The Shortest Distance Between Two Women (12 page)

“Auntie Emma, have you ever had one of those moments when
you felt your heart move towards the clouds? Like life and everything in it made sense for just a little while, and that you knew something about yourself that you never knew before?”

Oh, sweet innocent Stephie, who has a world waiting for her, places to go, people to meet, hearts to break, and more than a few hurdles to jump. Oh, gorgeous, lovable, and so absolutely wonderful Stephie, who has no idea how much trouble her aunt will be in if Joy finds out where they have been, or if Marty wants to see the reservation receipt, or someone else listens to the answering machine.

But what she tells herself is that it has been so long, so damn long, that she’s suddenly absolutely terrified she may never feel that way again.

Then Stephie does what so many teenagers do. She sweetly touches her auntie and then asks her a question. It is a question and an answer that will reverberate through their lives for a very long time.

“Hey, would it be okay with you if I stayed the night at Kara’s house?”

“Well, sure, I suppose,” Emma answers, surprised by this sudden shift from such an emotional discussion. “She’s the friend from math class?”

“Yes. Thank you, Auntie Emma,” Stephie says, as she gets up quickly and plants a fast kiss on Emma’s head. “She’s coming in just a second to pick me up. I’ll see you tomorrow after school.”

And Emma is abruptly left alone to try and figure out what has just happened as Stephie literally runs out of the bar. This, she suddenly realizes, is the very stuff her sister Joy must hate. This is the part of teenagerhood that also must have driven their mother crazy, because she had to go through it with four girls and not just one.

“Auntie Emma, I made a horrible mistake and I need help right away,” Stephie sobs, sounding terrified.

“What happened? Where are you?” Emma asks frantically as her heart accelerates.

“I’m at my parents’ house. The police are here. I had a party. One of the kids got really sick because he drank too much. Oh, please come now! Please! I am so sorry!”

Emma has no time to be angry. That will come later when Emma has made Stephie and her friends clean every glass and tabletop and inch of flooring and carpet, when Stephie calls her parents who are still at the beach, and when every ounce of freedom that Stephie has enjoyed is taken from her life.

First there is Emma racing to her sister Joy’s house and dealing with the police and several sets of parents, who thankfully are not angry at Emma, but their own horrid irresponsible teenagers. Then there is the phone call to the hospital where the boy is having his stomach pumped and where his father says he would sue the living hell out of Emma’s family—except that his son had a similar party last year so he understands.

This is the easiest part of the night.

The hardest part comes when the physical work is done. All the friends have been transported home to their own new lives of restricted hell. The house is as clean as it’s ever been, the sick boy is home and safe. At last the first light of day cascades into the front yard and it is finally just Emma and Stephie. And suddenly Emma cannot stand it any longer.

“Do you have any idea how serious this is?” she says through clenched teeth. “That boy could have died, someone could have
been hurt, the house was a shambles and you’ve totally destroyed any trust your parents and I have in you.”

Stephie is in that cocky drunk state that allows her to say things she might never say when she is sober. Things that people think, but should never, ever say out loud.

“Kids do this all the time. It’s part of living and growing up and stuff.” She shrugs.

“What?” Emma stammers.

“You know what, Auntie Em,” Stephie says, not as a question but as a statement of fact, “you wouldn’t know about stuff like this because you really don’t live. You hide out in those damn gardens of yours and you run around and take care of everyone else and get all involved with them, but you don’t live. Maybe you should try having your own damn party.”

Emma takes in a breath that is so deep and long, Stephie almost falls over from waiting, and then Emma silently spins her niece around, puts her in the car, and takes her home.

And that is where the truth of Stephie’s words settle against Emma’s wounded heart as she stands in her own tidy kitchen, watches the early morning sun wake up her gardens, and wonders how a sixteen-year-old can be so absolutely stupid and so wise at the same time.

Emma and Stephie have designed a kind of mild truce following the horrific drinking-party incident that has totally changed Stephie’s life. Orders from her furious parents have turned teenage Stephie back into a baby. No unmonitored anything. No cell
phone. No computer except for school projects. Grounded until she turns fifty, or figures out a way to make amends, and apologizes every second for the rest of the year.

And Emma, not certain if Stephie would even remember what she said to her, accepted Stephie’s sober apology, dealt with Joy on the phone, and had to apologize herself for not realizing what Stephie was up to. She’s talked to her own mother about the incident and they’ve agreed to let Joy decide who to share it with. Marty shook it off as typical teenage behavior, but at the far, far end of typical, and agreed that Stephie had taken advantage and crossed a fairly serious line. And with all of this on her plate Emma has been very successful at avoiding Stephie’s notion of “her own damn party.”

