Eleven
On the final leg of our journey, the landscape is a patchwork of forest, field, stream and village, stitched together at the seams by country roads and rock or whitewashed fences.
“God, do people actually live here?” Molly wonders aloud, taking it slow as she navigates the Suburban down a hill to an old-fashioned town, complete with white church spire and village green. “It looks like a movie set.”
She’s right. It’s a strange and beautiful land, innocent and pristine, yet with a faint air of danger that comes with alien territory. As a girl, I dreamed of traveling far, but I never did. In my family, vacations were few and far between, and when we went somewhere, it was usually a car trip to a state park. For my parents, life at home was enough.
My mother had a favorite escape, and it was as simple as turning on the TV. She was fanatical about the TV soap Dallas, about a family like none we’d ever known. In my head, I hear the brassy theme song that heralded the start of the show. It’s one of the most vivid memories of my childhood. The churning melody signaled my dad’s bowling night and my mother’s sacrosanct program. On Sunday nights, the routine never varied. She would shoo him out the door, then fix an Appian Way pizza out of the box, oiling her hands with Wesson and expertly spreading the dough in a thin circle on a round baking sheet. A splash of canned tomato sauce, a sprinkle of questionable-looking cheese, and heaven was only minutes away.
Unlike any other day of the week, we didn’t have a proper, sit-down family dinner on Sundays. No salad or side dishes, no pretense of a token vegetable. Just slices of hot pizza and glasses of cold milk. Maybe a Little Debbie for dessert.
Then, despite my deeply resentful protests and martyrlike sighs, I was sent to bed. Even in the summer, when the light lingered for an extra hour, Mom made me decamp upstairs to my room, because Sunday nights were sacred. They were Dallas nights.
Mom wanted no interruptions. I suppose she would have taken the phone off the hook, but she didn’t have to, because all her friends were doing the same thing—hastening their children off to bed, urging their husbands out the door—so they could spend an hour in that fabled living-color world of millionaire matrons and the scoundrels who loved them.
I wasn’t allowed to watch and wouldn’t have wanted to, anyway. To a kid, the endless adult conversations, high-stakes oil deals and secret affairs were deadly.
Sequestered in my room, I always knew when the show started. First, there would be the clink of a glass. On Sunday nights, Mom opened the wicker-clad bottle of jug wine we kept in the cupboard and poured herself exactly one round-bellied, stemmed glass, full to the brim. Next, a curl of cigarette smoke would snake its way upstairs, emanating from a Parliament 100 with recessed filter, whatever that meant. It was all part of Mom’s curious ritual of self-indulgence. I wonder if she ever imagined Southfork Ranch as a real place, tucked into the green folds of the Texas countryside, with skyscrapers in the distance.
The high-octane music would swell, the sound boiling up the stairs to my resentful ears. Mom loved the theme from that show so much that she bought the sheet music. Even though we didn’t have a piano, she learned to hum the notes. A few years ago, Molly found the music in the piano bench and picked it out while I was working in the kitchen. I felt the same curious shiver of resentment and intrigue I’d felt as a child.
Nowadays, women escape by running away to urban spas, yoga retreats or wild-woman weekends of paintball drills and primal screams. Others frequent male strip clubs or dress to the nines for high tea. Back then, women like my mom didn’t have to go any farther than their living rooms.
* * *
We stop at a deli for a take-away lunch, and Molly is drawn to the counter girl’s flat New England accent, which skips blithely over the r and elongates the vowels.
The sub sandwiches are called “grinders,” and the milkshakes are “frappes.” The word feels awkward and foreign in my mouth, and when we place our order, Molly and I don’t look at each other because we’ll start giggling.
We take our lunch to a roadside park with a scenic overlook. There is a sign pointing the way to the Norman Rockwell home.
“I can see where he got his inspiration,” I tell Molly, gesturing at the spill of rounded mountains below us.
“Who?”
“Norman Rockwell.” I indicate the signpost.
“Who’s that?”
Not again. This is crazy. Is it possible that she isn’t familiar with the quintessential American artist of the twentieth century?
“You know, the one who did all the illustrations of kids fishing and families praying,” I say. “He did the cover of the Saturday Evening Post for years. That was even before my time, but you saw those illustrations everywhere—calendars, greeting cards, posters, dentist’s offices.”
“I guess.”
“Maybe we could drive over there, check out the place where he created his art.”
“Let’s not.” She speaks quickly. Maybe there’s an edge of urgency in her voice.
I let the topic go. “I’ve got one thing to say about grinders and frappes, or frapp-ays, however you say it.”
“What’s that?”
“They rock.”
She nods in agreement. The homemade bread and exotic cold cuts—olive loaf, dry salami, maple-smoked ham—and tart dressing and relish are delicious. I tell myself I can start my diet when I get home.
