She found Anna in the waiting room calmly talking to the woman sitting next to her, as if she weren’t the patient with the death sentence and all was right in her world. They rode the elevator in silence. Karla waited for Anna to ask what the doctor had said, dreading what she would tell her, wishing she’d insisted on not going in the examining room. Most of all, wishing she’d never come. What difference did it make whether Anna’s estate was in order when she died? No one else seemed to care; why should she?
Karla opened the door that led to the parking garage and stood aside to let Anna through. “Wait here. I’ll get the car.”
“It’s not that far.” Anna tucked her hand into Karla’s elbow and started up the ramp. “Besides, there’s something I want to tell you, and if I wait until later, I’m afraid it will sound contrived. I really hate coming here. It reminds me that I’m dying and that there’s not a damn thing I can do about it.” She paused to catch her breath. “Having you with me made it easier somehow. I just wanted you to know that.”
Of the dozen answers that came to mind, Karla was surprised at the one she chose. “Thank you for telling me. It was something I needed to hear.”
Chapter
6
Why don’t we stop somewhere for lunch?” Karla said as they drove away from the doctor’s office. She was on the ramp for the elevated freeway before Anna answered her.
“If you don’t mind, I think I’d just as soon go home and lie down for a while. If I have a nap, I’ll be ready if we decide to do something tonight.”
“Are you sure you’re feeling all right? You don’t look tired, you look exhausted.” Even Karla flinched at the question—the third of its kind in less than ten minutes.
“There’s something we have to get out of the way between us, Karla, and it seems now is the right time.” Anna stuck her thumb under the shoulder strap on the seat belt and held it away from her body. “I really don’t mind you talking to Dr. Michaels about me”—she turned to look at Karla for emphasis—“as long as you don’t take what he tells you too seriously and start hovering. I have enough reminders of my own about what’s happening without you adding to them.”
“You would think I’d know better. I used to hate it when you would pick up on one of my moods and want to know what was bothering me. I swore I would never do that to anyone.” She glanced at Anna with a self-effacing grin. “And here I am, doing it to you.”
“Just what did you and Dr. Michaels talk about that’s made you like this?”
“You—and what’s ahead.” She’d decided on honesty between them no matter how stark or brutal. Given a choice, it was the way she would want to be treated. Still, the words were hard to say aloud.
Anna returned her smile, only hers was accepting. “I’m sure he told you that I’m dying, but I’m just as sure he didn’t tell you that it was going to be today. As a matter of fact, the last time I brought up the subject, he told me there wasn’t any reason I couldn’t last a couple more years. Good years, too. That’s the only kind I want,” she said insistently. “I suppose that’s one of the things you’ve come here to talk about. At least I hope it is.”
Karla needed time to think, to sort through all that she’d learned that morning, to regain some equilibrium. They traveled the next five miles with only the sounds of traffic to relieve the silence. Then, realizing that her retreat was a form of abandonment, she forced herself to ask, “Does it bother you to talk about what’s happening?”
“You don’t have to use euphemisms or dance around the subject. Just say, does it bother me to know I’m dying. After all, it’s why you’re here. We both know that.”
“I wish that weren’t true,” Karla said softly, as surprised at the revelation as she knew Anna was. “I’m sorry I can’t tell you a convincing enough lie to make you believe I came here for another reason.”
Anna turned to look out the window. “Maybe by the time you leave you’ll feel differently.”
They’d had twenty years. There was no reason to think four weeks would change anything. Still, she conceded, “Maybe I will.”
“We’ve talked about me enough. Tell me about you. At least tell me about the coffee shop. How were you able to leave it for a whole month?”
Karla wasn’t ready for reciprocal intimacies. Her involvement in Anna’s life was one thing; Anna’s involvement in hers was another. Still, it was easier to answer than come up with a reason for not answering. “I had Jim come up from Los Angeles to run it for me.”
“How is Jim?” Anna asked carefully.
“Fine.”
“Is he still working for that movie company?”
The only way Anna could know about Winn Brothers Productions was through Grace or Heather. Karla didn’t like knowing her sisters were talking about her personal life to Anna. “They went out of business a couple of months ago.”
“Oh, that’s too bad. I know Grace was hoping he could help her get a job.”
Grace had never said anything to her about talking to Jim. “Grace doesn’t need Jim to help her. She’s got one of the best agents in Los Angeles. All she needs is a break.”
“I hope she can hold on long enough to see it happen. Living down there is so expensive.”
“She’s doing okay.” Karla thought Grace had stopped dumping her problems on Anna, but wasn’t surprised that she hadn’t. Grace was a person who never let a thought go unspoken.
“It was lucky that Jim was free to take over the shop for you.”
“Yes, it was.”
“You don’t want to talk about Jim to me, do you?”
“Not really.”
“That’s okay. It’s none of my business anyway. It was just my clumsy way to let you know I was interested.”
