“I’ll look at the cards,” Lola says and takes them from me. “Thank you, Mom.”
“I’m just trying to help,” Mom says, fidgeting.
“I know.” Lola puts her hand over Mom’s. “This isn’t the time for you to worry over me, though. We should be fussing over you.”
“It gives me something to do.” Mom pulls her hand out from under Lola’s only to put it on top like that old childhood game. “It’s always time for a mother to fuss over her daughter. You can’t take that job away. I won’t let you.”
Mom says it with a smile, like she’s making a joke, but I know she means it. I know she’s holding on tight. I am too.
Lola puts the cards on the countertop and walks out of the room. I watch Mom flitter around the kitchen, and I know she has slipped again and had couple of cocktails but followed them up with a pot of black coffee this morning—which is why I found nothing but the dregs. I guess if slips are going to happen, today would be the day. Still, it frightens me. Has enough time passed that she is really able to handle it—or are we on the doorstep of what used to be? I used to think that her drinking was a weakness, and I was ashamed for her. But now I’m more ashamed for myself. I was a child and I saw the world like a child sees it—full of rainbows and unicorns. I realize now that fairy tales are for those with weak stomachs.
I can’t bear the kitchen anymore so I wander through the house, looking for Cassie. I find her watching television in the living room with Chris.
“Aren’t you afraid your ad is going to come on?” she says and bites her lip—ribbing him.
He tosses a pillow at her and holds up the remote. “I’m at the ready,” he says.
It’s a playful moment that makes me both insanely jealous and sad.
“Have you seen your aunt?” I ask Cassie, wishing I had some funny something to say to wedge into the conversation—to belong.
Cassie nods her head toward the hallway, not looking at me directly.
“Be kind to your mother, kiddo,” I hear Chris say to her as I walk away. “It’s a rough day. It’s not easy to say good-bye to your dad.”
“I know,” Cassie says quietly.
I feel my gut wrench. I know she’s talking about Jack, and it makes me suddenly nauseated. I should go back and say something, but I can’t image what that something is, so I keep walking away.
I find Lola in the sunroom. She is always looking for light. She sees my distress all over my face and hugs me.
“Thanks,” I say. “I don’t think I’m up for this today.”
“No one ever is,” she says. “How about we make a signal like on TV. If people are bugging you about Jack and all things relevant to that, you pull on your ear and I’ll come to your rescue.”
“Can the signal be that I punch someone in the face and you come to my rescue?”
“Absolutely,” she says and then punches me lightly on the arm. “You should have told me about Chris.”
I try to suppress a smile but fail.
“You just seemed to like him so much.” I try to coax her hands off her hips. “It seemed cruel to burst your bubble.”
“There you two are,” Mom says as she comes into the room. “What’s wrong with Chris?”
Lola and I both start to sing. “Your house is trashed, you’ve got a rash, your car is broke . . .”
“I love those commercials,” Mom says, looking above our heads in a dreamy way. “The one where he’s trying to pedal that car with his feet like the Flintstones cracks me up every time.”
Mom laughs to herself and leaves the room.
Lola wrinkles her nose, her delicate features accentuated today by dark circles under her winter-sky, blue eyes. Her face looks like an approaching storm—snow and hail and hardship. She’s beautiful nonetheless.
“Come upstairs with me,” she says. “I have to show you something.”
Upstairs in our old room, she reaches under her bed and pulls out an old record album.
“Look,” she says and holds it up. “Here it is!”
I know she’s thinking what I’m thinking—that he had it under the bed, ready to sneak it out and scare us with his favorite game even all these years later.
I still don’t know who the band is, but I hold the record cover in front of me and make ridiculous growls and noises that are not at all scary. Lola laughs, which is what I was hoping for.
Mom yells up at us from the bottom of the stairs. “You girls get ready to go.”
I suddenly feel like I’m ten years old and it’s time to go to school and Lola bursts into the tears I want so badly to shed.
At the bottom of the stairs, Mom takes Lola from me. She puts her hands on Lola’s cheeks and kisses her nose.
“I know that doesn’t make it all better anymore,” Mom says.
Watching them, I feel the bitter absence of Dad’s embrace and my new inability to connect with a daughter I have known all her life.
After Lola’s accident, more than twenty years ago now, Dad was the only reminder of the way things had been. Even though it hadn’t always been good, at least it had been real. Mom had flipped a switch after the accident. First, she went crashing downhill, drinking more than ever, making us fear that the family was being picked off one at a time by some demon of tragedy.
Then Lola woke up, and Mom started over. She seized the opportunity to begin again. Lola didn’t seem to remember anything or anyone and life was a blank slate. To Mom, it was like moving to a new town and creating a whole new sense of self. To us, it was like being put
