Mothers and Daughters: An Anthology

by Deborah Bedford

  Frannie’s head jerked toward Carrie. With a whoop and an arm upraised in victory, she galloped toward the shed.

  Chapter Eleven

  By the time they arrived home, the dirty cat purring happily in Frannie’s lap, Carrie felt more positive than she had in months. Tux had lost weight but he was alive, and Mother had had a very good day. Even Frannie remarked that she hadn’t been “crazy” today. She and Lexi had giggled at the remark. Carrie didn’t see the humor.

  Though a cat in the house was not her idea of a good thing, Carrie didn’t protest when Frannie carried Tux straight to the kitchen for a bowl of milk and a can of Vienna sausages.

  “I’ll have to get out to Wal-Mart for cat food and flea spray,” her mother said. “Poor baby, he’s probably covered.”

  Oh joy.

  Tux ate greedily and after accepting a few more ear rubs and hugs, slithered away to curl up and sleep in Dan’s chair. Carrie refused to think about the fleas jumping off into the upholstery.

  Humming happily, Mother took her shopping bags down the hall to her bedroom. She returned wearing one of the new outfits, an almost sedate turquoise pantsuit with sequin-lined collar and cuffs. “How do I look?”

  “Wonderful.” Carrie leaned forward and hugged her mother’s shoulders.

  “Good, because I feel like celebrating. Tux has come safely home. God is good. I have a glorious new outfit. Hand me that telephone. I’m going to call Roland and invite him to a movie.”

  Carrie froze. Roland again.

  “Mother,” she started.

  “Who’s Roland, Grannie?” Seated on the sofa across from the sleeping cat, Lexi had one foot propped on her knee as she applied polish to her toenails. She looked up with a grin. “Does Mr. Markovich know you’ve got another boyfriend on the string?”

  Carrie shook her head at Lexi.

  Her daughter frowned, head tilted in bewilderment. “What?”

  “Roland was mother’s boyfriend a long time ago. Remember, Mother?” she said to Fran. “Roland was a long time ago.”

  Frannie’s animated expression turned to confusion. “He was?”

  “Yes. You and Roland broke up. You married Daddy. He died. Remember?”

  Lexi capped the fingernail polish and set the bottle on the coffee table. The snick of glass against wood sounded loud. She stared from her mother to her grandmother and back again as comprehension dawned. Her pretty face filled with the sad knowledge, slicing off a chunk of Carrie’s pounding heart.

  “Grannie,” she said softly, rising from the couch to stand beside her grandmother. “Are you okay?”

  “I slipped again, didn’t I?”

  A thick silence clouded the room.

  Frannie went to the sofa, sitting with a heavy sigh. “I feel so stupid. I don’t know what made me think of Roland. That’s the thing about this forgetting disease. It makes me feel stupid.”

  “You’re probably tired, Mother. I know I am. Today has been a busy day. A good day, too. We found Tux.” Her throat ached with unspent emotion.

  Frannie didn’t answer, but Carrie could see she was bothered and didn’t want to be. Watching her chipper nature struggle to rise above her problems was heartbreaking.

  “Grannie Frannie, do you remember how to make cobbler?” Lexi asked.

  “Well, of course I do. Making cobbler is a piece of cake.” She and Lexi stared at each other for one beat and then burst out laughing. Carrie chuckled with them, and the painful moment passed.

  “Do we still have berries in the freezer?” Lexi said to Carrie.

  “Tons of them, thanks to Mr. Blanton’s abundant garden.”

  “Awesome. I’ll get the video camera.” She hopped up and left the room, returning with the device. “Come on, Grannie. You’re going to teach me how to make cobbler while you still remember.”

  “Lexi!” Carrie felt uncomfortable being so bold about her mother’s disease. Her daughter was far less inhibited.

  Neither Lexi or Frannie paid her one bit of attention.

  “And you’ll videotape my recipe?” Mother asked.

  At Lexi’s nod, a wide grin creased Frannie’s face. “Splendid idea, rosebud. You are such a blessing. Let me change out of my glamour girl attire and get my hat. Oh wait. I don’t have a chef hat anymore.” She tapped a finger against her cheek and then inspiration struck. “I know just the thing.”