“No wonder your mother was glad to get away from you for a week, Ms. Stephie,” Emma not-so-jokingly says from behind a tangle of weeds that are threatening to take over her yard.

“Me?” Stephie feigns shock. “What’s wrong with me? I just made that one
little
mistake. I thought we decided days ago that everyone was crazy but us.”

“That was before everything you put me through this week. I’ll be lucky if I even know who I am by the time you leave tomorrow night. Who’s got time to wish they were someone else?”

“Is that a no then?”

Periodically Emma has wished to be everyone but herself. A very long time ago she wanted to be her mother. That was before her father became ill. She remembers her yearning when she would watch her mother get dressed in a silky dress, or a pair of sleek pants, or a flowing skirt that was so absolutely beautiful Emma had to touch the fabric while her mother walked from the bedroom into the kitchen. Sometimes when her mother put on lipstick—because if you wore lipstick it did not matter what else you had on, you were cleared to go anywhere—Emma so wanted
to be her, to be able to wear lipstick and to go anywhere that might be a place her sisters had not already been.

When she got older there was a very short period of time, maybe two weeks, when she wanted to be just like her three big, and mostly annoying, older sisters. Debra, who during a sweet moment actually let Emma use her makeup and try on her nylons and who was kind enough to tell her that “yes, sister, you will get breasts just like mine someday.” Joy, who was always busy sneaking out of windows and hiding things in the bushes that were most likely discovered by their father, who near as Emma can recall never said a word, although occasionally Joy would ask Emma to help her. “Hold open the window, rugrat,” or “If you promise not to tell Mom you can have some of this beer” were two of Joy’s more endearing remarks that sometimes made Emma actually adore her. And even as a young girl Emma knew Erika was filled with quiet grace. She did not take to yelling like her other sisters, had a habit of flinging her long blonde hair over her shoulders that made her look like a runway model, and Emma tried to fling her own hair the exact same way until she was at least eighteen.

After that in junior high there was not a young girl alive in Higgins, South Carolina, who did not want to be Bridget Cantina. Bridget, so it seemed, had been born wearing a training bra and things just got bigger from that point on. Ms. Cantina, who Emma found out later had breast reduction surgery in her junior year of college, went on to achieve even more local fame by marrying a man twenty-five years older than she was and then claiming, even now, to still be madly in love with him.

The years following high school were beyond a wash in the female heroine department. When Emma tries to remember events from those years it is as if they have all been magically erased from her mind. She knows she surely didn’t want to be herself most of the time. Marty was suffering from empty-nest syndrome and
phoned her at college daily and showed up unexpectedly so often that it was embarrassing.

After that, in an honest moment, Emma might admit that she sometimes wanted to be one of the many girlfriends who called to tell her about an upcoming marriage or an old friend who announced that she had taken a job in Paris. Emma sometimes wanted to be her sister Erika who had the guts to move out of South Carolina and detach herself in a sort of loving yet distant way from the Gilford family madness, and now, just now, she thinks it would be wonderful to be Stephie Gilford and to have a semi-clean palette and rainbows of colors to choose from.

Emma tells all of this to Stephie as they pull weeds and fertilize and Stephie grumbles about how hard it is to be a gardener until Emma stands up to ease her aching back and politely reminds her of all that has happened during the past week.

No initial curfews.

Lots of cooking time.

Friends sleeping over three nights in a row with no questions asked.

The poetry night at the illegal club.

Shared secrets times twenty.

No mother to snap at every word you said.

None of the reunion planning Joy had threatened her with before she left.

No blood relatives maiming her following the drunken party.

The almost riot when they were going through the reunion storage shed in Marty’s backyard yesterday and Debra showed up.

Before the evil Aunt Debra arrived, there were several hours of hard work and hilarious discovery as Emma and Stephie made believe they were cave explorers going into unknown territory for the first time.

Stephie went in the dark and stinky shed first, brave young
soul that she is, while Emma stood behind her with a notebook and pen to record what, if anything, might be of use for this year’s reunion. This after Emma looked through the quick notes she had taken from Marty’s answering machine message and decided she could at least do this one thing while she waited for salvation from Erika. Erika who has never, ever taken this long to figure out a problem or return a call.

In the meantime the shed loomed and what a cave of bleakness it was.

There were bags of paper plates—that needed to be counted.

There were bags of tablecloths—that were moldy and needed to be tossed into the garbage.