A Little Ray of Sunshine (8 page)

“Blink,” Digs whispered, giving me a gentle poke on the leg under the table.

“So, Jess,” Danny said, turning his warm smile on her, “how long have you known our girl?”

She looked at me, seemed to do the math in her head, and then smiled at Danny. “I guess about eight days.”

My mother reached for her wineglass and took a generous sip. I put my hand on Jess’s shoulder.

“Yeah, we just hit if off from the start,” I said, sadistically enjoying the sight of the woman I barely recognized as my mother rending at the napkin in her lap, obviously tortured at the thought that her only daughter had turned gay, thus seriously complicating her shot at grandchildren.

Serves you right, you big faker.

“Jess was there when I went out to visit EJ,” Digs said. “She didn’t get a chance to warn Jess against me, so I was able to sucker her into being my date for the wedding.”

Mom released a breath in a manner she probably thought was subtle, then grinned at Jess. “Oh, how wonderful! You two will make such a handsome couple.”

“Yes, they will.” I sat back and shot Digs a look.

“Well, don’t be shy,” Danny said, motioning toward the plates. “Eat up. It’s good stuff. Our Lilly is a master at paninis.”

I watched as everyone else took bites—except my mother, of course. Interesting. I waited for the chokes and gasps, but each of them just smiled and made yum noises as though it was possible those sandwiches weren’t the most deadly things ever created at the hands of a mortal. I knew better, though. I’d been there for the Great Pot Roast Disaster of ‘86. Jess took a healthy bite, touched her napkin to her lips daintily and grinned at my mother.

“Lilly,” she said, swallowing. “These are wonderful! What’s in them?”

“Oh, nothing really, you wouldn’t believe how simple. A little sliced turkey, caramelized onions, and some fontina, and then you just layer it all between thin slices of sourdough, and—you won’t believe this—actually wrap a brick in tin foil—”

“Caramelized onions,” I snorted. I didn’t realize I’d verbalized the thought until I looked up to see four pairs of unamused eyes watching me. “I mean... you can’t...” I blinked at the blank faces, then looked to Jess and spoke under my breath. “Can you caramelize onions?”

Jess gave me a stern look, then dropped her eyes to my sandwich, and raised them back to me, arching one eyebrow to tell me I’d better take a bite of that sandwich or lose a hand. I sighed, leaned forward, and took the smallest bite I could, my free hand reaching for my glass of ice water to help me choke it down...

... except it was good.
Really
good. I put it down, said, “Mmmmm,” and smiled. My mother glanced happily at Danny, as if she had ever in her life given the slightest crap about my approval. What the hell kind of
Twilight Zone
reunion was this? Where was the contempt, disdain and recrimination? Who was this woman?

“So, Jess, where are you from?” Danny asked, his head politely angled toward our poor, poor guest.

“Oh. Um, I’ve kind of lived all around, actually,” she said, then turned her grin on my mother. “Lilly, I can’t tell you how exciting it is to meet you. I have been a fan of
Baby of the Family
since I was a little girl, and to get to meet you in person is such a thrill!”

Oh, God. Here we go
. Despite the fact that any normal human being would be sick to death of talking for nearly a half century about what they did between the ages of six and ten, Lilly Lorraine thrived on it. I zoned out for a bit, staring at my sandwich while trying to work up the strength to listen, once again, to the story about the time she accidentally fed chocolate to Rex, the dog that played Skipper, thus making him puke up Rocky Road all over the second assistant director.

“... don’t you think, Emmy?”

I raised my head. “What? Huh?”

My mother smiled amiably. “I was just telling Jess how lovely the path around the lake was at dusk, and how it makes such a nice after-dinner walk. Don’t you think so?”

I blinked. No Rex story? How was this possible? I sat up straighter. “Yes. It’s really...” I met my mother’s eyes. “... lovely.”

