The Shortest Distance Between Two Women

by Kris Radish

Torture was and is torture. Sisters and more sisters holding their siblings under water, by the ankles, and upside down from the third story or inside of a tight blanket. Sisters making their siblings eat diced-up worms and concoctions of, well, shit that they stole from their mother’s kitchen. Those same seemingly sweet sisters tie younger sisters to trees and shoot arrows and rocks and their father’s BB gun at them and occasionally don’t. Sisters take kitchen knives and carve on the bottoms of the feet of their poor innocent little sisters and sometimes behind knees and on the palms of their hands to see how long it takes them to bleed and then to cry. Sisters force their sisters to do all the things they do not want to do—like feed the dog, take out the garbage, clean up the yard, and every and anything else because they were older, stronger, and knew they could get away with it.

  It’s a very old game, Joy admits, and then quickly adds that her days of playing torture were numbered by the time Emma came along because, as Debra so tactfully puts it, she is so much older.

  “So,” Emma has to know. “What did you three jerks do to me?

  “Everything,” Debra fesses up.

  “Yep,” Erika agrees cheerfully.

  “Name a few everythings,” Emma pleads.

  “This could ruin the rest of your life,” Debra warns.

  “Please,” Emma asks again.

  I used to shoot the BB gun at you when Mom was hanging up wash and you were playing in the sandbox, Erika tells her.

  When I combed your hair, which I hated to do, I would tangle it all up and pull at it so that you would cry, Debra shares. You lost a lot of hair and at one point looked kind of bald.

  Oh, I also told you the most horrid stories about ghosts and monsters just before bedtime so that you would actually run down the hall into Mom and Dad’s room screaming, Erika confesses.

  Was it you or me who locked her in the back closet all the time? Debra asks Erika.

  You, Erika lies.

  And this is where Emma begins to wonder if they are all lying.

  Oh, remember that time we all tied her up, put her in the garage, gagged her, and then turned off the lights and ran into the house so she would learn not be afraid of the dark? Joy asks.

  “Well, thank God I don’t remember that,” Emma tells them. “It’s a wonder you didn’t kill me, for crying out loud.”

  “Well, the sad thing, Emma, is that you never got to play torture because we all left and then it was just you and Mom and Dad for a little while there at the end,” Debra admits.

  At the end.

  When everything changed.

  When Dad was dying.

  This is where Emma really wants help and where the little bit of wine they are managing to drink, in between all the stories, helps them finally remember what they have all been trying to forget since the moment their father died.

  “We’ve never really talked about Dad. It would mean a lot to me to hear what you know, what you remember, what you can tell me,” Emma says when Debra, Erika and Joy grow silent.

  It is closing in on midnight. The normally delicious time of night when Emma’s flowers and plants lean into each other and take a much-deserved break.

  In the annual, perennial and totally indigenous sections of Emma Gilford’s gardens, Emma silently turns her head first from one side to the next and then back again, turning to her gardens for comfort.

  And they do comfort her.

  Just as Emma’s three sisters and the adopted Susie Dell begin to tell her what she so needs to hear and comfort her as well.

  Just as Emma temporarily shelves her role in recruiting Debra and Erika for Joy’s scheduled intervention.

  Just as Emma’s sides ache from laughing.

  Just as Susie Dell feels as if she has just suffered whiplash.

  Just as Emma wishes every single moment could go slower or that she had videotaped this raucous pre-reunion Gilford sisters’ reconciliation bash.

  Just as the non-fighting miracle Emma had hoped for has been happening.

  Just as Emma has realized her sisters love her all of the time—not just when she helps with their chores.

  And then it was time for what Emma really needed, really wanted, really had to know about their father.

  It had not been an easy year because they all knew their father was going to die and they all knew that Marty was going to act like he was not going to die. Marty was so strong and among the three of them—the older sisters, the ones who still occasionally thought of Emma as “the baby”—they can only remember a few times when they saw Marty cry, saw her break down. Only Debra can remember listening to her mother’s sobs seeping under the bedroom door where they know Marty had stuffed towels and turned up the music so they could not hear her.

  Their father was a gentle, kind man who seemed to always be on top of everything from yard work to his own job to his duties as a father and husband—until the illness leveled him. And then he could no longer leave the house, work, rise out of his bed, or whistle the hundreds of songs he must have known.

  There were small signs before that. A missed step. Calling in sick for the first time in his entire life. Phone calls from doctors. Visits to so many hospitals it seemed as if their parents were never home. Jars of medicine appearing on the counter. Their father was dying.

  This is the part of the Sweetest Moment of Possible Salvation, when Erika, Debra and Joy clasp hands and then reach for Emma’s fingers. This is when they tell her how hard it got. How sick he really was and how Marty stretched herself so thin she almost disappeared.

  This is when Louis, their long-tempered, smart, gentle father, began taking his daughters into his study one by one to talk, and to tell them to be brave, and to let them know that he wanted so much to be there to finish what he had started.

  And you too, Emma. He talked to you about being brave, too.

  Emma cannot remember.

  She begs them to tell her what he said.

  It was all about love. It was all about family. It was all about the Gilfords going on and remembering the good stuff and forgiving.

