A Good Distance

by Sarah Willis

  My mother drives us by the house she grew up in, when her dad was rich and owned oil wells. It’s large and brick, and the street is wide, not narrow like ours. “Is your dad really dead yet?” I ask my mom. Mine is. I sure would never have said he was dead if he wasn’t, like she did.

  “To me he is,” she says. She doesn’t sound sad at all. I wanted to make her sad.

  “Why?” I say.

  “Oh, forget it, Jennifer. I’m mad at him, that’s all. He’s not really dead, but we don’t talk. That’s all.”

  I remember getting mad at my dad for not taking me to the amusement park, and then, how he did. If he hadn’t taken me, he would have gotten better.

  My mother gets a cat and names it Lovely. She pretends she names it Lovely because it’s so pretty, but I hear her talking to Mrs. Tarken on the phone. She says, “Yeah, I named it Lovely because life is just so goddamn lovely, isn’t it.” At night I have to go outside and call for it. I am twelve and am embarrassed to death.

  I paint my closest walls with black paint and carry in a mirror. I take a candle from the living room and put it on a cookie tin in front of the mirror. I call to the dead. No one answers, but I have just begun. I will grow up to be a witch, and then everyone had better watch out.

  A year after my father dies, five months after we move into this duplex, my mother begins to drink. Drunk, she calls my father on the phone. “Michael. Come home. Come home, Michael.” I take the phone from her, but there’s no one on the other end. Or, if there is, he’s not speaking to me. I start to wonder if he just couldn’t stand to be near me anymore. Maybe he knew I couldn’t memorize lines. I yell at my mother, who sits crumpled up on the floor, wedged in a corner. She just keeps crying.

  My sister is ten and retreats into quiet. She hardly speaks. My brother spends hours in the basement nailing boards together, wiring batteries to potatoes, making lights go on and off.

  My mother is perfectly straight when she goes to work. It is only when she comes home that she drinks.

  I cook the dinners. This is my job now. Pork chops, mashed potatoes and gravy. Beef stroganoff, rice, and peas. Chicken Kiev. I can really cook. My mother taught me. I cook dinner. I set the table. I put the food on the plates, hot and smelling so good. I do not call anyone in for dinner. They can go to hell.

  Chapter Eight

  Now, sitting on my couch, I close the picture album and think of calling my brother, but I’ll never find him. He’s on his way to some mountain with a number. The fifth highest, or the sixth. He’s working his way up to the big one, the one everyone dies on. I am supposed to cheer him on.

  I should call my sister, but I don’t. One challenge at a time, and I am working on my mother while she still has the time.

  When Todd and I began dating four years ago, I showed him these photo albums. This is me, I’d say, as if by looking at pictures I would never have to explain anything to him. I showed these pictures to other boyfriends, hoping the same thing. Showing them to Todd, I thought, I can’t do this again, this opening myself up and hoping to be loved for who I was. There are too many men who have seen my baby-plump body in a striped bathing suit, my friendly wave as I sat on my new tricycle, my crooked-toothed smile as I sat on our old gray couch. I wanted every one of those men to love me, but I never loved them. Then there was Todd, and somehow I love him.

  Or, I have said I love him. Said it even to myself. What you say becomes true.

  Jazz calls to say she won’t be home for dinner, she has to keep working on her school project. My mother won’t come downstairs, so I take her a plate of lasagna and sit with her. She keeps her eyes on her food but her chin held high, which makes eating even more difficult. I ask her if she would like anything else, and she snorts.

  I turn on her TV and tell her I’ll be back up soon.

  I set the table and wait for Todd to come home. When he does, he notices the table is set for two.

  “Just us?” he says.

  “Just us,” I say, happy and guilty at the same time. How come I can never feel just one damn emotion at a time?

  “This is nice,” Todd says. He gives me a kiss on the cheek. Now he smells like beer and cigarettes, and I go around the other side of the table and sit down, try to shake off those smells so I can eat. He sits down and waits for me to pick up my fork, take the first bite. How could his ex-wife have ever divorced him? What woman would not have done anything to keep this man? I want to tell him that he’s the prize in my Cracker Jack box of life, but it would sound so stupid right now. Maybe I can work it into the conversation later. Or whisper it in his ear tonight in bed.

