by Leanna Ellis
Rae shrugs. “I’m not sure. Maybe I was always that way. Maybe I was rebellious.” She winks. “Or maybe I just saw how it never really mattered. You can’t please everyone all the time. It’s impossible. Your mother tried to please our parents. But in the end she still disappointed them. They expected me to disappoint them, so when I did, it wasn’t a major catastrophe.”
“Were their standards so high?” I ask.
“I don’t know about that. Maybe just different. They were worried about what neighbors would say, about what people at church would say.” Rae laughs. “I always said if they were talking behind our backs, then that wasn’t right. My folks frowned at that, but they didn’t have an answer for it either.”
“I think I tried to please Mother. Being an only child, I was a pleaser. But I wasn’t always sure I did.”
“Oh, you did. Beverly was very proud of you, Claudia.”
I shrug, feeling uncomfortable. “She never said that. She wasn’t very demonstrative with her feelings.”
“That was just her way. She was a lot like our mother, your grandmother. Maybe it was a sign of the times.”
“I wish I knew more about Mother. She never liked to talk about herself. Or her past.”
“Oh?” Rae looks away from me, stares off as if she’s looking into a mirror reflecting days gone by.
“After Stu and I became engaged, I asked Mother how Daddy had proposed to her. Know what she said?”
Rae gives a tiny, almost indiscernible shake of her head.
“She couldn’t remember.” Incredulous still, I laugh. “How can someone not remember how their husband proposed?”
Rae lifts one narrow shoulder in a shrug.
Worried I’ve upset her, I lean forward. “Are you okay? Does it upset you to talk about my mother?”
She gives me a reassuring smile, but there’s something in her eyes that I can’t quite read. Is it pain? Regret? “I never knew what your relationship was like with Beverly. I wasn’t around you two much. Except when you were little.”
I look at my aunt, sitting cross-legged on the ground in a filmy skirt. My mother would have been mortified if Elvis had fallen face first into her lap, but Rae thought it was funny. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe you were different from others. Ahead of your time.” I try to peer across the parking lot but can’t see the Cadillac or Ivy. “What’s taking Ivy so long?”
Then I hear footsteps, the snapping of flip-flops against heels, and Ivy walks up. She slides the plastic key into the slot and pulls the door open.
“Okay. Here we go.” Rae pushes herself up to stand, brushes off her skirt, and flexes her fingers. “Hold the door now.” She bends, and we again perch Elvis horizontally between us. He stares up at the stars. “The towel?” She glances at Ivy, who looks suddenly pale.
Then Ivy lunges forward, pushes past me. I stumble, joggle Elvis. The door knocks against my shoulder and a sharp pain shoots through my arm, making my fingers tingle. I brace the door with my foot. Elvis’s head tips toward the concrete. Rae and I bobble Elvis but manage to right him. We look at each other for a moment, breathing a sigh of relief, knowing how close we came to destroying this stupid, cheap bust. Once again I wonder if Stu is getting a good laugh out of all of this.
Caught in the doorway, I hang onto Elvis. From the corner of my eye, I see Ivy bending over the bushes. I don’t know what to do. I wish someone would stop and help us, but then pray no one sees us.
“Do you need help, Ivy?” Rae asks, looking over at the girl.
Ivy gags, but it seems to be a dry heave.
“Are you okay?” I start to put Elvis down, but how? I’m trapped. “Ivy?” She turns finally, her face pale, eyes wide. She presses a hand to her mouth.
“Do you need a towel?” I ask, seeing it on the concrete at the tip of my shoe.
Ivy picks it up, dabs her mouth, then lays it atop Elvis, carefully straightening the folds and edges.
“Now what?” Rae asks. “It’s getting heavy.”
“I can’t put it down.” The weight of the door pushes against me. Elvis’s head presses into my stomach.
“I’m okay.” Ivy steps behind me and pulls the door open wide. “Go on.”
“I’m glad we aren’t attracting any attention,” Rae says.
