by Kris Radish
Emma desperately wants to say, “No shit,” but she doesn’t. Instead, she looks back towards her mother and asks, very softly, “Why?”
“I suppose this would be a bad time to say I need a drink,” her mother says in all seriousness.
“Yes, it would,” Robert responds gently, putting his hand on Marty’s.
This is when Emma realizes that Robert knows things. He knows Marty. He knows about Rick and knows, too, that Debra could end up just like Joy if she doesn’t watch out. He knows that Marty usually calls Emma first and that Emma rarely says no to anything having to do with Gilford family business. He knows that her mother usually flips out close to reunion time. He probably knows about Samuel and her garden fetish, too. He knows how to kiss her mother and which side of the bed she sleeps on and most likely how she hates it if anyone puts butter on her toast without asking. Robert Dell knows how to make her mother laugh and he cannot keep his hands or eyes or lips off of her.
Robert Dell knows things. Emma realizes that she is just a little bit jealous because of that not-so-startling fact and because he’s probably the one Marty now calls first—that is, if they are ever apart.
Marty slaps her hand on the table when she sees that Emma is staring at Robert Dell in a way that looks as if he moves, or blinks, or opens up his mouth to say something Emma may jump up, grab a knife and scalp him.
“Emma!” Marty says just like she used to when Emma was about ten years old and had just done something like dump potting soil all over the living room rug or eat her cereal without a spoon.
“Jesus, Mother!” Emma shouts after she jumps a few inches.
“It looks like you are getting off track.”
“It’s more like a roller coaster.”
“This started with the missing meat and now we are talking about Joy’s drinking and it looks as if you have fled the country and are about to assassinate someone by the look in your eye, Emma, and all I want to do right now is get some meat,” Marty announces. “Meat. Can we not just get some meat and not worry for once about the drunkards and who in the hell Rick is sleeping with, and you are not sleeping with, and what the neighbors think or whether or not the town gossip is going to turn us in for being totally out of our flipping minds?”
And suddenly, without warning, the last piece of string that has been holding the old Emma together for a very long time suddenly lets go. It’s as if one of her ribs has finally fallen into place, she’s discovered a long-dormant secret well of energy buried behind her major organs, or found out that she has the power to change water into wine, which in her family would save just about everyone a lot of money.
Instead of shutting down, quietly agreeing to acquiesce, to curtsy and back out the door, as the old Emma would, the new Emma, the woman who is powered by so much acknowledged love, calmly turns towards her mother and says, “To hell with the meat. I’ll go slaughter a damn cow myself if I have to. There’s meat to be had all over this town. Get a grip, Mother. It’s just meat. It’s not a vial of cancer-curing medicine.”
When Marty looks up and into Emma’s eyes, Emma notices a tiny line of something that she can only think to call sadness and surrender move across her mother’s face. Robert is still holding on to her hand and he quickly brings up his other hand and covers both of Marty’s hands with his own. When Emma looks at his hands, still strong-looking with tall blue veins, small cuticles, and nails trimmed into perfect half-moon shapes, something seizes in her throat and she wants to hurl herself across the table and tell her mother she is sorry.
But sorry for what? For asking questions, for telling her about Joy? For simply showing up at her house to talk about the reunion? Or because of that small parade of sadness that made her heart stop when she saw it limp across Marty’s eyes?
Lining up all of Marty’s sad moments, bouts with what some people might call depression, or just the plain old down-in-the-dumps-of-life times, does not take Emma very long.
Could there be something else? Something horrible about to happen after the arrival of Marty’s glowing eyes following the trip to the romantic island and after the coming-out party with the lively Robert Dell?
Emma’s heart seizes up yet again and she realizes that if her mother is sick, if something bad is about to happen to Marty, then the world really is about to turn sideways and quite possibly stop, and she may not be able to keep breathing. Now that she has made up with her sisters, Emma cannot start over with her mother. Enough already.
