The Shortest Distance Between Two Women (32 page)

The mess with Joy is what floated in the front of Emma’s mind as her sisters gathered in her backyard and as they settled in immediately with actions that seem preplanned to throw copious amounts of attention on the hostess. And the suddenly overwhelmed hostess was aghast because she was hoping the attention would fall in circles around all of them and not just her.

Emma manages to change the conversation for a moment because she knows she is outnumbered and at any moment all hell could break loose. First she says thank you and then surprises herself with a confession of assumptions.

“I’ve been a foolish baby,” Emma finally concludes. And then she says, “I’m just sorry it took me this long to see my life the way it is supposed to be, the way it
really
is.”

And this is when the other Magical Moment of Possible Salvation begins that is so much wider and wilder than Emma ever could have imagined. Because Emma is suddenly in front of an emotional firing squad that she unwittingly helped organize.

Erika admits that the Gilford sisters, and their newest adoptee, Susie Dell, were going to have a party just like the one Emma has thrown for them. They wanted to admit that they sometimes abused her, took advantage of her singlehood, her kind heart and stunning personality. All of her sisters—in spite of their own shortcomings and life mistakes—so want Emma to know that no matter how ugly their shared lives get, they all still love her and one another.

“We have been going crazy trying to figure out how to make you see how much we love you,” Joy said. “You’ve been so miserable. It’s like you are scared to be happy, Emma.”

Emma can’t move.

“It’s not the damn family reunion, or Mom’s boyfriend, or this shitty mess with Samuel, sweetheart,” Debra adds. “We should all tell you we love you more. And even when I am the Bitch of the Year, Emma, I just hold you so close in my heart.”

“Even when I screw things up?” Emma whispers.

“Oh, hell’s bells, sugar. I could show you screwed-up,” Debra snorts.

“We could all be better at telling you how much we love you, Emma,” Joy says, softly. “I, for one, want to call this night ‘Emma’s Lovefest.’ Because I love you so much, sister. Just
so
much.”

All Emma can do is wordlessly draw her sisters—Debra, Joy, Erika and Susie—into a tight circle so she can touch each one of them.

“I love you all, too,” she tells them. “Thank you for this. Just thank you.”

Emma then continues to be ambushed by her three sisters, and by Susie Dell who may as well change her last name to Gilford. They begin to serenade her with the stories she has been craving to hear since her mother took her to the secret garden. Stories that are as hilarious as they are poignant. Stories that ride over the hurt and anguish and spilled fingernail polish. Stories that appear to be getting longer and louder and more detailed as the night begins its parade towards darkness and then way past that absolutely magnificent moment when the heart of the evening begins to slide south.

Surprisingly it is Erika, not Joy, who takes charge and demands that there will be no arguing or bringing up crap that will hurt anyone gathered under the gazebo. Then she demands to know everyone’s oldest memory having to do with siblings or anything Gilford-like.

And all of the sisters saying to each other, “You were never a princess,” and “I bet I could kick your ass now,” as Emma’s intervention and all its potential consequences accelerates into warp-speed while so many Moments of Possible Salvation are being formed it’s a wonder the plants and their little flowers do not twist themselves into a heap of shredded greenery.

Joy remembers the weekend that their cousins from the country came to visit for the first time and were astounded by everything from the streetlights to the fact that they could walk three blocks and buy a candy bar at the corner store.

“Was that the night you got on the roof with the hose and scared the living hell out of them?” Erika wants to know.

“No,” Joy corrects her. “The hose thing was the time I nailed everyone coming for trick-or-treat and then Dad made me stand outside while he hosed me down for about twenty minutes so I could see what it felt like.”

“You were both dirty animals,” Debra laughs. “Do you remember how mean you and Erika were to me and my friends, and especially you, Joy, because you were so much older, which, ha, ha, makes you really old now, and when they thought you were absolutely beautiful you told them you were a trained killer who was a female CIA recruit?”

“Really, Joy?” Emma wants to know.

“I am a trained killer, Emma.”

“Gag,” Erika moans as if she is once again thirteen.

And Susie Dell sits almost motionless except for the bobbing and weaving of her head as the stories and emotion swirl like the sucking wind of a tornado.

Torture was and is torture. Sisters and more sisters holding their siblings under water, by the ankles, and upside down from the third story or inside of a tight blanket. Sisters making their siblings eat diced-up worms and concoctions of, well, shit that they stole from their mother’s kitchen. Those same seemingly sweet sisters tie younger sisters to trees and shoot arrows and rocks and their father’s BB gun at them and occasionally don’t. Sisters take kitchen knives and carve on the bottoms of the feet of their poor innocent little sisters and sometimes behind knees and on the palms of their hands to see how long it takes them to bleed and then to cry. Sisters force their sisters to do all the things they do not want to do—like feed the dog, take out the garbage, clean up the yard, and every and anything else because they were older, stronger, and knew they could get away with it.

