I Wish... (2 page)

I was surprised when Shep used the next available exit to turn us around so that instead of traveling west we were heading back east. Ramona punched a number into her cell and started an animated conversation while my mother left her awkward perch and sat beside me at the table. She was toying with the dog-eared notebook that was her constant companion. My mom was a mystery to me. Despite an emotional void where her maternal instinct probably should have been, she really could have been a success at anything she wanted to do in life. She looked like a super model and she had the most incredible ability to memorize forever anything she saw in writing. Somehow Ramona had convinced her to give up what could only have been an amazing life on her own to follow her around the country acting as her personal assistant. She was forever writing notes to herself in a notebook and couldn't be found without one in her hand.

Even though I knew it wouldn't do any good, I decided to use this opportunity while we were together with Ramona occupied on the phone to try to get some information out of my mom. If there was a weak link in the plot to keep me in the dark about life, I figured my mother was probably it. "Why are we turning around? Ramona's signing and interviews are in LA."

"Mother Georgina is sick. We need to get back to care for her." Her voice was expressionless, her blue eyes blank. Someone was sick enough to change our plans and there's no reaction to any of that? Clearly the woman was a robot.

"Who is Mother Georgina?" I was cautiously hopeful I might get a little more information, but it was evident that I was going to have to work for each tiny scrap of info.

"She's Ramona's mother. Your great grandmother. She isn't doing too well. We need to get there as soon as possible." I tentatively reached for her hand, unsure whether she might need some comforting. She didn't seem too broken up about any of it, but weren't you supposed to worry when you found out your grandmother is sick?

It gratified me when mom took my hand. I hadn't touched her, or her me, for years. If Shep didn't beat me up on a near daily basis, I probably wouldn't have had any human contact since the age of six. Not that it bothered me. I mean, I wouldn't have minded if a boy had wanted to touch me or something, but I wasn't the sort of girl who needed someone to hold me while tears welled up in my emo orbs. I vastly preferred to deal with stress or negative feelings with humor and laughter. With a life like mine, if you couldn't laugh there was a very real possibility you might go crazy.

A few minutes went by with my mom holding my hand and staring absently out the window. I decided to risk another question. "Hey Mom?"

"Yes?" She looked at me with guileless eyes. She was pro at that. It was what made her a formidable opponent when trying to get information out of her. When she told you she didn't know something, you really wanted to believe her.

"Where is it that Mother Georgina lives?"

"She lives near the east coast, not far from New York City, in a town called Desire." Oh this was promising. I’d never succeeded in finding out something so concrete about our past before.

"Is that where we lived before we started touring for Ramona's books?" I held my breath.

"Yes, you were born the-"

"Savannah! Can you finish this call for me? There are some dates I need you to write down." Ramona's eyes, the same color as my mother's but far colder when she was angry, sparked cornflower ice chips now.

My mother, never one to let anything show, didn't appear to be cowed by Ramona's clear disapproval. She stood up with liquid grace and walked through the RV. The way the movement of the vehicle caused her to sway made her appear lither. I did envy mom that one thing. I'd seen grown men brought to tears when subjected to Ramona in a rage, but I'd never seen my mother look shamed or even so much as flinch because of anything Ramona had ever said to her. If anything could cause mom to lose her composure, I hadn't seen it yet.

Mom took the phone from Ramona and started scribbling in her trusty pad. Ramona spared me one final annoyed glance before she turned her attention to the map Shep had produced from some cubby up front. It appeared that she wasn’t going to say anything to me.

Relieved, I quickly focused on my laptop. It was best to avoid any unwanted attention while Ramona's temper seethed just under the surface. Besides, now I had a clue to my true identity.

I'd done searches for myself in the past, of course. With a name like Thistle Nettlebottom, you wouldn't think it would be that hard to find some information on myself. How many of us could there be? The problem was that the only information I ever managed to find was only a few years old or more recent. I knew from successful prying over the years that Nettlebottom wasn't my birth name. I wasn't sure if Thistle was or not. I couldn't unearth any clues about what our surname used to be. Ramona worked out some sort of system for her mail that involved us never receiving any of it. I suspected she probably hired someone strictly for sorting it out for her. The only paperwork I'd ever seen around the RV was addressed to Nettlebottom. I often wished that my early childhood wasn't a blank, but sadly, I couldn't remember a single detail before I was maybe six or seven years old.

I had a tenuous connection to the internet using my cell phone as a modem. I pulled up a search engine and started searching for information about Desire. I looked for towns, maps, a connection between Desire and the name Georgina, and Desire plus Nettlebottom. An hour passed and I still hadn't found a single clue about this town. It amazed me that a town, no matter how small, had somehow escaped the notice of the entire internet. It figured though. Even when I got some piece of information out of them it was still worthless and brought me no closer to solving the mystery of who I was.

I settled back and waited for powers beyond my control to sweep me forward whether I liked it or not. I was pretty sure that this was going to be one of those times when I didn't like it one bit.

***

Chapter 2

We made it to Desire in just under three days. Shep was like a cyborg or something. I'm not sure he got more than seven hours of sleep during the entire trip. Ramona was insistent that we make the best possible time we could. I was positive my body language reading classes must have been a total waste of time and money because it didn't seem like she was hurrying home to care for her sick mother. It seemed like she was actually
excited
. Maybe she was just excited to see her mother after such a prolonged absence.

That was one more thing that ate at me. When was the last time she'd been home? I couldn't think of a time when she was gone long enough to have paid even a brief visit to the family I didn't even realize she had.

I tried pumping Shep for information while keeping him company during the long nights of driving.

"Have you ever been to Desire?"

"I'm from there."

"Wow, really? Is that how you know Ramona then?"

"Yeah. I started this job as a favor to my mother."

"You've been with us for as long as I can remember. That's a wicked big favor."

