and you should run out of that closet, jump out the window, and get the hell over here before she kills you in your sleep.

  But what Emma manages to say, even though she is bewildered by the jealousy she never before knew her sister feels, is tender and true. She tells her niece that mothers get tired and that they forget they were once sixteen and in need of space and time and attention. She tells Stephie that yes, her mother drinks a bit too much, but it would be hard to imagine that she does anything else. No drugs. Probably not sex at all, which she does not tell Stephie.

  “I think it eventually ends,” Emma says finally, trying to convince herself and then quickly asks, “When does your break actually begin?”

  “Why?”

  “Answer the question, smartass.”

  “Are you swearing?”

  “Hell yes.”

  Stephanie finally laughs and far away, maybe six or ten years from now, Emma can hear the distinct tone of Marty’s glorious laugh resonating in the teenage cackle of her beloved niece. She hears this hint of glory and Emma knows something brave and wise that she cannot name or hold but she knows something she did not know before this phone call. And that simple feeling, of something coming, something remarkable that will happen, causes her to make an improbable, unlikely, and maybe terribly dangerous decision.

  As she says it, Emma has no idea where what she is about to say is coming from, what it might mean, or what could possibly happen to the course of her Gilford-motivated life. She only remembers being sixteen and waiting for the last three inches of her breasts to get going and grow. She only remembers how lonely she often felt living in her own house even though she was usually surrounded by way too many sisters.

  And that’s why she promises her niece that she can come stay with her for a week and that she will try and work it out with her mother. And Stephie squeals with laughter and the phone goes dead and Emma does not have time to realize what she has just done because she unexpectedly falls back asleep. But just four hours later her cell phone, propped next to her ear, rings again and she awakens to find there is a crisis brewing.

  There’s a major deadline and the temporary workers she helped hire have been stranded because of bad weather on the other side of the world and Emma finds herself racing through her house before five a.m., struggling to get dressed and trying with great difficulty to remember exactly what she promised her niece.

  A week? A week, knowing that Joy already hates her because she gets along with her only daughter better than she does? A week of all the stuff that probably drives Joy mad—the music, friends, swearing, loudness and also a week of all the good stuff—conversations and lights on in the house when she gets home and hugs in the kitchen and a seven-day slice of motherhood instead of the usual bits and pieces?

  The Joy mess hangs in front of Emma like an unmovable curtain as she races into her office, imagining with dread the conversation she must now have with her oldest sister in order to keep her promise to Stephie. At least it will keep her distracted from the weight of the reunion, her abrupt departure from the brunch, and the phone call from Samuel, which already seems as if it happened a year ago.

  Emma’s massive headache probably started as she answered Stephie’s midnight phone call. But by three p.m., when she still has not solved her work crisis, it has turned into a full-blown, want-to-lie-down-with-a-towel-on-my-face, throbbing pain that runs from the center of her forehead to the back of her neck.

  There is barely time during the next three hours for her to swallow some Tylenol, eat an apple on the run, and call every recruiter in a ten-state area as she struggles to meet her hiring deadline.

  Emma is almost panting with pain and exhaustion at six-fifteen p.m., more than twelve hours into a workday that she knows will not end for several more hours, when her assistant smiles knowingly, tells her that she left two messages on her desk that “seem kind of urgent,” smiles knowingly again, and then leaves for the day.

  It’s another three hours before Emma can finally get back into her office, close to exhausted, crisis averted and headache flourishing. Only then does she remember to read the messages on her desk. One is from Joy. It simply reads, CALL ME ASAP!!! The other is so long Emma has to sit down to read it.

  Joy’s message is a no-brainer. Their discussion will be either a loud tirade about the spring break offer or a long tirade about the spring break offer and Emma’s over-involvement in Stephie’s life.

  The second note is a cryptic message from Marty. It looks like some kind of emergency “have to get this before the discount store closes at midnight” reunion shopping list that Emma thinks she must have known about but somehow cannot remember. The list is long and detailed and without thinking about how many days it has been since she last actually talked to Marty and quietly stormed out of the brunch, Emma picks up the phone. She first tries calling her mother at home. When there is no answer she tries the lovely cell phone that Erika finally convinced their mother she needed to carry with her. That phone is turned off.

  Without hesitating, Emma looks at her watch and decides that if she drives over the speed limit, takes the side street around the center of town, and then sprints she’ll be able to make it to the store fourteen minutes before it closes.

  This is exactly what she does next, with her pounding headache to keep her company and not even considering that she could just go home, make herself a very, very late dinner and go to bed after a long hot bath.

  The thought finally occurs to her twelve minutes into the shopping spree when the lights in the aisles start to go out, an obnoxious man announces everyone has five minutes to get to the checkout counter or they will be spending the night locked in the store, and she looks down at her half-filled cart and realizes there is no way she will get everything on Marty’s list.

  Emma is suddenly frozen in place.

  What in the hell am I doing here?

  Emma stands paralyzed while one by one all the lights go off. She can hear people milling around the front of the store while store clerks urge them to hurry, as if an extra fifty seconds will make someone late to the Dairy Queen, for pity’s sake.

  Emma looks down into her cart. She looks at the plastic beer cups, the paper plates, twelve rolls of masking tape, a mountain of paper towels and the pile of plastic tablecloths that she has managed to squeeze into her cart just as the store manager gets on the intercom and
says, “I know there are still four people in here and you need to leave—now.”

  And that’s when Emma snaps.

  Her exhausted mind and body have hit the wall that has been building brick by brick for longer than one day. Debra, Joy, her mother, the shopping, her work schedule, a tangle of unplanted flowers and shrubs, the brunch, the reunion and all its accessories and tasks and plans and lists and deadlines and, of course, smiling Samuel. All of those things at once, suddenly and without any warning, turned her headache and her life into an explosion.

  There will be five people who will always remember the woman who walked out of aisle three of Dunnigan’s Discount Den one warm spring night, stalked up to the baffled store manager, threw six rolls of paper towels, one after the other, into his face and said, “I’m leaving. Are you happy now?” and swept out of the store without buying one single item.

  6

  THE SIXTH QUESTION:

  Are you running with scissors in there?

  MARTY HAS SHOWN MAGNIFICENT STRENGTH for almost two weeks and when she can no longer stand it, she purposefully parks her car down the street from Emma’s, hauls out a can of Diet Pepsi, watches for her daughter to roll in from work, waits for her to drop her briefcase and turn on the dining room light, then catches her off guard with a knock on the front door as she pushes her foot against its metal edge and calls, “Emma Lauryn Gilford! Are you running with scissors in there?”

  This is not what Emma Lauryn Gilford expected at her front door. An Avon lady perhaps, the paperboy or a late package. But not her mother who is admittedly prone to stopping by, like the rest of the Gilford clan, unannounced, but who, Emma assumed, would keep avoiding her youngest daughter as long as her youngest daughter kept avoiding her.

  “Mother, have you been working out?” Emma manages to say with a straight face. “Not everyone can hold a door open like that.”

  Marty does not skip a beat. She steps into Emma’s green-tiled foyer, pushes the door closed, sets down her Pepsi can on the lovely antique plant stand, drops her purse on the floor and moves towards one of the comfy cloth-covered dining room chairs.