Nine
“You should try it,” Molly says, combing back her wind-tossed hair and pulling it into a bun. She is still shivering from the lake, her lips tinged a subtle blue. With her hair pulled back, she looks sophisticated, older. We return to the beach shack to get her something warm to drink. The hunky waiter hovers, bringing her hot tea in a small stainless steel pot.
“In my next life, maybe.”
“Seriously, Mom, you’d love it.”
“I’m too chicken to love something like that.” Still, I feel a slight twinge. What would it be like, dangling in midair like the tail of a giant kite? But no. That is so far out of my comfort zone I can’t even imagine myself doing it.
“What’s that piece of fabric?” Molly asks, indicating the dotted Swiss. She’s been enjoying my stories about the pieces in the quilt.
“This is from your grandmother’s square-dancing skirt. There’s plenty of fabric, yards and yards of it, so I used it for sashing. Do you remember how she and Grandpa used to go square dancing?”
“Sort of. Maybe just from looking at old pictures, though.”
My parents were avid square dancers. They belonged to a club that held a dance the first Saturday of every month. I can still see them in my mind’s eye, my dad trim and dapper in a Western-cut shirt, with mother-of-pearl snap buttons, and a string tie. My mother’s dresses were outrageous confections. She made them herself, with yards of ruched calico or dotted Swiss draped over a pinwheel froth of crinolines. The dresses had puffy sleeves that sat like weightless balls on her shoulders, and she always wore these horrible little one-strap dancing shoes.
The sight of my folks in their square-dancing getup might have made me squirm, except that they were so damn happy to be going out to the dance hall together, to laugh with their friends and drink sticky fruit punch.
“They loved those dances so much,” I tell Molly, drawing a stitch through the sashing. “Grandma more than Grandpa, but he was a good sport about it.”
“I never saw them dance,” Molly says.
“Every once in a while, they’d have family night and we’d go.” Of course she wouldn’t remember that; she was in a stroller at the time. Still, I could see her swinging her tiny feet and clapping, mesmerized by the noise and the movements.
When Molly was in the second grade, my mother suffered a massive stroke. She was just sixty-four; it shouldn’t have happened. I took Molly to see her, praying my child wouldn’t act frightened when she saw Mom’s altered face, the left side slack and unresponsive, her neck encased in a cervical collar.
I needn’t have worried. Molly had happily rolled an ergonomic table in front of my mother and said, “Now you can play cards with me.”
The funny, sewing, square-dancing mom I knew vanished that day, even though she lived for two more years. Her personality changed, and dark anger emerged from a place we never knew was inside her. It was as if the stroke awakened a slumbering dragon inside her. She raged at how hard she had worked, and how frustrated she was that she hadn’t given her kids more. I constantly reassured her that what she’d given her family was enough. She always liked it when I brought Molly to visit her, though. Seeing her only granddaughter quieted the angry sadness.
She was supposed to get better with a long and rigorous course of physical and occupational therapy. She hated the therapy, though—squeezing a hard blue rubber ball, poking a thick shoelace through holes on a board to form the shape of a spider, walking back and forth between parallel bars. Most days, she refused to do any of it, preferring to let my dad tie her shoes and push her wheelchair. Her hands, which used to effortlessly knit Fair Isle sweaters and mittens and hats, closed around some invisible object and refused to open. Once or twice, she tried knitting again, but the yarn wound up in knots of frustration on the floor. The physical therapists told my father that in the long run, she’d be better off dressing herself and learning to walk on her own, but Dad didn’t listen. It was more important to him to do what my mom wanted.
“I wish I could remember the square dancing,” Molly says. “Not the assisted living place.”
I wish that, too. Even though I know it’s irrational, I feel irritated at Molly because she doesn’t remember my mother the way I want her to. I want her to recall the funny singing voice, the strong hands with their faint smell of onion, the perfect bulb of hair held slick with Aqua-Net. I want Molly to miss that woman, even though I understand it’s impossible.
“How did she die?” Molly asks. “You never talk about that.”
“Ask me how she lived. After all, that’s what she spent most of her life doing.”
“You talk about that all the time,” Molly notes. “And I do love hearing the stories, Mom. But you’ve made her into this Disney grandma who’s barely real to me.”
“She got pneumonia and was too weak to fight it.” I smooth my hand over the fading calico. “She died early one morning when you were in fourth grade. I didn’t tell you right away because you had a school party that day. I didn’t want to ruin it for you. So I waited until you got home.”
Molly is quiet for a minute, sipping her tea, staring out across the lake, where the wind whips up white tufts in the water. Wrapped in a blanket someone at the restaurant gave her, she looks little and lost. But there is a sharpness in her eyes. “You were always cushioning me, Mom.”
“It’s what mothers do.” I wish my own mother could see this young woman now, vibrant and excited about her future. My dad, who has grown quiet and slow with age and loneliness, often tells me he wishes that, too.
“It didn’t work,” she says, not looking at me. “I knew, anyway. I could tell from the way you rushed me off to car pool. I was scared to say anything because I didn’t want to see you cry.”
This shocks me. Dan and I had been prepared; Mom’s doctors had let us know her death was imminent, even offering signs and markers to watch for. For me, the sense of loss was so overwhelming that I hadn’t been able to talk about it.
Even now, years later, it’s still hard. There is something about losing your mother that is permanent and inexpressible—a wound that will never quite heal.
“I had a rotten day at school that day,” Molly explains. “Hated the party. There were these awful cupcakes, and the games were lame. So it’s not like you spared me anything.”
“Moll, I never realized you knew what was going on that day.”
“Nope. You didn’t. I didn’t say anything because I didn’t want to upset you. We were both trying to protect each other, and it didn’t work.”
I draw the thread to the end and make a tiny, invisible knot before cutting it free. “How did you get so smart?”
“Must’ve inherited it from my mother. We’d better get going.” She drinks the last of her tea, combs her hair again. The breeze is reviving her curls. She stands up and folds the blanket. She waves a thank-you to the waiter and he hurries over to our table.
I put my things into the crafter’s bag and head back to the car while she lingers to talk to the waiter. Looking back, I feel a jab of annoyance. I don’t like the way he stands so close to her, checking her out. It’s on the tip of my tongue to call out, to remind them both that I’m standing here. Then I think about what Molly said about me always stepping in, trying to smooth things over for her, to absorb the body blows life tends to deal out from time to time.
The afternoon at the lake caused an almost imperceptible shift in our mood. We’re more on edge. Our silences are longer, corresponding to the flat, boring stretches of highway.
How do long-haul truck drivers handle the tedium? How will I handle it, driving back alone, the Suburban emptied of Molly’s things, devoid of her fruity-smelling hair products and her lively chatter?
What’s really eating me is this. We’re almost there.