At first Annie was happy to point out the different rides, enjoying the view, but then she started whining. How much longer? Ive gotta pee. Im hungry. Im hot. I wanna go home.
I wanted to know: How could someone just walk away and abandon us, leaving us suspended in midair? Id have to ask Paige about that one. How do you say to your babies and your husband, Im done. Buh-bye, and never look back? Leave them suspended, unable to move forward until a replacement operator by the name of Ella came up and pushed the right buttons. The replacement mother, the replacement wife. Is that how she saw me? Is that what I was? Is that all I was? But after sitting up there for ten minutes, I loved the replacement operator; when she let us off that ride, I wanted to hug her. I said, Thank you! We wouldnt have survived another minute without you. She nodded, looking bored, directing us back into the hordess of people. Annie said, Mommy, arent you being a little dramatic?
Despite our being saved, the day kept on its downward spiral. I shuffled around, squinting. Too bright, too many primary colours, too many loud noises. And one of the loudest? Zach, who threw a tantrum whenever my mother let go of his hand. Her trip to the bathroom cost me a churro and another Slushee this time grape.
On the way home we got stuck in five oclock traffic, which, anywhere in the Bay Area or its ever-outstretching vicinities, begins at three oclock. The kids fought over every toy like wild dogs over a porterhouse, and my mom, who always received compliments on her youthful appearance, looked every one of her sixty-two years and then some. The air-conditioning malfunctioned so that it felt like a person with a high fever was blowing at us through the vents, while in the rearview mirror I watched Annie rip Zachs Bubby from him until my mom screamed, Ella! Stop! I slammed on the brakes just in time to stop us from smashing into a yellow Hummer. You know who would have survived that crash. Not us in the Jeep.
I calmly and quietly said to my mother, We almost got into an accident. Accidents happen randomly and with no warning. Joe was killed in a drowning accident, and now we could have been killed in a car accident. Just. Like. That.
Jelly? Are you okay?
I shook from top to bottom, and the kids kept right on fighting. I hit the steering wheel with both hands and shouted, Goddamn it! I cant drive! Now, you two shut up! Shut up!
And they did. No one said another word the entire drive home except the voice in my head, which told me over and over, You, my dear, are the very worst mother on the planet.
When we pulled up our driveway, Callie loped up to greet us, but the kids were out cold. Annies cheeks were pink despite the sunscreen Id covered them with. The side of Zachs face stuck to his car seat; drool ran down his T-shirt, which now held red and purple splotches that coordinated with his lips and chin. The Slushees had left what looked like bruises, but I felt Id done far worse damage with my own temper tantrum. I could almost see their wings, so angelic were they in sleep, certainly incapable of causing an adult to scream at them at the top of her lungs. I carefully pried Zach from his seat; his arms and legs hung loose and heavy; his head lolled before resting on my shoulder. He let out a long, stuttered sigh. These were my angels who had just lost their dad. Whose birth mother had decided it was okay to poke and prod from a distance, enough to do little more than remind them that shed left them. And now their evil stepmother had yelled at them for being kids.
We got them settled in their beds and tiptoed out to the kitchen. Im sorry, I said to my mom.
For what?
You know. For losing it in the car.
Well, honey. Its understandable. They were acting up. Youre exhausted. Give yourself a break.
But theyre bound to act up right now.
That doesnt mean you let them scream and fight in the car. It was an intense situation. You didnt have time to remind them, Use your inside voices and nice words, children.
I didnt remind myself to use my nice words. I dont remember you ever yelling at me like that.
I didnt? She knit her eyebrows. Didnt I? Well, after your dad died, you hardly made a peep. Youd been such a yacker, always into everything, disappearing for hours with that little notebook of yours. You know how the kids started saying Why? Why? Why? when they turned three? You were still asking that all the time, even when you were eight. She shook her head. Such a character, you were. And a handful! But then you got really quiet. All that happy hoopla just drained out of you.
She stopped talking, pulled a bracelet back and forth over her hand.
We were a pair of skaters trying a new leap, a new twist, but it was time for one of us to pull back into our familiar routine, each of us depending on the other one to stay clear of obstacles or warm spots. Youll all get through this. She smiled. Ive been where you are. And youve been where they are. And we got through.
Now she made it sound like it had been easy. Out the window I saw a squirrel stop on our porch railing to inspect some kind of pod, turning it in its paws. I still think about Dad all the time. All those camping trips on the Olympic Peninsula, how much he taught me in eight short years. She reached out and squeezed my hand. So, Mom, how did you make it through that?
