Elvis Takes a Back Seat (8 page)

“Sweet tea?” the waitress asks.

“It's been years,” Rae says, “but I believe I'll indulge in the house wine of the South.”

“You must not have been in the South much, sugar,” the waitress remarks. “Or else you have great self-control.”

“I've never been accused of that.”

“Tell us about Oregon,” I say, when the waitress has taken our orders.

“Where do I begin?” she asks wrinkling her forehead.

I'm relieved to find a topic she's willing to discuss. “Why did you choose to live there?”

“It seemed as far away from Dallas and Memphis as the moon. It's also where I found myself … and God.”

“What do you mean?” Ivy asks.

“More like God found me. Because I don't think I was looking. But he got my attention.”

“How?” I ask.

“I quit looking inward and looked for help. And I found it.”

“God helped you?” Ivy asks.

“He always does.”

“What did you need help from? Were you trying to escape? Trying to avoid seeing someone?” I ask, wondering if that someone was Elvis.

“Someone? You mean Elvis? No, it was over. I was over Elvis. But other things are not so easily forgotten. I needed to get away. It was too confining in Dallas.”

Or was our family, my mother and grandparents, too reserved for her? “What did you do?”

“Do?”

“For a living.”

“A little bit of everything. I waitressed in a little café for a while. Modeled in New York.”

“You modeled in New York?” Ivy leans forward.

“Sure. I did a couple of runways, but I wasn't much good. I didn't want to show off the clothes. I preferred grabbing everyone's attention myself. Designers don't like that. I did a couple of magazines. But mostly I modeled for art students.”

Ivy leans back, shading her eyes with her eyelashes, wary and watchful.

“Somewhere there's a picture of me in the buff on some stranger's mantle.” Rae starts to laugh.

Ivy's eyes widen. “Really?”

Rae arches her back, pushing her small breasts forward. “Well, I wasn't Brigitte Bardot in my day, but I certainly wasn't a dachshund either. I had plenty of men interested back then. And I made a good living in the different art
schools. Of course, I liked to think of myself as an artist then. But I had no talent. And certainly no determination. Just a willing spirit.”

“A free spirit,” I say.

She nods.

“And what did my mother think of all your adventures?” I ask, remembering Mother's dislike of Holly Golightly in
Breakfast at Tiffany's
.

“Oh, Beverly didn't ask anymore what I was up to. We had very little contact back then. She never wrote.”

“We never got letters from you either,” I defend my mother. “Just an occasional postcard.”

She shrugs as if indifferent. “It was for the best. Beverly didn't want to hear from me. She was busy with her own life. She had no need of me, no desire to remember …”

“Remember what?” I ask, leaning forward, resting my elbows on the table.

“Her dreams. She had them with you.”

I lean back into the booth. “Mother always said she wanted to be a wife and mother.”

“That's true.” Rae's mouth flattens into a thin line. “Our food should be coming soon.”

“Was my mother really satisfied with that?” I ask, needing to know more. I thought I'd known Mother, but maybe I hadn't. Maybe no one had. It didn't seem like she let anyone into her thoughts or her heart. Maybe Rae hadn't really known her either. After all, they hadn't spoken for many years before Mother died.

“I don't know.” Rae lifts a narrow shoulder, then fingers the base of her iced-tea glass. “Dreams come true are rarely as satisfying as we imagine.”

Wondering if she's thinking of my mother or her own lost or forgotten dreams, I place my hand on hers. I wonder if it's painful for her to be back in Memphis. Memories, I know full well, can soothe like a violin sonata or jolt like a discordant note on a steel guitar.

Rae places her other hand on top of mine and her warmth surrounds me. I feel a sudden closeness to her, the same feeling I remember when she visited when I was a child. A tingling delight and solid connection took hold. If nothing else, my aunt and I share a love for my mother.

“I miss her …” My voice breaks.

“I know,” Rae says, her eyes fill with tears. “I do, too.”

