The Shortest Distance Between Two Women

by Kris Radish

  “Geez,” Emma sighs. “Just when I thought you were my friend.”

  “I am your friend, Emma.”

  Later Emma will think this was her big chance to find out the truth about the photograph and whether or not Susie Dell took it, but Susie Dell would not let up.

  “Emma, Emma, Emma,” Susie says, then states that she isn’t going to leave until they talk for a very long time about Emma. “And no wine until you answer my question.” Ms. Dell picks up the bottle, pours some for herself and sets the bottle down so that Emma cannot reach it.

  “I really can’t have any until I answer your tough questions?” Emma asks as if she’s just found out that Susie is the redhead her brother-in-law has run off with.

  Susie makes loud smacking noises with her lips as she takes another swallow of the wine.

  “You shit,” Emma says. “I feel like the one who is about to run naked through the backyard.”

  “It’s about time, sister.” Susie Dell says the word sister as if she’s said it a million times before.

  The truth is, Emma shares, that running naked through her garden or any garden has never really appealed to her.

  The truth is that she’s more of a one-on-one kind of gal and not the whoop-it-up-at-a-party kind of woman.

  The truth is she has felt for a long time as if one part of her head was going to explode with her familial responsibilities, even as the other parts of her head rejoiced with gratitude because she was at least part of a family.

  The truth is that she has no idea what to do with the phone messages from Samuel she keeps listening to but is too cowardly to erase.

  The truth is that sometimes she gets lonely and that she finds immense, and probably insane, sanctuary in her gardens.

  The truth is that she sometimes sits in the parking lot at work for a very long time before she goes in because being inside the building makes her feel trapped.

  The truth is that she is absolutely dying to talk to Erika, to understand why she would give up her big-city life to come back to this hellhole called Higgins.

  The truth is her biological time clock has ticked her off.

  The truth is also that she is terrified about her mother, because she realizes she doesn’t really know about Marty, and what’s in her heart. She also so needs to have a very long conversation with her—and she’s terrified to do that in case she might find out things she doesn’t want to know.

  Emma finishes. Then she holds out her glass, which Susie refills as she leans over to give Emma a soft kiss on the cheek.

  “There now, see?” Susie says. “That wasn’t so awful, was it?”

  “I’m sorry I snuck some family things in there but I just couldn’t help it. And it’s not like I don’t think about these things or worry about them but lately, well, longer than lately, my family has sucked a hole right through the center of me.”

  “I know. I can see right through you.”

  “Very funny.”

  Susie Dell then tells her things that a real sister should be telling her and this is when Emma totally forgets about the missing photograph yet again.

  Susie tells her that there are few women alive who do not feel as if they have been swallowed whole by their family obligations. And fewer women who do not wish they had made different choices and not married this man, or waited for this one thing, or had one more child or given up a career or not had a career or missed out on an opportunity because someone they are related to didn’t think that was the right direction. Fewer women than that who can stand up and pound their own chests and roar from the center of their souls and just say Hey listen, you can say what you want and what you feel but when the curtain drops I am going to do what I want and feel. And hardly any women at all who are not bound by the love of family, entangled in the memory of some tragedy, by the frightening notion that maybe they are doing the same things to their children, the people they love, that someone did to them.

  “Well …” Emma stammers because she realizes Susie Dell has just told her the truth of female life.

  Susie takes a breath then and stands up quickly before Emma can even ask her about the missing photograph, or why she is so wise, and she announces that she just remembered she has to meet someone.

  And then she drives away, leaving Emma sitting on her porch swing with her mouth hanging open.

  And alone yet again.

  Emma scoots to the edge of the porch swing and feels as if she is dangling out over a cliff. A cliff with a view that she bypassed all those years ago when she went seemingly overnight from being the little sister to the only one who was left in the house with a set of life instructions that were written in a language she did not understand.

  What she sees when she looks down is an abyss of lost chances and loves, people constantly calling for help, the backside of love disappearing into the darkness, the little girl she once was growing overnight into a young woman and switching her school backpack for a load of life that no one should ever have tried to carry at such a tender age.

  But that’s life, she tells herself. People everywhere have “stuff.” Life abounds with lost chances.

  And while she clutches her empty wineglass Emma cannot even bring herself to get up and walk through her own gardens.

  All of this while Susie Dell drives off into the long past sunset thanking God she got the hell out of Emma’s backyard before Emma could ask her about the photograph she must by now know is missing and hurrying like hell to meet Erika, Debra and Joy.

  The other three Gilford sisters.

  19

  THE NINETEENTH QUESTION:

  Would you like to drag my bones through the river?

  WHEN ERIKA WAKES UP THREE mornings after the garden party, she picks up Emma’s ringing phone and hears her mother ask, “Would you like to drag my bones through the river?”

  Erika is hungover for the second day in a row, exhausted, emotionally drained and on the verge of a Gilford-and Higgins-induced hysteria. So when she hears her mother’s voice, assimilates the question, and begins laughing, it is almost impossible for Marty to get her to stop.

