Around the Bend (7 page)

Again, the little girl looked at us, but her mother wagged a French fry in her direction.

“Well, dear, maybe Michael is just pragmatic,” Ma said. “Thinking of your future.”

Sally pouted. “Maybe. He is smart that way. But still…a minivan?”

“He could have bought you a bus,” I pointed out. “Look at the Partridge family.”

My mother shot me a not-helping look, but Sally laughed. “Okay, yeah, that would have been way worse.”

“Excuse me, girls, but I have to go to the ladies’ room.” Ma got up, slowly, then made her way to the restroom. I watched her go, her steps measured, and worried anew over her.

“Hilary,” Sally said, drawing me back to the table. She covered her hand with mine, clearly considering us best buds now. Sally was clearly one of those voted “Most Likely” kind of people. “How do you know if a man is the right one?”

I laughed. “I am totally the wrong woman to ask that question.”

She cocked her head, studying me. She’d gone to the restroom when we’d arrived, splashed some water on her face, cleaned up the worst of the mascara damage, and plucked the baby’s breath from her hair. Except for the white gown, she looked almost normal. “Haven’t you ever been in love?”

“Well…I…” Had I?

I’d never thought about that subject, not really. I’d been in
infatuation
before, a dozen times. That particular emotion had caused me to make numerous stupid choices. But in love?

Those words put me into Sally’s world, the very planet I avoided orbiting. With Nick, I’d been circling that solar system, but not quite bumped into it, because actually falling in love would mean trusting him with my whole heart—

And then going to the next step. The leaving-my-clothes-in-his-apartment, moving-in-with-him step. I’d done that once with Nick, and it had been a major mistake. Before Nick, I’d almost gotten married once before, and thankfully come to my senses just in time.

But in love…also known as open-heart-surgery vulnerable? No way. Not me. I’d rather run the Boston Marathon naked.

“No, not really,” I said.

“Why not?”

“I’m of the marriage is a prison club.” I gave her a little smile, then drummed my fingers on the table, wishing my mother would hurry back. For the first time ever, I missed Reginald and wanted to get back in the car and on the road.

“I think love can be really freeing,” Sally said on a dreamy, read-too-many-fairy-tales sigh.

“Five minutes ago you were ready to file for divorce over a minivan.”

Sally plopped her chin into her hands. “I know. But maybe, it’s just because I was so nervous. Getting married is scary as
h-e-
double hockey sticks,” she said, gesturing toward the miniature ears still watching our entire conversation.

“You can say that again.”

“But when I think about Michael, I think about how much he loves me and how excited I am about waking up as Mrs. Michael Carmichael tomorrow. And the next tomorrow. And the one after that.”

I looked at Sally, at the incredibly happy smile on her face, and no longer wanted to puke.

Suddenly, I envied her in a way I had never envied anyone before. Sally was in some elite club I couldn’t gain access to. She glowed, with some knowledge I didn’t have.

If I married Nick, would I look like that? Would we have that happy ending?

Or would we end up like my parents? Essentially two strangers, one locked away in a room, hiding a sorrow too deep to share?

“Hey, Hilary, is your mother okay?” Sally asked.

I glanced across the restaurant and watched my mother make her way through the crowded room, her movements seeming slower than before.

Images of my mother, struggling to get in and out of my low-seated Mustang came to mind and guilt pricked at my conscience. Every stop we made seemed harder on her, more labor-intensive. We’d gone from stopping every four hours, to every three, to every two.

The Mustang sat in the parking lot, cherry-red, gleaming in the sunshine. My baby. I’d saved for so long to buy it, working night after night, coming home smelling like beer and stale nuts, stuffing my stash of hard-earned ones into an old pretzel jar, with a picture of the car taped to the front. I’d put up with rude drunks, leering old men, complaining women who thought their burgers were undercooked. I’d worked every Friday and Saturday night for a year straight, had gone without cable and didn’t even take a vacation, just to get that car.

I’d dreamed of a Mustang ever since I’d learned to make the Vroom-Vroom sound. It was my pride and joy, the one treasure I owned.

I looked at Sally, at the car, then at my mother.

An idea came to mind, but I pushed it away. There was
no way
I was giving my car to an emotionally unstable girl in a wedding dress who wasn’t even legally old enough to have champagne. And especially not in exchange for a Mommy bus.