“My mother left when I was three,” Ivy says suddenly. Beneath the layers of makeup, there is a dusting of freckles across her nose. She looks so young and vulnerable. Twisting her fork over and over, she stares at the candle in the middle of the table.

I don't know what to say. But I know loneliness, the kind that weights the heart until it cracks and break. I understand the need to reach out to my mother, to feel her arms come around me and hold me as she whispers that everything will be all right. “I know.”

“B-but why?” she asks, her tone flat. Then she looks right at me, searching for answers when there are none. “You knew her, right?”

I never understood why Gwen walked out on Ben and their young daughter. “I don't know what happened.”

I wonder what Ben told his daughter, if they discussed her mother's disappearance since the garage sale. Or if it's been too painful, too difficult a subject to broach when their
father-daughter relationship seems at a standoff. “What did your father tell you?”

“Not much.”

“She didn't leave a note.” I remember Ben coming over, carrying a sleeping Ivy against his shoulder, pain as deep as any I've ever seen darkened his eyes. Now Ivy squints at me, anger burning in her gaze. “No reasons. No excuses. Not that anything Gwen could say would explain it away.” The hurt had been dealt with a harsh blow, the emptiness, all these years later, still resonates. “I always thought your mother was overwhelmed … that she felt inadequate—”

I stop. I don't want Ivy to think she's the reason her mother left and blame herself. Suddenly I understand the briar patch Ben has tried to pick his way through, knowing if he said the wrong thing, it would be Ivy who would be hurt. Tread carefully, I tell myself. “It didn't have anything to do with you though. You know that, don't you, Ivy?”

She looks away. My heart aches for her, for Ben, for elusive answers, haunting questions.

Rae's somber gaze shifts between us, watching, listening, waiting.

“How could she leave like that?” Ivy asks. “Maybe she hated being a mom so much. Maybe she knew she'd make us all miserable. Maybe we made her miserable.”

Rae makes a disgruntled noise of disbelief.

As a baby Ivy had an easy, full-bodied smile, wiggling her body, kicking her legs, waving her arms with joy. Now she's somber, so sad. Her eyes tilt downward at the corners,
as if weighted with misery. “I remember when she was pregnant with you.”

“Was she happy?” Ivy asks.

“Yes. For a while. Now that I think back, she wasn't typically a happy person. She was always fussing, worrying about something. But I remember her rubbing her tummy affectionately.” She always said everything was all right, but her eyes told a different story.

“So why'd she leave?” Ivy asks.

“I don't know.” I feel unprepared and wish Ben were here to field these questions. But maybe Ben doesn't have any answers either. No amount of explanation, I've learned, can cover the heartache. I remember the doctor painstakingly explaining the way cancer can spread and grow. But knowing, understanding the physical, biological reasons didn't answer the deeper struggle of why.

“Sometimes,” Rae chimes in, “we don't know what is in another's heart. It's a mystery. A mother's heart … is as deep as an ocean. You must know that whatever took your mother away, you are in her heart. Wherever she is, whatever happened. A mother never forgets her child.”

Her words strike a chord in me that resonates outward, like sound carrying across water. I can never forget my baby either, the hopes, dreams, promise of a new life. What do you do with those dreams?

“How do you know?” Ivy asks pointedly.

“Because I have been a mother.”

Rae's admission stuns me. “You have? You are?”

“Yes.”

Mother never mentioned Rae having a baby. Did
Mother not know? Had the child died, I wonder? What happened? “When?”

The waitress picks that moment to serve our meal. By the time we finish passing barbecue sauce and having our tea glasses refilled, Rae has deftly changed the subject. She chatters about the pictures of famous people on the wall and the different barbecue sauces. I try to think of a tactful way to ask about Rae's child. “So where is this cousin of mine?” I want to ask. “Is your child in Oregon still?”

