by Sara Evans
“Hear what I’m saying to you, son. Think ahead, plan, cover yourself.”
More left-handed advice. “Like you did with Claire?” Max tossed back his soda with one gulp.
Dad refilled his glass. “Our clients need to know that they are valued and that the firm is looking after their interests. The future of the firm, our employees, our livelihood, depends on it. Clarence can do that well.”
Max shoved the chair aside and confronted his dad. “When has my private life ever interfered with this firm?”
“Last fall when you had to leave a million-dollar case to spend a week in the hospital detoxing.” Dad’s steely gaze never wavered. “You don’t handle stress well. Work on that.” He slowly raised his glass to his lips. “Clarence will retire in a few years. You’ll be ready then.”
Max set his glass on the bar. “How are you going to announce it?”
“No big hoopla. Low-key. Give a call to all our major accounts. Clarence is on board, ready to go if the governor calls.”
“Rebel?” A knock sounded before the door eased open. Gina peered inside. “The governor’s on the phone.”
“Well, what do you know?” Rebel checked Max visually. “Are you on the team?”
“Yeah.” Max aimed for the door. For now.
Nineteen
The closet’s naked lightbulb dropped a hard glare over Jade’s shoulders and cast her silhouette over the old sewing box of photos.
Sitting cross-legged on the old shag carpet in Mama’s closet, Jade held a black-and-white photo in her hand of Mama with long blonde hair wearing a headband and fatigue jacket. Just like the hitchhiker. Jade put the picture in her pile of things to take home with her. Her pile of one . . . so far.
Dr. Meadows called earlier to say Mama could go home in the morning. Jade had run upstairs to get clothes for her to wear home, and while digging around in the closet, she’d stumbled upon an anthology of Mama’s past.
Inside the sewing box of pictures were shots of Mama with Aiden and Jade as babies, though most of the images were from Mama’s commune and hitchhiking days. Jade only recognized two people, Mama’s friends Carlisle and Eclipse. Then she found a stunner. Mama sitting two feet from a smiling George Harrison, sitting cross-legged, playing his guitar. Oh, June had to see this one.
Jade thought of the perfect frame she had at the Blue Umbrella. She’d hang George and Mama in the shop.
Next she found a portfolio of mint-condition, original show prints of bands who played San Francisco’s Fillmore Auditorium between ’66 and ’67.
Turning over one poster advertising the Grateful Dead and Jefferson Airplane, Jade found an inscription on the back. To Beryl, with love, Wes Wilson.
Signed by the artist. This was an amazing find. Jade set it in the pile. How did Mama know these people? How had her experiences with them impacted her life? She guessed the poster to be worth a good bit of money. But she’d frame it and hang it on the wall next to the ex-Beatle.
In a leather suitcase, Mama had folded up several muumuu-type dresses, miniskirts and tops, and a tattered pair of moccasins. In a banged-up shoe box, Jade discovered letters to and from Granny and Paps, from the Vietnam vet Mama had fallen for when she was seventeen, concert ticket stubs, and a variety of tarnished silver and turquoise jewelry.
Pulling a letter from an envelope stamped July 1967, Jade’s eyes scanned her mother’s young, determined handwriting.
Dear Mother,
I’m fine. Stop worrying. Marilyn and I have met some far-out people, having a groovy time. We go home to Aunt Lillith and Uncle Dave’s once a week for laundry and a square meal.
We have a cool crash pad right on Haight. Lots of the kids go there at night and it’s such a serene scene.
We help the Diggers serve breakfast in the morning, and I just started helping at the free clinic. It’s like I’m home, Mother. These people understand me. I understand them. This is the scene I was born to live in, I know it. I feel it.
I don’t think I’m coming for my senior year. Why do I need to graduate high school when our boys are fighting a useless war? The government is ripping off our generation and is going to kill us all if we don’t do something about it.
Jade laughed softly. Mama sipped a lot of the political Kool-Aid of her day. But Paps put an end to her plan to drop out of high school. He drove out to San Francisco and brought her home. Paps wasn’t a big man, but he was powerfully built with a gentle demeanor. Until pushed. Once he arrived in San Francisco, Jade knew Mama had no choice but to come home to Prairie City. Mama was lucky. She had Paps.