  “Er-ika?” Marty wonders.

  “Mother …”

  “What in the holy hell is going on?”

  “I’m just wondering how I could have missed so much drama simply by living a few states away. I feel like I’ve missed dozens of episodes of a very cool and somewhat controversial television show. Now I’m being asked to have a walk-on part and act as if I know what has been happening since the beginning of time.”

  “It’s not our fault you stay away so much,” Marty throws back at her.

  “To be honest, Mom, the real reason I don’t come home more than once a year is just because of time, and because I have a family of my own. And also, just so you know, I really do miss coming home,” she tells her mother. “It’s not what you or anyone else might think.”

  “Are you really looking for work here?”

  “Who told you?”

  Now it’s Marty’s turn to laugh, which she does in a way that makes Erika smile and remember how much she has missed hearing her do just that.

  “Sweetheart, I know all. That’s my job. I know that you’ve seen your evil brother-in-law and spent time with Debra and that you are hoping to have dinner with Emma tonight. And I know that for some reason she is really mad at you, and that she keeps avoiding me when I ask about the reunion assignments.”

  “Is the homing device thing in your uterus what helps you know all of this?” Erika asks, knowing that at least one part of that device is broken because Marty does not know everything.

  “No,” Marty answers, in all seriousness. “That’s just for finding things that men cannot locate like the pickles on the third shelf of the fridge. I’m a mother. That’s what mothers do. We keep track of things, of our kids even if they are grown, and we like to stick our nose in every possible corner. So do you know anything about all the reunion assignments? Because Emma has not told me a thing and
your other two sisters are worthless right now.”

  “No,” Erika replies with her fingers crossed. “But what’s with the bones-dragging-in-the-river thing?”

  “I thought Emma would still be at home. She and I need to talk.”

  “Like that doesn’t happen enough?”

  Erika wonders what it might look like to see Emma dragging their mother’s bones through a verbal river. What in the world could those two possibly have to say to each other that they have not said in the past forty-plus years?

  “Mom, can you have lunch with me?” she decides to ask.

  “Heavens no,” Marty answers without hesitation. “Robert and I have duties at the senior center. Then we are going on a beach hike and we’re having friends over to eat the leftovers from the party.”

  Erika is not just stunned but her feelings have also been hurt. Emma gets to drag bones through the river and she’s home on a special visit and her mother is too busy to have lunch with her? Maybe she’s an idiot to think about coming back to Higgins to live. Maybe she should stay in Chicago and let her son grow up without cousins and underwear-streaking and the mad rush of Sunday brunch and Easter and Christmas and every other frigging holiday that binds all the Gilfords together.

  “Mom, really, you can’t see me today?”

  “Oh, snap out of it, Erika,” Marty says bluntly. “You are going to stay for the reunion, I’m busy, and your sister is the one in first place here. Emma and I need to talk. It’s a mother-daughter thing that can’t wait any longer. So go suck up to your bastardly brother-in-law, your drunken sisters, and let me get off the phone so I can call Emma.”

  Erika almost drops the phone. She is absolutely unable to speak.

  “Oh, by the way, you know I love you, and give that rat-fink Rick a kick in the balls for me, and good luck at the job interview.”

  And Marty hangs up on her.

  Erika plants herself at the kitchen table and wonders if her sister has enough coffee in the house to get her through the next few days. How did Marty know about the job interview? And Rick?

  Her meeting with her brother-in-law, who has been excommunicated from the family, has lodged itself in the front of her brain like toothpicks under her fingernails. What to do next? Rick was unfortunately honest and open and ready, willing, and able to take whatever it was his family, half the free world, and any aliens who might be watching were ready to give him.

  Erika so wanted to be pissed at her brother-in-law but Rick owned up immediately to everything. He admitted his exit from his dysfunctional marriage and from his raspy-throated wine-, vodka-, and beer-soaked vision of his wife was not pretty. No, he is not living with the redhead, but yes, he has been seeing the redhead, and he thinks he is in love with her. He’s smart enough to realize that he has to make it right with his children and with Joy, Marty and everyone else before he can move in a positive direction, but he said that was totally impossible until he’d left. And Rick said all this because Erika was the first Gilford to make eye contact with him since he’d left Joy.

  Erika had ended up helping Rick compose email letters to his children and to Joy, Emma, Debra and Marty. Letters apologizing, letters explaining the importance of being happy, letters that did not ask for forgiveness, but simple understanding.

  Sweet Jesus, Erika whispered out loud, at the kitchen table, thinking about all that has happened in the short time since she arrived back in Higgins. It’s like living in the middle of a flipping five-star tornado.

  Which is exactly what she was dying to tell Emma during dinner—if Emma would only respond to her phone calls or talk to her about actually eating the dinner with her.

  Emma, who has just now received her It’s Rick Don’t Hate Me Even Though I Am a Total Shit email at the very same moment her mother has called to finally ask the correct daughter if she wants to drag her bones through the river.

