Around the Bend

by Shirley Jump

  “Coming,” she called back, the tone in her voice too high, like a rookie opera singer reaching for a note she couldn’t carry.

  “You okay?”

  “Fine.” Another falsetto note, this one even shakier. A sense of foreboding whispered through me.

  “Let me in.” I tried the knob, a futile exercise.

  “I’m not dressed.”

  “Ma, let me in.” The dread doubled now, tightened in my throat, wrapped around my chest, and with a whoosh of memory sent me spiraling back five years.

  To another door I couldn’t open, another calling of fine on the other end, when things hadn’t been fine at all.

  Not at all.

  “Now, Ma. Open the door. Please.”

  I tried the knob, but the door held fast. “Let me in.” More urgent, my hand working the knob, even as I knew it wasn’t going anywhere. Her voice on the other end, muffled, but finally, an “I’m coming,” and then, the sound of metal clicking against metal, chambers sliding into place, and then it gave way, allowing me entry.

  “See? I told you. I’m perfectly fine.” She stood in her room, one hand gripping the back of a dark blue armchair, the cheap kind with a printed finish to cover for food stains. Sweat marched across her brow, and even in the dim light from the bedside lamp I could see a flush in her cheeks that had nothing to do with Maybelline.

  Relief rolled over me, then anger, then worry, like tides coming in at the end of a long day. I wanted to shake her, to make her sit down, to give her some eggs. But most of all, to get her to stop covering up. It was something our family had always done too damned well. “You’re not fine. You’re sick. We should stay here today. Take a rest.”

  A flicker of movement, and an almost imperceptible push off from the chair, like a swimmer who didn’t want to get caught cheating in the pool. A few measured steps to where Reginald lay on a quilted blanket, his name embroidered in bright blue letters underneath his snout. A Zip-Loc of pig chow sat beside a monogrammed ceramic bowl. My mother bent to open it, and a sound, almost a mew, escaped her. Betraying something I’d never heard before.

  Weakness.

  “Ma?”

  She drew in a sharp, quick breath. “I’m not sick.” But she wouldn’t look at me when she said it and she had yet to get the pig chow. Her hand reached out, searching blindly for the edge of the bed, banging in a widening circle, grasping at the ugly brown and peach floral quilt, curling around it in a rosette, before hauling herself to the corner of the bed.

  I didn’t wait or argue. I crossed the room, dumped what looked like a reasonable amount of feed into Reginald’s bowl and then faced my mother, hands on my hips. Roles reversed. Me, the irresponsible one, giving her the grown-up glare. “You look anything but fine. And we are not getting in that car until you tell me what’s wrong.”

  “Noth—” She cut off the word when she saw it wasn’t getting her anywhere. “I’m tired. You try getting to sixty-seven and see how you feel.”

  “You’re lying.” I should know. I’d become an expert, just ask Nick.

  “I’m not.” She drew herself up, dared me to disagree. All traces of weakness disappeared, to the point where I could almost think I’d imagined it. She got to her feet, brushed off her dark blue traveling suit, but I noticed she’d traded her pumps for slippers, and her leg still had that water-logged look. Again, I questioned the wisdom of travel.

  “Are you ready to go?” Ma said, clear and chipper as always.

  I glanced again at her leg. “I really think we should—”

  “Get in the car, Hilary. We have a lot of road to cover today.” And just like that, my temporary rule as leader was toppled.

  I opened my mouth to protest, shut it when my mother brushed past me, her packed suitcase in hand, Reginald at her feet. I packed up his bed and bowl, grabbed his package of food and fell into line behind the pig.

  I think God put Ohio—flat, plain, filled with nothing but corn and cows—in the United States to torture me. It was hours before we saw anything remotely interesting.

  I drove and drove, missing Nick, my mind playing awful tricks, flashing scenarios about where he’d gone last night—without me. Why was I worried? Nick had never given me reason to doubt his fidelity, but something about the distance, about his pressure for us to commit, had my mind conjuring up images it never had before.

