The Shortest Distance Between Two Women

by Kris Radish

  This sister who at fifty-four wants to reach back and touch the roots of her life, reconcile her memory to reality, and show this first part of her life to her son and husband as a gift and as a necessity.

  The sister who once drove fourteen hours so that she could be there on the day of Emma’s high school graduation. Who has not once forgotten her birthday, or failed to call on a holiday, and who has invited her to spend time in Chicago at least five thousand times even though Emma never could find enough time to go.

  This grown-up who is now crying so sweetly, who wipes her tears with the back of her hand just like a child, and who Emma suspects is crying for a lot more than just this moment.

  But Emma cannot ease her sister’s pain until she takes that huge step of easing her own.

  Emma says what she has to say. She tells Erika that she is devastated because of what she feels is a betrayal, not just on her part, but on her other sisters’ part, too. She confesses that she’s totally screwed up the reunion planning, she admits that she’s in free fall about Samuel and about Debra’s reaction to his phone calls, and then of course there are everyone else’s problems that always eclipse her own problems.

  And now—now, this also.

  “What about me, Erika?” she asks. “I feel as if my whole life has fallen apart. You were the one who always promised to help me. And here I am hanging out to dry all by myself while everything collapses. I’ve made a mess of everything.”

  “I think it’s time I told you the truth then.” Erika is smiling.

  “What are you talking about? What truth?”

  “I wanted to surprise you—Well, we wanted to surprise you. But this seems like the best time to tell you.”

  “What in heaven’s name are you talking about, Erika?”

  “The reunion. We’ve taken care of everything.”

  “What do you mean by we?”

  “Joy, Debra and, well, Susie has been helping us, too. I came a few days early and stayed with Debra. We took care of everything.”

  “Susie? Susie Dell?” Emma stammers.

  “I knew you were having a hard time. And you always do so much for all of us, especially Mom. So I pulled everyone together, even Debra, and we’ve reserved the park, ordered all the food and made all the announcements. Right this moment Joy is finishing up the invitations. So you are totally off the hook.”

  Emma is teetering between being even more angry and hurt and being immeasurably relieved, thankful, and rescued. “Are you serious?”

  Yes, Erika tells her, even in the midst of myriad personal and family catastrophes, her sisters have managed to pull out the stops and finally help her.

  “That’s what sisters do, you know that,” Erika adds, hopeful that she can close the gap between her and Emma that has lately turned into the Grand Canyon. “Everything you said is true. We always count on you and you should know that Joy and Debra never once complained—well, maybe Debra just a little—about helping you.”

  “Does Mom know?”

  “No, but I’ve given her updates. I told her that you asked me to keep her informed.”

  Emma knows she is now supposed to be gracious and to tell Erika the truth and the truth would be that Erika has for the most part been a wonderful sister and that Emma knew she could always count on her and that she loved her beyond words.

  But that is a step Emma cannot yet take. A part of her wants to climb over the table and sit on Erika’s lap. Another part of her wants to get in her car and drive as far away as she can without looking back even once.

  So what she does astounds her.

  She gets up, tells Erika that she needs to think, and turns to walk away. But before she does, she pulls out a Kleenex from her purse, sets it in her sister’s hand and lets her fingers rest there for just a moment, so she can feel the warmth of Erika’s skin.

  And as Emma walks away, Erika wishes she would have told her the last secret. Maybe that would have changed everything.

  Maybe. Or maybe not.

  20

  THE TWENTIETH QUESTION:

  Auntie Em, do you know anything about tiaras

  and beauty pageant stuff?

  THE PHONE RINGS AT THE EXACT same moment Emma hears Marty’s car pull in front of her house, the not-so-sweet sound of her beeping horn. She hears her mother yelling “Yoo-hoo” just as Emma says hello to the almost breathless Stephie and hears her lovely and extraordinarily brilliant niece ask if Auntie Em “knows anything about tiaras and beauty pageant stuff.”

  Emma hesitates as if she is about to lose her balance on a tightrope that is strung between two skyscrapers. It’s as if the reunion-planning season has attracted every problem and unanswered question in the universe. Why now?

  If she drops the phone and runs outside, Emma knows she will be leaping into whatever in the holy hell Marty has planned for the evening. This thought alone does not frighten her but she cannot imagine what her mother has to say, what she has planned, where she might be taking her.

  Her other choice is to answer Stephie’s question. It is a question that makes absolutely no sense to her even as she imagines why Stephie might be asking her about sequins and little crowns and tap dancing.

  Either way, Emma feels that the best thing to do would be to just stay there, with one foot inside of her living room and the other on her front step, suspended between the honking horn and Stephie’s expectant breathing.

  If only.

  “Are you there, Auntie Em?”

  “I’m here,” Emma answers, giving in first to the Stephie side of the tightrope.

  “Well, do you?”

  “Absolutely not, my sweet girl, but why in the world are you asking me this question?”

  “Don’t say anything until I tell you the whole story,” Stephie pleads.

  “My lips are sealed,” Emma promises, holding one finger up to Marty, who appears to be singing an opera in her car.

  “You are the first person I am telling, and after I tell you, just listen. No freaking out,” Stephie demands.

