Return to Little Hills

by Janice Macdonald

  Maude took a tentative lick of the exchanged cone. “Told you,” she said. “Now, this one is chocolate. I knew that wasn’t chocolate. I might be old but I haven’t lost my sense of taste.”

  “Good. Enjoy it.” Edie counted slowly to ten before she turned on the bench to look at Maude. “Turn your hearing aid up, okay?” she said in a low, distinct voice. “I want to talk to you.”

  “I’ve got if off,” Maude said. “When you shout, it hurts my ears.”

  “I’m not going to shout,” Edie said. Fat chance. “Please leave it on, okay?”

  “I can hear without it.” Maude licked her ice cream cone. “It’s only you and Vivian that think I need a hearing aid. I just thought of something. We need to stop at the IGA. They’ve got bacon on sale. I like to put it over the top of the meat loaf, it makes it nice and juicy. Vivian says she never uses bacon, but that’s why her meat loaf is always so dry, a little bacon won’t hurt I say but she’s always watching her weight—”

  “Okay, we’ll stop.” Edie polished off her ice cream, licking her fingers as she glanced around for a napkin. “Mom. I want to talk about Maple Grove—”

  “I turned off the stove,” Maude said. “You saw me.”

  “Mom.” Edie caught Maude’s free hand. “Please turn on your hearing aid, okay?”

  “Going to get it all sticky.” Maude had also finished her cone and, fingers wriggling, was glancing around as though for something to wipe them on. Edie jumped up, grabbed a handful of napkins from inside the store, came back and handed them to Maude. Her mother used them and then, with a great show of reluctance, raised her hand to her ear. Forehead creased in concentration, she twiddled for a moment.

  “What?”

  “Mom, I’m very upset—”

  “Oww.” Maude flinched as though she’d been struck. “See, that’s what happens. You shout.”

  “I wasn’t shouting,” Edie said. “But I’ll speak even softer. Look at me though, okay? This is important.” Maude turned, a smear of chocolate ice cream on her lower lip and a tiny white hair sprouting from her chin. “I want to know why you said that to Peter, about being forced out of your house.”

  Maude’s chin trembled.

  Edie leaned forward to dab the chocolate from her mother’s lip. “Is that what you think, Mom?”

  “I’m too much work for Viv,” Maude said. “She can’t be running over every day to take me places. It’s better if I’m somewhere else.”

  “But Viv doesn’t have to take care of you. We can arrange for someone to come in and do the things you need help with. You can stay in your own house, Mom. If that’s what you want. Nobody is forcing you out. I want you to understand that.”

  Maude nodded, seemingly deep in thought. “That’s the last time I let you talk me into having ice cream,” she said after a moment. “I’ve already got heartburn.

  “MOM’S JUST BEING MELODRAMATIC,” Vivian said when Edie called her that night to relay the details of her talk with Maude. “I’ve never said she’s too much trouble for me. No offense, Edie, but I wish you would just leave things alone. You breeze in and after less than a week, you think you understand the whole situation. Well, you don’t. But if you want to move back here and deal with Mom calling every day with a new emergency, fine. Be my guest. And I’d appreciate it if you didn’t go telling Peter Darling everything. Ray works with him and we don’t want our personal business spread all over the school.”

  Edie waited a full ten seconds before she trusted herself to speak. “I merely questioned whether Mom—”

  “No, you didn’t merely question. You’re trying to second-guess me because you think you have all the answers, which is the way you’ve always been. You know, when I picked you up at the airport, I thought, okay, this is my only sister. I haven’t seen her for six years. No matter what she says, I’m not going to get in an argument with her. I bit my tongue, Edie. I literally bit my tongue.”

  Edie pictured this. An amazing feat, she reflected, since it had been her impression that Viv had done most of the talking. On the other hand, she could be wrong.

  “The minute you got in the car,” Vivian was saying now, “you were condescending and patronizing, but I thought, I’m not going to say anything. It’s not worth a fight…” Her voice broke. “You’re just impossible, Edie, you really are.”