  Still, I want to offer him something. “I’ll drive her over to the nursing home tomorrow. Maybe she’ll have forgotten she already saw it, and said she wouldn’t go there for a million dollars. It was last month. Who knows what short-term means to someone her age?”

  “Jen . . .” He looks at me sadly. I hate it.

  “Sorry. But I should take her again. The more she sees it, the more she might think she already lives there. And I’ll work on my . . . project.” What a lame term for what I am trying to do. But then again, what am I trying to do? Unfortunately, Todd picks up on this.

  “What project? What are you trying to do? I don’t get it.”

  “I have to resolve something with my mother.” As soon as I say it, I hate what I have said. Resolve is too politically correct for what I mean. What I want involves blood and guts. I want her to know what I did and why. I want her to remember what she did.

  “What the hell needs to be resolved?” Todd asks. “You’ve told me all the stuff that happened to you, and yeah, it sucks, but I don’t get it. She tries to kill you both, and now you want to resolve something? It’s too late, Babe. Let it go.”

  I haven’t gotten there yet. To that night in the car. That’s why I’m remembering so slowly. She has never said she was sorry for what she said, so I could never say I was sorry, too.

  “I can’t let it go,” I say.

  “Then take it out of the house,” he says. “Go on Jerry Springer, or something.”

  I actually stop chewing just to stare at him. What the hell happened?

  “Sorry,” he says. There’s real kindness in his voice. He means it.

  “You are the prize in my Cracker Jack,” I say, then I cover my face with my hands, embarrassed.

  At least he laughs. “You’re nuts,” he says.

  “And caramel corn,” I say. “I’m crunchy but sweet.”

  “I think you need to work on the sweet part,” he says, then winces. I know it was just a joke, so I don’t get mad.

  “Put a little whipped cream on me, then,” I say, tilting my head, batting my eyes.

  He looks down at his half-eaten lasagna, his untouched green beans, then back up at me. “I’d like to pay you back for this afternoon,” he says with a sly smile. “But your mother . . .”

  “She’s not speaking to me right now. And she’s watching a Columbo rerun. Jazz won’t be home for at least an hour. I’d like you to pay me back, very much.”

  “Really?” He says this like a kid hoping to hear Santa’s real, and I get all choked up. I was getting in the mood for sex, but now I want to make love to him. I want to kiss his eyelids. I want to be held. Standing up, I walk around the table and take his hand. He follows me upstairs, both of us gracefully stepping over the gate as if gates have always been a part of our lives, as if we are good at this.

  Rose wakes, sitting in a strange chair. Nearby is a hospital bed. She’s in a hospital? She turns her head and looks out the window. A brown-haired girl gets out of a car, waving goodbye to the driver. It must be Jennifer. It’s hard to tell from so far away.

  She stays in her chair, too tired to move. After a little while, the door to the hospital room swings slowly open, and Jennifer peeks in.

  “Well, it’s about time,” Rose says.

  “Hi, Nana,” Jennifer says, not coming into the room, just standing there in the doorway like
an old stone.

  “It’s not contagious. Come in.”

  Jennifer comes in. She looks so young, and her clothes are too casual for a hospital, and what’s that on her lips? Purple lipstick? It looks awful. Well, she’s not going to start a fight now, although she should. It took Jennifer much too long to get here. “Sit on the . . . thing.” She points to the bed. “Go ahead. The nurses won’t mind. Sit down.”

  Jennifer goes over to the bed and sits down cautiously. What does she have to be nervous about? She works in a hospital, for God’s sake.

  “I almost died, you know. I could be dead, and it takes you a week to show up? Your brother and sister were here. Peter just left. Did you see him?”

  “No.” Jennifer shrugs, looking around as if Peter might still be here. Rose wants to tell her to sit up straight.

