Twelve
Travis catches her in his embrace, and my mind races with panic. What the hell is this kid doing, stalking her across the country?
With an effort of will, I restrain myself. For now. He’s come all this way. The least I can do is give them a little privacy.
I offer Travis a greeting that is brief but not unkind. “I’m going for a swim,” I tell Molly. “I’ll see you in a little bit.”
Yes, a swim in the pool. I need to cool off, calm down, clear my head. I don’t want to go off halfcocked, say things in haste, jump to conclusions.
When it comes to pools, I’m usually a toe-dipper, getting wet gradually, inch by careful inch. Today I peel off my cover-up and dive off the edge in one swift motion, surrounding myself with a storm of bubbles, hands brushing the gunite bottom. The water is cold but I’m glad for that. Every nerve ending is wide awake, as I imagine a soldier’s would be on the eve of battle.
For me, this is a nightmare—to bring my daughter to the brink of a brand-new, exciting future, only to have the past reach out and pull her back.
Yet for Molly, it’s a dream come true. What girl doesn’t romanticize about a love so strong, it makes a guy fly across the country just to see her? And in my heart of hearts, I can understand this. We teach our daughters to dream of love. We read them stories of damsels in distress and the knights in shining armor who rescue them, laying happiness at their feet like a carpet of roses.
Of course, in this day and age, we also read about enlightened princesses who do just fine without a man, but those are not the stories that stick with our girls. For some deep-seated, primal reason, the politically correct tales lack appeal. The stories that stay with them always seem to involve a big-shouldered alpha male, sweeping them off their feet.
* * *
After a long, vigorous swim, I shower and dress, trying to compose myself. Flying off the handle, yelling, getting mad won’t help the situation in the least. I try calling Dan but get voice mail, and hang up without leaving a message. If I try telling his voice mail what’s going on I’ll use up all our free minutes.
Instead, I head outside to find Molly. She and Travis have been in the shady garden of the motor court, talking and holding each other for a good half hour.
“What’s going on?” I ask them. Molly’s hair has dried stiff with chlorine, the curls out of control, her eyes red from crying.
“I had to see Molly,” Travis says. His ears are scarlet. I can tell it’s hard for him to talk to me.
I struggle to erase all anger and judgment from my stance. “Travis, I understand it was hard to say goodbye. I know you guys miss each other a lot. But it’s time—”
“Okay, don’t freak out,” Molly says. “I have a plan.”
To screw up your life. I bite my lip to keep from saying it.
“I’m listening.”
“I changed my mind about college,” she says, in one short phrase bringing my most negative fantasies out into the open. “I mean, I’ll still go. Just not so far away.”
“Whoa, hang on. This is a big decision.” Brilliant, I tell myself. You’re a real rocket scientist.
“It’s the right decision.” She is instantly defensive. “What I realized this week is that it’s too hard, being apart from Travis. I’ll be happier at UW.”
“Aw, Molly. I know you think that now, but remember, you always wanted—”
“This has never been about what I want,” she says, each word slashing like an finely-honed blade. “It’s about what you want for me.”
“We want the same thing.”
“Do we? When was the last time you checked, Mom? This train started out of the station as soon as I got the acceptance letter. It was never, Do you want this?”
“I didn’t think I had to ask. Forgive me for assuming you wanted to study at one of the best schools in the country and see where it takes you. Forgive me for assuming you worked so hard in high school so you could explore a future beyond the boundaries of a small town.”
“I’ve been thinking about it all week long. We never talked about other options, Mom. We never talked about the fact that one of those options is that I can say, ‘Thanks very much, but I have other plans.’”
Travis, never a kid of many words, simply stands there, stalwart and—I can’t deny it—impossibly handsome. He shuffles his feet, looks at the message window of his phone as though someone has sent him an answer through the digital ether.
“Tell me about these other plans, Moll. I really want to know.”
“The state school makes perfect sense,” she insists, her voice as intent and convincing as a trial lawyer’s. “It’s way cheaper.”
“You have a scholarship. One you earned, I might add, all on your own. I didn’t make you. This is something you went after because you wanted it.”
“And now I want something else.” She sends Travis an adoring look, but he’s still studying his phone.
The state university is filled with commuter students juggling marriage, motherhood and work in addition to their courseload. No doubt they’re gifted, hard-working people who are doing it all, succeeding, living happy and fulfilling lives. Of course the state school is a good option.
Still. It’s not the same as the rarefied world of students hand-selected from a pool of the best and brightest, with an endowment big enough to give scholarships to kids like Molly. There will be none of the things we’ve heard about, no bonfires or late-night study sessions or elaborate pranks, no students from Ghana or visiting lecturers from the UN, no Nobel laureates, no dorm hall dramas or campus productions of The Vagina Monologues, no Parents’ Weekend or commencement addresses in Latin.