  Carrie rolled her eyes heavenward. Mother had haunted the secondhand stores for hats, coming home with some wild and wacky headgear. “Cooking? In one of your hats?”

  “I think it’s a great idea, Mom.” Lexi’s eyes pleaded with her to go along with the game. Carrie’s heart constricted. Her teenage daughter, like her mother, was trying to make the most of a bad situation.

  All right. She could do this. She would do this, for Lexi and Mother. Forcing a cheerfulness she didn’t feel, Carrie went to the freezer for berries.

  Even with Mother’s momentary regression, the unexpected return of Tux put a renewed zip in everyone’s spirits. Early the next Saturday morning, Frannie sailed away in The Tanker with a promise to return in time for lunch, and though Carrie suffered a pinch of concern, she simply waved goodbye and got busy cleaning out the kitchen cabinets.

  Dan and his growing troop of boys, along with Lexi and Courtney, were out in the backyard hammering away on a doghouse for B.J.’s beagle. Carrie gazed out the dining room window watching the beehive of activity, all the while thinking this was the way life should have been—Dan with a bevy of kids to love and teach. Had things turned out differently, the way she’d wanted them to, those boys could have been Dan’s to share his skills and knowledge and absorb his stalwart, manly kind of love.

  He said something to Lexi and she nodded, then separated from the mass and came toward the house.

  “I guess you’re all getting hungry,” Carrie said as soon as Lexi opened the back door.

  “Dad wants to know if you’ll make sandwiches for everyone.”

  “Sure.”

  “I’ll help. The guys think they’re dying of starvation.”

  Carrie shook her head with a smile as she pulled sandwich fixings from the fridge. “How’s the doghouse coming?”

  “We’re about done. Dad says we might start building them all the time to sell and then use the money to take the boys camping or something.”

  “Good idea and really nice of your dad to think of it.”

  “Yeah. Grannie Frannie says mentoring boys is Dad’s ministry.”

  Carrie cocked her head. Dan didn’t even go to church. How could he have a ministry? “Really? Did you tell your dad that?”

  “Yeah. He said maybe she was right. And you know what else he said?”

  “I can’t imagine.”

  “He said maybe that’s why I never had brothers, because God knew there would be boys who needed him and if he already had a bunch of other kids he might be too busy.”

  Slathering mayo on a slice of bread, Carrie paused to stare into the gray-blue depths of her daughter’s eyes and then to gaze out into her backyard at the circle of man and boys. Dan laughed and draped an arm over B.J.’s shoulders, hugging the thin child to his side. Her husband had a ministry to boys. He wasn’t mourning the lack of babies. He was happy and fulfilled and doing exactly what he needed and wanted to do, and she hadn’t even realized it.

  Carrie finished the sandwiches and called everyone in for lunch. She was so bemused by the revelation that she didn’t think about her mother’s absence until Dan mentioned it.

  “She said she’d be back for lunch.” Carrie glanced at the clock on the microwave. The digits read twelve-thirty. “She’ll be here soon.”

  But she wasn’t. And by the time one-thirty rolled around, Carrie’s prickle of anxiety had grown to near panic. She phoned Alice and then Ken, neither of whom had seen Frannie.

  “I shouldn’t have let her go alone,” she said to Dan. “I should have gone with her.”

  Dan’s frown indicated his concern. “She goe
s by herself all the time. She’s probably shopping and lost track of time.”

  Carrie didn’t say the obvious. Mother could lose track of everything. “I’m worried, Dan. Anything could happen.”

  “The kids and I will scatter out around the neighborhood and then go downtown, see if we can spot her car.”

  “Good idea. I’ll stay here in case she calls or comes in. Take the cell phone with you. Lexi, you and Courtney walk over to the old neighborhood. She might have gone back there by instinct.”

  Dan put on his baseball cap and went to the door. Four boys imitated his every move, adjusting caps on their own heads. “If she doesn’t show up by two, I think you should call the police.”

  Carrie nodded grimly.

  “And it wouldn’t hurt to pray, either,” he said, shocking her, right before he closed the door.

  Pray. What good would prayer do? But in desperation, she tossed up a halfhearted request for her mother’s safety, then got out the phone book and started calling all of Frannie’s friends.

