“Of course. You know I do.”
“I keep seeing him in that hospital room.”
“There was nothing we could do.” Annie’s voice sounds small and far away. There’s a note in it Emily has not heard before. She’s aware that there are many things about her mother she’s noticing for the first time. For instance, when did she lose ten or fifteen pounds? Why does she take so long in the bathroom getting ready for bed at night? When did she get so tense, so anal? Annie showed up in Seville with a guidebook, all the famous tourist places underlined. In five days, they’ve been to the Alcazar, the cathedral, the Plaza de España, and several small art galleries. They’ve walked the halls of the old tobacco factory where Bizet set Carmen and where Emily theoretically attends classes at the Universidad de Sevilla. It’s not the season, or her mother would have them attending a bullfight.
“I’ve been offered a sabbatical.” Her mother, changing the subject.
Emily feels her gut wrench. “Really?”
Her mother does this. Trots off somewhere in the middle of every important moment in Emily’s life. The year she started junior high, her mother was in India, researching the influence of Indian culture on British literature. During Emily’s prom, in London accepting an award for her definitive book on the Brontë family. She never takes Emily with her. Emily’s father wasn’t able—or willing—to leave his architectural business to travel for months at a time, and her mother didn’t want to be saddled with a child in a foreign place. No wonder she insisted that Emily do this year abroad. She wanted her out of the way so she could plan her next academic adventure.
“For next year,” her mother says.
“Where would you go this time?”
Her mother puts down her cup, looks at her. Sighs. She opens the small bag she wears around her neck and fingers through her wallet, counting pesetas to pay the bill.
“We can talk about it later,” she says.
Not caring that she sounds petulant, Emily says, “I don’t want to spend our last day doing touristy stuff.”
Her mother doesn’t even pause. “Okay. You decide.”
Emily looks out the window of the café. Suddenly she’s tired. She wants to go back to the hotel, curl up on the bed, and face the wall. Instead, she says, “We could go hear flamenco.”
“Terrific. When?”
“It starts about midnight.”
Annie glances at her watch. “Only fourteen hours to wait. How about if we go shopping in the meantime?”
They’re in an Andalusian lace shop, the last place Emily wants to be. Her mother embarrasses her, spouting out a few words left over from high school Spanish, the woman behind the counter humoring her. Emily believes all these shopkeepers hold tourists in contempt, especially Americans with their loud voices, sloppy sweatshirts, big white and neon flashy tennis shoes. The clerk looks elegant in a simple black dress, black leather shoes, her hair swept into a chignon. Emily guesses she may be older than her mother.
“Mom,” Emily whispers into her mother’s ear. “Let’s go.”
Annie has somehow managed to communicate which laces she’s interested in, and the clerk lifts down bolts of ivory, white, ecru, off-white, linen-white, beige, cream, and natural lace. “Emily, look.” Annie holds her hand beneath the delicate fabrics, the pigment of her fingers highlighting the detail of the woven patterns. “Let’s buy some for your wedding gown.”
Is she kidding? “Mom, I don’t even have a boyfriend.”
Her mother ignores her. “Doesn’t it make you think of Jane Austen?”
“I’m not getting married.” Emily thinks this is the truest thing she’s said to her mother since she arrived in Seville. Why get married? Over half end in divorce, and of the percent that make it, one of the partners ends up alone. Why would she want to risk that?
Her mother tugs on her sleeve. “Emily, do you like the purer whites or these off-whites? Some of them tend toward gray and others more yellow? Look. Cool or warm. Let’s see which goes better with your skin.”
Emily dives deep inside, her body twitching to run from the store, knock every bolt off the shelf, and wound her mother in the process. But the clerk is watching, so instead, Emily stands silent and stiff while her mother makes gross grammatical errors speaking in halting Spanish phrases and drapes lace after lace over her shoulders.
Eventually, Annie settles on a heavy ivory lace, the cut pattern floral but indeterminate. Emily winces when her mother hands over her credit card. Annie has chosen one of the most extravagantly priced laces in the shop, and she asks for five yards.
