Four
We make our way to the Star Lite Motor Court and Coffee Shop. I’m not sure what the three diamonds in the auto guide signify. There’s a pool, but a suspicious-looking green tinge stains the tiles, so Molly and I decide against taking a swim. The coffee shop looks promising; it’s open late, and features a grill hissing with frying burgers, and a revolving glass case displaying pies of mythic proportions.
We let ourselves into our room, wondering what three-diamond amenities we’ll find there. The carpet smells faintly of mildew and ancient cigarettes, so we open a window to let in fresh air. Ugh, I think with a twinge of disappointment. Given the nature of this journey, I’d hoped for better accommodations. I’d pictured the two of us sharing a charming suite in a B&B, or working out in the fitness room of a modern hotel. As usual, there’s a gap between expectation and reality.
Molly flings herself on one of the beds, bouncing happily. “I love road trips,” she crows. “I love staying in motels.”
And with that, the disappointment is gone, lifted away by the grin on her face. I am forced to notice this small but significant shift. Molly’s mood has the power to determine my own. This was never apparent when she was at home, but once she’s gone, where will the happiness come from? I need to make sure I remember how to find it.
“What’s this?” She indicates the metal Magic Fingers box on the nightstand.
“You’ve never heard of Magic Fingers?”
“What?”
“Move over.” I dig some quarters out of my jeans pocket, drop them in the slot and lie down next to Molly. “Your education’s not complete until you’ve experienced Magic Fingers.”
Nothing happens. “I guess it’s broken,” I say. “The thing is probably thirty years old if it’s a day.”
“Just because it’s old doesn’t mean it’s broken.” Determined, Molly reaches across me and gives the box a shake. Still nothing. She messes with the cord. And then: “Whoa. Did you feel that?”
I lie very still. There is a mechanical hum, then a faint vibration buzzes upward, penetrating through me and increasing in strength. Molly relaxes next to me, supine.
“Okay,” she says. “This is weird.”
“It’ll stop in a few minutes.”
“Weird in a good way,” she amends.
“I can’t believe you never tried this before.” Through the years, we’ve stayed in dozens of motels together but this is the first time we’ve found Magic Fingers. “I guess they’re a thing of the past,” I tell her.
“Good thing we decided to stop here, huh?” She sighs with contentment.
A kinder way of saying “I told you so.” We lie side by side, the bed humming beneath us for long minutes. When the vibrations stop, I am startled to feel more relaxed, the rigors of the long driving day eased from my muscles.
“What are you thinking about?” Molly asks.
The question catches me off guard. “You, I suppose. I’ve always liked doing new things with you, even little things.”
“Like Magic Fingers.”
“Exactly. Everything was new with you. That’s what was so much fun about raising a child. I’d be in the middle of doing something—whipping egg whites into meringue or riding my bike with no hands or graphing a parabola—and you’d think I was amazing. A magician or something.”
“You were amazing,” Molly says quietly, turning on her side and tucking her hand under her cheek.
I must be hearing things. I consider asking her to say that again, but I doubt she will repeat it. “Who will I amaze now that you’re leaving?”
Molly laughs. “Excuse me?”
“I’m losing my audience.”
“You should have had more kids,” she observes.
I hesitate, caught off guard by her words. Yet not off guard at all. It’s an opening to a difficult conversation. I know this before either of us speaks again.
“Mom?”
I turn to her. “I couldn’t have any more babies after…”
Her eyes widen. “After you had me?”
I gaze into her face, seeing maturity and wisdom there, trusting the compassion in her expression. When I first conceived of this cross-country adventure, I knew things would come up between us, difficult matters. And I knew this matter was the most difficult of all. Through the years, I had protected Molly from the most painful episode of my life. It wasn’t fair to reveal a wound she didn’t cause and couldn’t heal. What would be the point of that?
Things are different now. She’s a young woman. Another person’s pain won’t confuse or destroy her. Isn’t that, after all, the essence of maturity?
Deep breath, I tell myself, gazing into her doe-soft eyes. “I had a baby boy named Bruce.” Even after so much time has passed, I still feel the piercing loss. I was bleeding, drugged half out of my mind, but I can feel him even now, his slight, unmoving weight in my arms. Weeks premature, he was as pale and beautiful and silent as a fallen angel, having never drawn breath in this world.
Molly’s eyes instantly fill with tears. “Mom, really? What happened? When?”
Pulling in a deep breath, I explain in a shaky voice. “You were just two years old at the time. He came too early, and I was bleeding. There was a tear in my uterus.”
“Oh, Mom. Why didn’t you ever tell me?”