  “They’re going to let me out tomorrow. You’ll pick me up? The doctor will tell you what time. Where’s your daughter?”

  “Ahhh . . .” Jennifer says, obviously stalling for time. Rose doesn’t wait for her to answer.

  “Play cards with me. I’m bored out of my gourd here.”

  Jennifer shrugs again. “Okay, but I was just looking for my mom.”

  Rose doesn’t understand this. Did she hear her right? She must mean she had trouble finding her room. Well, she’s here now, anyway. “Pull that table between us. You deal.”

  They play a game of Rummy and Rose wins. As Jennifer deals the next hand, Rose says, “I wish you’d stay at the house for a while. You’re a good cook. Remember when you made us that duck? You must have been fourteen. So goddamn pissy all the time, then you’d make a duck with orange sauce. Asparagus, right? Didn’t you make asparagus with that meal? Whatever came over you?”

  Jennifer stares dumbly at her. What’s the matter with her? Is she stoned?

  “Well?”

  Jennifer shrugs.

  “Oh, stop that shrugging and play cards. God, Jennifer, do you always have to be so difficult?”

  Jennifer folds her cards down. “So, I was a pretty bad kid, huh?”

  “Well, angry, that’s for sure. It’s not like your father’s death was my fault, but you acted like it was. I never understood why you ran away.”

  “I ran away?”

  “Twice. But who’s counting?” She puts her cards down. “I’ll tell you a story,” she says. “You want to hear it?”

  “Sure, I guess,” Jennifer says.

  Rose tries to figure out how to say this. The harder she thinks about it, the more the words vanish. Frustration makes her head start to shake. Damn it.

  “I went to the . . . bell place to swim away and I didn’t. Down by the . . .” She moves her hand back and forth and that helps. She can feel the water. “Lake.” “There was this lady . . . I went there to swim away, but I didn’t. Then he died, just like I knew he would. It wasn’t fair!”

  “Nana, it’s okay. Don’t worry about it.”

  “I’m trying to tell you a . . . story. Just be quiet.”

  Rose wants to tell the story about the time at the Bell Tower. She’s furious that she can’t make Jennifer understand. The memory is right there, she’s just not sure she’s getting the words out.

  When your father got sick, I couldn’t bear it. My mother was dead. I couldn’t even tell you what state my oldest sister lived in. Ben was in Vietnam, and Celia had seven children and lived hundreds of miles away. The people from the theatre didn’t want to believe your father was dying, and neither did he, so I just went along with the program. Then he went into the hospital that last time, the time you insisted on coming, remember? He told me to tell everyone not to visit, just wait till he got better and came home. Jesus, he was going to die, and I had three young kids, and what I really needed was to tell him how scared I was, but he wouldn’t let me, so we made plans about what we would do when he came home.

  I went down to the lake around sunset. I stood out on the point, where the old Bell Tower stood, and I cursed God out loud, to the lake and the sky. But then I asked myself if I even believed in God anymore, and I didn’t. Not one damn bit. God was a ruse. A phony. I had been an idiot to believe in Him in the first place. That terrified me. I felt more alone than ever. So, I thought, I’ll just swim out into the middle of the lake and tread water till I drown. But I was a good swimmer and the lake wasn’t all that big. I could probably tread water for an hour or more and still swim back to shore. I began crying, the kind of crying where tears just stream down your face. There I was as the sun set, staring out at a lake that I couldn’t even drown myself in, knowing full well I’d go home and the phone would ring and someone would tell me Michael was dead. I should have gone back to the hospital, but they said he had a few more days and I should get my rest. What a stupid thing to say.

  After about fifteen minutes of standing there silently crying, the sun set, and I thought, well, I’ll just get in my car and drive to a bigger goddamn lake. I knew I had you kids, but I was empty. It was like I was made out of papier-mâché. I had no bones or muscles or blood left. I couldn’t even walk to my car because there was nothing in me that knew how to walk. And then this lady comes up behind me. I didn’t even know she was there until she cleared her throat. “Oh, I’m sorry to bother you,” she said, “but I just had to talk to you.” When I turned around, the sky behind her was dark. With the sunset behind me, she couldn’t see my face, that I’d been crying.

