by CL Collier
“We did, actually,” Dad replies.
I need to formulate a plan to spend more time with this girl.
“Mom taught several grades over the years, all in elementary school. The past few years she taught third grade. I teach fifth,” Amanda says, answering a question Dad asked.
“And I teach fourth,” Laura replies.
“I teach fourth grade, too!” Mom exclaims. “I knew I liked you gals.”
Mom-approved. That’s a good thing.
Shit. I’m getting way ahead of myself here. I need to reel in the feelings before I get carried away. I hardly know this girl, and she lives in fucking Seattle. That’s a long way from little old Kernville.
They start looking at all the photo albums and yearbooks Mom and Dad got out, and I find I’m actually enjoying the stories about Amanda’s mom. My dad and her mom apparently had a really serious relationship. I was surprised to learn they lived together, and even more shocked to hear he knocked her up! What the fuck, Dad? Mom obviously knew this already and didn’t seem fazed by it at all.
What really gets me, though, are the pictures of my dad with Amanda’s mom. It’s like looking at her and me together. Her friend even makes a comment about it. It’s weird, yet I like it. It’s like a preview of what we’d look like together as a couple.
Again, I’m getting way ahead of myself here.
When Amanda excuses herself to use the bathroom, I decide to make my move. I want to talk to her, one on one. Maybe I can catch her coming out of the bathroom? I don’t want to wait for her there, though. That would definitely be a creep move. I’m not exactly sure what I’m going to do yet, but I’m listening intently for the bathroom door down the hall to open again. Then I’ll figure something out.
I hear the door open, and I look down the hall. I see her standing there, looking at our family pictures on the wall. Perfect. My dad is having a conversation with Krista and Laura about what there is to do in Kernville, and my mom left the room to hunt down more pictures of Amanda’s mom, so I get up and walk over to Amanda. She doesn’t even notice me approaching. I hope I don’t scare her.
Luckily, I don’t. She glances over at me, and I see a hint of a smile on her lips. I decide to explain who my sisters are in the pictures. She listens and then even asks about why our names all start with the letter D. We’re talking. I’m having a private conversation with her, and she seems genuinely interested in my family.
We hit a lull in the conversation, so I decide to start a new one. I lean closer to her, getting a whiff of her hair, which slightly distracts me. It’s just shampoo, for Christ’s sake, but it’s the best scent I’ve ever smelled on a girl’s hair before. I quickly pull myself together and say, “Isn’t it weird to think that if your mom and my dad had stayed together, neither one of us would be here right now?”
She looks at me curiously. “I guess that’s true. I never thought of that.”
“I suppose things really do happen for a reason,” I say to her.
Then I turn my attention back to the wall of photos and decide to change the subject again. I want to know more about her. “Mom and Dad took us on all kinds of family vacations when we were growing up, but they never did take us to Seattle. I’ve never been there before.”
I want her to tell me more about herself and where she’s from. When she simply responds with, “I love Seattle,” while wearing a thoughtful look on her face and a slight smile that makes me want to reach out and touch her, I decide to ask her if she’ll be my tour guide if I ever visit. I can tell it catches her off guard.
I can’t quite tell, but I think she’s interested in me, too. She’s nervous around me, that’s for sure. When she tells me to let her know if I ever come up to Seattle, I can’t help but just smile at her. She looks up at me and gives me a genuine smile, too.
Fuck. I’m done for. Her smile nearly knocks me off balance.
We look at more pictures that Mom found while Amanda was using the restroom, then Amanda and her friends decide to leave. I walk out with them. I need a plan to see her again, so I invite them to the Spot on Friday night. They all seem interested and say they’re going to go. I only hope they do.
Chapter Fifteen
Amanda
The next day, I meet John at his house at noon, and to say I was feeling anxious would be an understatement. I barely slept last night because I’m so excited about meeting my great-aunt and at least one of my mom’s cousins. I have no idea what to expect, but I hope it’s a positive and welcoming visit.