I feel a tear slide over the bridge of my nose. Such an old, old wound, made fresh again by indelible memories. When it happened, it changed me in ways I am still discovering, even now. That kind of loss has the power to stop the world. My baby boy’s tiny, otherworldly face will always haunt me. He looked so very much like my other newborn, Molly. “It was just so sad, honey.”
She reaches for me and we’re quiet together for a long time, the moments slipping by, measured by our breathing.
“I don’t know what to say,” she whispers.
“You don’t have to say anything.” There are some things that simply can’t be made better, not by talking or weeping or praying or pretending they didn’t happen. Yet her reaction is exactly as I’d hoped it would be—compassionate without being pitying or obsessive.
“I wish…” Her voice trails off, but I understand exactly what she’s saying.
“So do I.”
More quiet moments. We turn on the Magic Fingers again to shake us out of the somber mood. “You’re all the kid I need,” I tell her. She’s heard that from me before. Now she understands the hidden meaning behind the words.
“Well, I hope you know, I’m the one losing my audience,” Molly insists. “When I’m away at college, who will I perform for?”
This surprises me. I know there are things she worries about, being so far from home in a strange world where no one knows her. Still, I thought her eagerness to go out and find her life had banished all her fears. Now I realize she’s well aware of what she’s leaving behind. And it’s not just Travis Spellman. From her first smile to her last day of high school, and all the lost teeth, soccer trophies, piano recitals and Brownie badges in between, I’ve been there for her, cheering her on.
“I’ll still be your number-one fan,” I assure her.
“Sure, but it won’t be the same.” Then she smiles and bounces up off the bed.
I sit up and link my arms around my drawn-up knees. “You seem pretty okay with that.”
“It’s hard work, being your daughter.”
“You’re kidding, right?”
Now it’s her turn to hesitate. “Right. Let’s go check out the game room. I think I saw a ping-pong table.”
* * *
Late at night, long after our dinner of iceberg lettuce salads and oyster crackers, Molly steals away to sit on the stoop in front of the motel room and call Travis on her cell phone. Although college beckons like a mysterious garden of rare delights, she has formed a deep bond with this boy, with his funny grin and Adam’s apple, his appealing combination of cluelessness and charm.
A hometown boy at heart, he is causing her to have second thoughts about going to school so far away. For that, I could throttle him. At the same time, I feel an unexpected beat of empathy. I, too, would love to keep her close.
On their final night at home, Molly and Travis went out with a group of their friends, some college bound, others already immersed in jobs and responsibilities. They stayed out late, visiting all the places they knew they’d miss after dispersing like seeds to the wind. There were stops at the rusty-screened drive-in movie theater, the empty stadium, the all-night diner, the parking lot at the spillway below the lake. I don’t doubt there were other stops as well, which were not revealed to me.
I can’t be certain, but I suspect that Molly surrendered her virginity at the spillway at some point during the summer, in the secret place known to revved-up teenagers everywhere, tucked into the shadows of the sloping man-made bank. She didn’t tell me so, but there have been subtle signs. I’ve watched her and Travis grow closer, their bond tightened by a private and impenetrable intimacy that is both invisible and obvious.
Sexually active. It’s a clinical-sounding term. It’s nothing a mother wants to think about with regard to her own child, but at some point, you have to take the blinders off. Or not, I suppose, thinking of Dan. Whenever I try to bring the subject up with him, he says, “They’re good kids. They won’t do anything stupid.”
Pointing out that good kids who are not stupid get in trouble all the time doesn’t seem to advance the conversation. I have given up on discussing it with Dan. Now and then, I try to broach the topic with Molly.
“I’m fine. Don’t worry,” she said when I got up the nerve to ask her.
It doesn’t matter what century we’re in. Parents and children were not meant to talk together in detail about sex. Nor should we pretend to be all-knowing experts on love, even if we are. I understand exactly what love feels like in a young girl’s heart because I was that girl once, long ago. That’s why the Travis situation worries me, because I understand. It has a power like the pull of the moon on the tides, overwhelming and inevitable. There is no antidote for the passion and certainty a girl feels for the boy she loves, and no end to the fantasies she spins about their future together.
I can explain convincingly that the emotions engulfing her and Travis are not likely to last. I can tell her they’ll both grow and change, heading off in different directions. But then I would have to talk about my own choices, my own regrets, the many times I spent wondering about the life I would have had if I’d taken a different path.
For a brief moment, I consider telling Molly about Preston Warner, my first and, as far as I was concerned at the time, my only, forever and ever. Senior prom was the kind of magic-filled night every girl dreams about and, in my case, the dream came true. I wore something blue and silky; Preston was slicked-down, tux-clad and nervous. Not only did we consummate our relationship that night, we pledged to stay true forever, even though Preston was going far away to college.
