The Shortest Distance Between Two Women (34 page)

Emma turns to Robert as if doing just that will reveal something, anything, one small thing.

“You know, Robert, you can run and hide any time you want,” she suggests.

“Are you kidding?” he asks, leaning towards her. “I might miss something. Who knows what’s going to happen next around here?”

Emma desperately wants to say, “No shit,” but she doesn’t. Instead, she looks back towards her mother and asks, very softly, “Why?”

“I suppose this would be a bad time to say I need a drink,” her mother says in all seriousness.

“Yes, it would,” Robert responds gently, putting his hand on Marty’s.

This is when Emma realizes that Robert knows things. He knows Marty. He knows about Rick and knows, too, that Debra could end up just like Joy if she doesn’t watch out. He knows that Marty usually calls Emma first and that Emma rarely says no to anything having to do with Gilford family business. He knows that her mother usually flips out close to reunion time. He probably knows about Samuel and her garden fetish, too. He knows how to kiss her mother and which side of the bed she sleeps on and most likely how she hates it if anyone puts butter on her toast without asking. Robert Dell knows how to make her mother laugh and he cannot keep his hands or eyes or lips off of her.

Robert Dell knows things. Emma realizes that she is just a little bit jealous because of that not-so-startling fact and because he’s probably the one Marty now calls first—that is, if they are ever apart.

Marty slaps her hand on the table when she sees that Emma is
staring at Robert Dell in a way that looks as if he moves, or blinks, or opens up his mouth to say something Emma may jump up, grab a knife and scalp him.

“Jesus, Mother!” Emma shouts after she jumps a few inches.

“It looks like you are getting off track.”

“It’s more like a roller coaster.”

“This started with the missing meat and now we are talking about Joy’s drinking and it looks as if you have fled the country and are about to assassinate someone by the look in your eye, Emma, and all I want to do right now is get some meat,” Marty announces.
“Meat
. Can we not just get some meat and not worry for once about the drunkards and who in the hell Rick is sleeping with, and you are not sleeping with, and what the neighbors think or whether or not the town gossip is going to turn us in for being totally out of our flipping minds?”

And suddenly, without warning, the last piece of string that has been holding the old Emma together for a very long time suddenly lets go. It’s as if one of her ribs has finally fallen into place, she’s discovered a long-dormant secret well of energy buried behind her major organs, or found out that she has the power to change water into wine, which in her family would save just about everyone a lot of money.

Instead of shutting down, quietly agreeing to acquiesce, to curtsy and back out the door, as the old Emma would, the new Emma, the woman who is powered by so much acknowledged love, calmly turns towards her mother and says, “To hell with the meat. I’ll go slaughter a damn cow myself if I have to. There’s meat
to be had all over this town. Get a grip, Mother. It’s just
meat
. It’s not a vial of cancer-curing medicine.”

When Marty looks up and into Emma’s eyes, Emma notices a tiny line of something that she can only think to call sadness and surrender move across her mother’s face. Robert is still holding on to her hand and he quickly brings up his other hand and covers both of Marty’s hands with his own. When Emma looks at his hands, still strong-looking with tall blue veins, small cuticles, and nails trimmed into perfect half-moon shapes, something seizes in her throat and she wants to hurl herself across the table and tell her mother she is sorry.

But sorry for what? For asking questions, for telling her about Joy? For simply showing up at her house to talk about the reunion? Or because of that small parade of sadness that made her heart stop when she saw it limp across Marty’s eyes?

Lining up all of Marty’s sad moments, bouts with what some people might call depression, or just the plain old down-in-the-dumps-of-life times, does not take Emma very long.

Could there be something else? Something horrible about to happen after the arrival of Marty’s glowing eyes following the trip to the romantic island and after the coming-out party with the lively Robert Dell?

Emma’s heart seizes up yet again and she realizes that if her mother is sick, if something bad is about to happen to Marty, then the world really is about to turn sideways and quite possibly stop, and she may not be able to keep breathing. Now that she has made up with her sisters, Emma cannot start over with her mother. Enough already.

In a moment of uncalculated anxiety and because of her new demeanor, and because she is fueled by sisterly love, Emma impulsively reaches out. She puts her hands on top of Robert Dell’s
hands, which are still securely wrapped over Marty’s hands. It looks as if the three of them are playing the sliding-out-hands game that half the children in the world play.

“Mom, what is it? What’s wrong?”

“I’m pretty sure it’s not the meat,” Robert says with a half smile.

“Mom?” Emma says.