In a moment of uncalculated anxiety and because of her new demeanor, and because she is fueled by sisterly love, Emma impulsively reaches out. She puts her hands on top of Robert Dell’s hands, which are still securely wrapped over Marty’s hands. It looks as if the three of them are playing the sliding-out-hands game that half the children in the world play.
“Mom, what is it? What’s wrong?”
“I’m pretty sure it’s not the meat,” Robert says with a half smile.
“Mom?” Emma says.
Marty sighs, pulls her hands out and pats Robert softly on the arm. Then she reaches across the table to lace her fingers through Emma’s fingers.
“Honey, the meat was like the last straw, you know? It was the one little thing that threw me right off the edge. It wasn’t you or anything you have done. In fact, when I heard you shuffling around out there, honey, it made me smile.”
“Then what, Mom? Tell me, I’m dying here.”
“I’m tired.” Marty says it simply and quietly. “I’m exhausted and absolutely ecstatic at the same time, which makes me feel like I’m in the middle of a constant battle, you know?”
A battle, she continues, where there is all this good stuff on one side and all this not necessarily bad stuff on the other, but enough stuff so that when she turns to look it in the eye it all makes her sad and her bones ache, and her head pound, and also makes her want to lie down in a darkened room with a pillow over her face.
“Just tell her,” Robert urges.
“I’ll tell her some now, Robert, but not everything,” the old Marty says with her eyes sparkling just a little.
Not everything? Emma is beginning to understand why both Joy and Debra love to dab a little gin behind their ears every now and then.
Marty shares her smile with Emma and tells her that she is tired of worrying and wondering and interfering and making plans and being in charge and that is why she cannot and will not help with Joy’s intervention. Tired of being the mom. That is why this is the last Gilford Family Reunion that she is going to help organize and that is why she is furious about the damned meat and why she took Emma to the garden and why she disappeared to the island with Robert and why everyone keeps wondering if everything is okay with her.
Consider it semi-retirement, Marty says, looking as if she is getting ready to stand up and go jogging.
Emma feels like someone has zapped her with a stun gun.
Her mother does not want to be the mother any longer.
Robert knows things.
There really is a tiny hint of sad exhaustion in her mother’s eyes.
There are car doors slamming outside in the driveway.
And Emma suddenly feels as if someone has set two bushel baskets filled with fifty pounds of unplanted bulbs on top of her shoulders.
Emma jumps up at the very instant Marty jumps up and for some reason this makes Marty smile.
“What?” Emma asks her mother, totally exasperated.
“Do you know how many times we do things at the exact same moment?”
“I’ve never thought about it,” Emma admits.
“Well, it happens all the time. We pick up the phone to call each other, get up, smile—we do lots of things at the exact same moment.”
This is the last thing on Emma’s mind right now. After being so bold just a moment ago she is perilously close to having a panic attack. She can feel a long line of sweat down the center of her back, and there is a small herd of butterflies stuck inside of her rib cage flutte
ring around as if they are desperate to escape.
“But who is going to be the mother now?” she asks with such naked sincerity that Marty turns and folds Emma into her arms so tightly that it would be impossible to slip a toothpick between them.
“You will figure it out, darling,” Marty consoles her. “You already know the answer.”
“I do?”
“Just think about it for a little while,” Marty adds, pulling away. “But first get on the meat thing, please?”
“The meat,” Emma repeats, grabbing her phone as if she is in a trance and turning just in time to miss Marty winking at Robert, who puts both thumbs into the air and smiles as if he has just won the lottery.
And all Emma can really think of then is the mysterious “not everything” uttered by Marty, which she needs about as much as yet another phone call from Samuel.
25
THE TWENTY-FIFTH QUESTION:
Have you seen the dress Uncle Barry is wearing?
