The Shortest Distance Between Two Women (26 page)

“Oh, snap out of it, Erika,” Marty says bluntly. “You are going to stay for the reunion, I’m busy, and your sister is the one in first place here. Emma and I need to talk. It’s a mother-daughter thing that can’t wait any longer. So go suck up to your bastardly brother-in-law, your drunken sisters, and let me get off the phone so I can call Emma.”

“Oh, by the way, you know I love you, and give that rat-fink Rick a kick in the balls for me, and good luck at the job interview.”

And Marty hangs up on her.

Erika plants herself at the kitchen table and wonders if her sister has enough coffee in the house to get her through the next few days. How did Marty know about the job interview? And Rick?

Her meeting with her brother-in-law, who has been excommunicated from the family, has lodged itself in the front of her brain like toothpicks under her fingernails. What to do next? Rick was unfortunately honest and open and ready, willing, and able to take whatever it was his family, half the free world, and any aliens who might be watching were ready to give him.

Erika so wanted to be pissed at her brother-in-law but Rick owned up immediately to everything. He admitted his exit from his dysfunctional marriage and from his raspy-throated wine-, vodka-, and beer-soaked vision of his wife was not pretty. No, he is not living with the redhead, but yes, he has been seeing the redhead, and he thinks he is in love with her. He’s smart enough to realize that he has to make it right with his children and with Joy, Marty and everyone else before he can move in a positive direction, but he said that was totally impossible until he’d left. And Rick said all this because Erika was the first Gilford to make eye contact with him since he’d left Joy.

Erika had ended up helping Rick compose email letters to his children and to Joy, Emma, Debra and Marty. Letters apologizing, letters explaining the importance of being happy, letters that did not ask for forgiveness, but simple understanding.

Emma, who has just now received her
It’s Rick Don’t Hate Me Even Though I Am a Total Shit
email at the very same moment her mother has called to finally ask the correct daughter if she wants to drag her bones through the river.

This is what Emma would like to say following her fall into the abyss of loneliness and pity but instead Emma just sighs like she used to when she was a little girl.

And in right-back-at-you mode, instead of getting upset, the sighing makes Marty laugh, which of course totally makes Emma melt because Marty’s laugh is and always will be like free beer during the hottest Fourth of July parade in the history of the world.

“It doesn’t work now, though,” Emma retorts with a hint of pouting in her voice.

“Honey, I couldn’t be mad at you for more than five seconds if I tried.”

“Why is that, Mother?”

“Let’s talk and I’ll tell you why. Remember, you asked for this.”

Imagining everything, Emma cannot now think of one thing that her mother could give her, say to her, show her that would erase the hollow and aching feeling that has centered itself on the top of her breastbone. It is as if she has lost her way in the family forest at sunset thinking that she still has hours to go before it gets dark.

Emma surrenders because suddenly she does not have the energy to do anything but that. She
says yes. Come and get me now. Please. Hurry
.

Marty says she will pick her up after work tomorrow, provide dinner, and take her someplace and of course they can talk, just as Emma has asked.

“Someplace?”

“You’ll see,” Marty answers and then hangs up.

She hangs up, which Emma will discuss later at dinner with Erika when Erika tells her that Marty has also hung up on her as if she were running out of time and couldn’t be bothered to wait politely for the person on the other end to respond.

But first the two sisters must actually get to dinner. They end up at a restaurant on a side street in Charleston that has a rooftop view of the water, eating seafood that Erika tells her is so absolutely perfect Emma will want to sob into her rice.

But Emma isn’t eating. She can barely look Erika in the eye. She is angry about losing this sister, her unabashedly favorite sister, who has totally let her down.

Finally, while Erika sits quietly Emma just blurts it out.

“I am so angry and hurt and I am not even certain if I can sit here and eat with you,” Emma confesses. “My life is in shambles and you of all people, you are the one I always counted on, and you have totally dumped on me.”

“Can you just listen to me for a minute?” Erika asks. “I have things to tell you.”

Erika reaches across the table and tries to touch Emma’s hand but Emma pulls it away.

“I have a tremendous amount of guilt because I left,” Erika tells her. “I know you were saddled with everything and yes, I know I sent you money and came to the important events but now, I’m just—Emma, I have to know, beyond how you feel now, if I could have done more.”

