“I’m sorry.”
“As am I. As will they be.”
I had no idea what to say, and found myself anxious to leave.
“I guess I should have asked in advance …” I trailed off, hoping she would finish the sentence for me. Spare me from having to ask. But she showed no evidence of knowing where I was going. “… what you charge for this.”
She seemed genuinely taken aback. “Charge?”
“You don’t …”
“I don’t do this for money.”
“Oh. I’m sorry. I just assumed …”
“I do it because it needs doing, and not many people can.”
“I’m sorry. I just … how do you make a living, then? Not that it’s any of my business.”
“I work at the phone company. This is my day off.”
I was speechless. And quite tired of my repeated forays into speechless, a territory so recently unfamiliar to me. Once upon a time words were my strong suit. A specialty.
“I’m getting a big thermometer,” she said. “But I don’t guess that helps you much.”
I stared at her blankly. I thought she meant she was planning to purchase a large thermometer. Had I been right, it could easily have qualified for non sequitur of the century.
“I’m sorry?”
“Where she is. There seems to be a big thermometer. But I’m not really sure what that is or how it gets you closer to where you need to be.”
“Oh. Well, then. I really owe you a debt of gratitude,” I said, not positive if that was entirely true or not. The whole thing still hadn’t put me any closer to where I so desperately needed to go.
“You’re welcome. Best thing you can do to thank me, not to be rude, but I could use a good rest before this next couple shows up.”
“Of course,” I said. “Thank you again.”
“I’ll call you if I get more information.”
“Thank you.”
Isabelle and her ancient dogs walked me to the door.
It had begun to rain again. Quite hard this time.
I was just breaking into a run in the sheeting rain in her driveway when I heard her call my name.
“Mr. Bailey.”
I stopped, and turned. Against my better judgment I just stood there, with no hat or coat, getting drenched.
She stood in her open doorway, one hand on the door. The dogs stood beside her, watching me with measured enthusiasm. Still wagging amiably.
“Yes?” I said, hoping to hurry this up.
“Not to pry, but what’s the connection with this other woman? Not the woman we’ve been discussing. Someone else. The recent one. What is that?”
I stood watching her a moment, having long since given up staying dry.
“I don’t know what that is,” I said at last.
“Interesting.”
“I don’t even know if it’s interesting.”
“We never really know what’s interesting, do we? Seems like part of the human condition, how we always guess wrong about that. Even me sometimes.”
“Really? Even you? That seems surprising.”
“Yes, I guess it would seem surprising, from the outside. It’s easier to see for somebody else than it is to see for yourself. I can’t explain it any better than that.”
I stood, getting soaked, for another brief moment. Wondering if we were done. Questioning myself about whether I’m too polite for my own good.
“OK,” I said. “Thanks.”
Then I trotted to my car and jumped in.
There I sat, soaked to the skin, shivering slightly, and one hundred per cent unsure of my next move.
The World’s Tallest Thermometer
“Oh, my goodness,” Myra said. “You’re soaked. Come in, Richard. Come in and get dry.”
She briefly left me standing in her foyer, dripping on to the mat, while she rummaged around in the master bedroom and came back with an oversized soft towel, and a dark blue man’s bathrobe that I could only imagine belonged to her late husband. Unless she was seeing somebody these days.
Either way it made me uncomfortable to take it. But I did.
I closed myself into the bathroom off the hall, peeled out of my wet clothes, dried off, and put on the robe, carefully transferring my car keys, wallet, and Vida’s worry stone into its big terrycloth pockets.
Meanwhile Myra put on a pot of coffee, and when I came out of the bathroom, she took my wet clothes from me and loaded them into her dryer. During all of this, she did not ask.
But when we sat on the couch together, looking at the pewter coffee pot and cups and cream and sugar servers, sitting on their pewter tray, she asked.
“So at some point,” she said, “I’m trusting you’ll tell me.”
I believe that qualifies as asking.
When I had called earlier to ask if I could come by and see her, I had pointedly avoided answering the obvious question, which of course is why I would be in Portland without having mentioned anything about the plan in advance.
“Very short-notice trip,” I said.
She poured two cups of coffee, because all I was doing was staring at coffee.
“You had the whole long drive up and a cell phone, though.”
“Yes. I did. Look, Myra. This brings me to what I came by here to say. I mean, I guess I mostly came by here because I can’t imagine being in town and not seeing you. But I did have something on my mind. Which is this. It should be obvious by now that the reason I’m not telling you why I came up here is because it’s one of those things you wouldn’t approve of. And I’m wondering … maybe this is too much to ask … but I’m wondering if maybe you could just let me go off in these directions that seem ill-advised to you. Even if it’s a mistake. Even if you’re right about that. But maybe you could just …” I wasn’t sure if I could say this last bit. But I felt I had to try. “… love me anyway.”
To my surprise, she put down her coffee cup and threw her arms around me.
I don’t believe we had ever embraced before. Myra was not the huggy type, and I was never the type to push in that regard.
“Oh, Richard,” she said. “I always love you. No matter what. I always will.”
