“If you’re lonely it’s your own fault.” My mother’s voice was clear in the darkness.
“I guess so,” I said. I didn’t talk to my mother about my failed relationships. I never told her I was lonely. It was not something I complained about. These were her observations, things she put together about my life. I had spent so much time with her that I had quit thinking about my own problems.
“Life has never made any of us happy,” she said. “We don’t get that luxury.”
“You sound so pessimistic,” I said. The sleeping bags had spent the day in the trunk of the car and took a long time to heat up to our body temperatures. My shoulder blades were sore from three nights of sleeping on the frozen ground, and I rolled over onto my stomach. My hipbones bore into the earth and I sat up, wishing I could sleep that way.
“You’re alone,” she said to me, and though I couldn’t see her face, the closed-in tent blocking all light from the spring sky, I knew she was also sitting up, facing me, talking directly to me.
“What about you?” I asked. “Aren’t you here with me?” I took my hands out of my sleeping bag and reached out in front of me. I hit her in the face—she was much closer than I expected her to be. She held my fingers up to her lips and kissed them. Her lips were dry and chapped. I could feel the blistering skin and pulled away. We have never been a family who showed much physical affection.
“I want you to be serious,” my mother said. “Don’t think of this as a joke.”
“Isn’t that a little like calling the kettle black?” I asked, and because I somehow knew where she was headed, I tried to divert her. “I’ve been trying to get you to give me a straight answer for the past two years.”
“I haven’t always known what my answers would be,” she said. Her sentences slowed and she got much more serious.
“It’s cold, Mom,” I said. But by then I was no longer cold. The tent was sealed and the wind had settled for the night. Come morning we would be wet, and then I would remember what it was to be cold.
“I’m ready,” she said.
“Are you sure?” I asked.
“I’m feeling strong,” she said. “Very strong.”
“Is this really what you want to do?”
“Oh, yes,” she said. “Yes.”
“What if you don’t make it?” I asked.
“It’s a possibility,” she said. “But not the only one.”
The night noises outside hummed and we sat quietly and listened for a while.
“Don’t go to flea markets,” my mother said.
“Excuse me?” I sat up again, and this time I could feel her breath on my face.
“If you’re alone and wondering what to do,” she said. “Don’t waste your time going to flea markets.”
“Of course not,” I said. “Of course I won’t.”
“I didn’t think so,” she said and touched my cheek with the back of her hand.
What Megan and Nina couldn’t understand, and what I’m still having a hard time trying to explain to everyone else in the family, was that my mother always anticipated a victorious run. The trip over the falls was to have made her famous. The day was to have ended not in death, but in celebration.
She wanted the victory party to be at the Pier House in Harbor Springs. Halfway between Detroit and the falls, it would be the perfect place for everyone to meet. She was sure the Detroit Free Press would pick up the story, after which it might run on syndication, maybe even with a small photograph and a few lines in People magazine. She saw herself sitting at the head of a long table, breathlessly explaining to the photographers and newspaper people that she had never been afraid. The conversation would be filled with words like courage, victory, spirit, soul—and for that one moment she might actually be like her beloved basketball stars.
It was to have been glorious. My mother saw her trip over the fifty-foot Tahquamenon Falls not as a stunt or a suicide run but as a quest—something she had searched for, something she wanted—and I could find no reason to stop her. This is not a story of my innocence. I knew exactly what she was doing. But like my mother says, it’s all a question of where you’re positioning yourself. Even with the roar of the rapids giving you a dry cotton mouth, your hands have to be clenched around the paddle; eyes straight ahead, leg muscles taut, but ready to go. And that’s when you lean over, all your weight to one side, and ride straight into your fears.
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
The stories in this collection were originally published in the following:
Press: “Three Fat Women of (Pittsburgh Just Visiting) Antibes”
New Letters: “Women Drinking Benedictine”
Alaska Quarterly Review: “We’re in Meadville”
Red Rock Review: “Me and Danno Booking ’Em Good”
River Styx: “Figures on the Shore”
River City Review: “This Month of Charity”
High Plains Literary Review: “Awaken with My Mother's Dreams”
The author is grateful to Carnegie Mellon University and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts for their generous support. And for ever-faithful friends-Gerry Costanzo, Mathilde Doubinsky, Keya Ganguly, Marty Karabees, Tim Haggerty, Chuck Kinder. And for Jim Zafris, who helped Nancy find the towel hanging on the fence in Rigny Usse.
Copyright © 1998 by Sharon Dilworth
Cover design by Steven Seighman
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