  Was I playing with fire by not committing to him?

  I knew that answer as well as I knew my shoe size, but that didn’t make me any more anxious to rush into marriage prison. Things were, in my opinion, already perfect between Nick and me. I couldn’t understand why he wanted to mess them up with a gold band and a marriage license.

  We’d been together for four years, brought together by an entertainment center. I’d moved into my apartment, bought a TV that was too big for the console I’d found at a garage sale and decided to grow up and buy a real piece of furniture. Someone had recommended Nick, and the next thing I knew, I had a custom oak cabinet and the carpenter in my living room.

  It wasn’t the way he worked that I fell for; it was the way he worked the wood, made it shape and mold to his will. He had a patience that I admired, a quietness about his spirit. I’d never met anyone who was both gentle and strong, who could confront me and give me room in the same breath.

  And it helped that he not only looked damned good without a shirt, but that when he kissed me, the world turned upside down.

  He called me just as my mother and I pulled into Cleveland. I don’t know what had me more excited—the familiar ring tone that meant Nick was on the phone, or the sight of something besides the vast desolation of Ohio.

  That something was the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, which even got Nick excited. “Get me a picture of The Clash exhibit, will you?” he said, with no mention of last night’s conversation. “And Jimi Hendrix’s guitar. Just one snapshot, so I can hang it on my wall and drool.”

  Nick and his buddies played at Ernie’s on Thursday nights, a garage band they’d put together three years ago when Kevin Linton had had a midlife crisis and realized he’d never experienced his dream of becoming Jon Bon Jovi. Nick played electric guitar—and he was good, very good, as good at coaxing music from the instrument as he was at coaxing beauty from wood.

  “Do you want me to see if they have a miniature reproduction of Hendrix’s guitar in the gift shop?” I asked, happy to keep things on this conversational level. “That way you can carry it around for good mojo or something.”

  “If you get me one, I’ll love you forever.”

  We’d gone all these years without saying those words, or at least not saying them seriously, but now that tone had returned to Nick’s voice. Again. It hung on the last four words, weighing them down, talking about a lot more than a plastic replica of the late-sixties rebel’s strumming machine.

  An ordinary woman would have thrilled to hear those words. Not me. Because I knew I was supposed to say the same thing back, and with those words came expectations, the very thing I sucked at. “Nick, I have to go.”

  “Sure,” he said, but I could hear the hurt in his voice. And it had nothing at all to do with souvenirs.

  I hung up the cell, put it in the ashtray, then stared at it for a second, my fingers lingering as if I could touch Nick, too.

  “You should marry him,” Ma said. Had she overheard Nick’s side? Or read my mind? I didn’t doubt she could do either.

  I put my hands back on the steering wheel, its leather hard and firm under my grip, a direction to somewhere other than a discussion I didn’t want to have. “We’re almost at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. What exhibit do you want to see first?”

  “I like Nick, I always have. He’s a little…unconventional, but he’s nice. And he wants you. Lord knows your ovaries aren’t getting any younger.”

  I shuddered. I swore she and Nick shared a telepathic link. “Can we not have this conversation?”

  “Why? When’s a good time, Hilary? Do you want to pen
cil me in for next June? Third Tuesday? Because I may not be—”

  My mother turned away, watching the pavement pass in a blur. She bit the edge of her index finger, the rest of her fist curled in a tight, white ball.

  What the hell was going on with her? One minute, my mother was the same pain in my butt I knew, the next, she was an emotional mess, and then the moment after that, she was acting crazy, dragging along this cardboard cutout of my father and taking pictures of her and him with a cow in a field. And now…

  Now she wanted to build a relationship with me after three decades of almost nothing?

  “Because you may not be what, Ma?” I said to her silent frame. “Able to wait that long?” My exasperation boiled over, that teakettle once again unable to hold in its stopper, the water too close to the surface, too jostled by the hours together, the years of frustrations, of unspoken words. “You’ve waited thirty-six years, what’s one more? I know I’m not exactly the child you dreamed of, Ma, but you should have doubled your odds. Had another one. Then maybe you could have had a daughter who actually lived up to your expectations.”

