Around the Bend

by Shirley Jump

  Who wondered about what had happened behind that closed door every single day of her life. What could have been done before that door shut. Just like I did.

  She covered my hand with hers, a bond forming between us that went beyond a cup of coffee. “I want you to have more of those happy days, Hilary. Marry Nick, honey. Take a risk.”

  Fear returned again, beating like a flock of birds in my chest. “I don’t know, Ma. The whole thought terrifies me. Too many what-ifs.”

  “I know that feeling, that fear.”

  “You? What have you ever been afraid of?”

  Her gaze drifted off into the past. “I never tried for another baby because I couldn’t face losing another one. And I was afraid of making things worse.”

  “With Dad,” I finished.

  She nodded, then gave my hand a squeeze. “If you live your life by what-ifs, Hilary, you’ll never find out what could be. And I really want you to find that out.” Ma leaned over and pressed a kiss to my cheek, lingering for a long moment against my face.

  My mind rocketed back to when I was five, six, little enough to be tucked in bed by my father, to still take a bear with me, to still have a night-light, to still believe in Santa Claus. My mother would get home well after my bedtime, because she’d been immersed in studies at Suffolk, or working long hours in her internship.

  More often than not, I’d be asleep, but once in a while I’d still be awake when she’d come home. And when she did, she’d always stop in my room, her shoes in one hand—those pumps, always pumps, as if she was dressed to argue a case in front of the Supreme Court even when she was just going to school—her nylons swishing in the quiet darkness, the scent of Chanel No.5 carrying lightly in the air as she bent down over my bed and pressed a kiss to my forehead.

  I’d keep my eyes shut, my breathing even, my body still as a statue. For just that moment, I wanted to be caught up in that magical embrace of my mother’s. Because that was the only time she would let her guard down and be a mother, not a taskmaster, not a judge and jury, but just a mother, an ordinary mother, inhaling the scent of her daughter’s hair, and holding a kiss for a long, quiet moment in the dark.

  “I love you,” she whispered now, her lips against my skin, soft and tender. A mother’s kiss.

  And one of us began to cry.

  sixteen

  I’d worried that without Nick to serve as buffer, my mother and I would slip right back into what we had been before—adversaries. But as we drove through the rest of the Rocky Mountains, a never-ending vista of beauty, our conversations became, well—

  Conversations.

  Good thing, too, because it helped take my mind off how badly I had screwed things up with Nick. How he was flying back to Massachusetts as I drove in the opposite direction—the very metaphor for our relationship. Just a few days ago, everything had been wonderful with us, and now, we’d diverged. I didn’t see a way to bring us back together without giving Nick the one thing he wanted, and I didn’t.

  “Did you always want to be a lawyer?” I asked my mother, focusing on her, instead of my deplorable love life.

  She laughed. “I did. You know me. I could argue the price of peanuts with an elephant.”

  “That’s true.”

  “I drove my mother crazy, always arguing back with her and breaking all her rules.”

  I shifted in the driver’s seat to stare at her. “You? You’re kidding me.”

  “Believe it or not, but I was quite the hellion when I was younger. Why do you think I tried so hard to keep you in line? I knew what could go wrong. Because I’d…Well, I’d done a few of those things myself.”

  “Yeah, right.” I snorted. “Ma, you’d make Miss Goody Two Shoes look like a juvenile delinquent.”

  “I’m serious. I broke a few laws in my day. Nothing that got me put in jail, but still, I wasn’t perfect.”

  I found that hard to believe, especially given how tight my mother toed the legal line now. “What’d you do? Commit jaywalking? Spit your gum on the sidewalk?”

  “Try grand theft auto.”

  I sent a sharp glance her way, and saw a smug, almost conspiratorial smile on her face, as if she was proud she shared a little mischief in her past. “No way!”

  “Yep. I stole my grandmother’s car when I was eleven. I was running away from home after a dispute over my bedtime. I got as far as the telephone pole in front of Mrs. Feehan’s house four doors down.”

  I laughed so hard, I nearly had to pull over because tears were streaming down my face and blocking my vision. “You really did that?”

