The Shortest Distance Between Two Women (41 page)

With no father and no mother.

A mother who carried you inside of her womb for nine months, watched her ankles swell like cotton in water, her blood pressure rise with each pound, and her stomach, once flat enough to be used as a temporary glass holder on the beach, inflate to within an inch of exploding. A mother who loved you even before that and who surely blew it more than once but who was there with tender arms when she helped you purchase your first bra and who did not ask more than once to come into the dressing room when you said no. She was there even more tenderly when your first menstrual cycle started while you were on a field trip to the museum and hid in the bathroom until she could come and rescue you with clean clothes and supplies and then left without anyone but you ever knowing. There were rides and dinners and sleepovers and new clothes and warm baths and always clean sheets and a refrigerator that was never even close to being empty.

Even with the drinking, with the yelling, with the magical dissolution of almost every mother-daughter relationship in the universe when the daughter turns thirteen years old, there was still the good stuff.

There was.

Stephie finally sits up when she can no longer cry and Emma gets up quickly to get the box of tissues because there isn’t much of her blouse left to use.

“Better, sweetheart?” Emma asks tenderly.

“You know, you sound like Grandma when you talk like that.”

“I do?”

“Yep. It’s kind of nice.”

“That’s sweet.”

“There you go again. I guess you can’t help it. You are so nice, Auntie Em, and sometimes when I am a shit I wish I was even more like you, and more like Grandma, too. Grandma rocks.”

Emma can’t help but say one more thing. One thing that might help Stephie understand something she has herself just come to realize in the past few weeks.

She sits back down, curves her left arm around Stephie’s waist, then tells her that there are probably things Joy has never told her. Things Joy may have never told anyone, maybe not even herself. Things that might someday allow Stephie to add her mother’s name to her list of female heroines.

“There’s a reason your mom is like this and we may never know what that is unless she tells us, but it’s something she has to address or, well, Stephie, she has to do this or her life will just get worse.”

Stephie says she knows and that she also thinks people are allowed to have lives within their lives and that not every thought or action or incident in that life needs to be put on public display.

“Mom is angry about something, that’s for damn sure,” Stephie finally says as she turns to hug Emma, to thank her for letting her be herself, and for letting it all go.

“It’s kind of a crapshoot, don’t you think?”

“Well, they don’t serve drinks at the community center and there will be a bus full of us to take care of her …”

Of course, Stephie suddenly remembers, half-jokingly hitting herself in the side of the head with her own hand. All the rest of the Gilfordites will be attending the pageant, driven there in a rented bus that is normally used to transport senior citizens to dental and doctor appointments and to every strip mall in and out of the city.

The mere thought of her relatives all jumping out of the bus and walking into the community center makes her laugh. It will be a parade. A sideshow event. A happening inside of a happening and suddenly she cannot wait to see it all unfold.

“You know, I realize I don’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of winning this stupid thing, but I’m having a blast, and with all my whacked-out relatives coming I’m pretty sure I will be leaving a lasting memory in this lovely community,” Stephie says as she carefully takes off the lime green dress and drapes it across the kitchen chair.

Before she allows herself to answer the question, Emma holds the dress up against her, and is amazed that it still makes her skin look like the color of a moon-filled summer night sky.

“It’s the
or what,”
Emma manages to say as she looks for a quick way through the crowd so she can find her niece. “But we liked the movie, too.”

The man does not move as the Gilfords file out of the bus one
after another, grinning and carrying an assortment of banners and signs.

Emma turns once to make certain that Joy, who appeared sober, well dressed and excited when they stopped to pick her up, is still behaving, and that Marty and Robert make it off the bus in one piece, even though Susie Dell, who has already become the life of the party, is hovering over the two of them as if they are incapable of walking off a bus without assistance. And who should be accompanying lovely Susie Dell but Uncle Mikey, who hopped on the bus with a bouquet of flowers for Susie Dell and another one for the would-be beauty queen.

The only one missing, Susie Dell dared not say, was Samuel. Samuel, who had not called or been called since he missed a series of airplanes.

