The Shortest Distance Between Two Women (13 page)

There were three bags of garbage that some dumbass should have tossed months ago when the last reunion ended.

There were signs of squirrel and mice damage everywhere.

There were two bags of what must have been lost-and-found clothes left at the reunion that Stephie and Emma decided to try on as a comic relief break.

And this is when Debra stormed into the backyard with a baseball bat in her hand.

“Whoever is in there get out right this minute,” Debra brayed in a voice three decibels below her normal range, as if that would scare anyone.

Emma and Stephie froze. Their eyes were as big as four white Formica dinner plates and they not only looked ridiculous but it took every ounce of their energy not to start laughing. They both knew without speaking that if they started they would never stop.

“Hi, Debra …” Emma almost gagged on her own words to keep from laughing.

“What in the hell are you doing? Who is that? What are you doing here?”

Debra sounded like a machine gun and Stephie quickly
yanked off her hat and said, “It’s me, Stephie, and Auntie Emma, Aunt Debra. Who do you think would be back here?”

And when they stepped out of the tacky metal garden-shed-turned-GFR-storage-shed, they both looked as if they were en route to a Halloween party or escapees from an institution that must have had a gigantic security lapse. Stephie wore a huge pair of men’s bib overalls, a pair of rubber boots, and a knit stocking cap that she had pulled down so far it was caught on her nose piercing. Emma had wrapped herself inside of an old 1960s Mexican-roadside blanket and had tied a tropical-inspired and extremely large dress around her waist as if it were a belt. To complete her lost-and-found outfit, Emma was balancing a bushel basket on her head and carrying a hose that was probably the only thing that was supposed to be in a gardening shed.

Debra did not drop her bat but glared at Emma and Stephie as if she would take them both out in a heartbeat if they moved an inch in the wrong direction. Stephie, of course, did not know that Debra and Emma had already had words. Stephie did not know that Emma had been thinking for several days of finding her own bat and whacking her sister over the head. Stephie did not know that Debra had appointed herself overseer of everything Gilford, including the reunion storage shed.

Emma now wanted to do anything but laugh. She wanted more than anything to be violent, if only she could. She wanted to make Debra disappear lest she ruin yet another lovely moment in her life.

“What the heck are you two doing?” Debra demanded.

“You wouldn’t know what we are doing because I am the one who always does this,” Emma answered, taking a step forward. “You’ve never even been in this shed except to throw bags inside of it and Stephie is helping me get ready for this year’s reunion so we
know what we have and what we are supposed to order. All that stuff doesn’t just
magically
appear, you know.”

“Why are you two dressed like that? You look foolish.”

“It’s called
fun
, Debra,” Emma retorted. “Spontaneous fun while we are sweating and working and wondering if something is going to bite us while we sort through this mess.”

“Does Joy know Stephie is here with you dressed up like, a … a whatever it is she is dressed up like?”

“You don’t know? I’m shocked. Stephie has been staying with me all week while Joy and everyone else are at the beach.”

“Joy let Stephie stay with you for a
week?”

Stephie cannot move. She watches her favorite aunt take a step forward and the other aunt take a step backward and she secretly wishes she had a video camera. Her two aunts dislike each other so much right now, she suddenly realizes, the storage shed assignment could become deadly.

“Aunt Debra,” she starts to say and her not-so-lovely-this-moment Aunt Debra tells her to be quiet.

“That is not necessary, Debra,” Emma says. “Put down the stupid bat. Stop yelling at us and help us, or get out of here.”

“I’m calling your mother!” Debra shouts, ignoring Emma.

“Why?” Emma demands. “So you can tell her we were cleaning out the reunion shed?”

“You both look crazy.”

“Us? Look at yourself,” Emma tells her sister, gesturing at the raised bat.

“Emma, what is happening to you? One day you tell me you don’t like me, and then I never hear from you, and now you look like a homeless person wandering around our mother’s backyard.”

“I still don’t like you,” Emma says, untying her dress belt and throwing off her blanket.

“I still don’t like you, either,” Debra spews, throwing down the bat. “This reunion is all yours.”

“Like that’s anything new!” Emma shouts to her sister’s back as Debra turns on her heel and power-walks out of the yard.

And Stephie says, “Holy shit” and then says she’s glad for the first time ever that she doesn’t have a sister.