  Five minutes later, she’d called back to apologize. “I’m sorry, Eed. I know my problems probably don’t sound like much to you, but…well, I’ve just got a lot on my mind, what with Ray and all. Still, I shouldn’t take it out on you. Forgive me?”

  “Let’s just drop it, Viv.”

  “What are you going to do now?”

  “I don’t know.” Talking to Vivian made her feel suffocated, smothered by the past and by a problematic relationship that she suspected troubled Viv more than it did her. “Go for a walk. I could use some fresh air.”

  “But it’s nearly ten, Edie. Don’t you think it’s kind of late to be going for a walk? Where are you going? Don’t go down by the river, okay?”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know—it’s dark. I always think it’s kind of spooky.”

  “But nothing’s ever happened? No one’s been mugged or anything?”

  “Not so far, but there’s always a first time.”

  Edie hung up the phone, wandered into the living room and found Maude channel surfing in front of the TV. Curious about what she might settle on, Edie waited. “What are you looking for, Mom?” she asked a few moments later when Maude was still flicking through the channels.

  “Go for a walk if you’re bored.” Her hand on the remote, she turned to look at Edie. “You don’t need to baby-sit me, you know. I’m capable of taking care of myself.”

  Edie breathed deeply. “Good idea, Mom. I think I will take a walk.”

  “I’m not upset, I just don’t want to talk. I’ve been talking all day. I’m sorry I can’t be more entertaining, but coming back here was your idea. Like I told Vivian, I fell once, but that can happen to anyone. I can take care of myself.”

  “Fine, Mom, you’re on your own,” Edie said, then just to be safe, called Vivian, anyway. “I’m going for a walk,” she told her sister. “Mom said she’s fine by herself.”

  “I’m sure she is,” Vivian said. “I hope I haven’t given you the idea that you need to check in with me, because you don’t.”

  After she hung up, Edie stood for a minute thinking about an alternative to the riverbank, which was where she’d planned to walk. Then she ran upstairs, changed into sweats and walked down the hill to the river, anyway.

  It was dark in a way it never seemed to be in California, the air still and warm. Music from a paddle wheeler docked a few hundred yards away floated over to where she stood, summoning carefree romantic images that bore no relation to any reality she knew. Maybe that was the whole problem, she mused as she cut across a grassy field to the water’s edge. Life was life, whether you lived it in Missouri or Rome. Not all good, but not all bad, either. Maybe her problem was an inability to let go of the dream of a perfect life where moments of contented bliss were as abundant and available as the apples on the trees in Beth’s backyard. If she could let go of that notion, maybe everything would just fall into place.

  Maybe.

  “Edie,” a voice behind her said.

  She turned to see Peter, tall and silhouetted against the paddle wheeler’s panoply of colored lights. They were standing in the middle of a gravel towpath that meandered downriver for miles, eventually reaching farmlands and open country. She registered the pale oval of his face, the escalated beat of her heart and the sound of footsteps behind her. And then Peter caught her arm, removing her from the path of an oncoming runner, a swift burst of neon-nylon in the dark night.

  “Wow,” she said. “I was so deep in thought I didn’t hear you or him.”

  “I spotted you from a good way back.” He was smiling. “Well, at first I didn’t know it was you, but then as I drew
closer I felt almost certain that it was. Fortunately, I was right, because I’d have felt like a bit of an idiot calling out to a strange woman.”

  She smiled back at him, her mood lifting. “What are you doing down here?”

  “Jogging. I wait until the girls are asleep and then I run off the tensions of the day.”

  “You leave the girls alone?”

  He looked at her for a moment. “Of course not. My sister looks after them. She’s living with us, temporarily, until…well, until things work themselves out.”

  Exactly what that meant, Edie couldn’t guess. He’d seemed flustered for just a moment. Hmm.