I don't realize I have spoken out loud until everything at the table stops. Ivy stares at me with the same blank, frozen look of the Elvis bust. Rae looks at me, then methodically places her forkful of pulled pork back on the plate and readjusts her napkin in her lap.

“I'm sorry,” I say. “It's none of my business. But I was just surprised to know you had a child.”
Had
a child implies she lost the child, and I instantly feel a connection with her. I want to reach out to her, tell her I know the pain as I've felt it myself every day since I lost my baby in a late-term miscarriage. But as quick as the connection between us formed, fragile and slender, it snaps in two.

“You're correct,” Rae says. But I'm not sure if she means it's none of my business or that the information is accurate.

“Did it die?” Ivy asks, and I'm suddenly grateful for a young, assertive teen who doesn't feel the constraints of propriety.

“No.” Rae sighs, then gives me a secretive smile. “I think I would rather talk about Elvis.”

I laugh and apologize again. “We don't have to discuss this. I shouldn't have brought it up.”

“My own pain shouldn't be yours. I'm the one who should apologize. For many years I've tried to outrun my past. It's proving difficult.” She looks around the restaurant. “I never thought I would return to Memphis, either. But you can't outrun who you are, your problems, or mistakes.” Her gaze settles on Ivy, then switches to me. “Or hide from them. True?”

I feel the barb of her remark like a splinter embedded under my skin. Does she think I've been hiding from my grief? Anger rushes through me. I live it every day, in every moment, in every way. It flows into me with each breath and out again as I exhale. It is a part of me that I can't escape.

Slowly, with her steady gaze, unwavering and soft as a baby's blanket upon me, I begin to see what she means. I've been hiding myself in the grief, in long, dreamless sleep, in extended hours at work.

Ivy belches, a loud eruption that makes heads turn at a nearby table. Her face turns bright pink with embarrassment. She places her hand on her flat stomach.

“Are you okay?” I ask.

She nods, then races from the table to the ladies' room. Rae and I glance at each other. I start to rise from my seat and go after her, but Rae places a hand on my arm.

“Wait. She'll share when she's ready.”

“Share? But what if she needs help? What if she's still experiencing motion sickness.”

“She'll let us know.”

I waver between acting like the girl's mother and trying to give her space and a bit of her dignity back. I figure if she's throwing up in the bathroom, she's probably old enough not to need me to hold her hair for her. Thank God for that,
as I have a weak stomach. But of course, if she needed me to, I would. I have done similar things for my mother and Stu.

“So,” I say, trying to fill the awkward silence between us. I can't ask Rae about her child, and I don't want to analyze my propensity for hiding. I tap my fingers on the table. “You said you would rather talk about Elvis …”

Rae smiles, her eyes twinkling, and laughs. “What do you want to know?”

“How can we figure out where Elvis, the bust, came from?”

“We'll start at the most obvious place and work our way down.”

Elvis's voice sings in my head,
Way on down …
“How way on down do you think we could go?”

“I'm afraid far,” she says.

“So where's the most obvious? Graceland?”

“Of course.”

I wish I could shake off the melancholy that wraps around me like tentacles. But tonight with so much talk, with so much heartache lingering like an ink stain, I feel trapped, unable to breathe.

Ivy emerges from the ladies' room looking pale and unsteady. Worried, I suggest, “Why don't we go back to the hotel?”

Rae reaches for her purse.

“But what about your dinner?” Ivy asks.

“We're finished.” I leave cash on the table for a tip. Rae offered to help pay, but I refused. This trip is Stu's fault. It's only fair I pick up the tab.

Accompanied by the sound of laughter and clinking dishes, we escort Ivy to the car.

“Maybe we should call your dad.” Concern creases my brow.

While I unlock the Cadillac, I glance over at Ivy.

Something's going on. She's pencil thin, her arms and legs bony. But so much anger and pain churn in those eyes. I recognize the look now: It's the same look I saw in her mother's face so long ago. A chill sweeps over me.