  She held up three fingers on her right hand. “Scouts’ honor.”

  “That almost makes my own car theft pale in comparison.”

  Whoops. I hadn’t meant to let that one slip out. But I couldn’t reach out and shovel the words back into my mouth. They sat there between us, like a third passenger. I sidled a glance my mother’s way to see her reaction.

  “1998,” she said. “When you stole the landscaper’s truck, went to Niagara Falls and got married.”

  My jaw dropped, nearly hit my chest. “You knew?”

  “Why do you think your annulment went through without so much as a blip? And why do you think the landscaper didn’t press charges?”

  I swallowed those tidbits. Digested them, churning them around with the surprise already there. The biggest secret of my life, the one I’d gone to elaborate work to keep from my mother. I’d done a lot of things in my life that I didn’t want her to know, but breaking laws hadn’t been on the list—except for this one time. I’d thought I’d dodged a bullet when the landscaper had either not noticed or not reported the truck stolen, and that my mother, the lawyer, wouldn’t end up defending her own daughter in court.

  “Don’t end up in jail,” had been Rosemary Delaney’s biggest piece of advice as I’d been growing up. Because she knew what jail was like. Knew what kind of evil lurked there. And I’d known the last photo she’d want to see of me would be a mug shot. So I’d kept the secret, begged everyone I knew never to say a word to my mother. Snuck back into the house, done extra chores, been on my best behavior for weeks, and never mentioned that boyfriend’s name again.

  Until now.

  “But I thought you hated Tommy McGrath. Didn’t even want me dating him.” He’d been in that bad-boy category, the kind of guy who stomped on my heart and treated it like dirt.

  In other words, not a Nick kind of guy. Who my mother considered a keeper, but I hadn’t exactly done a good job in the keeper category, either. Thankfully, my mother hadn’t leaped on criticizing me for that today.

  “I did. But your father kept telling me that the more I harped on about Tommy, the farther and the faster you’d run away.”

  “Which is exactly what I did.” I thought of the fight I’d had with my mother, that last night I’d spent in my parents’ house. I’d packed a bag, stolen the truck, because my mother had hidden my car keys, and taken off for Niagara Falls. Picking up Tommy on the way—because he hadn’t been able to hold down a job, and thus, didn’t own a car.

  Right there should have been a good clue that he wasn’t Mr. Right.

  “Why didn’t you ever say anything about what I did?” I asked.

  “Because I didn’t want you to run again.” Her eyes met mine, misty with a two-decades old hurt still lingering in them, and I could see the worry, the pain I had put her through, for my impromptu, selfish decision to run away.

  “I’m sorry.”

  She smiled, and the mist disappeared. “I know.”

  “I’d been so convinced he was the man for me. I thought I’d convince you, too, by marrying him.” I laughed. “That backfired.”

  Back then, I’d had the crazy idea that marriage would save a relationship. Prove something about how much a guy loved me, and I loved him. But as I’d gotten older, and seen the end result of an unhappy relationship, I became more and more skittish around gold rings, like a horse that had been locked too long
in the barn.

  “What finally changed your mind about Tommy?”

  “When I had to pay for my own wedding. Or maybe it was when he tried to slide a beer tab on my finger instead of a wedding ring. Or could have been when he had the bright idea of embarking on a life of crime instead of getting a real job. He had issues with the whole nine-to-five thing.”

  My mother’s mouth formed into a little O. “Not exactly Mr. Perfect, was he?”

  I shook my head. Thinking of Tommy made me miss Nick even more. Nick wasn’t perfect, but he had a lot more going for him in the Mr. Right category than Tommy had ever had. If only Nick didn’t come attached to so many expectations…

  “Tommy wasn’t even Mr. Perfect’s ugly second cousin. I clearly drew the short straw in the frog lottery.”

  “If he didn’t have any money, why did you run off and elope with him?”

  “Tommy had a plan, all right—turned out he thought he could pay for the wedding with a little help from the casinos. He had five bucks on him and lost it all in a few pulls of the quarter slots. After that, he tried to talk me into robbing a convenience store. I guess he figured if I could steal a truck, I’d have no problem with knocking over a gas station or two.” I rolled my eyes. “I don’t know what I was thinking. Actually, I wasn’t thinking at all. You were right about him.”