It’s too nice a day to hurry. Molly decides to take a walk, her euphemism for going somewhere private in order to call Travis. I doubt she’ll get a cell phone signal here, but I don’t say anything. Instead, I pull out the quilt and jab my needle into the fabric, piercing through all the layers. The quick silver flash travels fast, but not fast enough. Bit by bit, I am coming to realize that I have failed. By the time we get to the college, the quilt still won’t be finished.
Feeling unsettled, I watch Molly walking down the road, hands in her back pockets. Suddenly she looks very small and alone to me, and the urge to protect her—from what? Who knows?—rises up strong in me. Soon I won’t be around to protect her. But she has to go.
And as for me, I have to let her. After that, I have to figure out how to be my own person again.
“What’s that look?” Molly asks, returning from her walk and sitting beside me at the picnic table.
“I don’t have a look.”
“Come on. Spill.”
“Just thinking of this huge change. It feels so sudden.”
“It’s not like we didn’t see it coming.”
“I know. And this is what I wanted. I wanted to raise a child. And I did, I raised a wonderful child. But now you’re leaving.”
“Mom.” She offers a sweet, ironic smile. “That’s the whole point.”
“Well, I just wish someone had told me how hard it is to let go.”
“Did you think it would be easy?”
“Of course not.” The needle darts again, in and out of the quilt.
“A little bird once told me you shouldn’t avoid doing something just because it’s hard.”
My exact words, only I’d probably said them to her in order to get her to go off the diving board or eat a portobello mushroom.
“If you go away and screw up,” I blurt out, “how will I help you fix it?” I am instantly horrified. What a stupid thing to say. An apology rushes up through me. It came out all wrong. I shouldn’t have said that.
Before I can babble out I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it, Molly bursts out laughing. “News flash, Mom. It’s not your job to fix it.”
I laugh with her, but I can’t help the next thought that pops into my head: Then what is my job?
* * *
We spend longer than we intended at the roadside park. It’s so pretty and the air feels so good. When the breeze shifts just so, I can sense the forward march of the season, and I can see it in the crowns of the distant trees in the high elevations, which are starting to turn.
Molly seems preoccupied. I wonder if she’s thinking about what lies ahead—or what she left behind. Her phone calls and text messaging with Travis have decreased in frequency, which I take to be a good sign. She is driving while I keep doggedly working on the quilt, and she is fixated on the posted distance to the city. “Only forty more miles,” she says. “Hard to believe we’re finally that close.”
My needle slides through the fabric, paying homage to a swatch of old flannel from Dan’s pajamas, something she probably doesn’t even remember. But I do and suddenly I miss the feel of his arms around me, the sound of his breathing, calm and steady. I think about his warmth and his scent as he sleeps beside me. I miss him. If he were here, he’d make me say exactly what’s on my mind. No use bottling it up.
“I suppose we could go all the way right now,” I say, “instead of finding a place to stay way out in the suburbs.” We had planned for a noon arrival on orientation day, so she would have time to organize her dorm room before heading into the maze of new student activities.
“No.” Her reply is surprisingly swift and firm. “That’s not the plan. We don’t want to get to the city after dark. And I bet there won’t be any vacancies near the school, anyway, and even if we found a place to stay, the hotels are massively overpriced and the residence halls don’t open to new students until tomorrow at noon.”
Her barrage of protests is a bit mystifying. She couldn’t wait to get to college but now, the night before her new life is set to begin, she seems to have all the time in the world. I’m gratified that she wants to extend our time together.
“You’re right,” I agree, and I watch out the window for the exit sign to the town we’d picked out as our final stop. “We should stick to the plan.”
She nods and glances at her cell phone, lying on the seat beside her. Travis hasn’t called all day, which I suspect is the cause of the prolonged silences that stretch between us. I, with a terrible and dark sense of satisfaction, find myself hoping this is the beginning of the end for them, that his failure to call is not due to the lack of a signal, but to the lack of commitment.
My own thoughts make me feel horrible. She adores Travis, and he makes her happy. Isn’t that what I want for her, to be happy? Still, I don’t want my daughter’s future to belong to him, a charming local boy who has spent the entire summer trying to convince her that there is no better life than the one our small Western town has to offer.
It was enough for me, I realize with a surge of guilt, and I swiftly glance at her. There in that same small town she’s been forced to leave, I’ve found all of life’s happiness. Suppose I’m robbing her of the chance to do the same?
And why do I hope her dreams are bigger than mine ever were? What is it that I want for her that I never wanted for myself?
The onslaught of second thoughts assaults me. Molly flips on the turn signal. “This will do.”
We have a club card for Travelers Rest, a chain of midrange hotels, and so I nod in agreement. The room is predictable, clean and bland, a faint whiff of stale air blowing from the register vent. We are plenty early, with a large portion of the afternoon ahead of us. Maybe I’ll finish Molly’s quilt after all.