  It was so much about forgiving.

  Emma wants to know why so much of it is a blank beyond the gate in her mind that has kept out so many memories. Beyond the gate and beyond the stress and beyond what she does remember, which often seems like nothing more than a quick look through something that appears like dense fog.

  “I think we tried to protect you,” Erika says, holding her hand tighter. “We all knew what was coming. We knew that Mom would grieve and that we all had to leave home and that in the end you would be the one to hold everything together and really, I guess we also felt terribly guilty. We still feel guilty because we helped you go from being a little girl to an adult too fast.”

  “Yes,” Debra and Joy agree. “Yes, we do.”

  Oh.

  Oh shit.

  Emma begins to cry from a place that she never knew existed. It is a river that has been rumbling in an enclosed space for years and years. The crying starts softly and then builds as the river explodes in gratitude and relief and as Emma falls over and holds her head in her hands and sobs for reasons that she cannot even begin to list, accept, understand or acknowledge. She only knows that crying feels like sweet rain and the last day of a long fever and the physical relief that comes when someone tells you something you knew but have waited to hear spoken out loud for such a very long time.

  Emma cries as Debra opens more wine and Erika notices that two bird-feeders are empty and gets up to fill them. She cries as Joy and Erika exchange very lovely stories about how their father led them into the backyard together and asked them to be strong, to help, to take the very best care of both Emma and Marty. And when Debra hears this, she laughs until she cries, too—because that is exactly what their father also told her.

  Emma weeps as Erika says once again how glad she is that she is staying with Emma and as they all realize that they have forgotten to talk about Robert, and their mother having sex, the wild underw
ear, if they should make Susie Dell change her last name, and whether or not everything really is ready for the blasted reunion. And as Emma suddenly remembers that she must send Joy home first—somehow—so that she can talk to Erika, Debra and Susie Dell alone.

  Susie Dell, who tells them all how lucky they are to be and have sisters even as all four of them grab Susie Dell and claim her as their fifth sister.

  Joy, then, for the first time in years, totally cooperates by leaving first. Emma can barely look her in the eye. But when Joy does leave and Emma tells Susie Dell, Erika and Debra about the intervention, they so quickly agree to help that her heart is flooded with a garden of gladness—not just because she is relieved, but because she always knew they would never say no.

  And when Debra and Susie Dell finally head home, Emma decides she is finished crying. She decides she has had enough, and heard enough, and knows enough. So she sits in her kitchen and watches as Erika puts out the fire, throws away the napkins and plates, and then turns without instructions to throw a wide kiss to all the flowers and this makes Emma start crying all over again.

  Finally when Erika crawls into bed with her and wraps herself around Emma as if she is made of plastic wrap—arms over arms, shoulders bumping shoulders, legs on legs, and whispers, “We slept like this for weeks after Daddy died,” Emma starts crying all over again until she falls into a kind of deep slumber that feels as if it is part of a glorious resurrection.

  And for some strange reason when she gets up in the morning to start the coffee there is the missing photograph of Samuel propped up on the kitchen table as if it has walked there from its unseen hiding place.

  Emma has no idea how it got there but she does know that not everything has been resolved by her backyard sisters garden party.

  What she does know is that she is loved. And this knowledge has filled her with a sense of lightness and happiness that almost—just almost—makes her listen once again to the four messages on her answering machine.

  24

  THE TWENTY-FOURTH QUESTION:

  Who in the hell was supposed to order the meat?

  EMMA HAS MADE WHAT COULD BE the fatal mistake of showing up at her mother’s house a few minutes early, because Emma is almost always a few minutes early, when she pauses with one leg on the first front porch step and the other in midair, as she hears her mother yelling, which is kind of several decibels above what normal people would consider yelling, “Who in the hell was supposed to order the meat?”

  Ducking instinctively so she will not be seen, Emma hovers on the steps as if she is in buns class down at the gym, closes her eyes, and asks herself, Was I supposed to order the meat?

  Nothing close to meat, or even tofu, rises in her mind. So Emma drops her rear end onto the step and tries hard to remember the jovial mood she was in just moments ago as she proudly drove to her mother’s house with the reunion RSVPs, the park permit, the stacks of reunion notes that have been amassed during the past few weeks, and a running list of what still needs to be done before the reunion even begins.

  All courtesy of her sisters because Emma has just recently come back to life and is at long last back in the reunion game.

  Emma can hear her mother banging something in the kitchen, and still she cannot bring herself to open her notes and see who was supposed to order what usually seems like several tons of uncooked meat formed into patties, wieners and an assortment of picnic-like edibles that are fried for hours while everyone consumes beer, plays horseshoes and volleyball, and gears up for the big auction.

  Just as she is thinking of getting up, there are footsteps coming from the bedroom side of the house and Emma summons her ability to silently duck for cover as the footsteps come into the kitchen and then she hears the low murmur of what must surely be Robert’s voice asking her mother if everything is all right and that is when it hits her even harder than it did at her backyard sisters fling.