“I need to make a phone call,” Sally said, and got up, her dress almost a lethal weapon every time she moved, white ruffles pinging against chairs and coats, legs and shoes.

“Wait,” I said, reaching for her hand.

“But, Hilary, I need to call Michael now, before he gets too worried. Just talking to you made me realize how important he is to me. I need to tell him I’ll learn to live with the minivan. I’ll try not to feel like a Mommy in it. I love him, and he’s more important than a silly old car.” But her voice caught on a sob as she said it, indicating she was still not completely okay with the minivan idea. Sally from Sandusky was clearly still holding out hope for her SUV.

“Please, sit down. I have an idea.”

“An idea?” She dropped into her chair again, the skirt forming a huge white puddle around her chair.

I gave her a smile, then let out a gust of air. “Yeah. A real Cinderella, happily ever after ending for all of us.”

Sally beamed. “Oh, those are my favorite kind.”

Driving a minivan was on par with driving a Mack truck. Except without the fun horn to toot. I kept looking in the back, expecting to see a set of twins and a diaper bag.

“I can’t believe you did this,” Ma said.

“Me, either,” I muttered. Thinking of my precious red Mustang in the hands of one very happy Sally from Sandusky. Who’d driven off with a war whoop and a screech of the tires, beaming from ear to ear, and no longer needing my mother’s Kleenexes.

“This is so much more comfortable than the Mustang. And fun, too.” A whine of electricity announced my mother shifting her seat back, allowing her to stretch out her legs. Contentment spread across her face, and all thoughts of my Mustang—and any lingering regrets about my impetuous trade in the parking lot of Cracker Barrel—disappeared.

I’d done the right thing, and as much as I hated the van, I was glad I’d made the trade.

Even if she refused to tell me, something wasn’t right with
my mother, and clearly the vehicle trade had been the right decision. After the trip was over, I could always head to a Ford dealership and undo it.

But until then, there was me, Ma, Reginald, Dad in the back, flat on the floor now with all that extra room, and the big old Dodge under my tutelage.

“I still don’t understand why you did it, though.” My mother glanced at me. “You loved that car.”

I wanted to tell her that I loved her more, but the words got lodged in my throat. “You shouldn’t be riding in a Mustang. I don’t know what I was thinking.” I turned in the seat and faced my mother. “I’m sorry, Ma.”

“You don’t need to apologize, Hilary. I should have told you I was uncomfortable or offered to rent a bigger car.”

“No problem, Ma. Really.” I gave her a smile, a truce. “Let’s call it a draw.”

She laughed. “Okay. Sally sure seemed happy after she called Michael and drove off to meet him.”

“She was leaving for her honeymoon. Everyone’s happy going on a honeymoon.”

“Not everyone.” My mother picked at the Kate Spade clasp, flicking and unflicking it.

“You weren’t?” Another surprise to me. I’d always thought they’d at least started their marriage on a happy note. Another chalk mark in the Why Marriage Is Not a Good Idea column. I should have been keeping notes to show Nick later.

“I…got married fast.”

I arched a brow at her. “You? The woman who creates a pro/con list for her grocery shopping?”

“I do not.”

“You did, too. When that new Stop & Shop moved into Dorchester, you posted a list on the refrigerator of reasons why you should and should not shop there.”

“It was out of my way.”

“But the prices were lower.”

“Which was what finally swayed your father. He really liked shopping at the corner market.”

“Where you bought your green beans a gazillion years ago isn’t that important to me. But I am a little surprised by this honeymoon bombshell.” I was, in fact, surprised that my mother would drop any bombshells at all. She’d opened up to me more in the last three days than she had in the last thirty-plus years. Was that all it would have taken? Forced proximity? One hell of a long road trip and we could have avoided all those shouting matches and slammed doors? The years of silence?

“Your father was impetuous,” Ma said.

I snorted. “That’s putting it mildly.”

“And when he met me, he didn’t want to wait to get married.”

“I know this story. He proposed after just three months.” My mother getting married that quickly still shocked me. Here I’d been hemming and hawing for four years, and would keep on riding that seesaw as long as I could.

My mother fiddled with the clasp again and cleared her throat. “I might have fibbed a bit on that.”