EMMA NOTICES SUSIE DELL rounding the corner at the far edge of Sand Creek Park where the Gilford Family Reunion is always held. Susie has her arm draped over Emma’s boss, Janet’s shoulder just as Stephie, who is holding several bowls of potato salad, scoots up to Emma from behind and says laughing into her ear, “Have you seen the dress that Uncle Barry is wearing?”
“A dress?” Emma questions, thinking at the same moment, Here we go, kids, as she struggles to balance her own load of picnic paraphernalia.
“Yes, it’s a cute little red sundress.”
Just then Emma looks up and sees the alleged red sundress.
“Stephie, that’s not a dress. It’s a kilt. You know, like men wear in Scotland and Wales. And if I’m not mistaken, Uncle Barry has been taking bagpipe lessons and I’m guessing that will be part of the auction.”
“How cool is that,” Stephie says after a long whistle.
“That’s probably the calmest thing you are going to see during the next eight hours, Stephie,” Emma warns as they walk towards the pavilion and the steadily growing swarm of Gilfordities who are already setting up lawn chairs, tossing around balls and hovering around the beer kegs.
“I’ve been at like fifteen of these, remember?” Stephie reminds Emma as they drop their latest load on a picnic table. “I don’t think I’d ever miss this reunion even if I end up living in Iceland.”
Iceland sounds extremely attractive to Emma at that moment. In Higgins it is very hot and humid, which means it’s a typical South Carolina day, a day that started out just a hair after midnight for Emma when Stephie called her from her cell phone to ask if she could spend the night, which—in Emma’s world anyway—was already about half over.
Stephie was calling from her driveway where she could park and look into the front window and see her mother—what else—drinking. The boys must have already been asleep and Stephie could imagine the sad silhouette of Joy slumped against the kitchen wall with a dark-colored tumbler pressed to her lips as if it had been glued there. Up and down and up and down until it was empty and Joy turned to fill it up again and that is when Stephie called Emma begging to spend the night.
Emma had rarely said no to Stephie before the discovery of her even-more-wretched-than-she-could-have-imagined home life. She would surely not now say no ever again, no matter what was happening in her own life.
This after an insanely busy day at work, an early evening filled with running to the store to get everything from ketchup to a thousand more plastic cups, writing out her own “I will plant a garden for you” certificates for the auction, and a surprise visit from Erika, her husband Jeff and their thirteen-year-old son Tyler, who was so polite and talkative Emma almost became speechless herself.
Erika did not phone. She simply walked into the backyard and tapped on Emma’s window while she was guzzling a cup of very powerful coffee because she knew it was going to be a long night and she needed all the caffeine she could get. Emma was sitting at her kitchen table frantically going over the notes from the picnic folder.
“Emma,” Erika beckoned.
Emma jumped as if she had unintentionally touched a live electric wire, and let out a little scream.
“Shit,” she cried. “You scared me.”
“Sorry.” Erika didn’t sound sorry. “Can you come out for two seconds? I want Jeff and Tyler to see your yard and all the gardens. We’ve been out walking like we used to walk when we were kids, you know, aimlessly going up one block and then down the other.”
The tour did not take just a few minutes because Emma was pleasantly surprised to find out that Erika had a passion for gardening too and had turned their apartment condo into the talk of their Chicago neighborhood.
“It’s a whole different way to garden and it’s been absolutely wonderful to transform the entire back of the condo and a huge porch area,” Erika shared as she crawled around on her hands and knees with Emma while the boys settled in under the gazebo with iced tea.
Without intention Emma and Erika ended up sitting in the middle of the far garden for close to an hour, lost in conversation about everything from potting to terracing in limited spaces, interspersed with intimate details of Erika’s life that hit Emma in a very soft spot just below her neckline. It was like something or someone invisible was pushing her right there with soft fingers as if to scold, You thought you knew her.
Emma realized that her vision, her inner photograph of her sister, had been so limited, so blurry, so underexposed—perhaps like the vision her sisters had of her at the same time.