Marty sighs, pulls her hands out and pats Robert softly on the arm. Then she reaches across the table to lace her fingers through Emma’s fingers.

“Honey, the meat was like the last straw, you know? It was the one little thing that threw me right off the edge. It wasn’t you or anything you have done. In fact, when I heard you shuffling around out there, honey, it made me smile.”

“Then what, Mom? Tell me, I’m dying here.”

“I’m tired.” Marty says it simply and quietly. “I’m exhausted and absolutely ecstatic at the same time, which makes me feel like I’m in the middle of a constant battle, you know?”

A battle, she continues, where there is all this good stuff on one side and all this not necessarily bad stuff on the other, but enough stuff so that when she turns to look it in the eye it all makes her sad and her bones ache, and her head pound, and also makes her want to lie down in a darkened room with a pillow over her face.

“Just tell her,” Robert urges.

“I’ll tell her some now, Robert, but not everything,” the old Marty says with her eyes sparkling just a little.

Not everything? Emma is beginning to understand why both Joy and Debra love to dab a little gin behind their ears every now and then.

Marty shares her smile with Emma and tells her that she is tired of worrying and wondering and interfering and making plans
and being in charge and that is why she cannot and will not help with Joy’s intervention. Tired of being the mom. That is why this is the last Gilford Family Reunion that she is going to help organize and that is why she is furious about the damned meat and why she took Emma to the garden and why she disappeared to the island with Robert and why everyone keeps wondering if everything is okay with her.

Consider it semi-retirement, Marty says, looking as if she is getting ready to stand up and go jogging.

Emma feels like someone has zapped her with a stun gun.

Her mother does not want to be the mother any longer.

Robert knows things.

There really is a tiny hint of sad exhaustion in her mother’s eyes.

There are car doors slamming outside in the driveway.

And Emma suddenly feels as if someone has set two bushel baskets filled with fifty pounds of unplanted bulbs on top of her shoulders.

Emma jumps up at the very instant Marty jumps up and for some reason this makes Marty smile.

“Do you know how many times we do things at the exact same moment?”

“I’ve never thought about it,” Emma admits.

“Well, it happens all the time. We pick up the phone to call each other, get up, smile—we do lots of things at the exact same moment.”

This is the last thing on Emma’s mind right now. After being so bold just a moment ago she is perilously close to having a panic attack. She can feel a long line of sweat down the center of her back, and there is a small herd of butterflies stuck inside of her rib cage fluttering around as if they are desperate to escape.

“You will figure it out, darling,” Marty consoles her. “You already know the answer.”

“I do?”

“Just think about it for a little while,” Marty adds, pulling away. “But first get on the meat thing, please?”

“The meat,” Emma repeats, grabbing her phone as if she is in a trance and turning just in time to miss Marty winking at Robert, who puts both thumbs into the air and smiles as if he has just won the lottery.

And all Emma can really think of then is the mysterious “not everything” uttered by Marty, which she needs about as much as yet another phone call from Samuel.

“A dress?” Emma questions, thinking at the same moment,
Here we go, kids
, as she struggles to balance her own load of picnic paraphernalia.

“Yes, it’s a cute little red sundress.”

“Stephie, that’s not a dress. It’s a kilt. You know, like men wear in Scotland and Wales. And if I’m not mistaken, Uncle Barry has been taking bagpipe lessons and I’m guessing that will be part of the auction.”

“How cool is that,” Stephie says after a long whistle.

“That’s probably the calmest thing you are going to see during the next eight hours, Stephie,” Emma warns as they walk towards the pavilion and the steadily growing swarm of Gilfordities who are already setting up lawn chairs, tossing around balls and hovering around the beer kegs.

“I’ve been at like fifteen of these, remember?” Stephie reminds Emma as they drop their latest load on a picnic table. “I don’t think I’d ever miss this reunion even if I end up living in Iceland.”

Iceland sounds extremely attractive to Emma at that moment. In Higgins it is very hot and humid, which means it’s a typical South Carolina day, a day that started out just a hair after midnight for Emma when Stephie called her from her cell phone to ask if she could spend the night, which—in Emma’s world anyway—was already about half over.

Stephie was calling from her driveway where she could park and look into the front window and see her mother—what else—drinking. The boys must have already been asleep and Stephie could imagine the sad silhouette of Joy slumped against the kitchen wall with a dark-colored tumbler pressed to her lips as if it had been glued there. Up and down and up and down until it was empty and Joy turned to fill it up again and that is when Stephie called Emma begging to spend the night.