The bus nonetheless has already been an absolutely hysterical and fun experience, mostly because Rick had the bright idea to call the bus driver and tell him to let everyone, especially Joy, know that alcoholic drinks were
not
allowed inside the vehicle. And then Janet, of all people, showed up at Joy’s house before the bus was due to arrive, to make believe she was going to do some last-minute work with Stephie, but her real job was to keep Joy occupied and sober.

Janet talked nonstop, would not even take a breath to give Joy a second to suggest having a drink, which she may have done anyway the one moment when Janet had to use the bathroom. They made a dozen banners and posters, cooked dinner, and then the bus pulled up in Joy’s driveway and a very sober Joy stepped inside of it.

Emma had been the first one picked up. Sitting alone in the bus was the only quiet time she thought she might have for the next few hours, or possibly the next twenty-four years. Although
Rick had organized the Bus-a-Go-Go, she had had to handle a flurry of phone calls about the pageant, the arrival back into Higgins of the happy bridal couple, Susie Dell’s seven thousand questions about Uncle Mikey, the one question about Samuel when Emma said no, she still had not called him back, and oh yes, there was work at the computer factory—a.k.a. her “real” job—and a round of fertilizing that needed to be completed, which had left about an hour for sleeping and eating since the day of the wedding and the prom dress alteration.

The bus driver, who is at least eighty years old, adjusted his seat belt straps for such a long time Emma wondered at first if he remembered he was actually driving the bus, but the pause gave her a chance to also wonder, if she did ever get more of a life, where in the heck would she put it? Well, she could bring a date to any and everything, or a husband if such a thing were ever to occur; the pageant would be over in a matter of hours and with it the need for seam sewing, personal coaching or wiping pre-pageant tears; the intervention, which might land more than one person in the hospital, would be over in the next twenty-four hours; Erika would be on her way back to Chicago—unless she got the job, which was something that would be fabulous; Marty would soon be more than occupied, what with her recent retirement as Gilford Commander-in-Chief and her new husband, and Emma thought then maybe, just maybe, she could have a few days in solitary confinement to count her recently discovered blessings.

Just as she sighed sweetly at that thought, and was relishing the prospect of the pageant, she also realized the bus driver had absolutely no idea where he was going and, from the look of the street signs, was headed for the discount store on the other side of town.

“Sir,” Emma yelled from her seat, “you need to turn around because you are going in the wrong direction.”

He smiled, pulled over to the side, put up his right hand, dropped his head as if he was trying to remember something, which of course he was, and just as Emma moved to the end of her seat and tried to recall if she had ever driven a bus, he shouted, “I’ve got it!” and turned the van around as if he was a performance race car driver.

“What, Mom?” Debra asked as if Marty was lying. “You want us to just pull over and ask people if they want to go to the Miss Higgins pageant and then invite them to hop in for a free ride and hand them a
Stephie for Queen
poster?”

“Yes, darling,” Marty answered from the very last seat, where she was cuddling with Robert.

“Seriously?” Debra shouted while Joy started snorting into her hands, which made her look like she was praying and everyone on the bus secretly thought that was not such a bad idea at all.

Robert did not hesitate. He braced his knees, which apparently had been getting quite a workout lately, against the forward seats as he walked towards the driver, and then scanned the sidewalks for pedestrians.

“Pull over, fine sir,” he ordered.

Marty was in the back chuckling as Robert hopped out and approached a group of innocent bystanders. Emma and everyone
else watched in amazement and glee as he bravely gestured towards the bus, probably mentioned the words “lime green dress,” and managed to lure a lovely young couple and their three children right through the accordion-like doors.

Five down and five to go.

The nieces and nephews, Bo, Riley, Kendall, Chloe and especially Tyler, who would always remember this night as the beginning of the second phase of his young life—the first being Pre-Gilford and the second being Forever-Gilford—had pulled down the windows and were hanging waist-high out of them in total amazement at what they were not only a part of but what could possibly happen next.

“Oh my God,” Tyler admitted, “if I was in Chicago tonight I’d be like in some dumb summer school math program, working at this dumbass job my mother got for me at the shoe store, and then thinking of some dumbass things to do after all of that when my parents were not looking.”