The Shortest Distance Between Two Women (30 page)

Emma goes on to explain that it is true that she is having a private get-together for just her siblings, including the now more-crazed-than-ever Joy, Debra and her vodka breath, and the increasingly dazed-looking Erika, and yes, the newest sister du jour, Susie Dell, in her quickly constructed new backyard gazebo/garden that will someday also be home to a hot tub where Gilford family members will most likely soak naked.

It is true, Emma asserts in a voice that is just at the very edge of quiet and calm, that all of her sisters are coming and that Marty is not invited and that anything else about the gathering, or the Gilford girls, or Marty, or any of their several hundred relatives, is
none
of Joyce Maleny’s business.

It’s also true that the gathering is in keeping with the planning guidelines so the sisters can relax just before the big Gilford shindig. And it’s also a chance for Emma to announce that she has chosen to say thank you, and to apologize, but that is none of Al’s damn business.

“You’ve been spying on us, Joyce, for years, and my mother is too nice to tell you to stop it but I am not going to start hanging
curtains so you can’t see me drinking coffee in my underwear on the weekends,” Emma challenges. “Joyce, do some volunteer work. Or get a part-time job. Or go back to school or something. But please, I’m begging you, stop lurking around our yards and peeking in our windows and asking us questions as if you were a reporter from one of those sleazy entertainment shows.”

There is absolutely no way Marty can keep herself from laughing, even if it is the last thing she knows she should do in front of Joyce, but laugh she does without any plan about what she will actually say to Joyce when she finishes, or about how she will try and then fail to later repeat the exact words Emma has just thrown all over the town gossip like hot tar. Emma, who appears to be an utterly changed woman, however, has that covered.

“And Joyce—before you leave now, because of your great interest in our wonderful family, I just want to invite you to the Gilford reunion next weekend. It’s casual, but really a lot of fun, and I can assure you that none of my siblings or I will be murdered before then and we will all be in attendance.”

“Are you kidding?” Joyce stammers, as if she’s just been invited to an Oscar party by Brad Pitt and seemingly forgetting all the astonishing things Emma Gilford has just said.

“Absolutely serious.”

“Well, I’ll be there, thank you very much,” she mumbles as she takes a step backward and then disappears down the sidewalk and around the corner so quickly it is almost as if she has dematerialized.

Marty immediately wants to know if her daughter is using drugs, has been poisoned, or was attacked by one of her insect-eating plants.

Guilty conscience, Emma admits, from lurking in trees, and a suddenly low level of tolerance for people who need to be told the
truth. And because, Mom, yesterday you finally helped me put together most of what I thought were the broken pieces of my heart and life.

And about that Gilford get-together that I have planned for my new backyard, which should be the last piece of this section of my life puzzle …

“What a fabulous idea,” Marty says before Emma can explain.

Before Emma can tell her mother that her brief phone conversation with a repentant Debra about the lies about Samuel, and her recent conversations with Erika and Joy, made her realize how little she really knows of her sisters’ inner lives.

Before Emma can say that she has been yearning to ask her three sisters so many questions.

Before Emma admits that the Gilford sisters need to get beyond the last few weeks and the last few decades of unspoken anger, hurt, hidden guilt and jealousy.

Before Emma tells her mother that she needs to be with her sisters alone in order to tell them about her own failings and misconceptions.

Before Emma shares the news that she used her vacation money to put in a small gazebo and buy yet more plants and bushes.

Before Emma lets Marty know that it’s important for all five of them to be alone without her so they can, well, be open and honest about everything from Robert to how Marty disciplined them when they were children.

Before Emma admits that if Marty was there they would all still probably act like children.

And before Emma shares that Marty’s talk with her, the revelations, the sharing of some of her secrets from the past, have unleashed a yearning to know more.

“You’re not mad I didn’t invite you?” Emma wants to know.

“I thought you said you learned something from our talk the other day and it pleases me to know you are reading the Gilford guidelines. It’s time for a pre-reunion party break.”

“I did learn more than something—”

“I don’t need to know everything. Or be a part of everything. And neither do you.”

“Of course,” Emma agrees. “But I would never want you to feel bad or left out even though we’ll probably trash the living hell out of you.”

“You, my dear, are now out of the will,” Marty says, with a hearty laugh.

“Mother, I know life and family relationships are filled with bumps and hurdles. But now I also know that I’m so very lucky—well, mostly lucky—and I’m sorry if I turned the wrong page in the script for a while.”

Marty doesn’t answer. Instead she motions for Emma to go into the backyard and sit on the bench under the kitchen window with her so they can talk about some more things before Emma gets herself in trouble yet again.

“Am I in trouble with you?” Emma asks, concerned.

“Almost,” Marty reassures her.

“Almost,” she continues, “because everyone makes mistakes, but,” Marty adds quickly, “you can spend so much time thinking about that possibility it becomes impossible to move forward in a different way. You can also wish your life away, apologize to people
who are supposed to love you so much and for so long that nothing ever gets done, and at some point you just have to say to hell with it.”

“Are you at that point?” Emma has a semi-desperate need to know.

“Honey, I reached that point a while ago, but to tell you the truth, you didn’t notice.”

“Well, Al must have noticed.”

“God, honey, you almost took that poor woman out. I’ve never seen you act that way before. It was rather … magnificent.”

And then they hear someone yelling both their names from the front of the house and Emma turns to her mother at the exact same moment her mother turns to her and they both exclaim, “Stephie!”