It’s a very old game, Joy admits, and then quickly adds that her days of playing torture were numbered by the time Emma came along because, as Debra so tactfully puts it, she is so much
older
.

“So,” Emma has to know. “What did you three jerks do to
me?

“Everything,” Debra fesses up.

“Yep,” Erika agrees cheerfully.

“Name a few everythings,” Emma pleads.

“This could ruin the rest of your life,” Debra warns.

“Please,” Emma asks again.

I used to shoot the BB gun at you when Mom was hanging up wash and you were playing in the sandbox, Erika tells her.

When I combed your hair, which I hated to do, I would tangle it all up and pull at it so that you would cry, Debra shares. You lost a lot of hair and at one point looked kind of bald.

Oh, I also told you the most horrid stories about ghosts and
monsters just before bedtime so that you would actually run down the hall into Mom and Dad’s room screaming, Erika confesses.

Was it you or me who locked her in the back closet all the time? Debra asks Erika.

You, Erika lies.

And this is where Emma begins to wonder if they are all lying.

Oh, remember that time we all tied her up, put her in the garage, gagged her, and then turned off the lights and ran into the house so she would learn not be afraid of the dark? Joy asks.

“Well, thank God I don’t remember that,” Emma tells them. “It’s a wonder you didn’t kill me, for crying out loud.”

“Well, the sad thing, Emma, is that you never got to play torture because we all left and then it was just you and Mom and Dad for a little while there at the end,” Debra admits.

This is where Emma really wants help and where the little bit of wine they are managing to drink, in between all the stories, helps them finally remember what they have all been trying to forget since the moment their father died.

“We’ve never really talked about Dad. It would mean a lot to me to hear what you know, what you remember, what you can tell me,” Emma says when Debra, Erika and Joy grow silent.

It is closing in on midnight. The normally delicious time of night when Emma’s flowers and plants lean into each other and take a much-deserved break.

In the annual, perennial and totally indigenous sections of Emma Gilford’s gardens, Emma silently turns her head first from one side to the next and then back again, turning to her gardens for comfort.

And they do comfort her.

Just as Emma temporarily shelves her role in recruiting Debra and Erika for Joy’s scheduled intervention.

Just as Emma’s sides ache from laughing.

Just as Susie Dell feels as if she has just suffered whiplash.

Just as Emma wishes every single moment could go slower or that she had videotaped this raucous pre-reunion Gilford sisters’ reconciliation bash.

Just as the non-fighting miracle Emma had hoped for has been happening.

Just as Emma has realized her sisters love her all of the time—not
just
when she helps with their chores.

And then it was time for what Emma really needed, really wanted, really had to know about their father.

It had not been an easy year because they all knew their father was going to die and they all knew that Marty was going to act like he was not going to die. Marty was so strong and among the three of them—the older sisters, the ones who still occasionally thought of Emma as “the baby”—they can only remember a few times when they saw Marty cry, saw her break down. Only Debra can remember listening to her mother’s sobs seeping under the bedroom door where they know Marty had stuffed towels and turned up the music so they could not hear her.

Their father was a gentle, kind man who seemed to always be on top of everything from yard work to his own job to his duties as a father and husband—until the illness leveled him. And then he could no longer leave the house, work, rise out of his bed, or whistle the hundreds of songs he must have known.

There were small signs before that. A missed step. Calling in sick for the first time in his entire life. Phone calls from doctors. Visits to so many hospitals it seemed as if their parents were never
home. Jars of medicine appearing on the counter. Their father was dying.

This is the part of the Sweetest Moment of Possible Salvation, when Erika, Debra and Joy clasp hands and then reach for Emma’s fingers. This is when they tell her how hard it got. How sick he really was and how Marty stretched herself so thin she almost disappeared.

This is when Louis, their long-tempered, smart, gentle father, began taking his daughters into his study one by one to talk, and to tell them to be brave, and to let them know that he wanted so much to be there to finish what he had started.

And you too, Emma. He talked to you about being brave, too.

Emma cannot remember.

She begs them to tell her what he said.

It was all about love. It was all about family. It was all about the Gilfords going on and remembering the good stuff and forgiving.

It was so much about forgiving.

Emma wants to know why so much of it is a blank beyond the gate in her mind that has kept out so many memories. Beyond the gate and beyond the stress and beyond what she does remember, which often seems like nothing more than a quick look through something that appears like dense fog.