“You will?” I sounded five years old to myself. Seven, tops.
“Of course I will. I never realized you could think otherwise.” Her voice projected bizarrely close to my ear. I could even feel the breath of her words as she spoke them. It made me feel vulnerable and small. “Oh, Richard. You mean so much to me. You’re the only person in the world who loved my daughter as much as I did. And that includes her own father and her two sisters. I don’t know if I could have survived these last few months without you. I think I would have gone insane. I just don’t want to see you get hurt. That’s all.”
Amazingly, she was still holding on.
“Sometimes people have to get hurt, though. Sometimes they just do.”
“I always feel like I want to give them the benefit of my experience.”
“That never seems to work, though. At least, not for me. Have you had any success with it?”
“Very little,” she said. “Now that you bring it up.”
• • •
I had just tucked into bed in Lorrie’s old room, which had long since been converted to a generic and rather feminine-looking guest room. High canopy bed, dust ruffles, pillow shams. Matching window treatments. I was under the covers in just my boxer shorts, which Myra had so nicely dried for me.
I heard a soft rapping at the door.
“Come in, Myra,” I said, pulling the covers up over my bare upper body.
But the head that peered through the half-open door did not belong to Myra. It belonged instead to Lorrie’s sister Rebecca.
“Richard! Mom said you were here. Are you sleeping?”
“No. Not at all. I just crawled into bed. Come in.” She did. And sat on the edge of the bed and gave me a big hug, which felt awkwardly intimate. Not sexually intimate. Just awkwardly close.
&
nbsp; She was Lorrie’s oldest sister, which made her a year or two older than me, and enough of a ringer for Lorrie to make my heart flip over twice. Figuratively speaking. But I swear it felt like it was flipping around in there.
“I haven’t seen you since the funeral,” she said. “Are you OK?”
“Depends on the standard of measure, I guess. I walk and talk on a daily basis. I didn’t know you were here visiting. Myra didn’t tell me.”
“Visiting? I live here.”
“Since when?”
“Since the bottom dropped out of the real-estate market. Don’t get me started. It’s totally humiliating. And very temporary. I hope.”
“Probably a good time for Myra to have one of her daughters at home.”
“Yeah, I thought of that. She acts like everything is under control. But I know her too well. So, listen … don’t take this the wrong way, but what did you say to Mom to make her feel guilty? She has her guilty face on.”
I pulled the covers a little more snugly to my chest. “I didn’t mean to make her feel bad.”
“Don’t take it on. I just wondered.”
“I just sort of … asked her to let me make my own mistakes.”
Rebecca burst out laughing. It was a deeply familiar sound. Not only did she laugh like Lorrie, but she flipped her hair back the same way, and the expression she formed with her mouth made my teeth ache in a sudden acute attack of missing what I’d lost.
“Why are you looking at me like that?” she asked.
“Just for a minute you looked so much like her.”
“Oh, Richard. Honey.”
She slid closer to me on the bed. Touched my face. I saw her face move in close, and just for a moment I thought she was going to kiss me on the mouth. But the kiss landed warmly on my cheek.
“Poor Richard,” she said, and rose to go. “By the way. I wish I had a nickel for every time I told Mom I needed to learn things for myself. Good luck with that. But she needs to keep hearing it anyway. I’ll leave you to get some sleep,” she said. “Goodnight.”
Then she was gone.
I sat up a while longer, wondering over an odd dichotomy. The more I found myself surrounded by people, the lonelier I felt.
• • •
I arrived home about eight o’clock the following evening to find Abigail sitting on my doorstep.
My heart fell.
My threshold for human contact had worn painfully thin. I felt like a car that had been running its lights too long on battery alone. I felt fresh out of charge, and as though I needed to plug in for days before I could have one more conversation with one more human being.
But there she was.
I wondered how long she had been sitting there. Waiting to talk to me.
I pulled my car into the garage, then came out through the front, hitting the button to close the automatic door behind me. I stepped up to my own front porch, and she looked up at me.
Right away I noticed a difference in her energy. She looked like Abigail, but felt like someone else entirely. The fire had gone out.
“How long have you been sitting here, Abigail?”
“I’m not sure,” she said faintly. “I’m not wearing a watch.”
“I’ve been gone for days.”
“I haven’t been here for days. Maybe an hour or two. Or three.”
“Would you like to come in?”
“Yes, please.”
I let us both in with my key, and she sat on my couch, slumped over herself and looking about half her normal size; which made her look the size of a child. I offered her coffee or fruit juice or wine, but she shook her head.
I found myself leaning against my writing desk, facing her, because I wasn’t sure I wanted to get too close to this new energy, or lack of same. I didn’t have much margin for error in that department.
“I’ve been wondering how everything went so horribly wrong,” she said.
“That actually sounds like a worthwhile use of time.”
She looked up at me suddenly. Examined my face, as if trying to assure herself I wasn’t being sarcastic. “That means a lot to me,” she said.
“What does?” I had no idea what I had done.