Krista and Laura are hanging out at the hotel. They didn’t want to go with me; they said that meeting my relatives should just be a family affair. John will obviously be there, but only because this wouldn’t even be possible without him. They told me to go alone, and we’d meet up again later.
John wasn’t kidding. My aunt lives just a few blocks away from him, and it takes us less than five minutes to walk to her house. On the way over, he tells me what he knows about my aunt and her daughter Lucy. Lucy is divorced and has two sons who also live at home with them. She moved into her mom’s house two years ago after her mom had a stroke, confining Polly to a wheelchair. Polly’s other two kids, Jimmy and Lorraine, moved away from Kernville several years ago. John isn’t sure where they live now.
“Do they know we’re coming?” I ask him.
“No,” he says.
And the butterflies pick up their pace in my stomach.
When we get to the house, John leads the way up the path to the front door. The house is a one-story ranch-style home. I hope they’re home.
He rings the doorbell, and it doesn’t take long for someone to answer the door. It’s a young man, and he looks at us with uncertainty.
“Hi, is your mom home?” John asks him.
“Yeah. She’s in the back. Who are you?”
“I’m John, and this is Amanda,” he says, pointing at me. “She’d like to talk to your mom and grandma.”
The boy, who’s probably about eighteen years old, still looks confused, but then he says, “Wait here and I’ll go get my mom.”
He closes the door, leaving John and I standing on the porch. He looks at me and raises his eyebrows. “Well, at least she’s here!”
I take a deep breath. “Yeah, I just hope they’re happy to see me.”
The door opens again, and a woman with brownish gray hair is standing in front of us. She looks a little bit like my mom. Not a lot, but they’re definitely related. “Can I help you?” she asks, looking unsure at us. Then she suddenly recognizes John and seems to relax a little. “I know you. You own the auto shop.”
“Yes, I do. My name is John Young,” he says as he extends his arm so she can shake his hand.
She shakes it and says, “I’m Lucy. What can I do for you?” She looks at me, and suddenly, it’s as if she recognizes me. “Do I know you?” she asks me.
“Well, no,” I start to explain, “but you did know my mom, Lydia Childers.”
She looks as though I’ve shocked her. “My cousin?”
I nod my head. “Yes. If it’s all right with you, I’d like to talk to you and your mom.”
She opens the door wider and invites us in. She looks as though she’s seen a ghost. “You look a lot like your mom,” she says to me.
“That’s what a lot of people say,” I reply.
Lucy leads us into her living room and invites us to sit down. “I’ll go get Mom. She’s going to be so excited to meet you!”
John and I sit down on the couch, and Lucy walks down the hallway. We hear some voices and movement coming from a room in the back of the house, and a few moments later, Lucy returns, pushing a wheelchair with the sweetest little old lady sitting in it.
Polly’s hair is silver and all pulled back into a bun. She has a sweet face and kind eyes. The second she sees me, she looks surprised, and her lips curl up in a smile. I can tell she had a stroke, though, because the left side of her face droops a bit, and she can’t fully smile. I know she
must think I look like her niece.
“Momma, this is Lydia’s daughter, Amanda,” Lucy says, bending down to speak closer to Polly’s ear.
Polly smiles at me. “By God, you look just like her,” she says to me. Even with her slurred speech, I can still understand her well enough. She puts her arms out toward me. “Come, give me a hug.”
I stand and go to hug Aunt Polly. She’s small and frail, so I try not to squeeze her too tight.
“How did you find me?” she asks as we embrace.
“My mom wrote about you in a journal,” I say to her as I pull away and stand back up again. She takes my hand and holds it in hers.
“Lydia did?”
“Yes,” I say to her. “She wrote all about you. She told me how wonderful you were to her when she was younger.”
“I tried to be wonderful,” she replies. “She certainly was a challenging girl.” Polly chuckles.
“Why don’t you have a seat, and we can chat,” Lucy suggests. I release Polly’s hand and return to my seat on the couch.