  My mother cupped a hand around her ear. “Did I just hear you correctly? Did you say I was right?”

  “Maybe,” I said, teasing her, laughing with her. “Okay, yes, you were right. There. I said it twice. Mark the occasion in your Day Planner.”

  We looked at each other, and I knew in that moment that we were sharing the same thought. When had she and I ever laughed together, just us, without my dad serving as joke teller, comedian, entertainer? When had we ever found a moment of camaraderie, of such solid agreement, before this trip?

  “I’m glad we did this, Ma,” I said, the lump in my throat so thick, it nearly blocked the words from getting out.

  “Me, too.” She reached for me, her hand so like mine, only with the wisdom and lines of age and experience. I saw my future in that hand, and for the first time, it didn’t look so bad. “Now, how about a cup of coffee?”

  “Sounds like a good idea.” I squinted against the glare of the sun and the lingering sting in my eyes. “A really good idea.”

  We made it all the way to Utah. To the painted purple mountains, the stuff of songs, before the petals began to fall off the rose.

  I noticed the swelling first. My mother’s left leg, taking on a life of its own, becoming nearly twice the size it should be. She gave up wearing shoes at the Utah border, kicked off her slippers after the first rest stop.

  “You’re feeling bad again, aren’t you?”

  She didn’t bother lying, nor could she cover the flush in her cheeks, the way her face scrunched up every few seconds when a fresh wave of pain hit her. “I think the Coumadin has stopped working.”

  I missed Nick more in that moment than ever before. His steady, even keel, the way he could lay a palm on my shoulder and make it seem like everything would be fine. But I’d screwed everything up with him and now, he’d stopped taking my calls. I could hardly blame him. He’d said it was over—

  And when Nick was done with something, he was done. The man recycled, for God’s sake. He didn’t hold on to mementos. Or dead-end relationships.

  I glanced again at my mother. “Maybe it’s time you went in for that catheterization thing the doctor talked about.”

  Why had we decided to keep going? Why had I let her talk me into continuing toward California? I should have kept her in Indiana, or brought her back to Massachusetts, not driven her through state after state full of nothing but desert and mountains.

  She shook her head so hard even the hairspray had trouble holding on. “No. We have to keep going.”

  “Ma, your health is more important.”

  “I won’t have another opportunity like this.” Her hands went to her purse, again in her lap. The all-business, travel posture. But her fingers fluttered over the clasp, and the flush in her cheeks deepened to a darker crimson. “I promise to go to the doctor as soon as we get home.”

  I sent another glance at her leg, at the ballooning, reddened skin that used to be a calf. Not good. Not good at all. Panic rose in my throat, expanded my chest. I could handle this alone. I had to. “I don’t have to be Marcus Welby to tell you don’t have that much time.”

  “Hilary—”

  I jerked her purse away, yanked the road atlas up from its place on the floor and laid it on her lap. No. “Find the nearest damned hospital, Ma. And don’t argue with me anymore.”

  She blinked in surprise. “Now you’re the mother?”

  I gave her a grin, but it was only a mask for the worry mounting with every mile passing under our wheels. Miles that brought us farther from home and deeper into the remote, vast boondocks of Utah, light years away from anything resembling emergency medical personnel and the comfort of a big blue H sign. “I think it’s about time somebody told you what to do for a change. And, even better, about time you listened.”

  I pressed harder on the accelerator. To hell with speeding tickets, with rules of the road. In fact, I could use a police escort right about now. Or at the very least, those miracle pigeons that had carried Brigham Young over the mountains.

  Ma shifted in her seat. Pain flickered across her face. Sweat beaded on her brow, and her eyes fluttered shut.

  “Good,” she said on a staggered breath, “because I think I need someone else to be in charge for a while.”

  seventeen

  This time, my mother’s doctor was old, grizzled and a man of few words. Joel Gifford, M.D., stood six and a half feet tall, with white hair, a rough, bushy white beard, and a loosened, blue-striped tie at the neck of a slightly wrinkled blue oxford shirt. If trustworthy had a face, it would be his. “She did fine.”