“I’ll get to have what you and I both want,” Molly continued. “An education, and Travis.”
“There’s so much more for you to discover,” I tell her, knowing she doesn’t believe me.
“Trav and I will discover it together.”
I grit my teeth, refusing to let myself explode. “Travis,” I say to him, “could Molly and I have a minute?”
“He should stay,” she says, clinging to his hand.
“Er, that’s okay.” He disengages his hand. “Go ahead and talk stuff over with your mom.” He steps aside with a conciliatory smile, barely concealing his relief. I almost feel sorry for him, knowing the tension between Molly and me is stretched to its limit, and very palpable. He walks over by the pool and plugs some change into a vending machine.
“Oh, Molly.” I pause, trying to find a way to persuade her. “Look how far you’ve come. Don’t give up on something you’ve been dreaming of for years.”
“It’s my decision,” she says, her eyes welling with tears. “I’m the one who has to go through the next four years. I can either spend them with strangers, struggling to keep up and trying to fit in, thousands of miles from home, or I can be near the people who love me, getting good grades and an education without sacrificing four years of my life.”
This sudden streak of practicality is something new. But I can be practical, too. “Most people wouldn’t regard a scholarship to a top university as a sacrifice.”
“For me it would be. Even this week has been torture,” she says. “I love him.”
Her stark passion gives me pause. What if Travis is the one? What if he’s the love of her life? It’s not as if love comes along every day. Do I have the right to turn her away from him? Suppose she does it my way and tells him goodbye, and something terrible happens? How would I ever forgive myself?
If turning around and going home with Travis is a mistake, it’s hers to make, not mine. If it’s the right thing to do, then it’s only right that she gets to choose.
I can’t deny that this unexpected new plan has its appeal. The thought of Molly living in state, coming home with her laundry on weekends, having Sunday dinner with us, draws me in. Yes, I think, yes, that could work, after all.
Still…
Over at the vending machines, Travis has scored a Coke and a bag of Cheetos. He’s chatting up the young mom with the two little kids.
Molly sees me rallying a defense. “A college degree… I can get that anytime—anywhere—I want.”
“That’s what I used to think.”
“But Travis. There’s only one of him. There are a lot of ways to get a college degree but there’s only one Travis.”
“And if he loves you, he’ll love the dream you’re going after.”
“If he loves me, he can’t stand to be without me. He spent a whole week’s pay to fly out here, even.”
I bite my tongue to keep from expressing my opinion of that. Long ago, I had rationalizations of my own that sounded eerily similar to Molly’s. What if she makes the choice I made? “Sweetie, you’re so young. Let yourself be young instead of closing all those doors.”
“I can be young with Travis.” As though reading my mind, she adds, “It’s exactly what you did, Mom. You went for love and look how your life turned out. It’s wonderful. You and Dad are wonderful. You focused on what’s important.”
This is what I’ve taught her. I’ve modeled it for her. Go for the love, every time. It’s surprising—and admittedly gratifying—that she looks at Dan and me and thinks we’re wonderful together. I hope like hell we are.
Yet her insistence on choosing this path still sits poorly with me. Travis is…just so damn young. He’s a good enough kid, from a nice enough family, but he can be careless with Molly’s feelings, though I’ve never pointed that out for fear of starting an argument.
Maybe Dan was that way, too, and I never noticed because I was crazy about him. Now, years later, I sometimes catch myself wondering, what could I have done, who could I have been, if I’d gone for the big life instead of the big love?
Am I making Molly live the life I missed out on? Is that fair to her?
I gather in a deep breath of courage. “I don’t want to force you into a decision. If you stick to the original plan and it turns out badly, you’ll never forgive me. I’ll never forgive myself. You call the shots, Moll. I’ll support you, no matter what.”
“Really? You’re not just saying that?”
Maybe. No, I mean it. Molly’s life is her own now.
“I mean it.”
I feel her strength and determination. She goes to find Travis.
And just like that, that world shifts. The dream changes. Love has transformed her life. Love has a way of doing that.
* * *
I call Dan and give him the news. Travis has come for her. He has convinced her to change her mind about going to college so far away. The rundown of Molly’s rationalizations spills from me—she claims she can still enroll in the honors program at UW. We won’t really forfeit all that much, just this past roller coaster of a week and a percentage of the first tuition payment.
“Says something for the kid, traveling all that way to make his case,” Dan tells me.
“What?” I ask, exasperated. “What does it say, Dan? That he’s got nothing better to do? That he’s ready to take responsibility for her, to hold her heart and her dreams and keep them safe? Or that the plant had a temporary layoff and he got bored hanging out with his friends?”
“Maybe he’ll surprise you.”
“This is not helping. We need to be on the same page.”
“No, we don’t. We’re two completely different people, and Molly’s her own person, too. She’s old enough to understand we can have differing points of view.”