“Do you think we should go to the emergency room?” I ask. “Get you checked out, make sure you're okay?”

“No! I just don't do well in the back seat. And the drive got to me. Again.”

“The dinner was spicy,” Rae says, then scolds, “You should have told us. I would have switched seats with you.” She climbs into the back seat.

I flip on the headlights, glance again at Ivy, who has closed her eyes. In the rearview mirror I see Rae staring out the side window, lost in her own thoughts and memories. Memories, I know, can be probing, penetrating, making me cringe as if I were being grilled under an interrogator's lamp. Or they can be fuzzy, like a distant glow, warm and enticing and just out of reach.

“That was here,” Rae whispers, more to herself than to Ivy or me as we pass an old diner that looks straight out of the 1950s. The Cadillac rocks slightly, acknowledging every bump and ripple in the road. Rae
tsks
. “So much has changed, yet …”

The blinker ticks. The Cadillac jiggles like a nervous mother joggling a baby as we wait for the left-turn signal. When the green arrow blinks, I accelerate through the light.

Rae suddenly sits forward and places a hand on Ivy's shoulder. “Are you doing okay?”

The girl nods.

“Are you going to be sick?” Rae asks.

Immediately I brake, a bit too hard, and Rae falls forward against the front bench seat. “Sorry.” Anxious, I glance from the road to Ivy, making the steering wheel bobble and the car weave, pitching Rae right, then left in the back seat. “Should I pull over? You can't—”

“I'm okay,” Ivy says through clenched teeth. I'm not sure if she's holding back vomit or irritated at our hovering concern. Cautiously, I maneuver the Cadillac over to the right lane.

“Don't worry,” Rae says, handing a Styrofoam container to Ivy.

“What's this?” Ivy opens it.

“I swiped it from the waitress on the way out of the restaurant. Just being cautious. You looked a bit green.”

Ivy tosses the container to the floorboard.

“How much did Stu pay for this car?” Rae asks.

“Too much,” I answer, remembering my shock over the sticker price. But I hadn't said anything. “He bought it after . . .” My voice drifts. “Stu was obsessed with everything Elvis.”

“Why?” Ivy asks, wrinkling her nose as if she couldn't understand it any more than if Stu had collected skunk tails. “All of this is so cheesy.”

“He was the King.” I shrug one shoulder. “Many people loved Elvis. Still do. Right, Rae?” But my aunt doesn't answer. “He was the epitome of cool. At least to Stu.”

“I think it was more than that,” Rae finally says. “Sounds like Stu was running from something. Or avoiding something … to spend so much money on an old car.”

“I guess we're all running and hiding, aren't we?” I manage, feeling my throat tighten. I'm caught between irritation at Stu for spending so much on this car and questioning
what I always believed about my husband. Have I had it wrong all these years? Why
did
Stu love Elvis so?

“I ran away from my problems,” Rae says, “when I was young. Not as young as you, Ivy. First I left my folks to get away, to escape what felt like a suffocating life of boredom.” She laughs. “Then I ended up running back to that security. Life can be crazy sometimes. Or maybe it's us … our actions that are crazy.” She sighs, looking back out the side window. “Anyway, I couldn't stay any longer and I left … went even farther away. But you can't outrun the pain, the past, or your problems. It never works. Never.”

The hotel looms large ahead. Cars line the streets. Elvis's voice floats from the speakers. It's not the words or the tune that stirs me, just his voice. The deep, melodic voice.

“For thirty years I ran. I stayed away. Even after …” Rae shakes her head as if cutting herself off. “I was off on my own. But then I finally had to stop. I couldn't run anymore.”

I pull up to the front of the hotel. It's a covered area where benches line one side for folks waiting for free shuttles to various tourist spots. Overhead Elvis sings about a tiger. With the car idling, I look at Rae over the seat separating us. “What changed?”

“Everything. And yet nothing at all.”

“What were you running from?” I ask.