Jade folded the letter, missing her grandpa, her granny, and her innocent youth. She was only ten when Paps died, but she remembered the safety of his tree-trunk arms.
“There you are.” June stood in the closet doorway, her hands on her hips, her hair tied in a handkerchief. She wore flared slacks and a short-sleeved sweater-top. “Are these Beryl’s clothes for tomorrow?” June stooped to pick up the slacks and blouse.
“Yeah. They should fit.” Jade offered up the picture of Mama with George. “I found this stuff while going through her things. She really wanted to do something, be somebody.”
June stared at the picture for a long time. “We all want to leave our mark in the world, Jade. Especially when we’re young.”
“I was reading her letters, and she was such a combination of wisdom and unfocused zeal. One sentence she’s volunteering to feed the hungry. In the next, she announces she’s not going to finish high school because the country was at war.”
“That’s the way it was with our generation.” June settled on the closet floor by the box of pictures, curling her legs behind her. “Look, there you are, Jade. With your mama. Or is that Willow?”
“Me. My dad took these. Aiden found his Nikon when he was nine, and that’s how he got started in photography.”
“Hospice called.” June straightened and replaced the pictures. “They’ll be here in the morning.”
“Oh, here’s a good one.” Jade handed June a picture of Mama and Daddy. A rare find.
June motioned to the poster of Scott McKenzie. “I can still hear him singing, ‘If you’re going to San Francisco, be sure to wear flowers in your hair.’”
“It’s the right thing to do, isn’t it?” Jade shuffled through another stack of photos. “Calling hospice, discussing the details of Mama dying at home.”
“It’s what she wants, so, yes, it is.”
Talking about hospice iced Jade’s sentimental journey into the past. She closed the sewing box lid. “I feel like we’re just giving up. And I hate it.”
“It’s been a long eight years, Jade. She’s tired. Most chronic leukemia patients don’t live this long.”
“Well, I’m not ready for her to go. I can’t make up for lost time if she dies.” Getting to her feet, Jade stepped over the memorabilia and passed June to exit the closet. Did the earth under her feet have to crack open all at once? “Even though I hated her at times and we weren’t close for many years, she is still my mama. Daddy’s in Washington, out of my life. She’s my only real parent, June. And she’s dying. I’m thirty-one. How is this fair?”
“I don’t suppose it is. How is it fair Rice died at thirty-eight, leaving her nineteen-month-old son behind?”
“It’s not fair. But don’t mix issues, June.” Jade peered at her through misty eyes. She slipped off the headband she’d tied around her head and carefully folded it against her palm. “I just hate the alone feeling. Even more that I’m afraid.”
“Sugar, you’re not alone.” June stood, cradling Mama’s clothes. “You got your husband, me, Willow, and Aiden.”
“I’m not going back to Max, June.”
“Just like that, you’ve decided? Doesn’t he have a say?”
“He voiced his opinion when he slept with Rice.”
“Jade, come on, aren’t you being a bit immature?”
“If being mature means I have to endure forty years with an adulterer, then, yes, I
’ll be immature.”
“Max is not Rebel, Jade.”
“No, he’s not. Yet.” Jade turned out the closet light and closed the door. She wanted out of the room. The walls were inching closer, squeezing out the thin air.
“Jade, Max has always struggled with being sidetracked. He’s brilliant . . . And I’m not saying that as a mother. He is. But his weaknesses rival his strengths. That’s how he got onto the pain pills. How he ended up with Rice in his room on his bachelor weekend.”
“I don’t have to go down with him, June.” Jade started down the back stairs. She was hungry. “I grew up dealing with a lot of other people’s weaknesses. I’m all out of endurance.”
June broke into the kitchen behind Jade. “So you judge Max?”
“Judge? No. But make a sound assessment? Yes. I won’t be tread upon.”
“Is that what you think of me? I’m tread upon?”
“Aren’t you?” Jade jerked opened the fridge and took out sandwich meat and fixings. Beyond the kitchen window, Tank Victor plowed his field.