  “I live a block or so up there.” He waved toward the lighted shops on Main Street. “Actually, I’m down here quite often with the girls. They adore the gooey butter cake at Olde Towne Bakery. As do I.”

  Edie smiled. “Gooey butter cake is a St. Louis tradition. I have a definite weakness for it, too.”

  Peter glanced over at the shops, then pulled back the sleeve of his red nylon windbreaker to glance at his watch. “Pity, I think the place is closed, otherwise I’d suggest we indulge in some over coffee.”

  “Yeah, too bad,” Edie said, thankful that she hadn’t been put in the position of having to decline so as not to ruin Beth’s chances of a long and blissful life with Peter. A moment passed in which she caught herself about to say, “Some other time.” Peter, she reflected, had that combination of sweetness and out-and-out sexiness that could turn her into a convert to marriage and family. A dog barked somewhere. Behind Peter, the river lay dark and silent. “Well,” she said finally, “I suppose I should hit the trail again.”

  “Are you finishing your walk, or just starting out?”

  “Halfway through,” she said.

  “May I join you?”

  She smiled. And saw Beth’s face. “Actually, I can feel this blister starting on my heel. It’s pretty painful. Shoes not broken in, I guess.” They both glanced down at her well-worn sneakers and she felt her face grow warm. “I usually wear a different pair. Anyway, I should probably cut it short…”

  “I was meaning to call you, anyway. After I left you and your mother, I took the liberty of talking to Beth Herman about Maude volunteering at the teen mother center. Helping the girls with their babies and so forth. Do you think it’s something she would enjoy?”

  They’d started walking, and Edie glanced up at him. “I’d never have thought of it myself, but now that you mention it, I think she would enjoy it. I remember when my nephews were babies, my mom took a real delight in them. She’s always dropping hints about more grandchildren…”

  God. Her face went from warm to hot. Talk about a leading remark. Peter said nothing, though, and they walked in silence for a little while. The weather, which had been so steamy for the last few days, had turned brisk. She’d noticed, that morning, a few of the trees in Maude’s backyard had started to change color. Autumn was her favorite season, but she couldn’t even remember the last time she’d seen the yearly blaze of autumn gold and red on the streets and slopes of Little Hills. Last fall, she’d been in Afghanistan.

  “I also had a favor to ask of you,” Peter said. “Since I came to Luther, I’ve been trying very hard to help the students make relevant connections between school and their future employment. We’ve started a landscape program, and one of the teachers just came up with a terrific idea to help the kids fulfill English requirements by becoming storytellers for children in local hospitals.” He laughed. “A rather long-winded way of asking whether you would be willing to talk to the students on a weekly basis about careers in journalism.”

  “I’d be happy to talk to them, but I’m not sure about the weekly basis. I’m only here for a month.”

  “Well, yes…I realize that.”

  They walked along in silence for a few minutes. Edie shoved her hands in her pockets and thought about the way he’d just said what he had. She wondered whether the short duration of her visit had crossed his mind before. Hmm. Quit projecting.

  “Perhaps you could come in a couple of times, though,” he finally said. “Just to get things off the ground. I’ve got so many plans. I also want to start up a campus newspaper. Any help and advice you can offer us there would be most welcome.”

  Edie listened as he went on to explain his ideas, his voice low and impassioned. After a while she found herself so caught up in his enthusiasm that she almost forgot that the man walking at her side was also the man who inspired fevered dreams in most of Luther Kidd High School’s female population. Almost. He’d shoot her a sideways glance, or his arm would brush hers, and she’d feel torn between wanting him to kiss her and fearing that he would.

  Mixed in with all that now, though, was a huge slice of admiration and more than a sprinkling of envy. She wanted to feel that dedication and enthusiasm.

  “I empathize completely with these kids,” he was saying. “I went through school, bored stiff and under-achieving, but ravenous to learn. By high school, I was constantly banned from the classroom for being disruptive. No one at home paid very much attention, so when I was sixteen I just dropped out.”

  “No kidding.” She absorbed this piece of information, surprised. She’d imagined expensive schools and model parents. “Was this in England?”

