The Shortest Distance Between Two Women (23 page)

Emma squeezes her eyes and stops as if she has just run into an invisible brick wall.
Oh my God. I need this gathering like a second
period this month. I’m not speaking to most of my sisters, the reunion has its arms wrapped around my neck, and unless I confess soon I’ll be lucky to get out of this alive
. Emma thinks that if she backs up slowly and does not open her eyes no one will know that she is fleeing. Maybe she can spare herself, this poor man, her mother, and everyone else who has heard Chloe’s question more moments of embarrassment and Gilford-like rudeness.

But as she starts to back up, totally serious about leaving, she feels something poke her in the back and she hears the unmistakable whisper of Susie Dell in her right ear asking her why everyone in the backyard has suddenly stopped moving, talking, eating and drinking.

“They look as if they have all been turned to stone,” Susie Dell adds. “What in the hell is wrong, Emma?”

Susie Dell is such a nice woman that Emma has to restrain herself from flinging the tray of cheese and crackers her new friend is holding straight into the bushes, grabbing her by the shoulders, spinning her around and saying, “Susie Dell, run for your life! Get the hell away from the Gilfords. Run fast and far.”

But Emma has a feeling Susie Dell can take it. She opens her eyes, moves her head just an inch, and repeats what her wild niece has just asked Susie’s father.

“ ‘Are you the man who is sleeping with my grandma?’”

“Oh, hell’s bells, I love it,” Susie barks loud enough for her own white-faced father to hear. “Let’s go save the poor Romeo.”

And then Susie Dell jumps in front of Emma with her tray of whole wheat crackers, quickly appears at her bewildered father’s side, sets the tray on the table and then puts one hand on each one of Chloe’s shoulders, looks her in the eye and says, “Sweetheart, you seem old enough to know that was a very rude question.”

Susie Dell, Emma chuckles to herself, must have been switched at birth. She is really a part of this insane family. Chloe, a
little troublemaker, who thought she was pulling a fast one, looks like she was just stripped naked in front of her entire school and has no idea what to say or do next. Susie Dell takes care of that, too. She introduces herself to Chloe, tells her that once, years ago, when this man who is her father was having an important garden party just like this, she organized six of her friends to run through the backyard in their underwear with plastic trick-or-treat masks on their faces.

“Seriously?” Chloe stammers, dumbfounded and totally in awe.

“She’s more than serious,” Robert Dell answers with a look of relief. “I would have grounded her for a year except I have to tell you that most of the people at the party really
needed
to see girls running around in their underwear. They were a bunch of uptight attorneys. It ended up being the best party I ever threw in my life.”

Emma can hear her mother laughing as if the underwear girls were just entering the backyard at this very moment.

“Robert, do not tell this granddaughter any more stories because she’s likely to be streaking nude any second and with the reunion coming up she’ll figure out a way to have everyone there do the same thing,” Marty says, walking towards the terribly gracious and quick-witted retired attorney from Charleston.

And then, in typical Gilford fashion, Stephie shouts from across the lawn, “There’s a good chance she doesn’t even
wear
underwear!” and Emma slaps herself on the forehead with the palm of her hand and knows for certain that the cocktail party is now fully under way and that the Dells will more than be able to handle not just the Gilfords, but pretty much anything else as well.

Sister Joy is already hovering over the gin-laden punch bowl and has appointed herself the official bartender and for once, because her marriage has just evaporated, it will be okay if she ends up dancing on top of the table.

There is also Stephie, who looks better than she did a few days ago at the tablecloth-cutting ceremony, but who is lurking as if she has some unspoken secret, which Emma can only imagine is something that will not just push the envelope but make it shred into dozens of pieces.

Debra has not even bothered to chastise her outrageous daughter Chloe. Now she’s busy ordering everyone under the age of forty who will listen to her to do something like make certain people’s cars do not block the neighbors’ driveways and to bring in more drinks from the garage refrigerator. Debra, who is candidate
numero dos
to have a marriage explode during the cocktail party or at any given moment during the next week, month, or year.

Her husband Kevin is, as always, trying so very hard to be gracious and kind and to make up for the loud and seemingly crazy behavior of the wife he loves in a way that even he probably does not understand. Emma thinks of Kevin as either a male god-like creature or someone who has a mental and emotional disability that has never been diagnosed.