Emma cannot remember ever having seen her sister cry. Perhaps at the funeral all those years ago but she really cannot remember. Erika cries quietly and Emma sits frozen and wonders what her sister could possibly say next.

“It’s Tyler. My son,” Erika explains and Emma recalls that her sister has never once called him her stepson. He’s always been her son. “He’s now the exact same age as you were when Dad died, and he is in such a tender stage, and I think all of the time about what it must have been like for you because you were the one who was
always there and who stayed. All I can do is look at Tyler and think about how fast you had to grow up and how we could have all been better and how I hope I never let you down too much.”

Emma so wants to move across the table and hold her sister in her arms like a baby, to move her fingers through her hair, and to tell her that everything was and is okay but she can’t. She wants to tell Erika that Marty was the one who did everything, that Marty was the one who held all the pieces together and became mother, father, and the fifth sister after her husband’s death. Marty was the one who walked Emma through her grief, not Erika.

Not Erika. This sister who she surely knows in part, and more than surely loves, but who has formed a life outside of hers. And although she can imagine what she likes, who she loves, the patterns of her life, what kind of mother and wife she must be, this attempt at a healing moment is a huge opening into Erika’s soul.

Erika who is obviously tormented by something she must know, something she thinks she may or may not have done.

This sister who at fifty-four wants to reach back and touch the roots of her life, reconcile her memory to reality, and show this first part of her life to her son and husband as a gift and as a necessity.

The sister who once drove fourteen hours so that she could be there on the day of Emma’s high school graduation. Who has not once forgotten her birthday, or failed to call on a holiday, and who has invited her to spend time in Chicago at least five thousand times even though Emma never could find enough time to go.

This grown-up who is now crying so sweetly, who wipes her tears with the back of her hand just like a child, and who Emma suspects is crying for a lot more than just this moment.

But Emma cannot ease her sister’s pain until she takes that huge step of easing her own.

Emma says what she has to say. She tells Erika that she is
devastated because of what she feels is a betrayal, not just on her part, but on her other sisters’ part, too. She confesses that she’s totally screwed up the reunion planning, she admits that she’s in free fall about Samuel and about Debra’s reaction to his phone calls, and then of course there are everyone else’s problems that always eclipse her own problems.

And now—now, this also.

“What about me, Erika?” she asks. “I feel as if my whole life has fallen apart. You were the one who always promised to help me. And here I am hanging out to dry all by myself while everything collapses. I’ve made a mess of everything.”

“I think it’s time I told you the truth then.” Erika is smiling.

“What are you talking about? What truth?”

“I wanted to surprise you—Well,
we
wanted to surprise you. But this seems like the best time to tell you.”

“What in heaven’s name are you talking about, Erika?”

“The reunion. We’ve taken care of everything.”

“What do you mean by
we
?”

“Joy, Debra and, well, Susie has been helping us, too. I came a few days early and stayed with Debra. We took care of everything.”

“Susie? Susie Dell?” Emma stammers.

“I knew you were having a hard time. And you always do so much for all of us, especially Mom. So I pulled everyone together, even Debra, and we’ve reserved the park, ordered all the food and made all the announcements. Right this moment Joy is finishing up the invitations. So you are totally off the hook.”

Emma is teetering between being even more angry and hurt and being immeasurably relieved, thankful, and rescued. “Are you serious?”

Yes, Erika tells her, even in the midst of myriad personal and family catastrophes, her sisters have managed to pull out the stops and finally help her.

“Does Mom know?”

“No, but I’ve given her updates. I told her that you asked me to keep her informed.”

Emma knows she is now supposed to be gracious and to tell Erika the truth and the truth would be that Erika has for the most part been a wonderful sister and that Emma knew she could always count on her and that she loved her beyond words.

But that is a step Emma cannot yet take. A part of her wants to climb over the table and sit on Erika’s lap. Another part of her wants to get in her car and drive as far away as she can without looking back even once.

So what she does astounds her.

She gets up, tells Erika that she needs to think, and turns to walk away. But before she does, she pulls out a Kleenex from her purse, sets it in her sister’s hand and lets her fingers rest there for just a moment, so she can feel the warmth of Erika’s skin.

And as Emma walks away, Erika wishes she would have told her the last secret. Maybe that would have changed everything.

Maybe. Or maybe not.