Polly sees John sitting there and immediately recognizes him. “John Young. What are you doing here?”
He chuckles. “I brought Amanda here. She didn’t know where to find you.”
“I haven’t seen you in years,” she says.
Lucy sits in a chair next to the wheelchair. “Amanda, what brought you to Kernville?”
I’ve thought about how this conversation might go several times over the past couple of weeks. Every time I imagined it in my mind, I planned out what I would say; however, now that I’m here actually having this conversation, all those plans have fallen out of my head. I take a deep breath, and then I start talking, hoping the words come out as well as I had imagined they would.
“Well, unfortunately, I have bad news to share.” Polly and Lucy both look at me expectantly. “My mom passed away a few weeks ago after battling breast cancer.”
“Oh!” Lucy says, then covers her mouth with her hand.
Polly looks down at her hands. She doesn’t look back up again for what feels like several minutes but, in reality, was probably just several seconds. When she finally looks back up at me again, she says solemnly, “May she rest in peace.”
I nod. “My mom wrote me a journal, which I got after she passed. I just found out about you two when I read it. Mom wanted me to come here and spread some of her ashes at her parents’ gravesite, so that’s why I came to Kernville. I’m here at your house because I wanted to meet you. I’ve never met any of my mom’s relatives.”
“Your mom didn’t leave on good terms,” Polly says. “She was a wild teenager who didn’t show much respect for Jim and me. When she left for Vegas, she cut ties with us.”
I look down at my hands. I don’t know what to say next. Luckily, Lucy speaks up.
“I remember your mom when she lived here. She was always nice to me. I missed her when she left, but then she never returned. I always wondered what happened to her.”
“Well, she ended up moving to Seattle, which is where she met my dad. She went to college, became an elementary school teacher, got married, and had me. She had a really wonderful life, and from what I read in her journal, I think she had a lot of regrets.”
“Oh?” Lucy says, intrigued to hear more. Polly is silent, but listening to me.
“I think she wrote the journal because she felt guilty for everything that happened when she left here. She wanted me to know everything about her life, and she wanted me to come here. I think the reason she never told me about you before was because she was ashamed.”
“Hmph,” Polly says. She looks away from us, and I can’t tell what she’s thinking or feeling. Then she looks back at me and continues talking. “Your mom made poor choices. I knew that losing her parents was especially hard on her. I tried to put myself in her shoes, but she said and did some things that made it hard for me to like her. I was hurting too, you know. Her mom was my sister, and I missed her something fierce when she died. Lydia changed, which I didn’t blame her for, but her disrespectful behavior was inexcusable. Jim, my husband, told her that if she left, she couldn’t come back. I guess she took that to mean she could never come back to Kernville at all. We never heard from her again.” She looks at John. “John knows what I’m talking about.”
John chuckles. “I sure do.”
“I actually knew she moved to Seattle,” Polly continues. “I also knew she became a teacher, got married, and had you.”
Lucy and I both look at her in surprise. “You did?” we both say, almost in unison. I did not expect to hear those words come out of her mouth. She knew about me?
Polly nods. “Her good friend Michelle kept in touch with her for many years. She always told me how Lydia was doing until they drifted apart. That was shortly after you, as well as Michelle’s daughter, were born.”
“You should meet Michelle,” John says. “I can take you to her house tomorrow, if you’d like.”
I’m taken aback by John’s generosity. He didn’t have to invite me over to his house or introduce me to all these people, but that’s what he’s doing. Maybe it’s a small town thing. Like Southern hospitality, only we’re not in the South.
“I don’t want to impose,” I say to him.
“You’re not. I’m offering,” he replies.
“Go meet her,” Polly says. “She was friends with your mom since they were born.”
I consider what they’re saying, and I might as well meet her. Who knows if I’ll ever come back to Kernville. This might be my only chance to meet my mom’s childhood friend.
“I really appreciate it. I’d like to go meet her,” I say to John.