Karla hesitated over saying anything more. She couldn’t remember one time she and Anna had talked about Jim that they hadn’t ended up in a fight. “When I decided to come, it was either close up the shop or ask Jim to run it for me. I wasn’t about to turn the place over to a stranger, and my part-time people already give me as many hours as they can. It happened that Jim was between jobs and willing to take it on for the month. He may have a lot of faults, but he’s honest.” She thought about what she’d said. To some, her grandmother especially, honesty included fidelity. “At least he’s honest when it comes to something like this.”
“Seems to me he was the perfect choice, then.”
Karla was aware how much the approval had cost Anna. “I’m pleased you agree.”
“Do you think there’s any chance the two of you will get back together?”
“No.” As far as Karla was concerned, Anna had lost the right to ask about her and Jim when she’d refused to attend their wedding.
“Are you sure? There’s no one else in your life right now—at least not according to Heather. Couples getting back together after a divorce isn’t unheard of.”
“You made it very clear that you never liked Jim. Why would you want me to get back together with him?”
“I was wrong. I never should have tried to stop you from marrying him. All I accomplished was to drive a wedge between us, and I’ve been sorry ever since.”
“So now you think you can change that by giving your approval for us to get back together? It’s not going to happen. Jim and I have gone our separate ways, and you and I are exactly where we have always been.” She sounded cruel and didn’t want to. “We may not have the best relationship, but it’s foolish to waste time worrying about it now or trying to change things. At least we know where we stand with each other, Anna. That’s something, don’t you think?”
“I didn’t mean to push you. It’s just that sometimes I don’t know when to stop.”
“Me either. Maybe it’s something genetic.” It was the first time in Karla’s memory she’d acknowledged they could have something in common.
“If so, it skipped your mother. We never argued—not about anything. That doesn’t mean she listened to everything I said, mind you.” A
nna’s smile at the memory was one of sweetness and longing. “She would just stand there with one of those innocent looks on her face, nodding her head as if she agreed with everything her father or I said, and then she’d go on and do whatever she’d had in mind to do in the first place.”
“Daddy used to say she had a smile that could charm a general out of his stars.”
“How lovely.”
“He was always saying things like that about her. I used to love hearing him, especially when he said it in front of my friends.” Grateful that they’d stumbled onto something neutral that they could talk about, Karla added, “They thought he was the most romantic man alive, straight out of the movies. I told him how they felt one day, even admitted I was proud that my friends thought he and Mom were special, and that I hoped when I grew up someone would love me the way he loved Mom.” She’d never told anyone about that conversation, saving it the way she had the four-leaf clover she’d found at the cemetery on her mother’s grave, giving the memory and clover special power without knowing what the power was. How ironic that when she’d finally told someone, it was Anna.
“And how did he answer you?”
What he’d said was so touching, so special, as she’d grown older she’d developed doubts about the accuracy of her memory. “He said I was destined to have one of the great loves of all time . . . poets would be unable to find the words to describe this love . . . that it would come to me so gently I wouldn’t recognize it at first.” She glanced at Anna and met her gaze. “Being the father of three daughters, it was almost a given that he’d develop a gift for telling fairy tales.”
“There are so many things about your father I don’t know. I was content that he made Marie happy and never thought to ask anything else. I missed so much of all of your lives.”
“Why did you let it happen?” For once, she wasn’t being judgmental, just curious as to how a mother could remove herself so completely from her own daughter’s life. As far as Karla knew, her mother and grandmother loved each other, they just weren’t particularly close.
“I didn’t want your father to think I was interfering in their marriage. I had such a terrible time with Frank’s mother that I swore I would never do anything like that to my own daughter and her husband. But I let it go too far. I thought I was giving her freedom, and now I’m afraid she actually saw it as disinterest. She must have thought I simply didn’t care.”
Again she reached up to loosen the shoulder harness. “Then you met Jim and I was so sure he was the wrong man for you that I rode that pendulum all the way to the other side. Frank’s mother wouldn’t have dreamed of doing what I did to you. I had no business telling you not to marry Jim, and I’ve regretted that I didn’t go to the wedding every day since.”
“And you still feel that way? Even knowing you were right about Jim?” Karla was testing. Anna wasn’t the kind of woman who backed off easily or without laying groundwork for the retreat. Somewhere in the fractured apology was an “I told you so.”
“Yes,” Anna said without elaboration and then laughed. “Did I pass?”
Karla laughed, too. How could they know each other so well and be such strangers? “Mom said you never came to see us because you lived so far away. I told her I thought it was because you didn’t like us. It must have hurt her feelings. She didn’t talk to me about you for a long time afterward.”
Anna didn’t say anything.
“It’s so strange . . .” Karla went on. “I can reconstruct the entire conversation in my mind, everything except her answer.” Again she looked over to Anna. “I know now why you never came to see us, but why didn’t we visit you?”
“You did. A couple of times before Heather was born and then once after. You probably don’t remember because you were so little. Then Frank died, and your father was transferred so often you barely had time to unpack before you were packing up to move again. Marie and I were always making grand plans to get together, but then something would come up and we would have to postpone the trip to another time.” She opened her purse, took out a pill from a small container and stuck it under her tongue. “I thought we had so much time. I should have known better, especially after Frank died so young.”