“Oh, I could give you a litany of things, but mostly I was running from myself. Fear. Fear dictated my life. And that's no way to live.”

“I can't imagine you afraid of anything.”

“We all have feelings below the surface, undetectable to others. Most of the time.”

“Was my mother ever afraid?” I ask.

“Aren't we all afraid of something?” Rae returns. “But Beverly never ran. She was braver. She had more faith.”

“So are you better now?” Ivy asks, half turning in her seat to look at Rae. “Now that you're facing up to things?”

“In some ways, yes. It's hard to face up to my own weaknesses and inadequacies. My mistakes. My sins. But everything is magnified again here. In Memphis.”

“Like your getting pregnant?” Ivy asks.

“No,” Rae says quickly, almost sharply. “That wasn't a mistake. Ever. I cannot say bringing a baby into the world is ever a mistake. It's after—” She stops herself. “I've said too much. Enough.”

“So it's possible,” Ivy asks, “for someone to change what they've done? Fix their mistakes?”

“You cannot change what's done. You can make the best of what is.” Rae places a hand on Ivy's shoulder. “That's what I'm trying to do. Maybe that's all I've ever done.”

I wonder what mistakes Rae means. And Ivy … what could she have done? She's so young, and yet there's a weariness in her eyes that many forty-year-olds don't have.

“You want us to get out here?” Rae asks.

“I'll park and meet you in the suite.”

“Good idea.” Rae gives me a secretive wink as if to say she'll take good care of Ivy.

* * *

GUILT FALLS ON me hard. It's the same guilt I felt every time I had to leave Stu's side for even a short time. I feel as if
I should accompany them to the suite. What if Ivy gets sick on the way upstairs?

I watch them walk into the hotel. They are such different women, yet similar in a way I cannot pinpoint. Maybe it's the squareness of their shoulders, their long strides. Ivy has an independent streak that I'm not sure I ever possessed. Even though at the end of Stu's life he depended on me, I believe that during twenty years of marriage I leaned more on him. Not financially, as I always worked, but emotionally. I needed him. Maybe more than he needed me.

Weaving the Cadillac through the parking lot across the street from the hotel, I search for an empty space. I wonder why Rae continues to bring up her story of running away, of not escaping the past. Is she anxious to get out of Memphis? My heart pounds in empathy. Going through Stu's belongings, as well as my mother's, before the garage sale, I felt an urgent need to run.

Or maybe Rae was simply rambling on for Ivy's sake. But why? I sense something is going on with the girl. Is it simply her mother, the confusion of her loss? Did she come all the way to Memphis with us just to get away from her dad for a while? There has to be something else. Or maybe I'm just so uneasy around teenagers that I assume the worst.

I remember flying to New York on business a few years back. It had been an unusually turbulent flight that had me reaching for the barf bag in the pocket of the seat ahead of me. Luckily I hadn't needed to use it. But I had felt off kilter the rest of the day. If I stood too quickly, I felt dizzy, my stomach unsettled. I was cautious what I ate at a business meeting that night. Maybe that's all it is with Ivy—car sickness and spicy food.

As I walk through the parking lot toward the hotel, I notice the night sky has begun to grow gray with clouds. A heaviness settles in my chest as I enter the hotel. Yet my pace takes on the tempo of the ever-present Elvis music rocking and rolling through the small lobby. I purposefully slow my stride and take the elevator up to our rooms.

Thankful for the relative quiet of the suite, I check on Ivy, getting her a cold cloth for her head and a drink of water. “If you need anything in the night, just let me know.”

I watch her lying on the bed, looking so thin and frail, and wonder if I should let Ben know that his daughter is sick. “Do you want me to call your dad? Have him come get you? You could have the stomach flu or something.”

“Don't tell Dad. He'll just worry.”

That's true. Knowing Ben needs a break—he's carried the burden of parenthood alone for so long—I decide to wait. Surely I can manage as a stand-in guardian for a long weekend.