  At two o’clock she called the police, humiliated by proxy for her mother. Then she cleaned the oven.

  At four o’clock Dan and the kids returned, tired and thirsty and worried. After fixing lemonade for the troops, Carrie mopped the kitchen.

  By a quarter to five, she was convinced something terrible had happened. “What if Mother is like one of those people you hear about who wander off and are found years later and hundreds of miles away? Or worse yet—”

  The sound of a car door stopped her. Lexi rushed to the window. “It’s Mr. Markovich.” She yanked the door open. “And Grannie!”

  Relief shuddered through the room as everyone rushed to the door. Ken Markovich, looking sad, gently held Mother’s hand as he led her across the yard to the porch.

  Frannie seemed dazed, her hair mussed, her makeup smeared.

  “Mother, what happened? Where have you been?”

  Ken answered for her. “Frannie got a little lost. She’s tired.” He led her mother into the house and to the sofa, his voice gentle and coaxing. “Sit down and rest, Frannie. You’ve had a long day. Carrie will bring you a Mountain Dew. You’re home. Everything is okay now.”

  Carrie had a dozen questions, but Ken was right. Mother was safe and the story of what had happened could come later. “Dan, will you phone the police and let them know she’s all right?”

  Dan nodded and went to the phone. Carrie brought glasses of soda for Ken and her mother, sick with a despair reflected on Ken’s kindly face.

  And so another of the last straws had broken as Mother’s independence was being stripped away, one thing at a time.

  Later, after Ken had left, Fran surrendered her car keys, declaring The Tanker now belonged to Lexi. Though she tried to put on a happy face, she, too, was clearly devastated by the latest turn of events. Ken had found her walking down a country road, six miles from where she’d left her car parked at the mall. At first, she hadn’t known who he was.

  Just when Carrie had thought things were getting better, the bottom had fallen out again. And she realized this was the way the rest of Mother’s life would be—one heartache after another.

  That night after the lights were out, she lay in bed staring into the darkness, too miserable to sleep. Dan was still awake, too. She could hear him breathing, feel his alertness.

  “Want to talk about it?” he said, without touching her.

  Her hair made swishing sounds against the pillow as she shook her head. “What’s the use? I’m losing my mother in increments and things are only going to get worse. Talking won’t fix it.”

  “For her sake, we should try to stay positive.”

  “I can’t. I’m too angry.”

  “At your mom? Or me?”

  “Oh, Dan. Neither.” She shifted in frustration. “I don’t know. The church. God. Someone. It just burns me up that Mother has spent her life doing good. I’ve decided God doesn’t pay one bit of attention to anything we do down here. He has no idea how many years of service she’s given to that church or how many pennies she’s pinched to send someone else’s kids to Bible camp.”

  “Blaming God isn’t going to solve anything.”

  “I can’t help it.”

  “For your mom you need to try. Do you know what she wants most of all?” He shifted toward her in the darkness. She felt his warm breath on her cheek. “She wants you and me and Lexi to find the joy in living that she has. She wants us to see God’s wonders and grace all around us.”

  “And where would that be? There’s nothing wonderful about Alzheimer’s disease or spending the day searching for your lost mother. Everything is bleak and ugly and horrible right now.”

  “But there are positives, too. Your mom would want us to think about those.”

  “I can’t think of a single one.”

  “All right, then, let me help you. Ken found your mom before anything terrible happened. She was spared from that fire. She could have died just as easily. We found the cat, a miracle right there, all things considered.”

  Carrie was silent for a few minutes, listening to the hum of air-conditioning through the vents. She knew Dan was right in some ways but if God really cared, why was this happening at all?

  “I’ve been thinking about something else, too,” Dan said, the rumble of his voice quiet and comforting in the darkness.

  “What?” she mumbled.

  “Church.”

  Carrie’s jaw tightened. “Bunch of hypocrites, just like you always said.”

  “I was wrong.”

  “No, you were right. I’m not going to church anymore.”

  Dan huffed in disgust. “Who are you punishing, Carrie? God? Yourself? Because this anger is getting you nowhere.”

