onto the plastic-armored sofa beside the chair, staring at the TV. “Nothing much. Just hadn’t seen y’all in a bit.” Trying to keep from frowning, she studied his face. “How’re you feeling?”
“Never better.” A heart “episode” the year before had scared the willies out of them; unfortunately, she strongly suspected he wasn’t following his diet and exercise regimen as scrupulously as he should. Especially when he said, “You know, this eating more chicken and fish routine really seems to be helping. I haven’t felt this good in ages.”
Uh-huh. Somehow, she didn’t think fried chicken was what the doctor had in mind. “Glad to hear it, Daddy. Where’s Mama?”
“In the den, sewing. Leastways, that’s what she said she was gonna do.” The leather squeaked when he shifted. “You know Trish called?”
This was news. “No. When?”
“Day or so ago, I don’t remember.”
“She say where she was?”
“Have no idea. You’ll have to ask your mother.”
Wondering, and not for the first time, how two people could live together for so long and talk to each other so little, she left her father to cheer on whoever and headed toward the smallest bedroom—the one that had been Trish’s for nearly eight years—which they generously referred to as a den. In a sleeveless blouse and cotton pants, Faye Malone sat with her back to the door, as comfortably padded as the futon beside her. As usual, she was keeping up a running conversation with the sewing machine while she worked, pins stuck in her mouth, tufts of touched-up-every-three weeks auburn hair sticking out at odd angles where she’d tugged at it while trying to figure something out.
Heaven knew, having Faye for a mother had never been exactly easy, and not only because of the woman’s habit of walking out on anyone who didn’t agree with her. Or her nearly obsessive protectiveness when it came to family. All her life, Dana had variously loved and feared the woman whose scowl had been known to set people to rethinking opinions held dear from the cradle. Tonight, however, Dana envied her mother her single-mindedness.
And her strength.
“What’s that you’re making, Mama?” she asked, once Faye had removed the pins from her mouth.
Her mother jumped and pivoted simultaneously. “Lord, honey, you gave me a start,” she said, laughing, dropping the pins into an old saucer by the machine. “This? Oh, um…just a little something for Louise at church.” She cleared her throat. “Her daughter’s havin’ her first baby next month.”
Dana sat on the end of the futon that had replaced the old iron daybed, fingering the edge of the tiny royal blue and scarlet quilt. The vent over the door blasted too-cool air at the back of her neck, making her shudder. “Pretty,” she managed, trying to keep her voice light, to ignore the tension vibrating between them. Not to mention the unmistakable wistfulness in her mother’s voice, that she’d never get to watch her daughter grow big with a grandbaby.
“So…” Eager to change the subject, Dana clasped her hands, banging them against her knee. “Daddy said Trish called?”
“Oh, yes!” Her mother pulled off her glasses, tucking them into her shirt pocket. “I would’ve mentioned it, except there didn’t seem to be much point.”
“So she didn’t tell you where she was, I take it?”
“Not a word.”
“She say she was coming back?”
Her mother shook her head. “Although she had that funny little hitch in her voice, like when she’d done something wrong and was afraid we’d get mad at her? To this day, I don’t know what my sister was thinking, marrying that…creep. Man wasn’t worth the price of the marriage license. And cost Marla her own daughter.”
An observation made many times over the past dozen years. Dana’s aunt’s second marriage, to a man the family fondly referred to as The Cockroach, had had a disastrous effect on her already troubled daughter. After Trish’s third attempt at running away, and since Dana had been more or less on her own by then, Dana’s parents had offered to let the teen come live with them in Albuquerque. And on the surface, especially after Aunt Marla’s death a few years back, Trish had certainly seemed to be getting her life on track. She’d settled down enough to finish high school, gotten through community college, and had finally landed that job at Turner Realty. She’d even talked about becoming an agent herself, one day.
But threaded through Trish’s marginal successes ran not only a string of rotten relationships with men, but a chronic resistance to letting either Dana or her parents get close enough to help her. Other than the occasional call during the past year to let them know she was still alive, she’d cut herself off from the only family she had.
Sad, but, since her cousin had consistently rebuffed Dana’s attempts at being chummy, none of her concern. If Trish was out there somewhere, miserable and alone, she had no one to blame but herself.
“She asked about you,” she heard her mother say.
Dana started. “Me? Why?”
“Beats me.” Mama threaded a needle and moved to the futon, where she preferred to do her hand sewing. “I thought it was odd, too.” She fell into the cushion with an oof. “Although she did ask how you were getting on since…”
Her mother caught herself, her lips puckered in concentration as she stared at her sewing.
At the beginning, Mama had meant well enough, Dana supposed, doing her level best to take Dana’s mind off her situation. Tonight, though, Dana realized she’d lost patience with pretending. And with herself for allowing the silence to go on as long at it had.
“Go on, finish your sentence. Since I had my operation.”
Faye smoothed the quilt with trembling hands. “I’m sorry, honey. It just sort of slipped out.”
Dana sighed. “It’s been more than a year, Mama. Way past time for us to still be sidestepping the subject, don’t you think?”
“I…I just don’t want to make you feel bad, baby.”
Stomach wobbling, Dana snuggled up against her mother, inhaling her mingled scent of soap and sunscreen and cooking.
“I know that,” she said softly, fingering the tiny quilt. “But ignoring things doesn’t change them. Not that I’m not okay, most of the time, but…but there are definitely days when I feel cheated, when I get so angry I want to break something. And if I can’t unload to my own mother about it, who can I tell?”
“Oh, honey.” Faye dropped her handiwork; Dana let herself be drawn into her mother’s arms, suddenly exhausted from the strain of putting on a brave face, day after day after day. Whether it had been holding Cass’s baby, or the toddler in the diner, or even the strange mixture of kindness and wariness in C.J.’s eyes that had brought on the sudden and profound melancholy, she had no idea. But today, this minute, all she could see were the holes in her life. And with that thought came a great, unstoppable torrent of long held-back tears.
Why did the ordinary rites of passage that so many women took for granted—boyfriends, marriage, motherhood—seem to slip from her grasp like fine sand? In her teens and twenties, there had always been “later.” But watching relationship after relationship crash and burn—if they ever got off the ground to begin with—had a way of eroding a girl’s self-confidence. Not to mention her hopes.
Was it so wrong to want a family of her own, to ache for a pair of loving, strong arms around her in bed at night, to be the reason for someone’s smile? Was it foolish to want a little someone to stay up late wrapping Christmas presents for, to wonder if they’d ever get potty trained or be okay on their first day of school, to embarrass the heck out of by kissing them in public, to tuck in at night and read to?
Or was she just being selfish?
And her mother listened