  Well.

  It hadn’t taken me long to lay it all out there. Leave it to me and my big fat mouth, and one long stretch of boring highway.

  This was why I hated Ohio.

  “I did,” she said quietly.

  “Did what?”

  She turned and faced me. “Have another.”

  The Mustang’s tires slapped against the pavement. Slap, slap, slap, slap. Like mini clocks ticking away the silence between us. I froze in my seat, those words repeating in time to the rhythm of the tires.

  “Another?” I echoed.

  “You were two. You wouldn’t remember.”

  That was true. The first memory I had came from my third birthday, when my father had brought a pony into the backyard. My mother had screamed at him, aghast at the four-hooved animal tearing up the perfect, manicured lawn. But Dad had been determined to make my birthday a success, to give his daughter a party she’d never forget.

  He’d definitely accomplished that.

  “Why didn’t you ever tell me?”

  “There were just some things we decided you didn’t need to know.”

  “A sibling was a need-to-know kind of thing?” I stared at her, dumbfounded, until the car drifted into the other lane and I had to jerk it back.

  “You were two years old, Hilary. You didn’t know how to use a toilet or count to ten. I wasn’t going to get into the facts of life.”

  But a sister, or a brother? She couldn’t have trusted me with that? With what had happened? Hurt stung at my eyes, my throat. I swallowed it back, determined not to let her see me cry. “What happened?”

  “I…” She took in a breath. “I lost it.”

  Not lost like a penny or the second sock that the washer always ate, but lost forever, to some cruel twist of fate. “But how…why? What went wrong?”

  She sighed. “Why do you want to know?”

  “Ma, I’m grown up now. I can handle whatever you hid from me at two.”

  “That’s not it, Hilary. Some things are…personal.”

  I thought of all the need-to-know items in my own history. The edited version of my life that I’d fed to my mother over the years. Of course, I hadn’t kept any secret babies from her, but I did have a couple of whoppers in my own background.

  She, however, had opened this Pandora’s Box and I wasn’t ready to shut it, not yet. “But…why didn’t you try again?”

  My mother looked out the window for a long time, so long I didn’t think she would ever answer. Behind us, Reginald snored, completely unaware. “Because your father was never the same after we lost the baby. It changed him. He tried…but he began to slip away and I was afraid…” Her voice trailed off, the sentence unraveling into a whispered sob.

  “Afraid of what?” Maybe, I thought, if I could understand more of who I was, where I’d come from—why my parents were the way they were—I could figure out why I wanted to run every time Nick got too close.

  My mother didn’t answer. And I guess I hadn’t really needed to ask what she’d been afraid of. I knew what my father had become. Had seen the hole he’d fallen into and never climbed out of.

  “Maybe if your father had talked to me,” my mother said softly, “everything would have been different. But we’ll never know, will we?”

  I bit my lip. “No, Ma, we won’t.”

  She nodded, quiet and severe, tucking her emotions away. I don’t know where she kept them, somewhere knotted in her colon, I supposed, because barely a flicker showed on her face. And yet, I knew, with the connection of DNA, of being a woman, too, that losing a child, whether it had been three years or thirty years ago, still hurt her.

  A rectangular blue sign announced food at the next exit. Saved by the bell, a welcome interruption to a topic too heavy for either of us to handle. I wasn’t sure whether I wanted to push it, to know more, or to just leave it alone. After all, this had happened more than three decades in the past. How much could it possibly matter now?

  And yet, I knew it did.

  I wanted to call Nick and tell him, see, this is why I don’t want to journey down these roads. I don’t want to feel this way in a year or two years or five. Why set myself up when I’ve already seen the end of the movie?