“You think Rae really ran away?” Ivy asks in a hoarse whisper.

“So she says. I know Rae was around when I was little, and then she wasn't. My mother would never talk about Rae. She always changed the subject when I brought it up. I figured they'd had a fight or something. Maybe it was hurt and resentment that kept Mother silent.”

“Dad acts the same way when I mention my mom,” Ivy says.

“I'm sure it's just hard for him. I know he wants to talk to you. Maybe he just doesn't know how. Maybe he can't find the right words.”

“Well, I can't answer my own questions!”

“I know. Just give him a break. Okay? It was rough on him. It can't be easy to relive the pain of that time. Keep trying. When you get home, try again. Ask him the questions you asked me. He may not know the answers. It might be really hard for him … and you, too. But afterward, I think you'll both be glad you talked.”

“It just makes Dad mad.”

I sigh and sit on the edge of the bed. “He's not mad at you. When it happened, when your mother left … he took it really hard. He blamed himself. And he was angry at your mom. You can't blame him for that. I'm sure your questions just stir up old hurts. Just know it's not you. Whatever happened between your parents was about them, not you.”

I finger the corner of the pillow. Cautiously I venture deeper into dark emotions that I'm not sure I can fully understand. “Ivy, I know it's hard not having a mother. I was lucky and had mine until I was thirty-five. And still it seems too early to have lost her.” I realize it's the lost memories of her stories, things she held back from me, that make her absence so sharp. Maybe it's the same way with Ivy. She has no memory of her mother, nothing to hold onto. “So, if you need anything … a substitute …” My throat tightens. “I'm not your mom. I won't pretend to be. And I've never been a mom.” My throat feels full, stretched, as if I've swallowed a ball of my mother's yarn. “But if you need somebody to listen, someone to talk to, I'm here. Okay?”

She closes her eyes.

I wait for an answer but don't really expect one. Turning off the light, I close her door most of the way, leaving it open a wedge so she can make her way to the bathroom if she needs to. There is a sharp pain in my heart, and I press my
hand against my chest as if I might find Mother's knitting needles sticking out of me. Slowly the pain eases.

* * *

I FIND RAE in the sitting room, already in a green silk robe, her long, silvery hair loose and flowing about her shoulders. The television is on, the sound muted. But Elvis sits in a Hawaiian jail singing “Beach Boy Blues.” In the corner, quiet yet noticeable, is our own Elvis shrouded only partially by a hotel towel, yet the profile is obviously that of the King.

“How is she?”

“I guess okay. I wish I knew what was wrong. Can,” I whisper and move closer to Rae so my voice doesn't travel down the hall to Ivy, “can drugs make you sick to your stomach?”

“Of course.” She sets a brochure about Sun Records on the coffee table.

“Why did you say all that tonight about running away from your problems?”

Rae lifts her chin. “She has problems. She wants to hide from them. But it's impossible. I learned that the hard way. I was hoping she might share with us.”

I nod. “I hope she will. Maybe tomorrow. Her mother ran away from her problems, from her responsibilities. It's been really hard on Ivy. Ben, too.”

“I can imagine. A young girl needs a mother.”

“I'm not a mom. But,” I shrug, feeling uncomfortable with my latest role, “I hope I helped.” I look back at Ivy's partially closed door.

“Don't worry. She'll talk when she's ready. She wants a mother. And she'll find that in you.”

Her statement shocks me as if she's thrown a dart into my heart. “In me?”

“You don't have to be afraid, Claudia. You're a natural. You have the gift of caring for wounded creatures.”

“I don't know anything about being a mother.” The empty space fills with a hard, weighty substance. Could it be fear? I don't have answers for Ivy. I don't have any solutions. Aren't parents supposed to have all the answers? Mine certainly seemed to. Mother never hesitated in scolding, in pointing out right and wrong, in speaking her mind. And yet I sense there is more to parenting, maybe something I missed out on.