“Emma,” Erika said, shifting forward a bit and placing her elbows on her knees, “you must come to Chicago. Come visit us. None of the Gilfords ever come to see us and I want to take you all over the place. We have unbelievable gardens and a very excellent downtown walking tour and, well, it would be so much fun.”
Chicago.
Emma paused, closed her eyes while she instinctively ran her hands across the bottom row of a section of daisies that she swore she could hear laugh as her fingers lightly touched their stems, and imagined what that part of the world looked like with the people she knew inside of it all. A condo in the city, gardens on rooftops, her nephew taking a train to school as if he were a hard-core commuter, Erika stalking with her briefcase down a long sidewalk, Jeff throwing down a cup of coffee and then driving off to the swanky suburbs to teach high school psychology with the car windows rolled down so he could smell the mingling scents of city and country.
Emma looked at Erika as if she had never seen her before and was again shocked to realize how little she really knew of her favorite sister.
Erika reached across her own lap, wrapped her hands around Emma’s, and said it was okay because it was easy to get so caught up in your own life that it was hard to see anything else. She told Emma about how sick Jeff’s parents were before they died, about a long-fought battle against Tyler’s school district to allow some experimental classes, and of course, about the raising of a son while still occasionally battling an ex-wife over a mess of absolutely asinine decisions involving Tyler—such as the purchase of shoes and when he should start to shave.
“Control-freak city.” Erika laughs, waving one hand in the air as if she were trying to swat a fly.
“Your plate is full too, sister.” Emma’s wondering how many times she had bad-mouthed Jeff when Erika came to visit alone.
Emma’s heart lurched as she quickly erased all of her imagined notions about her sister and life in the big city. There were no lavish cocktail parties, just lingering Sunday mornings with coffee while the city birds sang. There never had been a nanny there either and no more babies, not because Erika was a selfish career woman, but because she’d never been able to get pregnant.
“I never knew,” Emma whispered, wondering how something so important could slip past her.
“It was my choice not to talk about it,” Erika shared. “People will think what they want to think anyway. Besides, I have a son and he is extraordinary.”
> Emma leaned in, took Erika’s hands in hers, and told her that if they had not been born sisters she would still have chosen her as a best friend.
“Me too,” Erika said, raising her hand to brush it against her sister’s cheek.
“Girls,” Jeff had finally said, with a hint of begging in his voice, “come talk to us men for a moment.” And even that twenty-minute talk was riddled with surprises.
When Emma asked Tyler what he thought of the possibility of moving to South Carolina if his mother got a new job, she anticipated a teenage gasp like she’d come to expect from her other nephews. But Tyler answered that he didn’t want to go to high school in a big city. He loved the history of the South and had always wondered what it might be like to have cousins to hang out with, a real live grandma. And cool aunts, he added, as he winked at her.
When Erika and her men got up to leave for Marty’s, where they were staying while Marty not-so-secretly-anymore had Robert’s thong permanently decorating her bathroom door, Emma felt like running after them to beg them to stay. And that feeling accelerated when she saw Jeff put his arm around Erika’s shoulders as they walked down the sidewalk—it was as if they had been living on her street for years and years.
Emma forced herself to finish her hefty list of tasks after that, and hours and hours later, when Stephie came over, her loneliness eased. After Stephie fell asleep in her bed while they were talking, Emma made herself a promise to forget about Samuel, Marty’s recent revelations, and anything she might have forgotten to tell or ask her sisters. And a promise, too, to simply have fun at the family reunion.
Fun with men in kilts.
Fun with her special guest, her boss, Janet, who looks to be wearing Minnie Mouse ears.
Fun with Joy, who opened the first wine bottle at 10:28 a.m.
Fun with an assortment of cousins—first, second and third—who are a delightful assortment of lovely and mostly wild human beings.
Fun with the remaining aunts and uncles who will sit back in their webbed lawn chairs, drinking, still smoking their horrid and much-loved nonfiltered cigarettes, and reciting stories that are almost as old as the damned Civil War.