  “Just before we came to the States. My parents had divorced and my mother had an aunt in St. Louis who was always writing about the wonders of America. My mother sold everything we had to buy plane tickets for the three of us. My sister, Sophia, came too.”

  “She’s older or younger?”

  “Older. She was seventeen. It was a huge adjustment for both of us. Sophia actually ran away, she hated it so much. I hated it, too. I’d dream about England and it would seem so real. Even though I knew it was a dream, I somehow thought that if I tried hard enough I could hold on to it and make it real. I can still recall the sense of loss I felt when I finally opened my eyes.”

  “Like dreaming about someone who has gone,” Edie said and felt a sudden chilly dread, the source of which she couldn’t entirely identify. “That was quite a plunge for your mother to make. How did she support you?”

  “She got a job as a nurse’s aide. She had absolutely no experience, so she’d come home from the late shift and wake us up, taking our blood pressure and sticking thermometers in our mouths.” He laughed. “Practice.”

  They kept walking, the night dark around them. Occasionally, she’d think of Maude, waiting up perhaps, and consider turning around. She’d think about it, then Peter would offer another detail and she’d find herself absorbed once more.

  “And then what?” she asked. “Did you and your sister go to school?”

  “Sophia did for a while, but she eventually returned to England. She’s back here now, has been on and off ever since my wife died. She takes care of the girls while I’m at school. I tell her that I don’t know what I’d do without her and she tells me that I’d jolly well better learn how because she wants to go back to England.”

  “And what will you do? Hire a nanny?”

  He laughed. “Sophia feels that the only answer is for me to marry again. She’s becoming quite insistent about it.”

  “And…” Edie thought about Beth Herman. “Why haven’t you?”

  “Because I haven’t found anyone,” he said.

  Edie, still thinking of Beth, decided she’d felt more comfortable when they were talking about less personal matters. “So did you ever go back to England?” she asked, picking up the previous thread.

  “After college. And then I met an American woman in London. My wife. After our first daughter was born, Deborah very much wanted to come back home to the States. Anyway…” He stopped walking. “I’ve rattled on long enough. Perhaps we should turn back.”

  “I was thinking the same thing.” She laughed as they turned around and started back along the pathway. “Not about you rattling on. I found it all very interesting. My mother’s probably calling the police, though.” />
  “I like your mother,” he said. “I suspect that the two of you are very much alike.”

  She looked at him. “Oh please.”

  “I meant that you both strike me as determined,” he said. “Probably quite stubborn. Very strong personalities. I admire those qualities.”

  “Thank you,” she said. “Except that I don’t know any women who really want to be like their mothers. Same with me. I see all my mom’s faults and she irritates me to distraction. But then I remind myself I’m genetically predisposed to do exactly the same kind of thing and I swear I’ll watch out for it. If I see myself doing something she does, I’ll nip it in the bud.”

  “Tell me something about her that you don’t like but see in yourself.”

  “Hmm, that’s a good question.” She thought for a moment. “Right now I can’t come up with anything. Everything with my mom is so complicated and mixed up, all my feelings about her. I love her and I’m sure she loves me, but we’re always on edge with each other. I tell myself she’s eighty and to let it go, but she just gets under my skin.”

  “Do you admire her?”

  “Admire her?” She thought about it. “That’s a strange question. I guess I do. As you said, she’s pretty strong-minded and determined…”

  “Like you.”

  Edie shrugged. “I know she’s proud of me, but she doesn’t like me. We’ve never really gotten along and now she’s old and I keep hoping things will be different, but we just rub on each other’s nerves. And then I feel guilty as hell.” She took a breath. “Sorry, none of this is really your concern. You just seem to bring out the Aunt Blabby in me.”

  He smiled. They’d reached the town again and they stood on the deserted sidewalk, the shop windows that had blazed with light earlier shuttered now.

  “The dinner invitation still stands,” he said. “As does the theater invitation.”