There are the teenagers, especially the boys, Bo and Riley, who think no one can see them but who are lurking on the edges of not just the party but the next stages of their lives as if they are terrified
to take the next step. They are geeky and dorky and not-so-refined images of every boy-man who ever existed.

There are neighbors, a mess of Higgins men and women who must be Marty’s senior-citizen drinking-and-dancing pals, and Marty walking with her arm laced through Robert’s arm and introducing him as “my friend Robert” as she parades in a queenly circle around the gardens Emma designed for her all those years ago.

Gardens that Emma specifically formed around an open circle of grass so that there would be the perfect place for parties just like this. There are small walkways rotating from the circle but every single path in Marty’s yard looks as if it begins and ends in the center of this terribly lively circle and Emma, who has never really stopped to look at her creation or see it in its fullest use, is bent over at the waist so she can look at the plants behind Debra and Joy who have both stationed themselves at the drink table and are awaiting their turn to meet Mr. Dell.

This is when Emma, without intention, hears her mother talking with Erika and Robert, and when she discovers more about her mother and her relationship with Robert Dell while Erika peppers them with questions.

They met at the senior center.

It was an immense and startling attraction.

They danced all afternoon and then went to dinner.

Robert had no clue what to do.

The lovely Susie Dell was beyond helpful.

They started out with dinner and they went shopping.

Marty visited his home in Charleston.

They talk every day.

They have so much in common.

He feels as if he is more alive than he has ever been.

And then just as Emma thinks her back is going to snap like a
dry bean, she raises the top half of her body, sees her mother place her hand sweetly, gently and with great affection on the curve of Robert Dell’s cheek and kiss him on the lips in front of her second-oldest daughter.

Robert is charming, her mother is hanging on his arm as if she has found a new anchor, he’s smart and affectionate and not some lowlife botanist who randomly calls ex-lovers and reminds them of the past so they will be even more embarrassed and filled with self-loathing. It is impossible not to like Robert Dell, and the package includes Susie Dell, who is working the crowd as if she is running for mayor of Higgins.

Robert passes Emma’s initial test and she presumes she passes his as he warmly squeezes her hand and lets Emma know that she has “one terrific mother” before they move on to the next relative.

“Jesus,” Erika mutters flatly as she moves in next to Emma. “How in the hell long has this been going on?”

“I have no clue,” Emma admits, trying hard to be civil. “He’s Mother’s best kept secret. Or one of them, anyway. But I am beginning to think there are more secrets where that came from.”

“No, I don’t know everything, Erika.”

“Yes, you do.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because you are like … like …” she stammers.

Impatient Emma cuts her off. “Like what?”

“Erika,” Emma says softly, trying very hard to slow her heart. “I do not run this family. Mother runs this family. And I feel like an idiot and many other things because I had no clue, and I admit it. And why the hell haven’t you called me back about the reunion?”

“Take it easy,” Erika says, all but ignoring the question. “I will fill you in later. Relax. This is
a party
.”

Emma wishes someone had told her she was in charge of the world and then given her a map, directions, some kind of detailed and step-by-step guidebook.
Relax?
She may as well be tied to a torture rack.

When she lifts her eyes to look at her sister again she sees someone she does not know. Erika looks amazingly like her mother must have twenty years ago. She has let her hair go gray and it matches the color of Marty’s hair and tapers to a few lines of black that run from her temples all the way towards the back of her head and then disappear like magic into her sea of steely gray strands, and Erika’s laugh lines descend, also like Marty’s, not in long lines but in circles, like balls of beautiful, joyous string unraveling. Erika must work out because she is trim, has on a sleeveless dark blue tunic top that shows a large cut of muscles in her upper arms that dance like sweet waves into her upper back.

Like a random bird that suddenly lands in the wrong state, Emma’s mind flutters and she wonders if Erika, and perhaps Joy and Debra, also worry if they too might die young like their father. Is that why Erika came back before this reunion? Is that why she is here alone? Is Erika terrified that she might be carrying some disabled family gene? Is that why she has never had her own children, why she has stayed away, why she is separated from Emma right
now not just in miles but also in emotion? Emma is stunned by all these revelations.