Honey, Baby, Sweetheart (27 page)

“Yikes,” my mother said.

“I hope he’s okay in there.”

Chip Jr. was not only okay; he emerged wearing the complimentary shower cap.

“Gorgeous,” my mom said.

“Your head looks like the top of a muffin,” I said.

Chip Jr. pretended to soap up his armpits. “La la la,” he sang.

“You can take that home if you want,” my mother said. She put both pillows behind her head. Chip Jr. examined the room. He opened the drawers of the dresser, found a cable television guide.

“
Hot Sisters in Waikiki,”
he read. “Girlie show.”

“Pervert,” I said. “You had to turn right to that.”

“What do you know about girlie shows?” my mother said. Her voice sounded funny with her chin at that angle. “It could be about nuns.”

“Nuns in Hawaii,” I said.

“Of course they’d be hot in those outfits,” my mother said. “Give me that.”

Chip Jr. tossed her the booklet, pages flapping, and it landed on the bed beside her. He continued his hunt. He found a plastic bag to put dirty laundry in, stationery. He clicked the pen up and down. He moved to the table made of wood laminate and flipped through the padded book of services, opened the bedside drawer and found the Bible.

“In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth,” Chip Jr. read.

“This is going to take awhile,” I said.

Chip Jr. climbed on the bed I was lying on and stood. He stuck one arm out like a great orator. He still had his shower cap on. “Now the earth was formless,” Chip Jr. said in a deep voice.

“This is a little long for a bedtime story,” my mom said from the other bed. I couldn’t see her. All I could see was Chip Jr.’s back. He started jumping up and down. “Darkness was over the surface of the deep,” he read, jumping.

“Make him stop,” I said.

“I’m too tired for religion,” she said.

“You can’t be saying that now that you’re dating a minister,” I said. I gave Chip Jr. a kick in the back of the knees so that he fell on his butt on the bed.

“Hey,” he protested, but not too much. He returned the Bible to the drawer, got out the phone book.

“I’m not dating a minister,” she said. And then a moment later, “Okay. Maybe dating.”

“It’s almost funny. You with a minister,” I said.

“Funny? It’s hilarious,” she said.

“You’ll have to stop swearing.”

“Damn. How in the hell am I going to be able to do that?” she said.

Chip Jr. started the jumping oration thing again, this time with the phone book. “Beauty schools, beauty supplies and equipment—sales and service. Bed and breakfast accommodation.” I didn’t care as much. This time he was on Mom’s bed. “Beds—disappearing.” He looked up from the huge book. “Beds—disappearing?”

“Don’t ask me,” my mom said.

“Bee removal,” he read.

“Pest control. That’s what we need in this room,” I said.

We all got in one bed and watched old
Jetsons
cartoons, until Mom kicked us out to read for a while before we went to sleep. I got between the crispy motel sheets. I love crisp motel sheets, all tucked in tight, as long as you can train your mind not to think of all the people who might have slept in them, which can ruin it in a second.

I picked up Charles Whitney’s book again.

Of course Rose was beautiful. Any man would have noticed and considered that a prize. But that is not what captivated me and made me feel the way I did. She sat me on the edge of her bed one night, and
instead of loosening my tie and slipping her hands into my unbuttoned shirt, which I would have expected and wouldn’t have minded, she retrieved a shoe box from her closet. She lifted the lid. The shoes were still inside; I remember them—black pumps with open toes and a slender back strap. Underneath the shoes was a stack of folded papers. Poems. She was a poet. Images leapt and flooded her mind—a boy on a dark street, a woman wading out to sea, a tree burnt in a fire, a black dog in a yellow field. And although I wanted her hands to slip around the neck of my shirt down my bare back, these sheets of paper fed me more than that ever could. One was written on a paper bag. A poem on a paper bag—that was passion. That was direction—more beautiful than her perfect face, more desirous than her skin.

I set the book down. I thought about this. The fan in the room blew in a solid, drowsy hum.

“I’m falling asleep,” Mom said from the other bed.

“Me too,” I said.

“I’m at the end of the chapter,” Chip Jr. said. Hardy Boys. Mom gave him a few minutes—she always understood about chapter ends—then turned off the light.

Mom was a big lump in the other bed, and there was a thin sliver of light under the door.

“Quit touching my leg with your leg,” I said to Chip Jr.

“Quit touching
my
leg with
your
leg,” he said.

“Shush,” Mom said.

I turned my pillow over to the cool side and settled into the sheets. There, in the quiet with the three of us, I felt a comfort and sureness. I willed myself not to think of Travis Becker or of my own guilt. I tried to let my confession to the Casserole Queens do its work. They’d come in and cleaned a burdensome closet for me, it seemed—hauling away all that I was too attached to to be rid of, making those firm decisions that made you feel better afterward for the lightness they bring. Maybe Travis Becker really was just one event in a long line of events that was to be my life. I felt peaceful and tired, the way you do after a day at the beach, that particular kind of tiredness that contentment brings. With the three of us together in that room with the Venice canal paintings, and glasses with paper lids that looked like French maid hats, I had that rare feeling that I was just where I belonged.

Chip Jr. began to snore. His nose was having itself a rebellious, attention-grabbing moment. It reminded me of when I used to believe that all my dolls would come alive at night and do things I’d never know about. Chip Jr. was sleeping away, but his nose was having a rock concert.