The thing about being annoyed with someone is that, if you add guilt at your own horrible behavior to the annoyance, it blazes straight into anger. White-hot anger, as a matter of fact. Just a hair shy of rage. As I watched everyone at that table accept my mother’s pretense of being a decent human being, I began to fume. Then the guilt piled on as I grudgingly noted she’d been nothing but nice. And the paninis were really good. By the time the discussion had turned to the unusually sunny weather they’d been having, there was only one way for me to vent the steam building in my gut without exploding all over the table.

I started humming “Johnny Angel.”

Digs was the first to notice. He shot me a look, but that didn’t stop me. I just hummed louder.

“Is that...?” Jess said, but she stopped and her eyes got wide, and she mumbled, “Oh, no.”

Still, I continued humming, turning my focus on my mother, whose face was starting to show some real color now. Her eyes glinted with anger, and she curled her napkin up in her fist. Finally, there she was, the Lilly Lorraine I recognized.

“Emmy,” she said quietly. “I think you’ve made your point.”

“It’s EJ,” I said, “and I haven’t even begun to make my point.”

“EJ.” Danny’s voice was sharp and serious. “That’s enough.”

“It’s okay, Danny,” Mom said, putting her hand on his. “She has every right.” She turned to Jess and gave her a sad smile. “I’m so sorry, Jess. There’s a very complicated history here.”

I shook my head and sputtered, “Complicated history? Is that how you’d describe it? Who
are
you?”

“Sweetheart, you have every right to be upset. I sometimes forget how much I’ve changed, and I understand this might come as something of a surprise—”

“A surprise? No. A surprise is coming home and finding your bedroom has been converted into a home gym. A surprise is not coming home to discover that your mother has become sweet and nice and polite and not self-centered at all and has learned to cook. I mean, how am I supposed to deal with that?”

“EJ,” Danny warned, but my mother patted his hand, and he sat back and went silent.

“This has been out of left field for you, Emmy, I understand, but...” Mom shook her head and sighed. “I’ve changed.”

“No, shit.”

Danny shot me a warning glance, and I shrunk back a little.

My mother, seeming not to notice this exchange, kept talking. “After you left, I went down a very destructive path. Glenn and I got divorced. I started drinking way too much, and there was one night...” She swallowed, and her eyes glistened with tears, and Danny put one arm around her shoulders. She smiled at him, tightened her grip on his hand. “Danny saved my life. He came down to California, sold my house, brought me back here. He took care of me. He got me in touch with an excellent therapist—oh, I would have never survived the past few years if it weren’t for Dr. Travers. It’s been a long road, and it’s required a lot of work, but finally, I feel...” She breathed in deep and dabbed at the corner of one eye with her napkin. “I’m happy. I’m healthy.”

“You’re healthy?” I tried to give the idea a moment to sink in, but it wouldn’t. “You’re
healthy
? So, you’re saying that the woman who made me go on a grapefruit diet at the age of seven because I’d crept up to the sixty-fifth weight percentile for my age... you’re telling me that woman is healthy?”

She sighed. “Emmy, that was a long time—”

“Not done!” I held up a hand to silence her. “Give me a minute here. So the woman who assigned her driver to take me to the mall on my sixteenth birthday while she ran off to France to marry a man she’d known for three days...
this
woman is healthy?”

A deathly silence came over the entire table. Mom raised her eyes to mine and we connected, and I know she knew exactly what I was thinking.

So the woman who called me the day after my engagement to tell me I’d never make a decent wife, that I’d ruin Luke’s life as well as my own, that Luke deserved better, that I wasn’t cut out for marriage and that the best way I could show Luke I loved him was to drop out of his life that minute and never show my face again...
this
woman is healthy?

I shifted my gaze to Danny, focused on him, and how much I loved him and wanted him to be happy, and the rage inside started to calm.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “It’s been a long week for me, and I’m really tired. Does anyone mind if I just go up and take a nap?” I glanced at Jess. “You’ll be okay?”

She smiled and nodded. I dropped my napkin on my plate and forced myself to meet my mother’s eyes.