  “No freaking way I will freak out,” Emma lies.

  “I signed up to be in the Miss Higgins beauty pageant.”

  Emma totally freaks out.

  In a split second she can envision her niece parading down the runway at the community center in an evening gown that is made out of recyclable magazines. Stephie is also sporting new blue hair, polished combat boots, and she is carrying a stuffed gorilla to show support for every endangered species around the world.

  This image is temporarily erased as Stephie first explains that her mother has suddenly apologized about being jealous of her relationship with her aunt, and finally—well, almost—forgiven her for the party she had while they were at the beach. And then while Emma’s mind does a somersault, trying to deal with that knowledge, Stephie quickly adds that she has been writing poetry in her spare time and focusing on the importance of inner beauty.

  Also, Stephie admits, she has always admired the way Emma lives—with great compassion for the people she is and is not related to, and how her recent revelations about her passion for plants have made Stephie think about doing something remarkable herself.

  Something to shake up the masses.

  Something to address her notions of the word beauty.

  Something that will help her get lost in a summer project in between the forced family therapy sessions and all the frenzied reunion madness.

  Something to make people think.

  Something that will set her mark so she can do something higher and stronger and wiser next time.

  And yes, something to make her mother proud.

  Holy cow, Emma whispers to herself, glad she’ll once again get unrestricted visits with Stephie but not willing to take responsibility for something as bizarre as her niece entering a beauty pageant.

  “Oh, Auntie Em, you are so cool, don’t you know?”

  “Apparently not.”

  “Will you help me?”

  The tightr
ope has unexpectedly snapped and Emma is hurtling back down to earth, about to slam into the sharp rocks below. If she says no, Stephie will be devastated and she has already been that times one hundred this month alone. If she says yes, she will not only be getting in over her head but she will also have to face the gritty judgments of the rest of her family.

  Emma so wishes this request was coming at a time that was nowhere near the family reunion. At a time when she was not an inch away from some kind of nervous breakdown. At a time when she was not doing everything in her power to avoid contact with her three unruly and strong-willed sisters.

  Stephie is saying that she really expects the pageant to be a blast, and that she doesn’t give a damn about what other people say or think, or even if she wins. And then Marty starts beeping the horn again because she is apparently done singing her aria and is tired of waiting.

  “Yes, Stephanie, madwoman of the South, I will help you,” Emma hears herself say as she caves in once again to the niece she apparently cannot say no to.

  And when she hops into the car five minutes later and tells Marty that Stephie has just called to inform her that she is now candidate number seven for the title of Miss Higgins, Marty throws back her head, laughs like a wild African dog and cries, “Fabulous news!” as her front tire rams the curb and they almost hit a bush that Emma could swear ducked sideways so it would not be crushed.

  Marty winds them through the city and as they head south Emma asks her if she has received a note from Rick begging for forgiveness. She is not surprised to learn that not only has Marty read the note but she has also had a meeting with Rick and read him the Gilford family riot act, lectured about familial responsibilities, and of course, without hesitation, forgiven him.

  “Just like that?” Emma wants to know.

  “Just like that.”

  “You are a bigger and better woman than I am,” Emma admits.

  “I am not, my sweet thing, which is something we are going to talk about as soon as I can remember where this damn place is. I have not been there in so long I hope to God it is still there.”

  They pass a glorious series of farms and country homes and when Emma asks if there is a secret restaurant out in the middle of nowhere, Marty points wordlessly to the picnic basket in the backseat. They are off to eat cheese and bread in some mysterious place and as they go first down one long alphabet highway road, Hwy C, and then another, Hwy P, backtrack twelve miles, and then turn onto an unmarked dirt road, Emma is not only spellbound but also hopelessly intrigued.

  And now that she thinks about it, she can’t remember when she has actually been alone with her mother, shared a meal that was not some kind of group event, opened up her heart in a way that wasn’t defensive or accusatory, spent moments simply focusing on a one-on-one conversation and not a one-on-what-is-usually-at-least-ten.

  As Marty pulls into a tiny slot off a country road that is barely big enough for a car, Emma decides to trim her sails and let down her defenses for just a while. Her emotional barometer is off the charts, she knows for sure.

  Marty is quiet as she hands Emma the picnic basket and grabs a small cooler out of the trunk and Emma realizes that her mother is thinking about something beyond what she might want to share with her, something private, something that has made her dip her shoulders and pull her head closer to her chest, as if she is a flower shading itself from a brilliant summer sun.

  A memory.

  Marty has a memory surely of this place, otherwise they would not be here. And it is a memory she must be trying to get her head and mostly her heart around, otherwise she would be offering up a running commentary of everything from the first turnoff to the way she has the car parked. Emma decides to be quiet, to let her mother set the pace, and to follow behind her in silence as they walk single file down the road until it narrows and then disappears into a thin line that almost looks like a chalk mark set against the lush green bushes and scrubby plants that suddenly appear like a watermark on a sand beach.

  Emma immediately senses the change in soil, the way the earth slants south, and how the most important parts of every plant she sees—the faces, as she likes to call them—are all looking in one direction.