He smiles. “I’ll call her tonight and make sure they’re going to be home tomorrow. Since her husband retired, they like to travel.”
I spend the next couple of hours visiting with Polly and Lucy. John stays the whole time, too, and Polly entertains me with stories about my mom’s childhood. She even has Lucy fetch a few photo albums that contain pictures of my mom. Some of the pictures are of her as a child, and some are in her older teenage years.
“Why don’t you stay for dinner?” Lucy asks me after we finish looking through the pictures.
I’m touched by her generosity. “Thanks,” I reply, “but I have two friends in town with me, too. They’ve been hanging out at the hotel all this time, so I should have dinner with them tonight. They came all this way with me.”
Lucy smiles. “Bring them over, too. We’d love to visit with you some more. You came all this way, so you should spend more time with family.”
I smile back at her. After only meeting her today, she has already accepted me as a member of the family, and that warms my heart. “Okay, I can’t turn that down. Thanks. I’ll pick them up and come back later for dinner. I really appreciate the invitation. It’s been so nice getting to know you and Polly today.”
“It’s our pleasure,” Polly replies, her kind eyes and smile making me feel welcome.
When John and I leave, we walk back to his house, and I thank him again for being so kind and taking me there. I give him my phone number so he can let me know if I’ll be able to meet Michelle tomorrow.
Later that evening, Laura, Krista, and I have a nice visit with Lucy and Polly for dinner. Lucy’s two sons, Brad and Caleb, are both there, too. Brad is the one I met earlier when John and I arrived at the house. I was right; he’s eighteen. Caleb is twenty, and he’s just home for the summer. He attends California State University in Sacramento, which is where Lucy’s ex-husband now lives, too.
I also found out that Jimmy and Lorraine both live in Bakersfield. They’re both married and have kids and grandkids. Lucy said maybe if I visit again someday, I can meet them, too.
After visiting with Lucy and Polly for a few hours, we decide to leave when I can tell Polly is getting tired. I give both Lucy and Polly big hugs before we leave, and we exchange phone numbers and addresses so we can stay in touch. Lucy is also on Facebook, so I look he
r up on my phone and request to be her friend. I couldn’t find her when I searched before because she goes by her married last name even though she’s divorced now. I’m so happy I decided to come to Kernville. Meeting my mom’s relatives has filled a void I never knew existed. It’s a strange feeling, but I have a sense of wholeness. I have a better understanding of my mom’s life, as well as my own.
Just as Krista, Laura, and I get into my car to leave, my phone rings. John’s calling. I can’t wait to hear about tomorrow.
“Hi, John,” I say as I answer my phone. I remain parked in front of Lucy’s house.
“Hi, Amanda. I got in touch with Michelle, and she said she’d love to meet you tomorrow. She invited us over for lunch. Can you meet at my house at noon again?”
“Of course,” I say, feeling relieved that I do get to meet Michelle tomorrow.
That night, I have a dream about my mom. I’m chasing her through a field. She keeps turning around to look at me and tell me to hurry up and follow her. When I finally catch up with her, she smiles at me, then disappears, so I’m left standing there alone. I wake up in the morning feeling sad. I miss my mom.
Chapter Sixteen
Amanda
I get to John’s house promptly at noon. Laura, Krista, and I enjoyed those delicious cinnamon rolls for breakfast again, and we saw the waitress who said she would try to help me get in touch with my family. I told her I didn’t need her help anymore because I already found them, and she was elated for me! She’s such a sweet lady.
Krista and Laura stayed back at the hotel again. The hotel is within walking distance of a lot of things—the park, restaurants, the town shops—plus, the hotel has a pool. They didn’t want to tag along again today, and I understood. I really don’t mind that they want to stay behind. I’m grateful that they traveled this far with me in the first place.
John drives us over to Michelle’s house. She lives outside of town in a beautiful secluded house about ten minutes away. It looks like a large log cabin. It’s gorgeous.