Hampshire border.
What about the Rove side? I just had memories of her, and Eric had nothing. How much of our mother did either of us have?
No clouds, just blue, blue sky. The sky and the bike were the only things not moving. The mountains moved slowly.
“There’s a place up here if you want lunch.”
“You’re driving,” I said.
Off the highway, lean way over to the right. Country road.
“Up here” meant “way over there.” All the curves they’d taken out of the highway they’d put on this road. Lean left, lean right, slow behind a car, fast around it, up a hill, down a hill, fork right, hard left. This was more of a contest.
Slow down, we were stopped. It was a diner built off a white house with a gravel parking lot, a picket fence, and some flowers. Suddenly it was easy to breathe, and quiet. The ground was solid and unmoving.
I took a few steps and pulled off the helmet. Eric was still sitting, his helmet off, grinning and watching me. “Are you okay?”
“I’m okay. It just takes a minute to get my balance.”
He swung himself out of the saddle and unzipped his jacket. I was hot and I took mine off.
We went up the steps and in the door. The inside was the same as the outside, nice, plain, a little worn. The floor was tile. One table had people.
The woman behind the counter had been there a long time, thirty years maybe. She glanced up from the cash register.
“Eric. You brought a friend.” She stared at me. “Looks like he’s your brother.”
Eric smiled real big. “Yeah, he is. I’ve told you about him? This is Jason.”
“I’ll be with you in a minute. What do you want to drink?” she asked me.
“Just water.”
She was already filling a cup with lemonade. She brought the two drinks to the table.
“Hamburger, mushroom and Swiss,” she said, writing, without asking him.
“Two of them,” he said. “It’s great,” he said to me.
“Okay.”
“Anything else?”
“Onion rings,” I said.
“Me too,” little brother said. “Thanks, Hazel.”
Hazel was friendly but not talkative, and someone else came in for her to attend to.
“So you come here often.”
Eric nodded. “It’s one of my places.” Hazel’s lingering aura left just the right mood.
“So, what do you remember about our mother?” I didn’t even really know what to call her.
“Wow. Um, I don’t know. All the pictures make me think I remember her. I wouldn’t though, would I?”
“You were two,” I said. “I don’t think so.”
“What do you remember?”
“I remember…” It’s hard to put in words what you experienced before you knew the words. “I remember her in bed, or sitting. She sang lullabies to us. I remember thinking she was different from other people because she didn’t move. She just sat in her chair or in her bed.” Only to Eric could I say this. “I remember feeling loved. I loved her. I wish you could remember.”
We ate the food, which was passable, and we dealt with our tragedy. It was the first time we had.
Melvin was thirty-two and she was twenty-one. His father had died, and he was already rich and getting richer. His mother introduced them at a Christmas party. The Roves were a respectable old New Hampshire family, and she was very pretty. He swept her off her feet. They honeymooned in Paris and Rome and Athens. She was shy but brave, and he was bold, and together they were dashing. They had those two free and golden years together, then three more as happy parents. He had become very busy by then.
Then, partway through her second pregnancy, the doctors found something wrong. The baby was fine, the delivery was easy, but the cancer could not be stopped. There were two more years as she weakened. She had the best care, but he had many other cares, and she understood that he could not be with her as much. Her affection had only her children to be lavished upon. As her life faded, it intensified, and she lived fifty years in only half that many months. When she died she was young and wise, both full and emptied of life, her husband, for once, at her side. I had pieced it together from the fragments I had.
And I think, I think, she learned what she had lived for. Maybe she had always known, or maybe it was in the last years that she came to know. As a child, I put everything I could into my memories of her-impressions and details I didn’t understand but I knew were important. And now as an adult I sift through the memories, artifacts left by an ancient world, and I try to decipher what they mean. And. .. I think they mean that she knew, absolutely, why she lived the life she did.
“You were at her funeral, weren’t you?” Eric asked.
I was, and again my memory of it was of a five-year-old’s impression- of a big church with big pews and the casket far away, and endless sitting, and my first smell of death: flowers and candles. At my funeral I will have neither.
After the service I did not go to the cemetery. I was packed off to someplace that had toys, and a woman with a sharp nose read books to me about rabbits.
“Have you ever been to her grave?”
We were back on the motorcycle, ready to pull out onto the road.
“Twice. Somebody took me a couple years later. I don’t know why. Then I came once when I was in college.”
We were not far. Eric kept going on the two-lane road, winding, climbing, and falling, and then I told him where to turn. And then it was ahead of us, a simple white wooden country church and its timeless churchyard.
There was nothing to say. We got off the bike, and I doubted the suitability of our appearance. I took my jacket off and left it. I would have even taken off the leather pants, which were over my regular pants, but it would have been awkward; and then I would have had to put them back on, which would have been even more awkward.
So we disturbed the cemetery with our gaudy presence. But that small, quiet place was strong enough; its presence dwarfed ours. When the first graves were dug here, it may have been clear and open. Now huge ancient trees shaded it.
I knew where her grave was, and we walked straight to it. It was proper for the surroundings-calm, modest, and meaningful. We stood beside it, and I was completely lost.
Why am I here? There had to be a betrayal here, somewhere. She died of cancer, not a broken heart, but Melvin still betrayed her. He betrayed her by betraying us, me and Eric. And now I had betrayed Angela, and we’d both done it for the same reason-that money and power had rendered inconvenient what should have been important.
Why was I killing Governor Bright, or at least his career? Because I don’t like people telling me what to do? Jason is in charge-nobody bosses me around? Because the money is in charge.
Is this how it’s going to be for the rest of my life?
There was a conflagration back home that I’d ignited. I was going to pull down the governor and half his administration. I was going to rock the state-people would go to prison, lives would be ruined. There was a lot at stake. But it had to be done. What other choice did I have?
What would my mother think of me?
“Ready?” I said. It was time to get back.
“Yeah.”
We walked back to the church, but then I turned to look in. This was not where the funeral had been, but it should have been. A real church, hallowed by generations of lives centered around it and what it stood for. I only smelled wood. Was this the church her family had been part of? She had gone to church. She had taken me; I suddenly remembered that.