She opened the refrigerator and took out a bottle of pinot blanc.
Oh, thats how.
She smiled. Tempting, I admit, but no. She poured us each a glass.
Actually, at first I did check out, as you probably remember But then I kept thinking about my grandmother. Your great-grandma Just. She waited in Austria while her husband went to America. He said hed find work and send for her. She waited a year and never heard from him. So she sold every single thing she had and took her two children and got on a boat bound for America. She didnt speak English. She didnt know a soul. I can see her as if I were there: a tiny woman with a braid past her waist, an arm around each child, freezing and miserable, holding on to them for dear life. Can you imagine? Huddled on that ship, bound for the great unknown She shook her head and looked at me. And when I felt bad about my situation, I drew strength from her.
What happened to her?
Well. She found him. She actually found him! Hed drunk away everything hed earned. Penniless, sleeping around, and worse, violent. So she kicked him back out and, ironically, set up a moonshine business during Prohibition, and raised those two kids my mom and Aunt Lily with a trapdoor covered by a braided rug under the kitchen table. Its the same kitchen table I still have.
I didnt say anything. I was trying to figure out what part of the story she and I could relate to. Not the secret trapdoor. Not the moonshine business. Not the tiny mother with the two kids on the ship. Not the sneaky drunk husband. Callie barked and I turned to see the squirrel dive for the trunk of an oak and disappear.
Ella. My mother held my shoulders. We come from a line of strong women. I see that strength in you.
Thanks, I said, our faces only inches away, almost too close to each other, too close to all the unspoken. I could have asked more right then, but I knew better; Id learned my lesson long ago. I stepped back and picked up my wine, and she did the same. Hey, does that mean I get the old pine table? I love that table.
She raised her glass. Not while Im still breathing you dont. We clinked our glasses. A wordless toast to another success: once again, wed talked about my dad without talking about my dad.
Chapter Eight
The next morning I dropped my mom off at the airport shuttle bus, but not before she offered to postpone leaving and get someone else to cover for her at work.
I didnt want her to go. But I knew postponing her departure wasnt going to help us all get to the other side, or wherever the hell we were headed.
And so we drove her to the DoubleTree Inn, where she stepped onto the shuttle bus to the San Francisco airport and I pulled out cookies and juice to distract Zach, who otherwise would have definitely run up and grabbed her. We all waved, and I felt inspired by the fact that Zachs tantrums from the previous day had vanished. I buckled the kids into their car seats and headed home. At a stoplight, I turned to them and said, Im sorry I yelled in the car yesterday. That wasnt a nice way to tell you to stop fighting. Im sorry. Will you forgive me?
Zach nodded big exaggerated nods and said, Uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh. Id never heard him do that before.
Annie said, Of course we forgive you, silly. But if you need a break, now might be a good time for us to visit Mama in Lost Vegas.
The person in the car behind us honked, and I just made the light as it turned yellow again. Need a break? That was an odd thing for Annie to say, I thought, but the kids started singing Ive Got Sixpence and seemed almost happy. I didnt want to ruin the moment by drilling her. I just said, Annie, believe me, I dont need a break. Being around you and Zach is what I love most in this world. But the thought niggled at me. Either Paige was asking Annie to visit, or perhaps Annie had come up with the idea all on her own. I wondered what Paige wanted, but I wondered more what Annie wanted. It made sense that she might want to spend time with Paige. But what if Paige built up something with the kids and then pulled her disappearing act again?
We drove up the driveway, past Joes truck parked in its spot; the empty, hollow house waited, hungry, ready to swallow us whole.
Callie trotted up wagging her tail, but I felt as if we walked on a movie set, and everything was an illusion, and once I got closer and looked and prodded a bit, Id have to face the truth. Maybe the cute, cosy house was just a cardboard façade. The vibrant garden, plastic and dusty silk. Word had got out that the director had abandoned the film and the studio was pulling out of the financing and there the three of us were, standing outside the pretend door without a script. I unlocked the door anyway, and we went inside.
The screen door slammed behind us. Well, I said. Annie and Zach stood in the not-so-great room and looked at me, expectantly. Are you hungry? I asked. They shook their heads. It was only nine thirty a.m. and my mom had fed us breakfast before she left. The house still smelled of toast and coffee. You want to go out and play? They shook their heads again. Outside, the sun made everything sparkly and phony. The birds sang praises. The birds needed to give it a rest.