“Mom, we’re not talking about a tent.”
“Emily. Be still. Let me do this.”
They get out of the lace shop and trudge down the street. Emily walks fast, leaving her mother steps behind. She needs to kick a dog. Smash a window. Step in front of a bus.
At the entrance to their hotel, Emily crushes through the door, slams up the stairs, not waiting for the elevator or her mother. She unlocks the bolt and throws herself facedown on her bed. When her mother enters the room, Emily does not move. Annie crosses to the window, looks out at the plaza below, hangs her jacket in the closet, careful to arrange the shoulders evenly on the hanger. Emily waits for her mother to sit down by her on the bed. She anticipates the moment when her mother will ask what’s wrong, and by God, Emily will tell her. She rehearses the rant—you don’t ask me if I want lace; you don’t ask me if I have any intention of getting married; you don’t ask me if I want to stay here. What about me? What about what I want?
Instead, Annie sits in the chair by the window and opens a book. Unbelievable. Emily shudders, her body trembling, electric beneath the skin. She hates her mother, hates her, and why won’t she come over to the bed and hold her?
The room grows darker as daylight wanes, and Annie does not move to turn on the lamp. Eventually, Emily tires of waiting for her mother to stir. She props on the edge of the bed and blows her nose in a tissue. Her mother sits in the shadows by the window, head down, the book open in her hands.
“You know what I really hate about being here?” Her mother doesn’t answer. Emily talks to the silence. “I hate the way it smells. There’s horse manure all over the streets. People throw rotting garbage out.”
No response. Emily goes on. “In that house, I had to eat pork fat. The rind. And some fish stuff that tasted like sewer.”
Still nothing. “They didn’t even try to like me. They expected me to sit at my desk every night and study. They didn’t want me to go out.”
“Did you go out?”
Emily perks up. “Yes. I went out and stayed out late. I walked home alone across the river. I drank cheap wine with hundreds of strangers in the plaza.”
“Good.”
“Good?” That hardly seems like a mother response. Back in Lincoln, her mother would have had a fit if she stayed out late drinking. With strangers!
“What do you want me to say?”
“I want you to act like a mother. My mother.”
Annie closes her book and lays it on the desk. Rubs her hands across her eyes. Emily feels a pang of guilt. How sad and small her mother looks.
Annie’s voice falls into the gap between them. “When my father died, I was only a little older than you are now.”
“Yeah, but he was sick a long time.”
“You think that makes it easier?” Her mother’s voice flares. Emily shrinks back on the bed. Everything she says seems to go wrong.
Annie takes a deep breath and begins again. “I went with your grandma to that café out on the highway in Reach, remember? Oasis, I think it’s called. Some of the widows from the church were there, Corrine, Louise, you don’t know them. We sat down. Corrine leaned across the table, looked Grandma in the eye, and said, ‘You know the deal, Iris.’ Grandma nodded her head. ‘I know the deal,’ she said. Later I asked her what Corrine meant, and Grandma said, ‘Keep busy.’”
Emily waits, expecting more. Expecting something that ma
kes sense.
“That’s it? Keep busy. That’s the best you can do?”
“We’re looking for reasons. Everybody is, all the time, but us more than ever before.”
“What kind of reasons? Reasons Dad died?”
“No, darling. Reasons not to give up.” Annie stands, then, and turns on the desk lamp. “Now, let’s get dressed in something fancy and go out for tapas. By then, it should be time for flamenco.”
The crowded flamenco bar lifts Emily’s spirits. They are led through a series of rooms, crowded with drinkers and laughter, to a back room set up with long tables and benches, the roof a lattice of scarlet bougainvillea. Emily loves the disorder, the bumping and shoving, the singer’s lament cruising over the tops of heads. The young guitarist has dreadlocks and scruffy jeans. The older singer wears black pants, a white shirt open at the throat where he lays his hand over his heart. At the height of his performance he stands, arms gesticulating wildly in front of him. Emily’s emotions soar with him, and out of the corner of her eye, she catches sight of her mother. Annie’s not watching the flamenco artists. Instead, she’s staring at the table next to theirs where a young man is cooking a sausage over a blazing ceramic bowl.