Instead, I am possessed by restlessness. I take the Suburban to a nearby station and fill it with gas, asking the attendant to check the oil, the tires, the wiper fluid. I use the squeegee to clear the squished bugs from the windshield and grill. It occurs to me that I performed this same routine the day I went into labor with Molly. In childbirth class, we’d been told that a woman on the brink of labor often experiences a burst of energy—the nesting instinct kicking in. I cleaned and scrubbed the house and car all day and was just settling down for a good night’s sleep when my water broke.
So what is this, the de-nesting instinct? Simple common sense, I tell myself. Tomorrow, I don’t want to be distracted by the menial tasks of checking gauges and tires. I want everything to go smoothly, with the Suburban as ready as a criminal’s getaway car.
When I return to the motel, Molly is at the pool, a turquoise oval set in an apron of groomed grass. It’s not exactly swimming weather, but this might be the last swim of the summer. So, despite the hint of a nip in the air, I decide to join her. I duck into the room, don my swimsuit, one of those figure-flattering jobs with hidden panels designed to suck everything in. Of course, it can’t suck in what it doesn’t cover, so I slip on the secret weapon of the forty-year-old woman—the cover-up.
My flip-flops slap against the sun-softened asphalt of the parking lot as I approach the pool. Molly is wearing the yellow-and-white bikini we picked out in the end-of-season sale at the mall back home, and her hair is slicked back, her skin dewy from swimming. She sits at the edge of the shallow end, watching two little kids, a boy and a girl who are maybe four and six.
I take in the sight of her, wondering when we’ll travel together again, when we’ll pick a motel because of its pool, when we’ll eat junk food and watch TV together late into the night. Everything on this journey is more significant and intense because it’s the last time.
The kids are laughing and splashing under the watchful eye of their mother, who turns occasionally to make conversation with Molly. As I watch, Molly wades in to help the little girl adjust her water wing, then holds her hand and turns her in a circle while making a motorboat sound. The little girl giggles and flails while I stand off to the side, watching. And suddenly I am seeing Molly and me, hearing our laughter echo across the water, feeling her tiny hand in mine as I lead the way.
I’m struck by how like me she is right now, angling her arm just so, making certain she’s not going too fast or too deep for the small, trusting child. Where did she learn her gentleness with children, her humor? I don’t remember teaching it, yet here she is, replicating a moment I didn’t recall until just now. Suddenly, the memory is as clear to me as if it had happened the day before yesterday. One long-ago summer day, we looked exactly like this, a young woman and a little girl, sharing a small moment together.
Except I am not in the picture. This is Molly’s moment, one that has nothing to do with me. And it’s weirdly okay with me. She is her own person and I don’t feel the need to insert myself into any of this.
Her cell phone, which is lying on a metal poolside table, suddenly goes off. Travis’s ring sounds like a fire alarm.
Molly rushes to hand the little girl off to her mother, then leaps out of the pool, swift as a trained dolphin. She dabs her hand on a towel, then snatches up the phone. At the same moment, she sees me coming toward her.
Her face lights up with a glow of pure joy, a clear echo of the look she used to give me when she was tiny and I’d say, “Let’s go for a swim, Moll.”
She’s lighting up for someone else now. She acknowledges me with a wave, then says into the phone, “Omigod. Omigod, really? I don’t believe you!” She is jumping up and down now, a young adult no longer but a child bouncing with excitement. “Where?” she asks, and then, “Now?”
The settled feeling that had enveloped me only moments ago now swirls away. I set my towel on the chaise next to Molly’s, wondering what’s got her so excited. Here I thought she was uncoupling herself from Travis, their calls growing fewer and shorter as our journey progressed. Now she is as excited as she was when he asked her to prom.
Watching her, listening to the sparkle in her voice, I realize that I miss this Molly. Throughout this journey, she has been pleasant but guarded. Even soaring over Lake Ontario or watching line dancers at a honky tonk, she has been entertained, but not exuberant. Not until now.
What’s he saying to her that causes the air to slip under her feet and lift her up?
And then with a laugh of joy, she drops the phone onto the table. “I don’t believe it,” she keeps saying and then she scoops up her flip-flops and runs. I am slow, not really hooked into this reality, not really believing it, either.
In slow motion I stand up and walk to the chainlink safety fence that surrounds the pool. Her bikini flashing in the sunlight, Molly races across the parking lot, shooting straight up in the air when the asphalt burns her feet, then hopping up and down as she throws her flip-flops to the ground and jiggles into them. Then she resumes running but she doesn’t have to go much farther, just across to the porte cochere, straight and true as an arrow shot from a bow, into Travis’s waiting arms.