“Fibbed?” I nearly took out a Honda in the next lane. Rosemary Delaney, attorney of the year, who had, as far as I knew, never told a lie in her life. “You?”

“You were young, Hilary. We couldn’t very well tell you we got married after our first date.”

“You what?” And now I did swerve, into the next lane, meriting a strong honking from the other cars, before coming to a screeching halt in the breakdown lane. My heart leapt into my throat, beating fast and furious, half from the near collision, half from the shock of my mother’s admission. “
First date?
”

The words didn’t get any less shocking when I repeated them. Nor did their meaning.

No way I could have done that. Well, okay, there was a time—

A time when I’d been that insane, but I’d grown up since then. I wasn’t that rash anymore. I thought out my decisions, like I was doing now with Nick. Of course, he called it stalling, but I called it being smart. Instead of rushing into a mistake that would only add to the divorce statistics later.

“I liked that about your father. His impetuousness.”

“You?” I closed my eyes, but still had the sensation of an electric chair coursing through me. Maybe I hadn’t just traded the Mustang with Sally from Sandusky. Maybe I’d also traded in my maternal relative. “Ma, you don’t like surprises. Dad and I threw you a birthday party without telling you and you were so mad, you walked out of the house. It took Dad twenty minutes to convince you to come back. You lay out your breakfast dishes the night before. Plan your Christmas shopping for next year on December twenty-sixth. You’re like the poster child for structured.”

“Which was why I married your father. He helped me loosen up.”

I turned and stared at her. Gaped, really. “I think I missed that part, where you loosened up.”

“I never said I was good at it. Just that he tried.”

I shut my mouth, then opened it again. “And your first step after joining Control Freaks Anonymous was to get married on your first date?”

“You’d have to have known your father back then. He was—” at this, a soft, private smile took over her face, swiping years off my mother’s countenance, reducing her age instantly by fifteen years “—handsome, so, so handsome. And
very
persuasive.”

I glanced in the rearview mirror at the image of my father, lying flat on the floor, beside a sleeping potbellied pig, and looking about as persuasive as a term paper. “Dad never struck me as the forceful type, Ma.”

“Oh, he had his ways of talking me into things. Crazy ideas.” She let out a laugh and her gaze strayed to some far-off place I couldn’t see. “Driving to the country in the middle of the day, then going skinny-dipping in some lake we stumbled upon. It could have been public or private, or a huge watering hole, for all we knew. But your dad, he talked me into it. Next thing I knew, I was taking off my—”

“Eww, Ma, too much information.”

She flushed, jerked out of the memory, and back into her stern no-nonsense self. “Well, yes. You know what I mean.”

“Were you drunk?”

“When we went skinny-dipping?”

I shuddered. Already I had way too many mental pictures of that day. “When you got married.”

“No. Why would I be?”

“Ma, I’ve seen pictures of Dad when he was young and he was no Viggo Mortensen.”

“Who?”

“James Dean,” I said, translating into a star term she knew. “I just can’t see you running off to Vegas and eloping on your first date.”

“Well, there’s a lot about me you don’t know, Hilary.” She plopped the purse back on her lap, hands again in the driving-to-the-grocery position, and stared straight ahead. “Now, can we get going?”

I shook my head, reached for the gearshift, but paused before putting the baby RV into gear. There was a lot about me that she didn’t know, too, to be fair. “Why are you telling me all of this now?”

Quiet filled the space between us, its weight heavier than the storm clouds gathering along the corn fields lining the road. My mother started to say something, then Reginald inserted his snout between us and let out something akin to a bark. “Time for a potty break.”

“Yeah,” I agreed. “There’s something smelly in here, and I haven’t quite figured out what.”

But my mother was keeping mum, and left me to deal with her pig, instead of the stories she hadn’t told. The gaps left in what she had said.

I walked along the edge of the highway with Reginald, thinking about Nick, and never feeling as far away from him before as I did right now.

My mother had been deeply in love with my father once. Eloped with him on their first date. I’d glimpsed a side of her I’d never seen before, and for just a second, I envied that rush of happiness she’d had with my father—

But look how that had turned out.

Reginald ducked behind a shrub and I wondered what other secrets my mother was keeping. And whether I wanted to hear them at all.