“Thank you,” I said tightly, with as much sincerity as I could muster. “The panini was very good.”

***

Although there were a lot of ugly truths about that last conversation I’d had with my mother six years ago, the ugliest was this: Nothing that resulted from that conversation was her fault. She didn’t put a gun to my head and make me leave Luke’s ring on the nightstand in the middle of the night. I did that all on my own. My mother hadn’t created a situation out of a pure vacuum and injected it into my life; she’d just poked a bear that was already sleeping in my head. When I came to my senses some six months later in a trailer park in Utah and realized I’d made the biggest mistake I would ever have the opportunity to make, I blamed her, of course. And some of that was justified, I guess. But when it comes right down to it, the truth was that I had done it to myself.

And that infuriated me more than if she
had
put a gun to my head.

After finding my way to my old room, I threw myself down on the bottom twin bunk and stared up into the support bars that held up the top bunk, much as I had through so many summers and holidays when my mother couldn’t have been bothered to care for me, and had shipped me up to Oregon to stay with Danny. Many nights were spent staring at those supports, hardening my heart against the things my mother did or didn’t do, what she said or didn’t say, and here I was, at it again.

Just like old times.

A knock came at the door and I called out simply, “Come in,” not really caring if it was her or not.

It wasn’t.

“Hey.” Jess stepped inside, closed the door behind her and pulled the desk chair over next to my bunk. “How are you doing?”

“Fine,” I said, still staring up at the supports. “I’d say I’m sorry, but you’re the one who kidnapped me, so you get what you deserve.”

She laughed lightly. “Is there anything you want to talk about?”

I shook my head.

“Okay.”

We sat in silence for a while. I wondered how long she planned on sitting there, but lacked the energy to ask. Finally, the last of my strength left me, and I started talking.

“Part of me wanted to come, you know,” I said. Jess barely moved, but I could tell by the slight tilt of her head that she was listening, so I kept talking. “When we stopped at that first truck stop, you asked me how I felt when I thought we were heading to Fletcher. You know what? I felt relieved. I’ve been thinking about coming back for a long time, but I couldn’t bring myself to because... well. It doesn’t matter. But when I was stuck inside that Airstream, barreling down the road, and it wasn’t my choice anymore, I felt relieved.”

“That makes sense,” she said quietly.

“I wanted to see her again for a lot of reasons, but a big one was to show her how great I was without her in my life. Show her how happy I’d been. How little I needed her. Even if it was a lie, I wanted to show her.” I let out a bitter laugh. “And now, the woman I came all the way here to show up doesn’t even exist anymore. I mean, how is that fair? It’s like she gets to twist the knife one final time and I just have to suck it up and deal with it because the woman pretending to be my mother is kind and sweet and ‘healthy.’ And I’m...”

I trailed off. I wasn’t sure exactly what word best described me, but I knew what it wasn’t.

It wasn’t “healthy.” And it for damn sure wasn’t “happy.”

Jess sat there in silence as afternoon rain clouds closed in, darkening the room. She sat as the storm started with gentle pitter-pats on the window, and then as it raged, pummeling the roof and the walls. She was still there when I fell asleep, but when I woke up the next morning, the chair was empty and settled back into its spot next to the desk.

***

So many of my friends have entered treatment of one kind or another. I have to say, I don’t understand it. Not that you shouldn’t ask for help if you need it, but just the sheer number of people in my acquaintance deciding they’re addicted to drugs or alcohol or sex or money... it’s shameful. How bad have we had it, really? We’ve had food to eat. We’ve had luxury. We’ve had fame. Millions of people worldwide look to us for guidance and role modeling. And what message do we send? That we can’t handle the good life? That our good fortune is somehow a curse? I’ll tell you what—all these quote-unquote unfortunates should have to starve like those children in Asia. Or Africa. All of these so-called unfortunate Hollywood success stories should be banned to an A-country, that’s what I think.

—Lilly Lorraine, The Dick Cavett Show, 1982