“Love makes us do strange things.” June walked around the table and took the bread from the wooden box. She tugged a couple of napkins from the holder on the counter and got down paper plates from the top of the refrigerator.
Jade tore open the lunch meat package. “By the way, Aiden and Willow will be here this weekend.”
“Beryl will be happy to hear that.” June handed Jade two slices of bread.
“I hope she’s still here by the time they arrive.” Jade peeled off a couple of slices of roast beef and matted them into her bread.
“She’s too stubborn to die without seeing her children.” June handed Jade the mayonnaise jar and a knife.
“Thank you.”
June walked behind Jade, her fingers gently dusting her shoulder. “Now, you want tea with your sandwich or a soda? Or pop, as you say in Iowa?”
Mama was home and settled into her bed. She fussed about Jade and June fussing, cracking on herself about her old, worn-out body. But she surrendered to her pillows without a word.
Her legs constantly rustled under the quilt. Every once in a while, she’d moan, low and long.
The hospice nurse arrived around noon and spent a good bit of the afternoon talking with Mama. Then she sat on the living room sofa with Jade and June, reviewing the medications Dr. Meadow prescribed, setting expectations and explaining the goal to keep Mama comfortable and let her live out her final days the way she wanted.
“If she wants to go outside, let her. If she wants a chili dog—”
“Mercy be, a chili dog?” On a good, healthy day, June turned up her nose to chili dogs.
“Yes.” The hospice nurse gave June The Look. You’re not going to be difficult, are you? “A chili dog.”
“I’ll bring her everything on the Dairy Queen menu if she wants,” Jade said.
“Only if she wants.” The nurse smiled. “I know this is hard, but the less stressed and more comfortable your mother is, the better it will be for all involved. Be prepared for Beryl to see things.”
“Like what?” Jade asked. The hitchhiker came to mind, but that was her vision.
“She might see someone from her past, a parent or treasured family member, maybe an old friend. I’ve had patients see demons and angels, even God.”
Intense. “Will she get frightened or upset?” Jade glanced at June.
“She might. Usually the patients have comforting visions. Just talk with her, help her through anything that might be disturbing.” The nurse reached down for her bag. “Here’s my card. Call if you need me.”
June walked the hospice nurse out. Jade brought Mama her tea and set her up with the remote control and a tattered paperback.
“Atlas Shrugged?” Jade read the book’s spine.
Beryl held out her hand. “Been on page eighty-five since high school.”
“Ayn Rand? Seriously?” Jade flipped through the pages of the book before putting it on the nightstand. “They’ll come take your socialist card away.”
“Got to see what the other side is thinking.” The bang of the kitchen’s screen door echoed up the stairs along with excited female voices and laughter. “Having a party down there?”
Footsteps echoed up the back staircase and June appeared in the door. “Carla Colter is here to see you, Beryl. Sharon and Elizabeth too. They brought a passel of food. Mercy, we’ll have to pawn some off on Linc.”
“Well, send them on up.” Mama scooped her hand through the air. Once. Her hand dropped to the quilt. But Mama never refused a party.
“Wait a few minutes, June. Then send them up.” Jade stretched out next to Mama and held her hand, listening to Mama’s soft and even breathing. “Are you sure you’re up to this?”
“Jade, don’t coddle me. The hospice nurse gave me the same speech she gave you and June,” Mama said. “Carla and the girls are good friends. Though, please, go down there and make sure Carla didn’t make her tuna casserole. A hideous dish, but none of us ever had the heart to tell her. She keeps cooking it and bringing it to parties.”
“Doesn’t she get suspicious when no one eats it?”
“Shh, we just scoop it into the garbage.”
Jade laughed. “Your idea, I’m sure.” Jade had eaten a lot of meals at the Colters’ the year she’d been with Dustin, but she didn’t remember bad tuna casserole. Yet she’d been so happy and in love, Carla could’ve served baked mud and Jade would have thought it was chocolate.
Above Mama’s bed, the ceiling fan swished the warm air around. Daylight slipped beneath the partially drawn shades. In the corner by the dresser, the floor lamp cut a white V into the shadows and highlighted the edge of the area rug.
