The Shortest Distance Between Two Women

by Kris Radish

  She cannot say no because she is remembering the circle of her nieces standing outside of Joy’s house and the hilarious way the Gilford girls used a verbal machine gun on Uncle Rick when they totally abandoned the reunion planning. She is remembering how Marty somehow managed to get Joy to take her extra-sharp scissors and use them to soothe her pain.

  “Right now,” Marty had urged her distraught daughter as the nieces and Marty and sister Debra fanned around her like protective gladiators. “Take out your anger right here, right now.”

  Joy had no idea what to do. Her anger had always reared itself from the center of her stomach and exploded through her throat as if she were a filthy-mouthed auctioneer. Joy’s frightened world, which was filled with more self-doubt than most people realized, was paralyzed by the long-held fear that her husband would one day actually leave her.

  Rick left because she is a failure.

  Rick left because she put the thought in her mind the moment they were married that he would one day take off.

  Rick left because she is a horrid wife and mother.

  Rick left because she is a henpecking drunken fool.

  Rick left because he is disappointed in the children.

  Rick left because he knows there is someone better than Joy.

  Rick left because of her.

  Marty was the one who gathered her female tribe around the table and made certain that Joy was in the center of the fold and who ordered her to let it go. Let it go, even as Marty knew Joy had been drinking wine, which was so a part of the problem but almost excusable this time, and had been staggering in a dazed circle of confusion for weeks as if she was about to audition for Dancing with the Stars and was memorizing a difficult routine.

  Emma watched her mother circle the wagons, comfort the sick and wounded and tend to the emotional victims of her oldest daughter’s evil husband as if she were a triage nurse on the front lines during a siege of vital importance. This is how Emma had always known her mother. A take-charge woman who had suffered the greatest of losses and yet managed to keep going. She’d asked her mother about that more than once, and each time her mother had replied, “It’s what women do,” and Emma could not imagine how, how in God’s name do women do this work, for so long, forever, every single damn time, every day, always and forever.

  How do you start a family and have babies and put Noxzema on your face every night thinking that the world is bright and beautiful and then wake up one morning to a nightmare the size of South America? How do you manage a household and all the people inside of it and usher your beloved through the final and most horrific days and nights of his life? How do you say good-bye and then get up to make certain that there is milk in the fridge and that someone has mowed the grass and sorted through the mail and paid bills so that the electricity stays on? How do you recover? How do you finish raising your adolescent baby and coordinate weddings and take a part-time job and maintain the Higgins social obligations and then still have time to babysit the grandkids and read every book on the New York Times bestseller list?

  These are some of the questions that Emma so desperately wanted to ask her mother in the middle of the Siege of Joy, which should really, Emma thinks, be called the Seize of Joy because by the time Marty was done with her pep talk Joy would have taken her scissors to every penis, dishcloth and anything else that would fit between its sharp silver blades not only in South Carolina but in every state in the Union.

  “Honey,” Marty prodded, “just whack something. Just let out a big old yell and let it go. Take that scissors and ram something.”

  Joy looked at first as if she could turn at any moment and impale anyone who was standing nearby. Then there was a moment of simple panic that struck every Gilford at once because they suddenly realized they could end up with a pair of exquisite shears lodged just above the soft edge of the lovely place where their left and right collarbones meet—inches below the windpipe.

  Everyone took a step back as if they were dancers in a play that centered around a would-be murderer who was about to either do it or not do it. The scissors could go either way.

  Emma edged backward too, but she was mostly watching, which is something she realized at the very moment that she did a lot of—watch. Watch and then tentatively respond and then think about it and then if she feels like it, jump in and join, especially if Marty is prompting her with hand gestures, or one of her famous dirty “get going” looks, or maybe a ruthless shove against the small of her back.

  This time Emma knew that Joy was going to harm a nonhuman object. She knew that even though Joy was a loudmouth reactionary, she was also in a world of hurt. She needed to make some kind of physical gesture to pry the lid off of her anger. Even as Joy knew that Rick would most likely leave her one day and then the Gilford women would gather round her table and hold her and talk to her and listen and then do something that in any other arena might be considered violent and unacceptable.

  Which is exactly what happened.

  Joy took the scissors off the table as if she were a paramedic and the call had just come in to save forty-five people trapped in an overturned tourist bus. Everyone had taken at least one, if not more, steps back by then and the Gilford girls were ready for whatever in the hell it was that Joy was about to mutilate.

  Joy looked around wildly. She thought about the planning notebooks and about the napkins that she had not so long ago placed alongside of the graham cracker cake that she had baked that afternoon and then covered in a layer of tears as she cried into the frosting. She looked towards the sink and saw three new hand towels that matched the blue and gold tile on her wall and she imagined slicing them up and then making a long distress ribbon to hang from the front porch light.

  She looked at the long tangerine-colored skirt that Stephie had on and thought that if she cut it off of her she might see yet another tattoo that would make them all gasp and she passed on Stephie and moved to two blouses her nieces were wearing, a pair of long cargo shorts on Chloe, and then at her own mother’s hair.