  Still she does not say a word as she follows her mother until the trail takes a huge dip. Emma can smell the water before she sees it.

  When they curve around rocks, white as snow with ribbons of speckled black and green running through them, Emma sees the lake—a soup bowl of blue so intense it makes her cry out because it is so beautiful, and then two more steps and she surely sees what her mother brought her here to see.

  Emma drops the basket. She is standing in a sea of perennial wildflowers. Dozens of blues and golds and yellows and reds so vibrant that Emma wants to run through every section—if only she could move. It is as if someone had planted a book of flowers, every wildflower that could grow in South Carolina, every color of the rainbow, every size and shape. And suddenly, along with the unmistakable feeling that she has found heaven, Emma feels that she has been here before.

  When Marty finally stops, because she realizes Emma has stopped, the two women lock eyes for a moment. Then Marty drops the cooler and rushes back to Emma who is so moved by what she sees that she is crying.

  “Sweetheart, what is it?”

  “It is so absolutely beautiful that I think my heart has stopped.”

  “Sit,” Marty orders.

  “I cannot move, Mother,” Emma whimpers.

  There is a pause when Emma takes her eyes off of her mother because she cannot get enough. She wants to find some kind of path through this untended and overgrown but astonishingly brilliant miracle of a garden. She wants to touch every petal until she drops over in a coma and turns herself into a bright pink honeysuckle.

  “Tell me, tell me right now, Mother. Someone planted these. Who? Tell me.”

  Emma has reached out to put her hands on her mother’s shoulders and is determined not to move, to keep her mother right there, on this glorious spot, until her mother answers her questions.

  Marty has underestimated the effect this trip would have on her daughter. Emma is holding her in place. She sees a wall of anguish, of wanting, of needing, cross her youngest daughter’s face and she wonders if she has not made a mistake in waiting so long, in holding back, in perhaps misjudging what this daughter needs.

  “It was your father.” Marty begins slowly as if those four words spoken quickly might make her daughter topple over. “Your dad used to bring me here. A friend of his owned it. It became our special place.”

  Emma’s hands slip just a bit and then she grabs on to her mother again because she knows if she lets go that she will fall to the ground.

  “Emma, I didn’t think you would be so moved by this lake and these gardens,” Marty confesses. “I brought you here to talk about other things. I had no idea. I am so sorry.”

  Emma follows Marty silently to the far side of the small lake where there is an old wooden bench propped up on two rocks. They sit, face the lake, hold hands, and they do what Emma so has longed to do.

  They talk.

  “When your father and I started to date, we would come here now and then even though the land was not, and never has been, open to the public,” Marty shares quietly.

  “How could I not know about this?” Emma is still totally astounded by her father’s role in the creation of this slice of paradise.

  “Dear, there are hundreds of things you don’t know about your father and about me.”

  And here, right here, Marty says, patting the bench, is where your father talked about the importance of family, and where I promised him that no matter what happened we would always have the Gilford reunion and that I would always be in charge of it.

  Emma is wise enough to know that her mother and her father had lives before they met, lives long before her, experiences and losses and loves and great regrets that need not be mentioned to anyone else. This place seems so sacred, so absolutely sad and
at the same time glorious, that Emma feels even more emotionally suspended.

  “Have you ever brought anyone else here?” Emma wants to know, turning to look into her mother’s tear-filled eyes.

  “Not a soul.”

  Marty moves her hand to brush it against the side of Emma’s face and sees that her daughter is lost in a world of hurt and misunderstanding.

  “Why me? Why now? Mother, I am so confused. One part of me is so sad I am wondering if I will be able to walk to the car, and the other part of me feels as if a huge box has been opened and that everything inside of it is wonderful and mine, just mine.”

  Oh, Emma, Emma, Emma.

  Marty can feel her own heart leaping as if it is dancing over hot coals. How does a mother explain this? She has thought about this trip for a very long time but rehearsing what to say, what not to say, when to say it, has eluded her for just as long—even as she has imagined this very moment for as long as Emma has been alive.

  She stretches out her legs and recatches Emma’s hand and, as tears roll down her face, she begins to talk.

  Now, Marty shares, because you need it so much and because you need to hear what I have to say about what was my own garden. Not a garden like this but a world like this where everything is so remarkable that every day when you wake up you have to rush to the mirror to make certain that you are alive and have not fallen into a fairy tale.

  A world where there is a nice house, a mother and father who are beyond doting, two older brothers, and the promise of everything a young girl in the 1940s could want.

  Marty asks Emma if she remembers what happened to her grandmother, Marty’s mother. Yes, Emma says, she got sick and died very young.

  It was cervical cancer, Marty tells Emma. A horrid, painful and in those days almost always fatal disease that usually went un-diagnosed until it was too late. It was an absolutely horrific way to die.

  Emma looks at her as if she has never seen her before. She has never heard this part of the story, of her mother’s life, not one word of it.

  “My brothers were gone, in fact both of them had recently married and my oldest brother and his wife were expecting their first child,” Marty continues without looking at Emma. “I was a teenager. I had been spoiled and pampered and treated like a princess. And suddenly I was the one who was taking care of my dying mother.”