My mother seemed less timid now. Obviously, she, too, could be quite impulsive. I was just about to tap the horn when my mother stood and took a minute to steady herself before heading toward the house. Why was she bent over, walking so slowly? Had she been pretending to be spry earlier, or had I just not noticed? Then the door opened, and a man—it was Drake, that was who it was—stood on the threshold, extending a hand and waiting, not going down the steps, just waiting. He stood ramrod straight, but, even driving slowly, I got only a glimpse of him: this man who was not my father, with his big hand extended, and my mother lifting her hand like a lady ascending an elegant, carpeted staircase, instead of three concrete steps.
There was nothing I could say. It had all been decided. There was not a word I could say that would stop either one of them.
I turned left just before the street dead-ended, not wanting to risk passing by a second time. I realized that there was someone waiting to hear from me: possibly two people—the kid
You can’t help understanding. First, because it is the truth, and second, because everyone knows the way things change. They always do, even in a very short time. Back in Fort Myers, the transaction was all business: another shift was at work at the rental agency, and there was only the perfunctory question as I opened the door and got out about whether everything was all right with the car.
The Rabbit Hole
as Likely Explanation
My mother does not remember being invited to my first wedding. This comes up in conversation when I pick her up from the lab, where blood has been drawn to see how she’s doing on her medication. She’s sitting in an orange plastic chair, giving the man next to her advice I’m not sure he asked for about how to fill out forms on a clipboard. Apparently, before I arrived, she told him that she had not been invited to either of my weddings.
“I don’t know why you sent me to have my blood drawn,” she says.
“The doctor asked me to make an appointment. I did not send you.”
“Well, you were late. I sat there waiting and waiting.”
“You showed up an hour before your appointment, Ma. That’s why you were there so long. I arrived fifteen minutes after the nurse called me.” It’s my authoritative but cajoling voice. One tone negates the other and nothing much gets communicated.
“You sound like Perry Mason,” she says.
“Ma, there’s a person trying to get around you.”
“Well, I’m very sorry if I’m holding anyone up. They can just honk and get into the other lane.”
A woman hurries around my mother in the hospital corridor, narrowly missing an oncoming wheelchair brigade: four chairs, taking up most of the hallway.
“She drives a sports car, that one,” my mother says. “You can always tell. But look at the size of her. How does she fit in the car?”
I decide to ignore her. She has on dangling hoop earrings, and there’s a scratch on her forehead and a Band-Aid on her cheekbone. Her face looks a little like an obstacle course. “Who is going to get our car for us?” she asks.
“Who do you think? Sit in the lobby, and I’ll turn in to the driveway.”
“A car makes you think about the future all the time, doesn’t it?” she says. “You have to do all that imagining: how you’ll get out of the garage and into your lane and how you’ll deal with all the traffic, and then one time, remember, just as you got to the driveway a man and a woman stood smack in the center, arguing, and they wouldn’t move so you could pull in.”
“My life is a delight,” I say.
“I don’t think your new job agrees with you. You’re such a beautiful seamstress—a real, old-fashioned talent —and what do you do but work on computers and leave that lovely house in the country and drive into this . . . this crap five days a week.”
“Thank you, Ma, for expressing even more eloquently than I—”
“Did you finish those swordfish costumes?”
“Starfish. I was tired, and I watched TV last night. Now, if you sit in that chair over there you’ll see me pull in. It’s windy. I don’t want you standing outside.”
“You always have some reason why I can’t be outside. You’re afraid of the bees, aren’t you? After that bee stung your toe when you were raking, you got desperate about yellow jackets—that’s what they’re called. You shouldn’t have had on sandals when you were raking. Wear your hiking boots when you rake leaves, if you can’t find another husband to do it for you.”
“Please stop lecturing me and—”
“Get your car! What’s the worst that can happen? I have to stand up for a few minutes? It’s not like I’m one of those guards outside Buckingham Palace who has to look straight ahead until he loses consciousness.”
“Okay. You can stand here and I’ll pull in.”
“What car do you have?”
“The same car I always have.”
“If I don’t come out, come in for me.”
“Well, of course, Ma. But why wouldn’t you come out?”
“SUVs can block your view. They drive right up, like they own the curb. They’ve got those tinted windows like Liz Taylor might be inside, or a gangster. That lovely man from Brunei—why did I say that? I must have been thinking of the Sultan of Brunei. Anyway, that man I was talking to said that in New York City he was getting out of a cab at a hotel at the same exact moment that Elizabeth Taylor got out of a limousine. He said she just kept
