All the Dancing Birds (9 page)

Problem solved!

After our afternoon of shopping, we take my packages home. We open the bags and arrange the contents across my bed. I clap my hands and coo over my purchases.

Allison’s face gleams with pride for her accomplishment.

After my daughter leaves, I return to my bedroom again and again to admire my purchases, especially smiling over my shirts with their colorful patterns of palm trees and flying birds, their lovely large pockets. Each visit to my room, with its display of clothing and accessories, brings me delight.

On each return, I clap and coo. Only once do I wonder how I came to have this wonderful array of goodies on my bed.

Chapter Nine

T
oday is travel-to-Maui day and I’m beside myself with joy. I repeatedly check my suitcase, zipping and unzipping, fingering through the contents, making certain all my items are neatly folded and properly tucked away. Finally, I give up and simply let the suitcase speak for itself. I decide that since it’s too full to close, I must be done packing. I check my notebook to remind myself what time I should be ready.

Bryan’s insisted on driving us to the airport. He arrives on time, checking his watch for verification of his timeliness.

“Where’s Allison?” he asks, tapping the instrument that, for him, measures time and character. “I don’t feel good about this trip, you know. Allison isn’t responsible for
anything
, except for maybe getting to her next manicure on time.”

“Hello to you too,” I say, waving my son into the living room.

“Sorry, Mom.” Bryan reaches down to kiss my cheek.

“She should be here any minute,” I say. “Do you want some nice iced tea? I made sun tea this morning before I remembered I’d be gone for two weeks.”

“Thanks, Mom, but… really, we really don’t have
time
for tea.”

“I should go pour it out, then. It’ll spoil while I’m gone.”

“That’s okay. I’ll take care of everything while you’re gone. Did that list I made help you get everything organized?”

Bryan’s question is gentle. Simple. Meant, most likely, to comfort rather than to pry. It occurs that I’m not certain when such questions began. I wonder how long it’s been since I ceased to be a mother to my children and how long it’s been since we’ve shifted roles. It was most likely a subtle shift, hardly measurable by any yardstick or passage of time on a clock. Still, in these regretful days, my handsome son, the child whose lips must dip at least a foot in order to find his mother’s cheek, now finds himself more parent than son. He comes armed with questions to make certain I’m safe, that I’m staying on the straight and narrow. He asks; I answer. There was a time when I was the questioner:
Did you finish your vegetables? How’s your homework coming? What time does the dance end? There won’t be alcohol at the party, will there? Who’s driving?
At some point between urging him to finish the peas on his plate and today, it seems Bryan’s taken up the thankless task of watchfulness over me and I’m saddened by it all.

I frown.

“Did you follow the list I made?” Bryan asks, hopefulness in his voice. For one brilliant moment, I glimpse a memory of my son, a basketball in his young hands, his legs illuminated by the sun, tossing hoops in the driveway with his father. In that lovely thought, he’s not asking about lists or suitcases, but simply if I’m watching him try to make the next basket.

“List? I’m sure I did. In fact, I must have followed it too well because now I can’t close my suitcase.”

“I’ll go see. Why don’t you call Allison and make sure she’s on her way?” Bryan goes down the hall and soon returns with my suitcase neatly closed with all its zippers in place.

“I checked your suitcase,” he says brightly. “You did great… except, I did notice that you didn’t have any underwear. I added a few pair from your drawer.”

“Underwear.” I say it like it’s the first word I’ve spoken all day. I let the word and all its implications hang unaccompanied in the air. What woman in the world forgets to pack her undergarments?

“Did you call Allison?” he asks.

“Allison? Was I supposed to call her?”

“Oh, God, Mother. I don’t feel good at all about this trip. Where’s your medicine? Did you take your pills yet?”

“Probably. Oh… I don’t really know.”

“Where’s your pill counter?”

“I suppose it’s in the regular place… unless I packed it in my purse like I was supposed to.” Bryan looks in the cupboard and then into the depths of my purse. He comes up with the blue plastic pill caddy like he’s just pulled up a fish barehanded from the bottom of a deep pool. He opens the compartment marked “F” for Friday and scowls. He pinches several pills of varying sizes between his fingers.