  Put me on a retainer, Emma is dying to tell her mother, still loaded with self-pity. Set up a little office for me in your garage, I don’t need much. And I promise I won’t listen at the door when you and Robert are playing with the tiger undies. Sure, you can count on me. Can’t you always count on me? I’ll finish up all the reunion planning, scold Rick for you, develop a flowchart so that you will know where all your offspring and their offspring are at all times. When we see Al coming down the street I will run interference so you can slip out the back door and not have to answer any questions about things like your love life, dancing on the beach, or whatever in the hell you might be doing or have done. Don’t worry. I’ll be a full-service attendant who will have absolutely no life at all beyond the precious hours I give to you and your brood of whacked-out family members, who, of course, will also have access to my services. I can pick them up, drop them off, and wash their dogs. I do, however, draw the line at sleeping with anyone’s husband, boyfriend or betrothed, and I would like one hour off a week to wash my clothes and rotate my sprinklers.

  This is what Emma would like to say following her fall into the abyss of loneliness and pity but instead Emma just sighs like she used to when she was a little girl.

  And in right-back-at-you mode, instead of getting upset, the sighing makes Marty laugh, which of course totally makes Emma melt because Marty’s laugh is and always will be like free beer during the hottest Fourth of July parade in the history of the world.

  “I haven’t heard that sigh for quite a while,” Marty tells Emma. “When you were little that sigh used to drive me to drink my emergency stash of holiday wine when your back was turned.”

  “It doesn’t work now, though,” Emma retorts with a hint of pouting in her voice.

  “Honey, I couldn’t be mad at you for more than five seconds if I tried.”

  “Why is that, Mother?”

  “Let’s talk and I’ll tell you why. Remember, you asked for this.”

  Maybe I really was switched at birth, Emma imagines, closing her eyes. Maybe she wants to tell me that she’s going to adopt Susie Dell because Susie would be a better daughter or she wants to plan a family adventure that would culminate in the beheading of her oldest son-in-law.

  Imagining everything, Emma cannot now think of one thing that her mother could give her, say to her, show her that would erase the hollow and aching feeling that has centered itself on the top of her breastbone. It is as if she has lost her way in the family forest at sunset thinking that she still has hours to go before it gets dark.

  Emma surrenders because suddenly she does not have the energy to do anything but that. She says yes. Come and get me now. Please. Hurry.

  Marty says she will pick her up after work tomorrow, provide dinner, and take her someplace and of course they can talk, just as Emma has asked.

  “Someplace?”

  “You’ll see,” Marty answers and then hangs up.

  She hangs up, which Emma will discuss later at dinner with Erika when Erika tells her that Marty has also hung up on her as if she were running out of time and couldn’t be bothered to wait politely for the person on the other end to respond.

  Sweet Jesus. The Gilfords have gone totally mad, Emma will then say out loud.

  But first the two sisters must actually get to dinner. They end up at a restaurant on a side street in Charleston that has a rooftop view of the water, eating seafood that Erika tells her is so absolutely perfect Emma will want to sob into her rice.

  But Emma isn’t eating. She can barely look Erika in the eye. She is angry about losing this sister, her unabashedly favorite sister, who has totally let her down.

  Finally, while Erika sits quietly Emma just blurts it out.

  “I am so angry and hurt and I am not even certain if I can sit here and eat with you,” Emma confesses. “My life is in shambles and you of all people, you are the one I always counted on, and you have totally dumped on me.”

  “Can you just listen to me for a minute?” Erika asks. “I have things to tell you.”

  Erika reaches across the table and tries to touch Emma�
��s hand but Emma pulls it away.

  “I have a tremendous amount of guilt because I left,” Erika tells her. “I know you were saddled with everything and yes, I know I sent you money and came to the important events but now, I’m just—Emma, I have to know, beyond how you feel now, if I could have done more.”

  Emma cannot remember ever having seen her sister cry. Perhaps at the funeral all those years ago but she really cannot remember. Erika cries quietly and Emma sits frozen and wonders what her sister could possibly say next.

  “It’s Tyler. My son,” Erika explains and Emma recalls that her sister has never once called him her stepson. He’s always been her son. “He’s now the exact same age as you were when Dad died, and he is in such a tender stage, and I think all of the time about what it must have been like for you because you were the one who was always there and who stayed. All I can do is look at Tyler and think about how fast you had to grow up and how we could have all been better and how I hope I never let you down too much.”

  Emma so wants to move across the table and hold her sister in her arms like a baby, to move her fingers through her hair, and to tell her that everything was and is okay but she can’t. She wants to tell Erika that Marty was the one who did everything, that Marty was the one who held all the pieces together and became mother, father, and the fifth sister after her husband’s death. Marty was the one who walked Emma through her grief, not Erika.

  Not Erika. This sister who she surely knows in part, and more than surely loves, but who has formed a life outside of hers. And although she can imagine what she likes, who she loves, the patterns of her life, what kind of mother and wife she must be, this attempt at a healing moment is a huge opening into Erika’s soul.

  Erika who is obviously tormented by something she must know, something she thinks she may or may not have done.