That night, I surrendered not just my virginity but all my hopes and dreams, handing them over to a boy who—though I didn’t realize it at the time—had no idea what to do with them. So he did what guys his age generally do. Three months into his first semester at a trendy private school a day’s drive away, he started dating other people. When I found out, I wanted to die. I walked around like a zombie, every bit of happiness having bled from my broken heart.
I still remember the drama of our final confrontation—he came in person to tell me it was over. To this day, I can still feel the horror of facing a future without him. I raged, I wept until I was weak and drained, I swore I could not go on. It caused a pain I couldn’t share with anyone. My mother brought me a pint of Cherry Garcia, but I promised her I’d never eat again. She said with utter confidence that I’d get over him. Then she went downstairs and ironed clothes, filling the house with the scent of lavender water. I ate the Cherry Garcia. Watched Seinfeld reruns and learned to laugh again. Somehow, one day dragged into the next…and eventually I realized that I didn’t miss him.
Hearing a heartbroken sniffle and the murmur of Molly’s voice drifting through the window screen of the motel, I decide not to tell her any of that. She and Travis will grow apart because that’s the way it works. She will have to find this out for herself. The end of love has to be experienced firsthand, not explained by your mother.
I turn on the radio to give her more privacy. Even so, I can guess what they’re saying. There are whispered promises of love-you-forever and we’ll-stay-together, and no one knows as well as I do that they mean it—every word. Preston and I certainly meant it, all those years ago. We were going to travel the world and live a charmed life together.
These days, Preston owns the hardware store in town and has a cushy paunch around his middle, a receding hairline and four kids. When I drop in to buy upholstery tacks or a can of paint, I always think about that last summer after high school, the passionate hours in the back seat of his car, the vows we made to each other. I can look past his bifocals and graying temples, and still see a boy who was as handsome and romantic as a fairy-tale prince. As Preston rings up my purchases and we make small talk, I wonder if he thinks about the way we were, too, if he remembers. Does he look at me in my pull-on slacks and gardening clogs and recall the girl I used to be?
Running into him is, weirdly enough, not awkward in the least. He’s someone who came into my life for a brief time, and then stayed in the past. I feel no wistfulness for him, no regrets. I do envy him those four kids, though. When one goes away, he still has the others to keep him company.
Or maybe saying goodbye four times is harder than saying it once.
When Molly comes back into the room, her eyes red and her chin trembling, I offer a smile, but I don’t say anything. This is a volatile issue, and I don’t want to push it. Travis is a boy of good looks and small ambition, one who regards his union job at the plant as a ticket to independence as well as an opportunity to work on his Camaro at his uncle’s garage on the weekends.
Travis has a peculiar sweetness about him, a quality Molly finds irresistible. She loves him, and her love is as real as her grade point average. She trusts that love to endure, no matter what.
Molly expects so much of herself and wants so much from the world. At the moment, she is tender and lonely, missing him, her heart sore as it can only be for one’s first love.
I have to wonder: Did I teach my daughter to love this hard and feel this deeply? Was I wrong to do so? On the other hand, maybe I shielded her too much from pain, and she never learned to deal with it. As more men loom in the future, a whole campus full of them, it makes me wonder if I’ve done enough to equip her to deal with love and heartache. My own mother never seemed comfortable discussing matters of the heart with me. That’s what I used to think, anyway. Now I wonder if she simply knew I’d discover it all for myself.
“Hungry?” I ask Molly, after she’s lain on the bed, staring at the ceiling for a while. “The coffee shop’s still open.”
“No,” she says softly. “You?”
“No.” This is a lie. The dinner salad was a disappointment. But I don’t need to eat. I don’t need that big, messy cheeseburger I’ve been fantasizing about since spotting it on the coffee-shop menu. I don’t need the coconut cream pie I noticed in the revolving refrigerated case. Something my mother never told me—when you hit forty, not only does your vision start to go. Your body changes. Nowadays if I eat things like cheeseburgers and cream pie, the calories magically transform themselves into saddlebags on my hips. I don’t feel any different than I did ten years ago, but boy, do my jeans fit differently.
My mind drifts. Maybe when I get home, I’ll join the local gym, start a regular fitness routine. Running around with Molly has kept me reasonably fit all these years. Thanks to her, I’ve hiked miles with Brownie and Girl Scout troops, led field-trip expeditions to museums or nature preserves, ridden for hours on family bike trips. I suppose I could still hike and bike without Molly around, but why would I? Motivating myself is not going to be as easy as it used to be.
A quiet sniff brings me back to the present. I look over at Molly to see that she is still staring at the ceiling. Tears track sideways down her temples.
I don’t say anything, because I know everything will come out sounding like empty platitudes. Instead, I find another quarter, drop it in the slot and start up the Magic Fingers once again.