“She missed you,” Karla said defensively. “I can’t believe you didn’t know how much. If I could see that, why couldn’t you?” The moment her mother died, Karla had become her champion, a role she’d carried so long it had become as much a part of her as the scar on her chin. It was impossible not to defend her now, even if Anna was dying.
“At night I’d sit on the porch and make up stories in my mind about what she’d done that day. I always put myself in the picture, of course. We’d have long conversations while we prepared dinner together. Afterwards, when we were cleaning the kitchen, we’d get to laughing and carrying on the way we used to when she was at home. Your mother liked to laugh more than anyone I’ve ever known. She’d get tickled about some silly little thing and the more she thought about it, the more tickled she would get. She’d wind up sitting on the floor holding her sides, me right along with her. Half the time I wouldn’t even know what we were laughing about.”
This was a side to her mother Karla had never seen. She felt cheated. “I guess when you grow up things aren’t as funny anymore.”
“When I got the phone call in the hospital that she and your father had been killed in the accident, the first image of her that came to me was one of her laughing. It’s stayed with me all this time.”
“I see her in the car.” Somehow, Karla had forgotten the reason Anna hadn’t come to the funeral. She’d been in the hospital with a gallbladder attack, so ill the doctors had refused to release her.
“But you weren’t there. At least that’s what I was told. How is it that you know what she looked like?”
“I listened to everyone talk about the accident, every tiny detail over and over again, how many bones were broken, how long my father lived, how Mom’s head went through the windshield, how much blood was in the car . . . everything.”
“They had no business saying things like that in front of you. They should have been more careful. Someone should have protected you. I should have been there to protect you.” She didn’t say anything for several seconds, and then softly added, “I was told they both died immediately.”
It would only take a sentence to destroy Anna’s comforting image of a laughing daughter. Not only hadn’t Marie died immediately, she’d lasted long enough to see her beloved husband die before her own heart had run out of blood to pump. “She only lived a minute or two,” Karla lied. “As I recall, it even says so on the death certificate,” she added, compounding the lie.
“It would break my heart to think they suffered,” Anna said.
“They didn’t, so your heart is safe. At least from breaking.” She cringed at what had been a stupid attempt at humor. “I’m sorry. That was a thoughtless thing to say.”
“It’s all right,” Anna said. “We’re new at this watching-what-we-say thing. It’s a given that there’ll be a little backsliding every now and then.”
Karla changed lanes as they neared the Rocklin turnoff. “How long do your afternoon naps usually last? I looked through the cupboards this morning and there are some things we need from the store.”
“Do as much shopping as you like. You don’t have to worry about me.”
“I was going to make an appointment at the bank for this afternoon to get into your safe-deposit box, but I think you’ve been through enough today. It can wait until tomorrow.”
“I’ve been giving your being here some thought.”
Karla exited and turned left, taking them under the freeway. “Oh?”
“I’ve decided you’re right. There are some things that I need to put in order.”
Karla had butted heads with Anna too many times to be drawn in by her seemingly easy capitulation. “What made you change your mind?”
“You have something I want. It seems only fair tha
t I give you what you want in exchange.”
“Okay, I’ll bite. What do I have that you want?”
“All those years I missed with your mother.”
Karla gave her a puzzled look.
“I want you to tell me about them. I want to hear everything you can remember, every detail, every moment.”
If Karla had been instructed to draw up a list of a hundred possibilities, Anna’s request would have been at the very bottom. “That doesn’t make sense. What difference could it make now?”
“Why does it have to make sense?”
“As you said before, you’ll be seeing her yourself soon. Why not ask her then?”
“I want the stories to come from you.”
Karla felt as if she’d been backed into a corner. “If this is your idea of a way to foster some last-minute reconciliation between us, to . . . to . . . create some common ground to build a relationship on, it’s too late, Anna. We can’t erase nineteen years in four weeks. It’s foolish to even try.”
“Why?”
“Because you’ll just be disappointed.”
“At least I’ll know we tried.”
“The doctor said you’re supposed to avoid things that upset you.”
“If that’s true, then the answer is obvious. Let me have what I want.”
“I’m not going to let you blackmail me into this,” Karla said. “You may be—”
“Why is it so hard for you to talk about your mother? I’ve tried since the day you first came here to get you to open up, but you were just as stubborn back then as you are now. Why?” The more agitated she got, the shorter and faster her breaths.
Upset at Anna’s physical distress, at the obvious signs of her grandmother’s failing heart, at her own inability to control the situation, Karla burst out, “Because it hurts too much to talk about her.”
Anna’s eyes widened in surprise. “Even after all this time?”
“Even after all this time,” she repeated woodenly. Her memories hadn’t faded. They were as clear now as they had ever been, as poignant. She could still hear her father’s laugh and see him coming up to put his arms around her mother as she worked at some chore. The way her parents had looked at each other, the smiles they gave no one else, the kisses they shared that had nothing to do with arriving or leaving were the guideposts Karla used to define love. After she started dating, it hadn’t taken long to realize she’d set her standard impossibly high. If she wanted a man in her life, she would have to find a way to settle. And she had.
Things Remembered Page 6