  Maybe there was a way to find a happy medium with Nick. To maintain the relationship we had and not take it to the next level. Or maybe it had come time to cut Nick loose, as much as that would hurt, because I was so clearly not the kind of woman who should get married.

  We passed the sign, and I glanced back at it, not wanting to let that oasis go. “I think it’s time for coffee, don’t you?”

  My mother gave me a smile. “Yeah, Hilary. That sounds good. Really good.”

  A few minutes later, we got out of the car, stretched our legs, ordered twin brews, then headed back to the Mustang, all without ever bringing up the topic of confusing relationships, lost babies and need-to-know subjects.

  Again, she moved slow, deliberate, not like the Rosemary Delaney I remembered. Worry pushed at me, telling me there were more things my mother had edited out of her conversations. “Ma, you are not okay.”

  “It’s that car. Seats are too low.” Her hand gripped the doorframe, and she eyed the leather bucket with obvious trepidation.

  “If I’d known, I would have rented a bus or something. An RV. You should have said—” I cut myself off. My mother was no spring chicken. Not to mention, I was thirty-six. Old enough to have more than two brain cells and at least some common sense. I should have thought about her age, the impracticality of the car before I brought the Mustang. Damn. How selfish could I be? Guilt ran through me like bad seafood. “No. I should have thought about you first. I’m sorry, Ma.”

  “That’s okay.” She laid a hand on my shoulder, instant absolution in that touch. “We’ll stop a lot. I’ll be fine.”

  As much as the thought drove me crazy, because that meant extending the trip, and already it seemed like it was taking an eternity, I didn’t see another option. I’d brought this on myself by insisting on driving the Mustang instead of having a little foresight and renting something practical. For once, couldn’t I have taken my mother’s advice instead of being so stubborn?

  I laid my hand atop of hers, the guilt not entirely gone, wishing I could rewind and undo this particular mistake. “We’ll stop as often as you want.”

  I held the door and helped her down to the seat, ignoring her as she tried to brush off my arm, my help. Reginald watched us, his buttocks flush against my backseat, content and happy to be laying on his Reginald-emblazoned fleece blanket.

  My father sat beside him, perpetually happy, not cramped at all. Some people didn’t mind the car one bit.

  As I came around to my side, I paused before getting in and leaned against the door. I’d meant what I’d said to my mother on the road. I was the family screw-up, and this incident with the car had proved tha
t in spades.

  I glanced down the highway, which seemed to stretch to infinity. Miles and miles yet to go. And just maybe…

  An opportunity to prove to my mother I could be the kind of daughter she wanted. And in the process, prove it to myself.

  eight

  Nick hid his disappointment well. “You never even made it past the Everly Brothers and Dion?”

  I sat in my car in the parking lot of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and sighed. Poor Nick. “I don’t think my mother realizes anyone made music after 1965.”

  “Not so much as a picture of Hendrix? A bit of dust from his Stratocaster?”

  “I think I glimpsed it from one of the halls, if that helps.” A heavy thud sounded on the other end of the phone. “What was that?”

  “Me. Shooting myself.”

  “You and I can always go sometime. Cleveland’s not that far from Boston.”

  “Yeah,” Nick said, but he didn’t sound convinced. He paused a long moment, and I could hear him walk around the apartment. I pictured him, phone in hand, barefoot, padding across the wide pine floors, scuffed by years of past tenants doing God only knew what, their furniture, their lives, leaving imprints. “That implies a future, Hil. Sticking together down the road. Beyond tomorrow. You up for that?”

  My gut tightened with tension, laid out like wires stretched too long, too far. I glanced out the window, but my mother had yet to emerge from the gift shop to save me from this conversation. “Well, you know, I meant going together to Cleveland in the vague kind of, whenever sense.”

  A sigh weighed down by disappointment and missed expectations traveled across the phone lines. I closed my eyes, wishing I hadn’t heard it, that Nick would take it back, laugh, anything. The thread I’d always counted on between Nick and I, however tenuous it sometimes became, was unraveling one word at a time, and I couldn’t twist it together again.