  She does remember tiptoeing through not just the rooms of the very house she is now sitting in front of, but years as well—tiptoeing because she was afraid of something—of rocking the boat, knowing something that she already knew, thinking that someone had pinned a sign on her that said Handle with care. Tiptoeing through years when she felt as if her assigned job was to be quiet, sit unseen, lie motionless so that all the other Gilfords could do whatever it was that they were also supposed to do. Tiptoeing when she should have been walking through her own life like a woman who had at least a partial road map.

  “Enough already!” she says aloud as she gets up and turns so that she is looking into Marty’s house at the very same moment Robert has decided to take Marty into his arms, dip her, and kiss her as if his name is Clark Gable.

  “Oh no!” Emma says out loud without even realizing she has spoken.

  Robert almost drops Marty as they hear Emma and both turn at the same time so that almost all of the weight of both their bodies is on Robert’s right leg.

  “How’s that meat search going, Mother?” Emma asks innocently as she pushes through the door. She wonders if there is a human timing belt that has come loose inside of her that makes her show up, open doors, walk into rooms and appear at a moment that would be perfect timing in a dramatic or comedic movie although not necessarily in real life.

  “Emma,” Marty says very quietly as if anything louder would tip them over. “Pull us up from Robert’s side, will you, dear? We seem to be stuck here.”

  Emma holds her laugh until she anchors her feet and leans back so that her weight gives Robert just what he needs to get Marty centered again. Then as the couple staggers upright Emma lets out a laugh that could flip on several remote control switches from across the room.

  “I wish we had this on film,” Emma snorts.

  “It might have looked funny but it didn’t feel very funny,” Marty admits, shaking her arms as if she has just finished lifting weights.

  “Robert, is this what you do when you want her to shut up?”

  “Sometimes,” Robert admits. “Occasionally I throw her over my leg like that just for the hell of it.”

  This is definitely a fine start to the last planning session, here on the afternoon before the Gilford Family Reunion begins. After Robert Dell straightens up, leans over to peck Marty on the lips, and Marty squeaks like a baby, they still do not know who was supposed to order the meat.

  The meat that should now be resting in the refrigerator just the other side of the storage boxes that house all of the leftover prom dresses, baby booties and plaid jumpers that should have been passed on to a secondhand shop a very long time ago.

  Emma suddenly remembers that she is holding the latest reunion notes, throws them on the table, and thumbs through the pages until she gets to the lists they made during the last get-together, when Rick had just allegedly abandoned his family.

  It’s Joy.

  Damn it.

  Joy was supposed to have ordered the meat and have it delivered to Marty’s industrial-sized garage refrigerator two days ago.

  Emma looks up to see her mother standing with her hands on her hips and she wonders if anyone has bothered to tell Marty about Joy. She surely has not, what with her emotional hangover from when Rick spilled his guts before the Gilford siblings party—now known as Emma’s Lovefest. Emma realizes, with a sinking heart, she will have to be the one to tell her mother about the severity of Joy’s drinking problem and the pending intervention.

  “Mom,” Emma finally manages to say, “Joy was supposed to order the meat.”

  “No surprise there,” Marty answers.

  “Has anyone talked to you about Joy, Mom?”

  “Anyone?” Marty asks.

  “Rick. Debra or Erika, perhaps?”

  “What happened at your little-sister festival the other day, Emma? Did Joy show up and streak through the yard?”

  “Mom, this is really important. Can you back off for a minute and just sit down? I need to tell you something.”

  Marty sits on command and asks
if it’s okay for Robert to stay in the room. She adds that Emma had better make it quick because Joy, Debra, Erika and all the nieces, minus Stephie, who is at rehearsal for the pageant, are due to join them in moments.

  “I think you are going to need Robert for this one, Mother,” Emma agrees, wondering if there will ever again be another calm moment in her life. “He not only can stay but he should stay.”

  “What?” Marty demands, a little sharply.

  And then Emma tells her about Joy and the drinking and the intervention and how Rick is not such a bad guy after all, well, except for that sleeping-with-the-redheaded-woman part, and how he is working hard to still be a father, and how they decided that Marty should be involved in the intervention, which they hope to stage the day after the reunion, when Joy will most likely have a huge hangover and not be quite so feisty.

  And.

  Marty holds up her hand like a stop sign and starts shaking her head left to right. It is definitely the international signal for the lovely word no.

  “No what?” Emma wants to know.

  “No, I didn’t know all of this, and no, I do not want to be part of your intervention.”

  Marty says this very slowly as if she is trying to convince herself of what she is speaking out loud.

  “No?” Emma manages to say back to her as a sort of question.

  “Yes, no,” Marty says again and then realizes how silly that sounds.

  Robert’s head is going back and forth between both of them as if there is a string attached from their lower lips to his head that pulls it every time one of them speaks.

  “Mother, are you serious? I’m the one who insisted that you must be a part of this whole thing.”

  “All I wanted was to know where the meat is,” Marty says matter-of-factly. “That’s all. Where in the hell is the damn meat?”

  Emma turns to Robert as if doing just that will reveal something, anything, one small thing.

  “You know, Robert, you can run and hide any time you want,” she suggests.

  “Are you kidding?” he asks, leaning towards her. “I might miss something. Who knows what’s going to happen next around here?”