  Carrie turned over and buried her face in the pillow. She didn’t know the answer and probably never would. But she couldn’t go on attending church and pretending that everything was fine.

  Chapter Twelve

  All day Sunday a pall hung over the house. No one went to church, not even Frannie and Lexi, though the latter wondered aloud about the change in routine. Carrie muttered something about letting Grannie rest, and then she cooked roast beef with mashed potatoes and brown gravy and fresh yeast rolls, but no one ate much. After lunch, Dan took his rod and reel and went fishing. Everyone else moped around, quiet and depressed, so that when the doorbell chimed, Carrie was tempted not to answer. Lexi answered for her.

  “Mom, we have company.”

  “Great.” She hoped she sounded more enthused than she felt. Drying her hands on a dish towel, she took the extra seconds to fold the thick terry cloth carefully over the oven handle before going to the living room. As she entered she heard her mother’s cheery voice.

  “Come in, come in. Oh, my goodness’ sakes alive, what a treat to see you.”

  A dozen or more women from the church trailed into the house, each carrying something.

  “I hope you don’t mind the surprise call,” Candace Ellis, the pastor’s wife, said. “We’ve been working on this for a while, but the time never felt right. So when you weren’t at church this morning, well, this just seemed to be the day.”

  “For what?” Carrie asked, bewildered by the smiling ladies she’d intentionally avoided this morning.

  “We are the unofficial Memory Lane Committee. After Fran’s house burned and well, her illness and all, we got to thinking of some way we could help out.”

  Alice, Mother’s closest friend, cleared her throat and lofted a bulging photo album, eyes shining with love and a hint of tears. “Memories. Losing your memories, whether in your brain or in your house is just a rotten shame. So we, the Memory Lane Committee, are resurrecting old memories of the fabulous, unforgettable Frannie Adler.” She shot a grin toward Frannie. “The two of us have been all over this state having fun, and I have the proof right here.” She slapped the cover of the album. “The other ladies have photos and ticket stubs and all kinds of memorabilia of Fran’s life, too. Carri
e, some of these things even include you and Robby as kids.”

  Carrie’s hand went to her suddenly full throat. “Oh my. Oh my gracious.”

  Fran laughed. “I think you’ve overwhelmed her, girls. Come on, let’s move this shindig to the kitchen table. I can’t wait to get my paws on what you’ve dug up. I may not remember them in my head, but I’ll remember when I see them.”

  None of the ladies seemed the least put off by Frannie’s blunt appraisal of her declining faculties.

  Once in the dining room, the women, still dressed in their Sunday best, began to unveil their findings.

  “Some folks didn’t have pictures so they wrote stories about some of the funny, entertaining, or wonderfully kind things they remember about Frannie. They’re in here.” Rhonda Flanders presented a notebook, beautifully hand-covered in lace and fabric, to Frannie. For once, Carrie thought the woman’s long hair and narrow face looked lovely. “We thought we all might enjoy doing a scrapbooking project together with the rest of the stuff.”

  “Is that okay with you?” Candace asked, glancing at Carrie. “Dan thought it was a good idea when I called a bit ago.”

  No wonder Dan had gone fishing. The sweet, sneaky man. “This is wonderful and the timing couldn’t be better. Mother had a rough day yesterday.”

  “I got lost,” Frannie said without batting an eye.

  Alice laughed as if Fran had said something funny. Sometimes, most times, Carrie did not understand Mother and her friends.

  “Well, you’re found today,” Alice said. “So let’s get at it. Going through this stuff is going to be a hoot and a half, just like you.”

  “Bring it on, sister.” Frannie pumped the air with her fist and then scraped back a chair and plopped down, eager as a child, while Alice dumped a box of odds and ends on the table.

  Lexi sidled up beside her grandmother and slid an arm over her shoulders. “Wow, Grannie Frannie, this is awesome. Look at all this stuff.”

  She picked up an ancient photo of a slimmer, younger Frannie driving a go-cart at an amusement park, a very small child seated next to her. “That’s me. I remember that. Grannie bought me cotton candy. I laid it in the seat and a fat lady sat on it. Grannie laughed and laughed and laughed when the lady walked away with pink fluff stuck to the behind of her black shorts.”