“You didn’t take your medicine this morning.” He rattles the container and then opens the “T” for Thursday and the “W” for Wednesday. He pulls out more pills. “You’re three days short of a full load.”

“Should I take them all now? I shouldn’t be short of my full load, should I?” I offer a bright laugh.

Bryan looks askance for a moment and then laughs with me. For one sparkling moment, he accompanies me in the forgetfulness of unpacked underwear and unswallowed medicine. We sway within the here and now and its sound of laughter bouncing around the back of our throats and the walls of my dear yellow kitchen. For one small moment, my son sees the oddity of his mother’s shrinking mind and we’re neither of us ashamed.

For one small moment.

Allison arrives then, dazzling and breathless. “Look! I’m the color of Hawaii,” she squeals, twirling into the living room.

“You’re beautiful,” I say.

“You’re late,” Bryan says, waving his wrist-watched arm toward Allison. “We should have been at the airport twenty minutes ago.”

“We’re not
that
late and even if we are a few minutes behind, it’s not my fault. I had to wait for my toes to dry before I could put on my shoes.” Allison shows off a fresh pedicure peeking through open toe pumps. There are sky blue flower petals painted across each large toenail, a perfect match to her flowing pants outfit.

“Well, I hope you don’t scuff your cute little toes running through the airport because you’re totally
late
.”

“Oh, relax, Bryan. You’re such a time freak.”

“Children,
please
,” I say.

Allison and Bryan’s bickering begins to slide a wedge into my thoughts and I feel interrupted. Disjointed. There’s a hard comma suddenly inserted into my mind where there should have otherwise been a smooth passage. “You’re both raining on my Hawaii and we haven’t even gotten there yet.”

“Mom is right,” Allison says. “Total rain.”

“Really? Are we going to have rain?” I ask. “Do I have an umbrella?”

“You’re okay, Mom. Don’t worry,” Bryan says.

“Well,
I’m
ready,” Allison says.

Bryan scribbles a look of disengagement on his face. “Then let’s load up and go. Mom’s excited for Hawaii.” He winks at me and opens up a smile wide as an umbrella under a stormy day. Bryan’s smile causes me to wonder again if I need an umbrella, but this time, I keep the question to myself.

We load our suitcases and our differences into Bryan’s car and drive to the airport. Allison’s in the back seat wearing her sky blue outfit and flowers on her toes and I’m in the front wearing wonderment on my face that the day matches Allison’s toe petals.

At the airport Allison guides me through the process of checking our bags at the ticket counter and then helps me through the security check to reach our gate. She is blasé. She’s ignorant of the difficulties within my hardscrabble mind and‌—‌oddly‌—‌her disengagement seems comforting. She watches with bored disinterest as I fumble my license back into my wallet and shove my boarding pass into a side pocket on my carry-on bag. She is sophisticated and I do my best to emulate her posture. “We’re going to Hawaii,” I tell the security guard. He is sophisticated too.

We find our gate and locate two side-by-side narrow molded chairs; we wait for our plane, carry-on bags tucked between our legs. Allison busies herself texting. Then she dials a friend to chat while I absently turn pages in one of her
Glamour
magazines. I decide to use the restroom before boarding and motion my intention.

“Watch my bag,” I mouth, not wishing to interrupt her conversation.

Allison cups her hand over her cell. “Where are you going?”

“Restroom.”

“Okay. But don’t be long. They’re just about to call us for boarding.”

Allison waves me away, seemingly lost once more within her giggly, happy conversation. She tosses her hair like a prancing pony and it’s hard to take my eyes from her. But I leave the boarding area and walk down a bustling aisle filled with shops and little restaurants. I locate the women’s room and try to hurry. As I wash my hands, I notice my mind is wild with excitement. It’s all I can do to keep from crowing to every woman in the restroom that I’m going to Hawaii and I have a boarding pass tucked into the side pocket of my carry-on bag back at the gate to prove it. I finish and hurry my steps back to Allison.