  “The catheterization was successful?”

  The doctor nodded. His beard did a little jig.

  “Will there be any side effects? Problems?”

  “Time will tell. We’ll watch her for a few days.”

  “And then—”

  His green eyes met mine, and in them, I read knowledge that he held, but wasn’t sharing. “You need to talk to your mother about that.”

  “What do you mean?”

  He put a hand on my shoulder, and the sternness in his face softened for a moment. For a moment, he resembled my late Grandfather Delaney, who’d played Santa, and had a way of telling a story that took an afternoon but never managed to bore his audience. “Talk to her. Talk a lot. That’s all I can say.”

  He gave me a pat, then turned and left, a tall man with a slight shuffle in his gait, as if trying to keep his height, his presence, to a minimum.

  I held my cell phone, wanting to call Nick, but didn’t. Instead, I leaned against the wall and closed my eyes, remembering the first morning I’d woken up in Nick’s apartment. He’d pulled me into his arms, held me tight, and somehow our conversation drifted toward the type of house he’d build if he ever had enough time and money.

  I’d bolted from the bed, claiming I wanted a shower. Nick tried to tease me back under the covers. He’d promised to cook me breakfast. Instead, I’d gotten dressed and ducked down to the nearest Dunkin’ Donuts, returning with a bag of artery-clogging fried holes.

  We’d laughed, we’d eaten, but we hadn’t talked—really talked about anything deep and meaningful. I thought back over our relationship and realized that the closer Nick got, the more often I ran out the door. Found other things to occupy our mouths and time so that I could push off the heavy stuff until tomorrow.

  Now where had that gotten me? Nick was gone, probably for good. And my mother was ill. Heavy stuff was sitting in the next room and I couldn’t ignore it anymore or buy myself time with some doughnuts.

  A few minutes later, I sat in another hospital room, this one almost an exact replica of the on
e in Indiana, right down to the antiseptic smell, the sounds, the sheets, the cheery but cheesy décor. I wondered if you could travel the country and visit hospitals like hotels, interchanging one for the other and not tell which was which. Would a facility in Boston be any different from one in Texas, save for the addition of a few r’s in the nurses’ diction?

  “Hilary,” my mother said, the syllables slightly garbled, her voice groggy, her movements nearly as slurred as her speech.

  “Hey, Ma.” I sat down on the bed beside her, sinking into the vinyl mattress, my hand snaking across the knit blanket to take hers. “How you doing?”

  She took a moment to rouse herself, gather her wits. “I feel like a vampire who got kidnapped and drained by the Red Cross, but other than that, okay.”

  I sat back, surprised. “Did you just make a joke?”

  “Hey, I’m learning a new skill every day.” She shook off a little more of the grogginess, becoming more of herself. Showing more of the bulldog, less of the woman who’d just been under anesthesia moments before.

  I grinned. “Hey, if you can become Jay Leno, that gives me hope that I might be able to do something else, too. Something I’ve been dreaming about for a while now.”

  “Like what?” She pressed the button on her bed, raising her head a few inches.

  “I’ll only tell you if you promise not to laugh.”

  “I can’t laugh. I just had surgery. And you know how surgery goes, sometimes they take out the wrong thing. Like a funny bone.”

  I did the laughing for her. “That’s two jokes in five minutes. What did they put in your anesthesia?”

  “Nothing.” She brushed her hair back off her face, the usually pouffy style now flattened by her time in bed, the blue paper surgical cap that had spent an hour on her head. “Tell me about your dream.”

  I drew in a breath, and with it, the courage to give voice to a thought that had lain dormant for years, never becoming much more than a flitting idea, something I had shared with no one but Nick, who had bugged me for years to pursue the thought. All those hours behind the wheel of the minivan had kick-started my imagination somewhere along the road, making me wonder what roads were open in my own life, if I decided to veer off the current path. “I was thinking of maybe opening my own restaurant.”