  Marty’s hair, that she had finally let go gray and was allowing to grow until it touched her shoulders and that Joy was now actually admiring during her pre-cutting frenzy. Why hadn’t she ever noticed how absolutely lovely it was, soft, long gray hair? Why hadn’t she ever seen how her mother’s skin was still so tight above her cheeks from all those years of using the Avon products that some woman in a red convertible always brought to her front door?

  The hair could not be cut with the avenging scissors because it was way too beautiful. And then Joy turned her eyes back to the table and saw the perfect tablecloth. The one that she always saved for reunion meetings and gatherings where something important was about to happen or where plans were being made for another huge gathering. She tried for a second to remember where she had gotten the hand-stitched tablecloth that she had ironed so many times the edges were stiff and always standing at attention the moment she took it out of the wash.

  Could it have been a wedding gift? How perfect would that be? A glorious reminder of a time when her marriage and the life ahead of her was as beautiful and clean and lovely as the tablecloth itself.

  And then, before she could think of anything else, Joy moved, pushing past Emma, Marty, Debra and Stephie. Joy rested both hands, including the one holding the scissors, on the edge of her antique oak table.

  Then Joy smiled sweetly, a smile that none of the Gilford women could ever remember seeing before, and she began cutting her beautiful tablecloth in half. She pulled it towards her as she sliced the handles up and down and then everyone looked at Marty, expecting her to say something or do something, but Marty only nodded her head up and down twice and everyone knew, somehow, what to do next.

  The Gilford girls took a step forward. Stephie, Emma, Marty, Debra, Chloe, Kendall and probably the spirits of about a thousand swirling deceased Gilford female spirits—they all seized the ends of that tablecloth and pulled so that the cutting would be swifter, straighter,
and so that Joy could make a clean and lovely split right down the center of the pure white cloth.

  When Joy was done, Marty quietly gathered up the two pieces, folded them together, laid them down on the counter right next to the coffeepot and gave everyone in the room a hug, starting with Joy, and then the women continued to minister to Joy, forgetting, or so it seemed, about the huge list of things yet undone for the reunion planning. And then they all ate the graham cracker cake, which was delicious.

  And this is why Emma, who is swirling around her mother’s request that Erika stay with her, rests her head against the cool glass of her office window and wishes she could tell her mother and Erika to shut up and go away.

  “Well?” Marty says a bit impatiently. “Are you still there? Are you okay?”

  “Who knows, Mother,” Emma asks back, with just a hint of challenge in her voice. “Who really knows who is okay and who isn’t and what is going on in anyone’s head but our own?”

  Marty is silenced by this question, which is really not a question. Before she can respond, Emma starts talking again. She lays the fingertips of her right hand against the glass, tapping lightly, and asks her mother if sometime soon they can just meet and talk.

  “Talk?” Marty asks, bewildered.

  “Yes, Mom, just talk. I’ll ask you questions and you can be honest and tell me who you are.”

  “You know me, dear,” Marty says, softening her voice.

  “Not really, Mom. I know there are things you have never told me,” Emma says, as if she knows what she is talking about.

  Marty is silent.

  Emma taps her fingers again and then says, “Please, Mom.”

  There is a weight resting on Marty’s chest that feels like a truckload of used books. But she thinks that Emma needs something and there is no way she can say no to her little Emma.

  “Okay,” she concedes. “But first you must promise me that Erika can stay at your house.”

  “The bed is hers, Mom.” Emma drops her hand so it rests on her desk and wonders how in the world she will get through what she has just promised without committing a felony.

  “I’ll call you when she gets in, okay, sweetheart?”

  “And then we can just go someplace and talk?”

  “Yes,” Marty answers and then hangs up so quickly Emma doesn’t even get a chance to ask her what day Erika is arriving.

  The part that Emma also does not know is that her recently estranged older sister is already in Higgins and that Emma is the only Gilford sister who doesn’t know.

  17

  THE SEVENTEENTH QUESTION:

  Are you the man who is sleeping with my grandma?

  THE WELCOME HOME ERIKA and Let’s Get to Know Grandma’s New Boyfriend last-minute cocktail party being held in Marty’s backyard is only fifteen minutes old when Emma walks reluctantly up her mother’s sidewalk, dreading seeing Erika for the first time since they’d quarreled. She turns the corner into the backyard, scans all of the blooming plants for any signs of trauma, then lifts up her head just as precocious Chloe asks a nice-looking elderly gentleman if he is the man who is sleeping with her grandma.

  Emma squeezes her eyes and stops as if she has just run into an invisible brick wall. Oh my God. I need this gathering like a second period this month. I’m not speaking to most of my sisters, the reunion has its arms wrapped around my neck, and unless I confess soon I’ll be lucky to get out of this alive. Emma thinks that if she backs up slowly and does not open her eyes no one will know that she is fleeing. Maybe she can spare herself, this poor man, her mother, and everyone else who has heard Chloe’s question more moments of embarrassment and Gilford-like rudeness.

  But as she starts to back up, totally serious about leaving, she feels something poke her in the back and she hears the unmistakable whisper of Susie Dell in her right ear asking her why everyone in the backyard has suddenly stopped moving, talking, eating and drinking.