We shuffle through the stairwell, then into a narrow hallway. The walls are painted yellow, but there are no decorations. Nothing but door after door of rooms. At the end of the hallway, I notice a sign with the silhouette of a woman.
“There’s a restroom.”
But Ivy heads straight for the elevator, which has a sign pasted over the buttons. “Out of order.”
“Great,” I mutter. “There’s another elevator down the hall.”
This time we have to pass the Jungle Room bar and the entrance to the lobby. No one seems to notice us as we scurry along like mice carrying a block of cheese the size of Wisconsin. When we reach the other elevator, I lean against the wall, my arms aching. “Ivy, are you sick? Do you think I should take you to a doctor?”
“I’m fine. Just carsick.”
I hesitate to mention the obvious, then say, “We’re not in a car.”
“I’m not over the drive yet.”
“It could take a few more hours,” Rae says as if she’s had experience with this sort of thing. “You’ll feel better when you get something in your stomach.”
Ivy doesn’t look too sure about the idea.
“Should we call your dad?” I ask.
“I’m fine. Really.” Her voice takes on that huffy quality of irritation, and I drop the subject.
I glance up at the lights above the elevator. How much longer? The hallway is deserted except for a framed poster of Elvis and a vending machine selling water and Cokes.
Ivy lifts the corner of the towel covering Elvis’s face. “That’s creepy.”
“Why do you think I banished Elvis to the attic?”
Finally the elevator arrives. It’s empty. We board it, inching forward, careful not to scrape Elvis against the doors. A minute later we carry him down the hallway to our suite.
“Where?” Rae asks.
“Over there.” We shuffle our way to the sitting room and set him on a corner table.
Ivy flips the towel over his head, covering at least his face. “He was staring at us.”
“Laughing at us is more like it.” I feel laughter bubble up inside me.
* * *
“WHEN IN MEMPHIS, eat like the natives,” I say, pulling into Corky’s, one of the best barbecue joints in town according to Southern Living. Weaving the unwieldy Cadillac through the narrow parking lot is an exercise in holding my breath. It’s usually my personal rule not to eat at places with big pigs on the side of the building, but it’s also my rule not to chase impossible dreams. This trip is an exception to all.
The air inside the restaurant smells tangy, mingled with the succulent scent of roasted pork. If I was looking for a quiet dining experience, this isn’t it. But at least the music piped through the restaurant isn’t Elvis. After a short wait we’re seated in a booth.
“Sweet tea?” the waitress asks.
“It’s been years,” Rae says, “but I believe I’ll indulge in the house wine of the South.”
“You must not have been in the South much, sugar,” the waitress remarks. “Or else you have great self-control.”
“I’ve never been accused of that.”
“Tell us about Oregon,” I say, when the waitress has taken our orders.
“Where do I begin?” she asks wrinkling her forehead.
I’m relieved to find a topic she’s willing to discuss. “Why did you choose to live there?”
“It seemed as far away from Dallas and Memphis as the moon. It’s also where I found myself … and God.”
“What do you mean?” Ivy asks.
“More like God found me. Because I don’t think I was looking. But he got my attention.”
“How?” I ask.
“I
quit looking inward and looked for help. And I found it.”
“God helped you?” Ivy asks.
“He always does.”
“What did you need help from? Were you trying to escape? Trying to avoid seeing someone?” I ask, wondering if that someone was Elvis.
“Someone? You mean Elvis? No, it was over. I was over Elvis. But other things are not so easily forgotten. I needed to get away. It was too confining in Dallas.”
Or was our family, my mother and grandparents, too reserved for her? “What did you do?”
“Do?”
“For a living.”
“A little bit of everything. I waitressed in a little café for a while. Modeled in New York.”
“You modeled in New York?” Ivy leans forward.
“Sure. I did a couple of runways, but I wasn’t much good. I didn’t want to show off the clothes. I preferred grabbing everyone’s attention myself. Designers don’t like that. I did a couple of magazines. But mostly I modeled for art students.”
Ivy leans back, shading her eyes with her eyelashes, wary and watchful.