Afterward, on the way back to their hotel, a man accosts them in the street. With little crime other than petty theft, Emily has learned not to be afraid here, but she senses her mother’s tension. Emily takes her mother’s arm. She listens intently to the man, who talks fast while waving his arm up and down the street. She tries to walk her mother away, but the man follows them. Emily struggles to understand.
“I think he’s got us confused with someone else. He says we’ve parked our car on this street. He says he owns this street and we have to pay him.”
“Tell him we don’t have a car.”
“I did. But he says we do, and we have to pay him. I think that’s what he’s saying.”
Emily watches her mother turn her head and look down the narrow cobbled street. There’s no one in sight.
“Just give him some money.” Emily wants this over with.
“Did you put him up to this?”
“What? No.” Emily’s stomach starts to clutch. The man seems larger, more menacing. A jagged scar on his right cheek screams of knife fight. Her mother keeps on smiling, oozing her ridiculous Midwestern charm straight at the man while she speaks to Emily.
“You did, didn’t you? Part of your ploy to come home.”
The man moves closer, his voice louder. Her mother grins like an imbecile. Before Emily can think what to say to convince her mother that they are victims of extortion, Annie glances away from the man to look at her. He seizes the moment to snatch her mother’s purse. He sweeps it off her mother’s neck, but her arm catches in the strap and the man shoves her hard while he yanks the bag free. Annie cries out, falls to the cobblestone street, and Emily stands frozen inside a cartoon cel, not certain if she should run after the man or tend to her mother. While she stares after him, he throws the purse down in the street.
“Mom. Mom, are you all right?”
Her mother has one hand against her head. Blood seeps through her fingers. Her other hand points down the street. “Get my bag.”
Emily runs down the street, afraid her mother will disappear in the seconds that it takes to reach down and retrieve the bag. It’s light. He’s taken her mother’s wallet. By the time she reaches her mother, Annie’s standing, wobbly as a cheap three-legged stool.
“Did he take anything?” Blood drips down one side of Annie’s face. She grabs the purse and squeezes it.
“We should find a hospital. You’re bleeding.”
“Head wounds bleed. It’s superficial. Oh, God. He took my billfold.” Annie’s voice rises at the end.
“You might need stitches. We can ask at the hotel.”
“It’s not here.”
Emily grabs her mother’s arm. She’s got to get her mother to a hospital. She’s not taking any chances. Her mother wrenches out of Emily’s grasp.
“I don’t need a fucking hospital.”
“Mom?”
“He took my billfold. Don’t you understand?”
There, on the streets of Seville, her mother starts to sob. Horrified, Emily thinks her mother must have a concussion. She must be in way worse shape than she looks. She said “fucking.” She’s hysterical. She never loses control like this. Never. Not even in the hospital. Or at the funeral. Emily tries to remember what she learned in her high school health class about shock. She takes off her light jacket and wraps it around her mother’s shoulders. Her mother trembles while Emily walks her over to the curb and gently presses her to sit. Emily lowers herself next to her and throws one arm over her mother’s shoulder. By now, Annie has stopped sobbing, but she hiccups and gasps to catch her breath. No one has come by. In this crowded city, how could they have chanced upon such a deserted street?
Annie fishes a tissue out of a pocket and blows her nose. The bleeding on her head has abated, but her hair is matted with dried blood.
“Shit,” her mother says. Even her voice wobbles.
“We can go to the embassy in the morning. Get a new passport.”
Her mother shakes her head. “I don’t carry my passport. Just a copy.”
“We’ll cancel your credit cards at the hotel.”
“I don’t carry those either. Not at night.”
“What’d he get?”
“Cash.”
“How much?”
“I don’t know. Forty, fifty bucks.”
That’s it? Emily has seen her mother hand over more than that to homeless drifters. “So . . .” She can’t think how to finish the sentence.