Below them, the kitchen was full and alive with female voices and clattering dishes. But the bedroom remained still and peaceful.
“Are you scared, Mama?”
It took a moment for her to answer. “A little.” She squeezed Jade’s fingers. “I want you to do me a favor.”
“Anything.”
“Will you call him, please?”
“Who?” Jade sat up, peering at Mama, who spoke with her eyes closed. She’d anticipated this, Mama’s deathbed urging for her to work it all out with Max. Another warning from the hospice nurse: the dying become peacemakers.
“Your dad. Please, call Harlan. He’s all you have.”
Jade picked at a pucker in the quilt, inhaling slowly. “He’s all you have” stung her heart with the same sense of loneliness she’d experienced sitting in the closet yesterday.
Several times last night she’d walked the edge of panic, the burnt amber sparking on the horizon of her soul and heart. Her heart raced as she tried to outmaneuver the bottoms-out fear.
She searched her mind for the triggers, but other than her whole life, there wasn’t anything specific. If she closed her eyes, she could almost envision some dark thing hovering over her, spitting and vomiting its brand of evil. At least that’s how she felt in those moments, like an ooze ran down her hair.
Jade hopped off Mama’s bed, trying to escape the memory. On its own, it had the power to kick open panic’s door. Purple swirls hung in the corners of the room waiting for their moment to descend.
“Jade?” Mama called, eyes still closed. “You all right?”
No, no, I’m not all right. You’re leaving me. I’m alone. “Just stretching my legs.” Jade paced, whispering, “Jesus, Jesus, Jesus” as she corralled her thoughts and spurred them away from the mire of anxiety.
Loneliness and anxiety were kissing cousins.
After a moment, peace flowed from the well she’d been digging for the past two years, since she’d met Jesus. It only took a few seconds, but seemed like an eternity. The darkness ebbed and the boundaries of her true self came into view.
“It’s not a fair request, I know,” Mama whispered. “But I’m a dying woman.”
“Mama, we’re just not meant to be, Daddy and me.” Jade exhaled, sitting on the si
de of the bed. “He came to the wedding, and after a few e-mails, we just stopped communicating. What do you say? ‘Hey, how’s life been treating you since you walked out on me when I was eight?’ We can’t undo all the years of distance and silence. Besides, I have Aiden and Willow. And the Bensons . . . well, June.” She rubbed her forehead with her fingers.
Was she destined to be alone, without a family? She was finally finding her place as a daughter with Mama, who was leaving this world. Where was the place Jade could exist where she was 100 percent home? No masks. No secrets. No addictions, or abortions, or miscarriages, or ex-fiancés and ex-husbands.
“I never asked much of you, Jade. Didn’t ask you to make straight As or to . . .” Mama struggled for each word, for each breath. “. . . cheerleader . . . band, or home . . . queen.” The rattle in her chest vibrated like metal dragging along the pavement.
“Mama.” Jade’s gaze fell on the oxygen tank, trying to remember the nurse’s instructions. “Do you need the mask?” Dr. Meadows said she’d be weak.
“No . . .” Mama peeked through narrowed eye slits. “I’m fine.”
Jade smoothed her hand over Mama’s pale forehead. “I never gave you a chance. Never tried to understand you. You wanted me to try to see the world through your eyes, but I refused to try. I liked being resentful.”
“Did the same thing to Mother . . .” Mama barely lifted her finger to point. “In the dresser . . . for you.”
“Hey up there, is it safe to come up?” Carla’s voice shot up the stairway and into the room.
“Five minutes, Carla,” Jade called out the door, then went to Mama’s dresser. “Which drawer?”
“Top . . . left.”
Sliding the drawer open, Jade found a small, velvet black ring box and inside, Mama’s jade ring. “You kept this?”
Jade hadn’t heard the story of Daddy giving Mama the ring during a Fleetwood Mac concert in decades. “I thought you tossed this into Miller’s Pond.”
“I wanted to . . .” she whispered. “But we named you after—” Talking drained her strength. “Jade . . .”
Jade slipped the ring onto her pinky finger and held up her hand for Mama to see. “It’s beautiful.”