“Somewhere there’s a picture of me in the buff on some stranger’s mantle.” Rae starts to laugh.
Ivy’s eyes widen. “Really?”
Rae arches her back, pushing her small breasts forward. “Well, I wasn’t Brigitte Bardot in my day, but I certainly wasn’t a dachshund either. I had plenty of men interested back then. And I made a good living in the different art schools. Of course, I liked to think of myself as an artist then. But I had no talent. And certainly no determination. Just a willing spirit.”
“A free spirit,” I say.
She nods.
“And what did my mother think of all your adventures?” I ask, remembering Mother’s dislike of Holly Golightly in Breakfast at Tiffany’s.
“Oh, Beverly didn’t ask anymore what I was up to. We had very little contact back then. She never wrote.”
“We never got letters from you either,” I defend my mother. “Just an occasional postcard.”
She shrugs as if indifferent. “It was for the best. Beverly didn’t want to hear from me. She was busy with her own life. She had no need of me, no desire to remember …”
“Remember what?” I ask, leaning forward, resting my elbows on the table.
“Her dreams. She had them with you.”
I lean back into the booth. “Mother always said she wanted to be a wife and mother.”
“That’s true.” Rae’s mouth flattens into a thin line. “Our food should be coming soon.”
“Was my mother really satisfied with that?” I ask, needing to know more. I thought I’d known Mother, but maybe I hadn’t. Maybe no one had. It didn’t seem like she let anyone into her thoughts or her heart. Maybe Rae hadn’t really known her either. After all, they hadn’t spoken for many years before Mother died.
“I don’t know.” Rae lifts a narrow shoulder, then fingers the base of her iced-tea glass. “Dreams come true are rarely as satisfying as we imagine.”
Wondering if she’s thinking of my mother or her own lost or forgotten dreams, I place my hand on hers. I wonder if it’s painful for her to be back in Memphis. Memories, I know full well, can soothe like a violin sonata or jolt like a discordant note on a steel guitar.
Rae places her other hand on top of mine and her warmth surrounds me. I feel a sudden closeness to her, the same feeling I remember when she visited when I was a child. A tingling delight and solid connection took hold. If nothing else, my aunt and I share a love for my mother.
“I miss her …” My voice breaks.
“I know,” Rae says, her eyes fill with tears. “I do, too.”
“My mother left when I was three,” Ivy says suddenly. Beneath the layers of makeup, there is a dusting of freckles across her nose. She looks so young and vulnerable. Twisting her fork over and over, she stares at the candle in the middle of the table.
I don’t know what to say. But I know loneliness, the kind that weights the heart until it cracks and break. I understand the need to reach out to my mother, to feel her arms come around me and hold me as she whispers that everything will be all right. “I know.”
“B-but why?” she asks, her tone flat. Then she looks right at me, searching for answers when there are none. “You knew her, right?”
I never understood why Gwen walked out on Ben and their young daughter. “I don’t know what happened.”
I wonder what Ben told his daughter, if they discussed her mother’s disappearance since the garage sale. Or if it’s been too painful, too difficult a subject to broach when their father-daughter relationship seems at a standoff. “What did your father tell you?”
“Not much.”
“She didn’t leave a note.” I remember Ben coming over, carrying a sleeping Ivy against his shoulder, pain as deep as any I’ve ever seen darkened his eyes. Now Ivy squints at me, anger burning in her gaze. “No reasons. No excuses. Not that anything Gwen could say would explain it away.” The hurt had been dealt with a harsh blow, the emptiness, all these years later, still resonates. “I always thought your mother was overwhelmed … that she felt inadequate—”
I stop. I don’t want Ivy to think she’s the reason her mother left and blame herself. Suddenly I understand the briar patch Ben has tried to pick his way through, knowing if he said the wrong thing, it would be Ivy who would be hurt. Tread carefully, I tell myself. “It didn’t have anything to do with you though. You know that, don’t you, Ivy?”
She looks away. My heart aches for her, for Ben, for elusive answers, haunting questions.
Rae’s somber gaze shifts between us, watching, listening, waiting.