  “They look as if they have all been turned to stone,” Susie Dell adds. “What in the hell is wrong, Emma?”

  Susie Dell is such a nice woman that Emma has to restrain herself from flinging the tray of cheese and crackers her new friend is holding straight into the bushes, grabbing her by the shoulders, spinning her around and saying, “Susie Dell, run for your life! Get the hell away from the Gilfords. Run fast and far.”

  But Emma has a feeling Susie Dell can take it. She opens her eyes, moves her head just an inch, and repeats what her wild niece has just asked Susie’s father.

  “ ‘Are you the man who is sleeping with my grandma?’”

  “Oh, hell’s bells, I love it,” Susie barks loud enough for her own white-faced father to hear. “Let’s go save the poor Romeo.”

  And then Susie Dell jumps in front of Emma with her tray of whole wheat crackers, quickly appears at her bewildered father’s side, sets the tray on the table and then puts one hand on each one of Chloe’s shoulders, looks her in the eye and says, “Sweetheart, you seem old enough to know that was a very rude question.”

  Susie Dell, Emma chuckles to herself, must have been switched at birth. She is really a part of this insane family. Chloe, a little troublemaker, who thought she was pulling a fast one, looks like she was just stripped naked in front of her entire school and has no idea what to say or do next. Susie Dell takes care of that, too. She introduces herself to Chloe, tells her that once, years ago, when this man who is her father was having an important garden party just like this, she organized six of her friends to run through the backyard in their underwear with plastic trick-or-treat masks on their faces.

  “Seriously?” Chloe stammers, dumbfounded and totally in awe.

  “She’s more than serious,” Robert Dell answers with a look of relief. “I would have grounded her for a year except I have to tell you that most of the people at the party really needed to see girls running around in their underwear. They were a bunch of uptight attorneys. It ended up being the best party I ever threw in my life.”

  Emma can hear her mother laughing as if the underwear girls were just entering the backyard at this very moment.

  “Robert, do not tell this granddaughter any more stories because she’s likely to be streaking nude any second and with the reunion coming up she’ll figure out a way to have everyone there do the same thing,” Marty says, walking towards the terribly gracious and quick-witted retired attorney from Charleston.

  And then, in typical Gilford fashion, Stephie shouts from across the lawn, “There’s a good chance she doesn’t even wear underwear!” and Emma slaps herself on the forehead with the palm of her hand and knows for certain that the cocktail party is now fully under way and that the Dells will more than be able to handle not just the Gilfords, but pretty much anything else as well.

  Sister Joy is already hovering over the gin-laden punch bowl and has appointed herself the official bartender and for once, because her marriage has just evaporated, it will be okay if she ends up dancing on top of the table.

  Erika looks dazed and confused as she is walking from relative to relative trying to figure out what is and isn’t happening. “I feel like I just walked in on the last act of a new play,” she confides as Emma walks over to give her a very quick welcome hug. Emma does not even bother to whisper when she responds with something so out of character that her sister drops her drink. “You poor bitch,” Emma says with a laugh. Still uncertain if Erika has saved her from the reunion mess she has created, and shaken from their last phone call when Erika hung up on her, Emma keeps moving as if she knows exactly where she is going.

  There is also Stephie, who looks better than she did a few days ago at the tablecloth-cutting ceremony, but who is lurking as if she has some unspoken secret, which Emma can only imagine is something that will not just push the envelope but make it shred into dozens of pieces.

  Debra has not even bothered to chastise her outrageous daughter Chloe. Now she’s busy ordering everyone under the age of forty who will listen to her to do something l
ike make certain people’s cars do not block the neighbors’ driveways and to bring in more drinks from the garage refrigerator. Debra, who is candidate numero dos to have a marriage explode during the cocktail party or at any given moment during the next week, month, or year.

  Her husband Kevin is, as always, trying so very hard to be gracious and kind and to make up for the loud and seemingly crazy behavior of the wife he loves in a way that even he probably does not understand. Emma thinks of Kevin as either a male god-like creature or someone who has a mental and emotional disability that has never been diagnosed.

  There are the teenagers, especially the boys, Bo and Riley, who think no one can see them but who are lurking on the edges of not just the party but the next stages of their lives as if they are terrified to take the next step. They are geeky and dorky and not-so-refined images of every boy-man who ever existed.

  There are neighbors, a mess of Higgins men and women who must be Marty’s senior-citizen drinking-and-dancing pals, and Marty walking with her arm laced through Robert’s arm and introducing him as “my friend Robert” as she parades in a queenly circle around the gardens Emma designed for her all those years ago.

  Gardens that Emma specifically formed around an open circle of grass so that there would be the perfect place for parties just like this. There are small walkways rotating from the circle but every single path in Marty’s yard looks as if it begins and ends in the center of this terribly lively circle and Emma, who has never really stopped to look at her creation or see it in its fullest use, is bent over at the waist so she can look at the plants behind Debra and Joy who have both stationed themselves at the drink table and are awaiting their turn to meet Mr. Dell.

  This is when Emma, without intention, hears her mother talking with Erika and Robert, and when she discovers more about her mother and her relationship with Robert Dell while Erika peppers them with questions.