The thought of no sisters makes Emma stop as if she’s run into yet another brick wall. No Joy. No Debra. No Erika. She can see two-thirds of that equation, especially now, but she knows that without Joy there would have been no Stephie and without Stephie there would not have been so many things—good and recently bad—it would be impossible to list them all.

And without Debra she would not have those other two terribly unique nieces, Kendall and Chloe, who make her laugh and fill her life in ways that even Stephie cannot.

So she tells this to Stephie. She tells her that this second even as she wants to throw something at Debra’s head, which is apparently a new theme in her life, you should never wish away what you have. And as she says it she tries hard to believe her own words because when she stops, Emma sinks right back to that place of wondering what in the world she is going to do about all her reunion-and family-related problems.

“But Aunt Debra was just, like, totally rude and made assumptions and you were right to walk out of brunch because she was out of her mind,” Stephie reminds her, throwing out her usual dose of reality.

“She’s still my sister.” It’s the only thing Emma can think to say.

“I get it,” Stephie says. “Like when Bo or Riley go into my room and look through my drawers and take stuff and I want to
kill them but then I run into Bo at school and he knows I forgot my lunch and he buys me something to eat.”

“Kind of like that,” Emma agrees, smiling.

And then Emma picks up her weeding bucket and Stephie follows her lead because the shed incident coupled with the poetry-bar-night-party-lie and the mostly fabulous week without her real mother, brothers, and her father’s country western music have turned Stephie into a total gardening slave.

Emma wonders as she weeds her way through the flower beds with Stephie if all of that and Stephie’s gregarious aura will still be enough to save her from the wrath of not just one, but now two Gilford sisters from hell. One who is jealous because of her relationship with her daughter, and now angry that she couldn’t control Stephie for a simple week, and another who is dying to kill her with a baseball bat.

The third sister has apparently immersed herself in Emma’s messed-up reunion plans and has still not called back or answered any of Emma’s new phone messages.

And Emma suddenly realizes that she has absolutely no idea what she is going to do about any of her sisters or with the wild feeling that keeps tumbling through her body that is making her say things she has been thinking her entire life but, unlike her niece, has never before been able to speak out loud.

“What?” Debra asks, forgetting Emma’s sudden appearance in her kitchen.

“Missing,” Emma echoes. “What do you mean by
missing?”

“I went by her house after work and it was dark. There wasn’t even one of those little automatic lights on. And there were three newspapers on the steps.”

“Well, Jesus, that doesn’t mean she’s missing,” Debra’s husband Kevin decides. “Three newspapers and a dark house don’t mean anything.”

“Are you
crazy?”
Debra shouts, jumping up as if she has someplace to go. “She
must
be missing. It’s reunion-planning season and the house is never dark.”

“Hold on, everyone. Didn’t she call anyone today or yesterday or the day before? Wasn’t she over here a day or so ago to talk about the reunion menu?”

The room goes quiet. Everyone shakes their head back and forth simultaneously as if they are Marty’s bobblehead dolls. It is possibly the loudest
no
ever heard in Debra’s kitchen.

“Emma, you usually see her about every twenty seconds. You mean you haven’t gone to see her? Didn’t she leave you a voicemail or anything?”

“There’s nothing new on my cell phone, I don’t think, and no, I didn’t go see Mom. Stephie and I were busy, as you know, and I had to work the last two days. I took off early on Friday and I didn’t check my messages on the home phone.”

“I bet you watered your damn flowers,” Debra snorts.

“What the hell does that mean?” Emma snarls.

The quiet pause that ensues could be used as a military weapon to psychologically torture enemy troops. Emma, Kevin and Debra are averting their eyes as if they might go blind if they look at one another and they are all wondering if Marty is actually missing, or at a very long senior lunch, or a few thousand other possibilities including everything from a tragic fall down the steps to a sudden memory loss that has her wandering around town with her dance shoes tucked under her arm.

Marty, who calls Emma what seems like a dozen times a day and everyone else just about one call less than that.

Marty, who always lets them know she is off to the senior center or shopping or on one of her dates.

Marty, who wants to be informed each time one of her daughters leaves town, changes the oil, or wanders over to talk to a neighbor.

Marty, who has never gone anywhere the precious months before the holy, sacred, and forever Marty-planned, and daughter-executed, reunion.

But lately, each one of them now realizes, Marty has been unusually quiet. The phone calls have tapered off: They’ve skipped family brunch because Stephie’s family has been out of town, and after the first volley of phone messages to see how Emma and Stephie were getting along there has been no word from Marty the last four days.