YOU YELL. You yell at your feet because they turned you the wrong way and now you find yourself on the far side of airport security, while your identification, your pass, your daughter, and your trip to Hawaii are on the other side. No one but your feet can hear you, but you give them a good talking-to nevertheless. When your feet are nice and sorry, you let them take you to the security gate where you find an opening to bypass the area because you don’t need to stop again. Surely the guards remember you. Certainly they know your plane is about to leave and you must be on it. But harsh hands abruptly pull you aside. You explain yourself in hurried, frightened tones, but all your words and explanations make no difference to the uniformed woman who pats the inside of your legs and runs a security wand over your body. Tears spill from your eyes as you are taken by your arm to a security room. Young men speak harshly, the same way you earlier spoke to your feet. Your plane is now flying to Hawaii, along with your lovely new pocketless pants and your red, red lipstick, but you are not. You can’t stop crying when your frantic daughter finds you and you cry even more furiously when the security guard wraps her arm around your shoulder in a gesture of comfort when all’s settled and forgiven. Your own daughter’s arms stay unsympathetic as she pulls you through the airport to the ticket counter. Her mouth turns tight as a slash when her wheedling and cajoling to secure another flight go unrewarded. Her voice becomes hurled stones as she hails a taxi, her hair snapping and swinging. Words of anger flow from her mouth. Through it all, you silently chant your new vow, over and over. You’ll never trust your feet again. You’ll never trust your feet again.

Once inside the taxi, Allison narrows her eyes and gives me her mad face. “How could you do this to me?”

“I didn’t… I don’t … I don’t know how this could have happened. I went to the restroom and then I just… I accidentally turned the wrong way. I’m sorry. How could I have known?”

Allison’s eyes are unyielding, their dusky green color now resembling hardened slate. “Why didn’t you tell them to just page me… right away?” she says. “If you would have just done that one
simple
thing, we could have made our flight.”

“Allison, my darling, I tried. How could I know there’d be such a stink? We’d already been through the security gate, so I just went around. I didn’t know I couldn’t do that. I’m really, really sorry, I just went the wrong way.”

“Wasn’t it obvious that you were going the wrong way?”

“No, it wasn’t… I didn’t know.”

I turn toward my daughter and catch her dear hands up into mine. “I’ll make it up to you. I
promise
. We’ll go someplace even better. We’ll go to… Canada. Yes. We’ll go there. But, won’t you please forgive your dear old mother… for this one horrible mistake? Please?”

For one bright and luminous moment, I watch Allison’s eyes soften into what looks to me like heaven’s forgiveness in the midst of an unforgiveable offense.

“I’ll try,” she says.

I realize I’ve been holding my breath. Slowly, I relax my posture, my shoulders, how my mouth has tightened and pulled downward. “We can do this again,” I say. “Next time I promise not to go to the bathroom.”

“Sure… whatever. No bathrooms.”

After a time, Allison sighs loudly, turning her face to the window on her side of the taxi. “On second thought, no. I’m just too mad at you.”

Allison turns inward and silent. Anything left of my sensitivity that’s not been already shredded by my daughter’s eyes is finished off by my own crashing guilt and embarrassment.

The rest of the ride remains silent. Allison deposits me at my front door and returns to the taxi, her heels clicking down the walkway to serve as her only departing words.

I roll my carry-on suitcase (with my pills, three brand new notebooks and my unused boarding pass tucked neatly inside) into the living room and leave it to unpack in the morning. My larger suitcase with all my new clothes is, of course, on its way to Hawaii.

“Damn it. I really need you, Ivan. Now!” I cry into the emptiness of the house. “Where the hell
are
you?”

I go into my closet and nearly rip down my cedar box. This time, I bypass the normal chance and happenstance of what I might read and carefully go through the letters until I find the one I want. This time, I leave the box on the floor and take the letter to my bed. I read:

My children,

Whenever I think of the difference between what is serendipitous and what is miraculous, I always wonder which prevailed when your father and I first met. Was it serendipity or miracle? I don’t know. I only know my head and my heart were forever changed because of him.

Of course, for all the silent, pious prayers to Jesus and for all the words flung into the wind that howled up and over The Blowing Rock, your MeeMaw’s eyes continued to deteriorate into permanent blindness.