Stephie lands in the backyard looking like the roadrunner from the cartoons Emma used to watch when she was a little girl. She skids toward them in her dark orange high-top tennis shoes and only stops because she braces herself against the huge oak tree that has been guarding the Gilford home since it was built in 1923.

“Thank God you are here,” Stephie gasps.

Emma cannot help but smile and Marty cannot help but notice how Emma’s entire demeanor changes when Stephie is around.

“What’s up, sweet cheeks?” Emma asks.

“I was praying to God you were here,” Stephie blurts out. “I’d be
dead
. Destroyed. Embarrassed.
Totally humiliated
. And that’s something that rarely happens to me.”

“Honey, what’s happening now? I hope it isn’t more of this mess with your father.”

“That’s a whole different story that I cannot even start talking
about now,” Stephie declares, dropping to her knees in the grass in front of her aunt and grandmother as if they are an altar.

They wait for her to continue and Emma has a moment to think that if she had a daughter, that daughter would probably look and dress and act just like Stephie Gilford Manchester. Kind of a sort of a shy wildass. Kind of a girl-woman who thinks for herself but is still not immune to the slavery of words and actions that her peers can and often do present. Kind of a smart kid who could do and be anything. Kind of beautiful even with the fluorescent hair and extra holes in her head. Kind of open to listen and change and grow. Kind of always a lot of fun and a challenge. And without hesitation—
so
kind of impulsive.

And even though she knows she has lost herself in her sisters’ families, Emma so realizes now that it was her choice. That she has fallen into a pit of love and adoration that she would not change for anything.

“It’s this damn beauty pageant mess,” Stephie groans.

“Oh,” is all Marty can think to say.

“Dress rehearsal starts in like one hour and I have to show them the dress I am going to wear in the pageant. I need
help
.”

Emma and Marty turn towards each other at the same moment and they both burst out laughing.

“This
is funny?”
Stephie asks in amazement. “I’m
dying here
, okay? You both have to
help
me. Auntie Em, I am so sorry you have to keep saving me.”

“Do you want to borrow an old prom dress or something?” Emma offers.

Stephie jumps right up and cries, “Oh my God, Auntie Em, that’s perfect! Absolutely perfect.”

“Well, it would fit because you were about that size when you
were doing all those dance and prom and homecoming things,” Marty remembers.

“Stephie, have you ever even worn a dress?” Emma’s trying hard to remember if she’s ever seen her niece in anything but a discarded trick-or-treat costume.

Stephie has to think and the thinking makes her sit back down.

Never a dress except the ones Joy made her wear until Stephie put her foot and everything else down and said absolutely no more dresses.

So why now? Emma has to know this and she absolutely has to know why in the world her wacky niece has decided to enter the Miss Higgins contest besides the obvious fact that she can.

“If I tell you will you help me because I’m sort of serious about this but not serious like some of the other girls who I have recently discovered have things like pageant coaches and professional photographers and hair-waxing assistants for hell’s sake,” Stephie whines.

“Considering we have fifty-six minutes until blastoff time, I think you’d better start talking, missy,” Emma advises, looking at her watch. “Or we’ll have to throw you into one of Grandma’s bathrobes and pluck you on the way to wherever it is you need to go.”

Stephie starts talking as if she has just been plugged in after a hibernation period. She tells Marty and Emma that first of all, not to get mad or anything, but the pageant was initially a way to piss off her parents, who were having a hard time forgiving her for her party mistake.

“I thought if I did something even more bizarre than I usually do that they would stop for a second and think about what in the hell they are doing. And how horrible I could really be,” she admits.

“It’s okay if she swears, dear,” Marty overrules. “It sort of works with her personality and angst.”

“What?” Emma exclaims, more astounded than ever.

“Pay attention,” Marty fires back sternly.

Then, Stephie tells them, just before school ended, and all the cool girls were talking about prom and showing up at school with photos of dresses and thirty other things that would make them look like they normally do not look, Stephie, who did not go to prom, thought it might be time to address the notion of Beauty.

“What is beautiful?” she asks her aunt and grandma now with a look of intensity that could halt a freight train. “When you hear that word, what jumps into your mind?”

Emma says “Flowers” at the same time Marty says “The sunrise.”

“See!” Stephie exclaims. “They still call this a
beauty
pageant. And no matter what they say about the talent part of the whole damn thing, the girl that society and the men on the judging panel thinks is the prettiest wins.”

“I thought these things were now called scholarship something-or-others,” Emma asks. “Haven’t we protested this kind of stuff enough?”

Stephie looks beyond pained as she reaches over to swat Emma on the leg at the same moment Marty turns and looks at her with an expression that could knock over a tank on the way to a frontline battle.

“Are some of those prom girls in this contest or whatever it’s called?” Marty asks, turning from Emma as if she has the plague.

“There are now twelve contestants and eleven of them are prom girls, Grandma.”

“I thought so,” Marty says. She moves serenely towards the
front of the bench and totally closes the distance between her and her revolutionary, subversive and frightfully smart granddaughter.

Emma turns towards her mother as if she is yet again seeing her for the first time. How did Marty know this? Does she know
everything?
Can she see through Emma’s clothes and tell her what kind of underwear she has on?

“Well …” Emma falters.

“Snap out of it,” Marty admonishes Emma. “We have fifty minutes of work to do here.”

“Are you both in?” Stephie pleads more than asks.

Emma takes a moment to shuffle her mind so that she can try and remember where she has parked her prom dresses. The talent thing has her worried but she’s been to the Higgins pageant and she knows Stephie will ace any question in the entire universe the proper judges throw at her. But first she has to ask: