The Shortest Distance Between Two Women (28 page)

A world where there is a nice house, a mother and father who are beyond doting, two older brothers, and the promise of everything a young girl in the 1940s could want.

Marty asks Emma if she remembers what happened to her grandmother, Marty’s mother. Yes, Emma says, she got sick and died very young.

It was cervical cancer, Marty tells Emma. A horrid, painful and in those days almost always fatal disease that usually went un-diagnosed until it was too late. It was an absolutely horrific way to die.

Emma looks at her as if she has never seen her before. She has never heard this part of the story, of her mother’s life, not one word of it.

“My brothers were gone, in fact both of them had recently married and my oldest brother and his wife were expecting their first child,” Marty continues without looking at Emma. “I was a teenager. I had been spoiled and pampered and treated like a
princess. And suddenly I was the one who was taking care of my dying mother.”

Emma tries to speak, but Marty raises her hand, and asks her to stay quiet until she finishes.

Marty’s father quickly fell apart and, especially after the death, was never the same. He died a broken man not long after his fiftieth birthday. But before that Marty was the nurse, the cook, the one who moved into bed beside her mother and held her as she rocked herself through the pain. It was Marty who watched as her mother’s body literally disappeared and the circles under her eyes swallowed her entire face. It was Marty who came running when her mother’s screams of pain rocketed through the house. It was Marty who was there the day her mother died and who walked into town to get her father and Marty who dressed her mother in the funeral clothes. It was Marty who stayed in the house as long as she could before she knew that if she did not leave, her father’s grief and the memory of her mother would swallow her whole.

When Marty turns to Emma and puts her hands on both sides of her face and feels her tears, she tells Emma that the day she finally left was the day she promised herself that she would get her family back by creating her own family.

“I had essentially lost everything and everyone,” Marty admits, “and to
me—family
—that was everything, it always was everything and always will be everything. When I met your father it was the start of my family again, after so much loss, and that is why I have always hung on so tightly, perhaps too tightly.”

Marty stops to take a breath, to say what must come next, what she really came to say.

And you, Emma, Marty confesses, you were such a special gift and constant surprise for me. The moment I felt you move inside of my womb, when I thought there would be no more babies, it was as if we were connected in a way that was unlike anything I had ever experienced. You, my lovely, were so my heart and so the one who always seemed to understand me. And so the one who, not just because you are the youngest, have always been the one I have counted on the most.

But, Emma, you have grown tired and unhappy. And your impatience with the world, with me, with everyone, needs to be addressed. You’re not living, you’re just existing. And that’s a sin, my darling daughter.

Emma stops her mother. She feels a mixture of sweet anger and sadness mingle within her chest.

“These stories, Mom … they’re stories I would like to have known so much sooner,” she admits. “It makes me feel as if there has always been a huge hole between us and I never knew it. I am so confused right now …”

“There are many other things I could tell you, many things that perhaps I should have told you, but until this moment I never felt the need to reveal those things,” Marty answers quietly. “But remember I never knew about Samuel. We are all entitled to keep what we need to keep and then give it away when it is time.”

This is not the stuff they write about in books about mothers and daughters, Marty knows with all certainty. It is not the stuff you worry about when your babies are born or when you have the sex talk and then ask if there are enough tampons in the bathroom. This is, however, the stuff that can either make the distance longer or shorten it up in such a way that there will never ever be a gap again.

“I know you see me as strong, and now maybe even a bit wild, but the truth, Emma, is that all of these years with you alone and even years before that, when your father was alive, I was terrified that I might be letting you down in some way. I have the advantage in seeing how alike we are because I knew what I was like at your age, and all the years before that, and you do not have that knowledge.”

Marty, afraid? Marty, hesitant?

“Oh, Mom, no,” Emma cries.

“The most important thing in the world is to be happy. That is why we are here and that is all that matters. There has to be a moment when you choose happiness, when you stand up, raise your face towards the sun, and just grab joy and put it in a place where no one can ever take it away from you. Emma, you so need to do that. You so need to know also that I am here for you, as I have always been here for you, and that not one thing I have ever done in my life was done to hurt you.”

And Marty adds softly, Emma, you need to stop blaming others. You need to see that everyone, even your sisters, wants what is best for you.

And what Emma at first thought of as an insurmountable distance between a mother and a daughter begins to disintegrate as Marty rocks her grown daughter like a baby and Emma tangles her hand in the sweet lips of a smooth sumac that feels as if it is kissing her fingers and she feels the hard edges of her heart begin to open like a summer flower.

But is it enough? Emma asks herself.

The question startles not just Emma but also the black-eyed Susans, which appear to be blinking as if they have something caught in their lovely brown centers. Emma has decided to lie on
her stomach in front of the Susans because she loves them in a way she does not love any of her other flowers.

She loves how they are simple and how many people think of them as commonplace because they adore spreading themselves like rippling ribbons of yellow along roadsides, across pastures, fields, meadows and just about everywhere there is soil. Susans are also individuals. Some of them shed their leaves before others. Some are short. Some are leggy and tall. A couple of years ago six breeders jumped three rows over, in what Emma came to believe was some kind of squabble that set in when she bumped the whole mess of them with the side of her red wheelbarrow. The daisy-like Susans are also hearty suckers who seem to grow stronger every time there is a harsh winter, a late spring, or some runaway dog gets into the yard and goes digging around before Emma can save her lovely ladies.

This fine Saturday morning even the unflappable Susans appear startled by the prone appearance of Emma so early in the day. A day this time of the year is usually filled with shopping for plastic serving trays, extra reunion auction gifts, thousands of napkins and hundreds of other items on a very, very long “must get before the family reunion” list that is always Emma’s responsibility.

Emma reaches a few inches in front of her and runs her hands along the legs of all the flowers as far as she can see. When she is finished she opens up all of the fingers on each hand, slides them into the very tops of the roots of the closest flowers and turns her head so that she is lying on her left cheek. Then she asks herself if she can indeed choose.

There is no wind to push for an answer, no ancient horticultural message hoisting itself up past the layers of sand, rocks, dirt, no drifting leaves or petals to land in the perfect configuration so Emma can interpret their meaning.

It is as if someone has slipped into Emma’s garden just moments before the pause and alerted them to the sad and sorry emotional state of their mistress.

It is as if they know that this is a question that only Emma Gilford can answer.

Emma’s last three days have been a charade of comings and goings, of avoiding Erika who has returned from her visits, of a reunion meeting that she attended where she could not look one sister in the eye, and of thanking her mother for being so honest—when the real truth is that she feels as if she has been scooped out until she is hollow by one of those melon utensils that women who have absolutely nothing else to do use to fix fruit bowls.

Emma has a stomachache, her period has come five days early, which is a miracle of sorts, and she’s been unable to eat, drink or be merry except during those few moments when she has had to fake happiness and act as if she knows what in the hell she is doing.

It is not a midlife crisis, Emma has decided, but as Stephie
would say, it’s a wild hot ball of family shit and bullshit and revealed secrets and the absolutely stunning and unbelievable news about every Gilford she knows, including herself.

And the very real idea that so much of her life has been on pause while she hides behind the skirts, dresses, and pant legs of her sisters and mother.

And of course, that already mentioned glorious planning meeting yesterday, where the four sisters gathered with Marty around the antique dining room table and argued for three hours, did not help much. Emma felt as if she was having a total out-of body experience as she listened to Joy, Debra and the usually cooperative Erika squabble about things like paper plates, ring toss games and monitoring the beer keg.