Her mother shudders. Emily feels it ripple through her like a tsunami. “Pictures,” Annie whispers.
“Pictures?” Emily echoes.
Her mother shrugs. “You. Your dad. The three of us.”
Every muscle in Emily’s body hardens. She feels herself poised, a hunting dog sniffing strange prey. Something is way off-kilter here. “Aren’t there copies?”
Her mother shakes her head. Sniffles.
“You carried one-of-a-kind pictures in your billfold?” This, the same woman who makes photocopies of her credit cards, leaves her passport in the hotel safe?
Annie only nods and breaks out into fresh sobs. Emily wraps a protective arm around her mom. Helps her to her feet. “C’mon,” she says. “We’re going to get your head looked at.”
The hotel clerk rustles up somebody on the staff to inspect the gash on her mother’s head. Emily suspects the man has no medical training, but he does clean the wound. It’s ugly but not deep. He dresses it with antiseptic cream and a bandage and sends them up to their room. Emily and her mother don’t say much. They’re both spent. Emily waits for Annie to finish up in the bathroom before she goes in herself. When she comes out, her mother is asleep, her mouth slack and drooling onto the pillowcase. Emily stands over her a few moments, watches her breath rise and fall. The blanket has fallen away from her mother’s shoulders, and Emily reaches down to snug it back in place. She throws herself onto the other twin bed, and before she can begin to think through the events of this night, sleep overtakes her.
The next morning they rise early so they can have breakfast together before Annie’s flight to Madrid. She’ll catch another to Amsterdam, then to Lincoln, a long travel day ahead. They decide to splurge and eat in the hotel restaurant. They are unnaturally polite, offering each other more coffee, cream, sugar, additional sweet rolls.
Eventually Annie clears her throat. Here it comes, Emily thinks. Here comes the speech. She’s prepared to tell her mother she’s coming home. She’s already booked a flight. A lie, but so what?
“The sabbatical is not really a choice.”
Her mother sounds—Emily gropes for the word—apologetic?
“What do you mean?”
“Dean Ross thinks I need some time off. I’m not in the classroom this spring. I’m assigned to admin stuff. Re
search. At least that’s the public line. He couldn’t arrange the sabbatical any sooner.”
Emily drops her gaze to the floor. The ground keeps falling away as she stares at the tile. She finds herself following the tiles until the floor meets the angle of the wall, up the wall to the ceiling. Not an earthquake, then.
“Wow,” Emily manages. It comes out as a whisper.
Her mother nods. “Yeah.” She reaches over and covers Emily’s hand with hers. “I don’t want you to worry. They can’t fire me. I have tenure.”
“Is it . . . is it that bad?”
Emily waits while her mother decides what and how much to tell her. Annie’s teeth worry her lip. Her hand trembles. She looks past Emily at an apparition over her shoulder. Emily fights the urge to turn around and see what her mother is staring at. Finally, her mother returns to her.
“Probably not. I’ve known the dean a long time. He’s looking out for me. I need some time to get it together. Get my focus back.”
“Were there complaints?”
Her mother nods.
“From students?”
“I missed class a few times. Overslept. Sleeping has been difficult.”
How is this possible? Her mother’s classes have always been favorites; she’s the star of the department.
“What . . . what will you do?”
“See a therapist, I expect. Try yoga. Take up golf. What other people do when bad things happen.”
“No, I mean next year.”
“I don’t know, really. You’ll be in your last year at Madison. I could go somewhere. London, maybe. I still have a few friends there.”
“I could come with you.”
Her mother dabs at her mouth with her napkin. She’s buying time. When she does speak, her voice is pitched high and tight.
“Maybe it was wrong of me to insist that you get on with your life. I don’t know. I didn’t want you to be saddled with your sad sack mom.”
“I’m sad, too, Mom.”
“I know, darling. Of course you are. This happened . . . the timing was so bad, just when you are supposed to be enjoying your independence.”
In Reach Page 12