  “I have to tell you, I was walking by, up there,” she said, pointing up the hill, “and I saw you standing down here, with your hair glowing in the sunset. You just stood here for so long, so peacefully, the waves lapping at your feet and the seagulls flying overhead. The sun set right behind you. I’ve never seen anything so beautiful in my life. So serene. I felt as if I shared a moment with you, as if there was some bond. You seemed so content to just stand here, to take the time to watch the sunset. I just want to thank you.”

  I didn’t know what to say, so I said, “Thank you.” She said, “Well, good evening. I’m glad I spoke to you.” She left and I walked over to the car. I got in. I drove home. I never thought about killing myself again, although I know you don’t believe that.

  “I didn’t try to kill myself!” Rose shouts. The sound of her voice feels rough and loud in the small room. Sitting on the hospital bed, her daughter looks stunned. God, it makes Rose tired. This sharing of her life. Still, she’s glad she has finally told Jennifer all this. It’s about time.

  “I’m tired,” she says. I want to go to . . .” She can’t find the word for the thing Jennifer sits on, so she just points.

  “To bed?” Jennifer asks.

  Rose nods.

  “Can you brush your teeth by yourself?”

  “Certainly.”

  “Okay, while you brush your teeth, I’ll get a nurse.”

  “Thank you, Jennifer. I’m glad you came. I was waiting for you to come back.”

  “You’re welcome,” she says.

  Chapter Nine

  Jazz comes out of my mother’s room just as I’m headed downstairs. When did she get home? My face heats up as I glance at the bedroom door. It’s closed. Todd’s still getting dressed.

  “Nana wants you to get her ready for bed,” Jazz says. “And, by the way, she thinks I’m you, and you’re a nurse, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “And, Mom, she’s acting a little weird. I mean weirder than usual. She was talking really good, she was telling me how you cooked a duck, but she thought I was you, then she got real quiet and she looked like a zombie or something, then she shouted, ‘I never tried to kill myself!’ What’s that all about?”

  My heart starts racing. “She said that?”

  “Yeah. So what’s it mean?”

  “Nothing. I’ll go get her ready.” I walk by Jazz, go in my mother’s room, and shut the door behind me. She’s standing in the middle of the room, just a few feet away, holding her toothbrush.

  “Hello,” she says. She says it like you say hi to someone t
hat you walk by on the street.

  “It’s me, damn it,” I say. “Your daughter, Jennifer. Remember me? You have to remember me. Come on. Oldest kid? Black sheep? Took you into my house so you didn’t have to go to a nursing home? Remember?”

  She drops the toothbrush.

  “Oh, God.” I rub my face, embarrassed. I shouldn’t be shouting at her. It’s just that Jazz upset me. I lean over and pick up the toothbrush, shake it.

  “What did you tell my daughter?” I ask.

  She cocks her head. Squints one eye. Sizing me up.

  “What did you say?” I try to say it calmly, but I don’t.

  “The bell place,” she says.

  “The bell place? What’s that?”

  “It’s none of your business, is what. That’s between me and my daughter.”

  “I am your daughter!”

  “I would like to go to box.”

  “Bed,” I say. “Bed, not box.”

  “Yes.” She looks at me. Grins. “Box.”

  Jesus, I swear she’s doing this on purpose, just to get me mad. I wouldn’t put it past her. “So go to box,” I say, and then I have this sudden picture in my head that makes me dizzy. My mother in a box.

  It would be easier for everyone if she were dead.

  It’s not the first time I have thought this. I know it’s normal to think like this. At least, I hope it’s normal. I wonder if Peter and Betsy have had thoughts like this.

  I get her ready for bed, reminding her to put on the Depends, which she does with no complaint. If I keep bedtime to a specific routine, she follows along nicely, which means it has to be me to do this every night, and means Todd and I don’t go out.