“Ruby?” my mother whispered from the other bed. “Are you asleep?”

“How can I be with that racket?”

“You’d think he’d wake himself up. Then again, he once slept through an earthquake. His piggy bank fell right on the foot of his bed, and he didn’t even notice.”

“I’ll kick him or something.”

“Wait. Ruby? I was thinking. You know, about what Miz June was saying tonight, and the rest. With all this divorce around and, I don’t know, images of a sleazy sort of
rhinestone
love, I don’t want you to lose faith in it. Love, I mean.”

“Okay,” I said. “I won’t.” I don’t know if I meant it or not.

“Don’t lose faith in the pure, sweet kind. It is out there, Ruby. I still believe it is, anyway. I just look at Charles and Lillian and I believe.”

I thought about the poems in the shoe box, Charles Whitney holding them on his lap like a small chest of treasure. “Okay.”

She held out her hand to me from the other bed and I took it and squeezed.

“I love you, Ruby,” she said. Mom’s voice was quavery. Surfing a wave of near tears.

“I love you too.”

Mom cleared her throat, trying to keep the tears at bay. I could hear her in the next bed, struggling.

“Mom?”

“Hmm?” Her voice was small.

“Are you okay?”

“Yes.”

“No, you’re not.”

“I . . . um. I’m just. Oh, jeez.” A small sound escaped her throat. “I’m just sorry, is all, Ruby. I’m so sorry.”

“For what?”

“For all . . .” She could barely choke out the words. “For all the wrong things I did as a mother. I wasn’t very good.”

“It’s okay.”

“It’s not. It’s not okay.” Her chest heaved, up and down, pain escaping in a sob.

“You just . . . When you have a baby . . .” I waited. “You just want to do so
right.”

“You did great.” I got out of the bed, kneeled down beside her. “Mom, you did great.” She put her arms around me, kissed the top of my head. I felt her shake her head no. One of her tears rolled down and I could feel its coolness on my cheek. I felt so bad about my anger at her in the restaurant. My own eyes got hot, my throat closed. Tears rolled down my own cheeks now. I held on to her arm. We held on to each other, wrapped up in the fabric of mothers and children, the quilt of guilt and innocence, good intentions and failings, full but imperfect hearts.

“Why do we have to be so human?” my mother said.

She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand.

Just then, Chip Jr. made some sound like his tongue and larynx were having a wrestling match.

“Oh, jeez.” She started to laugh, laughing and crying at the same time, trying to keep it quiet. Little muffled snorts were escaping. I started laughing too.

“It sounds like the time you turned on the garbage disposal when there was a spoon in it,” I said.

“Never mind,” she said, but her chest was still heaving
up and down in the dark, trying to keep the laughter in, trying to keep quiet. “Oh, jeez.”

Her throat made the gasp of a laugh being strangled, and I busted up.

I took a big breath, made my face solemn. “Think death,” I said, which cracked us both up again.

We quieted down. The horrendous gargling had made Chip Jr. stop snoring. Mom kissed the top of my head. I climbed back into my bed. I lay there for a long time, thinking. I whispered to the other bed in the darkness. I didn’t know if she was still awake.

“Mom?”

“Yeah?” she whispered back.

“I think Miz June was right when she said I was in love with Travis Becker’s motorcycle.”

“That’s okay, Ruby,” my mother said. “I think I was in love with your father’s guitar.”

We didn’t know we were in a race against time, that’s the
thing. With Delores and Nadine stalled for a while we thought our biggest problems were taken care of, unaware that another, much larger villain awaited. But we just didn’t know that. And no one hurried.

We were all enjoying the trip too much to want to rush. The next morning after breakfast, when Miz June turned the ignition key of the Lincoln, the radio blared on, the heater blasted high, and the windshield wipers
swunked
back and forth furiously. Miz June jumped back in surprise.

“Harold!” my mother shouted over the music until she found the knob and gave it a twist.

“Oh!” Lillian grunted in the back seat.

“You almost gave me a heart attack,” Miz June said. Which wasn’t exactly a joke in that car.

“Just a little something to make sure you were all awake this morning,” Harold said.

“Seeing you in your pajamas this morning already did the trick. I’m afraid to close my eyes, lest I see the horror replay itself,” Peach said.

“I wasn’t wearing my glasses, but the pajamas did appear to have snowflakes on them,” Miz June said.

Lillian made a sound of agreement. As we got closer to Charles Whitney, she was talking more and more. Peach had combed Lillian’s hair and freshened her up. She even wore lipstick, Peach’s own, and both their lips looked the same bright color.

“What’s wrong with snowflakes?” Harold said. He was freshened up too, but he stunk up the car with too much aftershave.

“I like snowflakes,” Chip Jr. said.

“Well, it is August,” I said.

“It’s not just that it’s August,” Miz June said. “It’s just . . .” The three women who had witnessed Harold and the snowflakes broke up into peals of laughter.

“Tonight, we want a fashion show,” my mother said.

“First, roll down the window. Someone got carried away with the fou-fou water,” Peach said. She fanned her hand in front of her face. I edged the window down a bit, until we started to drive and Lillian patted her hair as if she were worried the slight breeze was ruffling it. I rolled it up again. Vanity had its own language.