As we talk, I move around the room, needing an outlet for my agitation. I seize on the bag of quilting supplies. There’s a piece made from a pocket with a little embroidered dog on it. This was from the pedal-pushers Molly had worn the day she learned to ride a two-wheeler.
By five years of age, she had worn her training wheels down to the rims and I insisted it was time to take them off. She had balked, arguing to the point of tears.
She agreed only when Dan promised he would run alongside her, holding her up.
“I won’t let go until you say,” he vowed.
I was certain she’d never get to the letting-go phase, so I went about my business. I was in the kitchen, trying a new recipe, when I heard shouting and the faint brrring brrring of the bell on Molly’s bike. I went out to see her cruising on two wheels, Dan standing in the middle of the street and grinning from ear to ear.
“They’re young,” Dan is saying, “but they’re still adults.”
“If he was thinking of Molly, then he wouldn’t take this opportunity away from her.”
“The thing is, it’s not up to us—not anymore. Back off, honey. Let Molly work on this herself.”
Back off. I can hear Molly’s voice—Oh, like that’s going to happen.
I hang up the phone. Something has happened to me over the days of our journey, a subtle shift in the way I see my daughter. She is smart, genuine and more mature than I’ve given her credit for. Trying to bend her to my will won’t work on her any more than it would have worked on me when I was her age. Dan tells me to back off. He has no idea how hard that is. With a heavy sigh, I pick up the quilt where I left off. My needle easily pierces through the layers of cloth and batting, soft beneath the pads of my thumbs. I work in a phrase my mother loved to quote: To thine own self be true.
There’s a dot of blood on the white underside of the quilt. I didn’t notice I’d pricked my finger. I grab an ice cube from the bucket I’d filled earlier and try to get the stain out. It dissolves to a faint rusty shadow but doesn’t disappear completely. A bloodstain never does.
After blotting the stain, I set the quilt aside. I don’t feel like quilting. I don’t feel like anything.
I lie on the bed, staring up at the pockmarked tiles on the ceiling. It’s getting late, but I’m not sleepy in the least. Is it my job as a mother to convince her to stay on track for college? No. It’s not. It’s my job to raise a daughter with an open heart and a good head on her shoulders.
It’s a balancing act. Love and dreams and duty. I pick up the quilt again, filled with the softness of memories. All the wisdom in the world is in this quilt.
I stare at it for a long time, wondering if there’s anything in it for me.
* * *
I wake up in the morning to discover a warm lump of girl curled up against me, under the quilt. She stirs and snuggles closer.
Other memories—all the mornings I awakened her, doing my best to soften the ordeal of getting up for school. I’d lie down next to her on the bed and rub her back until she surrendered to the day. Then I think about all the late nights lying awake, listening for the reassuring rumble of her car engine. We used to have long, whispered conversations when she came in moments after curfew, sitting on the side of the bed to tell me about her date.
Now I marvel at how tender I still feel toward this fully grown creature.
Oh, baby. I used to be responsible for drawing the boundaries around your world. Now you’re on a path that leads you over the boundaries and away from me. I’ll always cherish our time together. Always. But you’ll never be my baby again.
She curls closer, a subtle natural movement, a drawing in. I tuck my arm around her. After a while, she pulls away as though preparing herself for her departure.
“Moll?”
She sighs herself awake. “Yes,” she whispers, turning away from me. “This means what you think it means.”
“Where’s Travis?”
“Where do you think? He went standby on the next flight home.”
I exhale a cautious breath of relief. It doesn’t last long. Molly comes fully awake, crying with the kind of sobs that shake the whole bed. She’s crying too hard to speak, so I just wrap myself around her and hold on for a while, silently willing her to stop. As an infant, she’d been fretful, and I spent many midnight hours walking the floor with her, making mindless shushing sounds, just as I do now.
Eventually, the storm subsides. She is still tearful, her voice shaky. “He was so mad at me, Mom. He was so mad. He might never speak to me again. I hurt him that bad.”
“I’m sorry, Moll. I know you can’t stand hurting anyone.”
“Why couldn’t you just let me go home? Why did you have to make a federal case out of it?”
“I left it up to you,” I reminded her.
“But it was the way you did it. It made me feel like an idiot.” Agitated now, she blots her tears with a corner of the quilt and sits up.
“I never meant to do that.” But wow, is she right. I want her to have the life I passed up in order to be a wife and mom. She is my road not taken. And it’s not fair to put that burden on her. “I’m sorry,” I tell her. “If you want to turn around now, we’ll do it. No hard feelings, no recriminations.”
She’s quiet for a long time. “I’d hate myself if I didn’t go for this. But I need for you to listen, Mom. This is my choice. I’m not doing it because you never had the chance. I’m doing it because I want the chance for me.”