He was quiet for a while and I thought for a minute that he wasn't going to add anything more to the conversation. Then he said in a low voice I don't think I was meant to hear, "Someone needs to watch out for you, kid."

I was touched. I didn't know who my father was. It was just one more in a long line of secrets. When I was younger I used to fantasize about Shep being my dad. He was a beast of a man; massively built without an ounce of fat. I supposed he was handsome in his own way, thick black hair curling in crazy directions under the edges of the bandanas he always wore. His skin was an olive color like mine, so different from both my mom and red headed Ramona. The illusion was dispelled as I got older. The interplay between the adults slowly eroded my hope and learning enough about genetics to realize that with his blue eyes he couldn't possibly be my father finally laid that fantasy to rest. My father would have to have brown eyes like my own.

Ignoring the last comment in case it made him feel awkward to know I had heard it, I said, "Do you know Mother Georgina?"

"Oh, I've talked to her in passing a few times. I'm not sure what you're going to find when we get there, but I remember her as being an exceptionally strong woman. Very determined. It's something I see in all the women in your family."

"Except mom."

"Your mom too. Especially your mom. She fought some pretty epic battles against Ramona in her teenage years. If I didn't know better, I would have sworn being stubborn was her talent."

What a weird choice of words. He seemed to think so too because he looked a little flustered. I decided to take pity on him and not tease him about it.

"So what happened? Mom does
everything
Ramona tells her to do. I can't think of a single time I've ever seen her disagree about anything."

"Do you realize it's after three in the morning, Thistle? You should really go try to get some shut eye."

I knew better than to try to argue. It was futile. Like a small mountain, Shep could not be moved.

I went to my couch by day, bed by night and lay down. The sleeping arrangements in the RV weren't ideal. Although the sides of the camper expanded to provide a significant increase of square footage inside, we didn't sleep in it at night all that often. If Ramona couldn't get her publisher to pay for the costs of a hotel, she happily paid out of her own pocket. On the nights we did spend in the RV, I didn't have much privacy. Shep installed a circular curtain around my sleeping area when I asked a few years earlier. When I was in a morbid mood, I imagined that I was in a hospital awaiting a potentially lifesaving surgery for some mysterious ailment that was so rare and so dire that it hadn't even been named yet.

That night I wasn't thinking about hospitals or dying. I was thinking about my mother. I was trying to imagine her as a woman with opinions of her own. The idea of her arguing with Ramona was a strangely compelling image. Arguments and opinions implied a woman with passion. That conflicted so much with the woman I knew her to be. What could have possibly caused her to change so completely? The question still haunted me when I finally fell asleep.

Now we were finally approaching Desire. We were on a road that, while paved and in good repair, was hardly more than a country road. The last town we'd passed was more than twenty miles back. Every so often we'd pass a house set off the road amongst the trees the road bisected and without fail; the houses were big and in great shape. The yards, although big enough to be considered acreage, were all neatly mowed. What we saw driving down that road should have prepared me for what we would find in Desire, but I was still amazed by my first glimpse of the town spread out below me as we crested a hill.

At seventeen, it's safe to say that I was better traveled than the majority of kids of my age. I'd certainly seen my share of small towns all over the country, but nothing even came close to Desire. The road we traveled widened as it approached the town proper. The houses that lined it became more frequent, but also much bigger. No, that wasn't the word. Grander. The entire town seemed to be comprised of two and three story Victorian style houses. There was a town square laid out in the middle of town with a covered gazebo in the center. I imagined a band playing there while families listened from blankets spread on the grass under the mature trees that dotted the the perimeter of the square.

I estimated that the square was two city blocks on each side. It was surrounded on all sides by rows of shops. I fully expected that there must be a soda shop somewhere that would serve me a drink to share with my special fella out of a pair of matching striped straws. The entire town looked like a postcard from the 1950s.

We made our way slowly through the heart of the down town area and the people we passed didn't make any effort to hide their curious stares. In a town this isolated I was pretty sure they'd notice strangers even if they drove through in a modest sedan though. Besides I was at least as curious about them as they were about us. Did any of these people know me when I was a baby? Could any of them tell me who my father was? Maybe one of them
was
my father. If dozens of movies and books had taught me anything it was that people in small towns love to gossip. If I could get some time away from Ramona and my mother, surely I'd find some answers.

We pulled into the wide driveway of a house on the far side of town. It was a beautiful white house with gingerbread trim surrounded by lush flower beds. The borders of the yard were marked by thick lilac bushes. Although it seemed awfully late for them to be blooming, the bushes were heavy with blossoms and the smell wafted in through the open windows, carried on the warm fall breeze.

A door opened and a woman in a flowing A line skirt stepped out onto the wraparound porch. She paused near a white wicker sitting area, hands on her hips. One bare foot was tucked behind the other. Judging by the look of confusion on her face she wasn't expecting to see a hot pink RV parked in her driveway. Ramona opened the door on the side of the vehicle and we dutifully filed out behind her. We were on the far side so the first person she saw was Shep as he jumped easily down from the driver's seat.

"Shep?"

"Hello, Marla. How's Georgina?"

"So Ramona heard."

Following her as we rounded the back of the camper, I watched as Ramona drew herself up to her impressive full height. She shook her shoulder length curls back from her face and smiled with her mouth, but not her eyes.

"Yes, I heard. Oddly enough, I didn't get a single call from my own daughter to let me know that Mother was ill. Why if it weren't for Shep's own mother, I might not have had any idea of what was happening. Possibly not until it was too late to get here."

Daughter? My aunt? I could definitely see a resemblance between her and Ramona. Marla had the same creamy skin and blue eyes, but like my mother, she had blond hair. There was also a striking similarity in their displeased faces and Marla was wearing hers at the moment.