“How could she leave like that?” Ivy asks. “Maybe she hated being a mom so much. Maybe she knew she’d make us all miserable. Maybe we made her miserable.”
Rae makes a disgruntled noise of disbelief.
As a baby Ivy had an easy, full-bodied smile, wiggling her body, kicking her legs, waving her arms with joy. Now she’s somber, so sad. Her eyes tilt downward at the corners, as if weighted with misery. “I remember when she was pregnant with you.”
“Was she happy?” Ivy asks.
“Yes. For a while. Now that I think back, she wasn’t typically a happy person. She was always fussing, worrying about something. But I remember her rubbing her tummy affectionately.” She always said everything was all right, but her eyes told a different story.
“So why’d she leave?” Ivy asks.
“I don’t know.” I feel unprepared and wish Ben were here to field these questions. But maybe Ben doesn’t have any answers either. No amount of explanation, I’ve learned, can cover the heartache. I remember the doctor painstakingly explaining the way cancer can spread and grow. But knowing, understanding the physical, biological reasons didn’t answer the deeper struggle of why.
“Sometimes,” Rae chimes in, “we don’t know what is in another’s heart. It’s a mystery. A mother’s heart … is as deep as an ocean. You must know that whatever took your mother away, you are in her heart. Wherever she is, whatever happened. A mother never forgets her child.”
Her words strike a chord in me that resonates outward, like sound carrying across water. I can never forget my baby either, the hopes, dreams, promise of a new life. What do you do with those dreams?
“How do you know?” Ivy asks pointedly.
“Because I have been a mother.”
Rae’s admission stuns me. “You have? You are?”
“Yes.”
Mother never mentioned Rae having a baby. Did Mother not know? Had the child died, I wonder? What happened? “When?”
The waitress picks that moment to serve our meal. By the time we finish passing barbecue sauce and having our tea glasses refilled, Rae has deftly changed the subject. She chatters about the pictures of famous people on the wall and the different barbecue sauces. I try to think of a tactful way to ask about Rae’s child. “So where is this cousin of mine?” I want to ask. “Is your child in
Oregon still?”
I don’t realize I have spoken out loud until everything at the table stops. Ivy stares at me with the same blank, frozen look of the Elvis bust. Rae looks at me, then methodically places her forkful of pulled pork back on the plate and readjusts her napkin in her lap.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “It’s none of my business. But I was just surprised to know you had a child.” Had a child implies she lost the child, and I instantly feel a connection with her. I want to reach out to her, tell her I know the pain as I’ve felt it myself every day since I lost my baby in a late-term miscarriage. But as quick as the connection between us formed, fragile and slender, it snaps in two.
“You’re correct,” Rae says. But I’m not sure if she means it’s none of my business or that the information is accurate.
“Did it die?” Ivy asks, and I’m suddenly grateful for a young, assertive teen who doesn’t feel the constraints of propriety.
“No.” Rae sighs, then gives me a secretive smile. “I think I would rather talk about Elvis.”
I laugh and apologize again. “We don’t have to discuss this. I shouldn’t have brought it up.”
“My own pain shouldn’t be yours. I’m the one who should apologize. For many years I’ve tried to outrun my past. It’s proving difficult.” She looks around the restaurant. “I never thought I would return to Memphis, either. But you can’t outrun who you are, your problems, or mistakes.” Her gaze settles on Ivy, then switches to me. “Or hide from them. True?”
I feel the barb of her remark like a splinter embedded under my skin. Does she think I’ve been hiding from my grief? Anger rushes through me. I live it every day, in every moment, in every way. It flows into me with each breath and out again as I exhale. It is a part of me that I can’t escape.
Slowly, with her steady gaze, unwavering and soft as a baby’s blanket upon me, I begin to see what she means. I’ve been hiding myself in the grief, in long, dreamless sleep, in extended hours at work.
Ivy belches, a loud eruption that makes heads turn at a nearby table. Her face turns bright pink with embarrassment. She places her hand on her flat stomach.