“Just the fact that you would give me credit for doing something right. I feel like nobody gives me credit any more. I feel like I’ve become the villain, and I don’t know how to make it stop.”
I sighed deeply. And knew I had to risk sitting closer. I joined her on the couch.
“People used to give me credit for being a good mom,” she said. “No, a great mom. And now all of a sudden they’re treating me like a terrible mom.”
I sighed again. “Well,” I said. “I guess it’s strange that I would be dispensing advice on motherhood to you. You obviously know more about it than I do. Only … have you ever noticed how easy it is to solve somebody else’s problems? I’m wondering if maybe I can make an observation here, based on the fact that I’m looking at the forest from a reasonable distance and perspective, whereas your view is blocked by all those damned trees.”
I pictured myself standing in the rain in Isabelle’s driveway while she said, “It’s easier to see for somebody else than it is to see for yourself.” I wanted to weave that into my point somehow, but I knew it wouldn’t make much sense out of context, and I was hardly prepared to supply the full context of my meeting with Isabelle now. Or, really, anytime. To anyone.
“Go ahead,” she said, still gazing at my hunter-green rug. “I’m listening.”
“It seems to me there are two phases of motherhood. The one where you have to nurture and protect your kids, and the one where you have to let them go be their own person. You know. Let them be grown-ups. I think some people are really good at one but not the other. I’m sure it takes practice.”
“It just all happened so fast,” she said. “I was taking care of her, all her life, and I got along fine with that, and all I wanted was for her to live, and I thought if she got a heart everything would be perfect; and then she got a heart and then it didn’t turn out the way I thought.”
“Things rarely do,” I said. As sympathetically as possible.
“I didn’t get to ease into it gradually, the way most mothers do. Do you have any idea how hard that is? To build your whole life around somebody, and then you just turn around and they’re gone? Just like that? No warning?”
I didn’t even answer. I knew it would hit her soon enough. So I just waited.
I saw it on her face, when she got it. I could see her face fall.
“Oh, that’s right,” she said. “You do.”
I expected her to cry. She didn’t. She didn’t seem to have access to enough energy. She just continued to stare at the carpet.
Then she jumped, as if she’d just remembered something important. She fished around in her purse for a long moment — there must have been a lot to fish around in — and pulled out a postcard. She waved it around as if it were live, incapable of holding still in her hand. On one pass, I thought I recognized a photo of Mount Whitney.
“Tell me what you make of a thing like this. How do you give somebody a blank postcard of someplace you’ve been? What kind of message is that supposed to send?”
She was poking it in my direction, so I took it, and looked at it, but I’m not sure why. If Abigail said it was blank, who was I to question? But I was curious about it all the same, and wanted to hold it, the way Isabelle had held the one Vida sent me. As if it carried its own well-guarded secrets, and I could coax a few of them out of hiding.
I looked at the photo, and noted that it was not identical to the photo on mine. But it was still Mount Whitney.
I turned it over to see if it had a postmark. It didn’t. But that wasn’t the most surprising thing about the back of it. The surprise was this: it wasn’t blank.
I just stared for a moment, wondering what this said about Abigail. Was she delusional? Had she really imagined the string of men she’d lied about, reducing the false inform
ation to something other than a conscious lie? Or had she lied again, about this, to make a point about her abuse at the hands of her daughter? In which case, wouldn’t handing me the card seem an odd choice?
I took the opportunity to read it.
“Dear Mom,” it said. “I’m sorry I’m not the same daughter I used to be, even though you need me to be, and I’m also sorry I keep expecting you to suddenly be a whole different mom, even though I guess you can’t be. I have to go find something, but when I come back, which I will, we’ll see who we can be to each other now.”
And she signed it, “All my love, Vida.”
Meanwhile Abigail had been going on and on about … well, I have no idea what, actually. I hadn’t caught so much as a word.
I looked up at her, and she stopped talking abruptly when she saw the look on my face.
“What?” she asked. A little defensive.
“It’s not blank.”
“What do you mean it’s not blank?”
“I mean it’s not blank. It has writing on it. From Vida.”
She snatched it out of my hands.
I watched her read for a moment, and then she melted into tears.
“Oh, my God,” she said. And then she just cried for a while longer.
I wanted to ask how she could make a mistake like that, but all the phrasings I tried out in my head felt insensitive.
“She must have slipped it out of my purse before she left again.”
Ah. Finally, something that made sense. And it was a relief, too. I wanted the woman sitting on my couch to be something at least resembling a reliable narrator.
“Be patient with her, Abigail. Everything is changing suddenly in her life, too.”
“How am I supposed to be something different to her?”
“Oh. I don’t know. I wish I did. It’s a whole big process, this letting-go thing. I’m not exactly the expert guru you need in that department. I think I’ve barely scratched the surface myself.”
“I don’t think I know how. I only know how to protect her. It was all she ever needed. She never needed any letting go before. So I don’t think I know how.”
“Maybe you need some help.”
“What kind of help?”
“Professional variety.”
Silence. Then, “That makes me feel …”
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