While I'm Falling (28 page)

Before she picked me up in the morning, she cleaned the van. She didn’t just get all the boxes and blankets and small appliances out of the back. She took it to a car wash and dropped in quarters to use a vacuum. I imagine she was the only person there, snow flying in on the upholstery, all the doors opened to the cold. But the van looked good. There was no more dried kibble rolling around on the floor mats. The plastic straw wrappers, dog hair, and used hand wipes had been sucked away from every crevice and nook. A circle-shaped deodorizer that smelled like lilacs dangled from the rearview mirror.

Just before we got to the airport, she took the deodorizer down and put it under her seat. She caught me looking at her.

“It looked a little trashy,” she said.

Elise got off the plane wearing jeans, a billowy shirt, and flip-flops. Her light brown hair was streaked with gold and pulled back in a ponytail. She carried no bag, just several folders full of paper. She started to yawn, but as soon as she saw us, she smiled. My mother and I got to her at the same time. When I went to hug her, she tucked the folders under her arm and tickled my ribs. She kept doing it until I laughed and screamed.

“Girls,” my mother said. “Girls!” But she was laughing a little, too. She stopped when she looked at Elise’s bare toes.

“Honey,” she said. “It’s snowing!”

“Don’t worry. I brought boots.” Even in flip-flops, Elise was taller than both of us. “And a coat. Do you remember my luggage? It’s silver? Can you watch the carousel for it? I have to pee. I’m dying.” She handed me the folders full of legal-sized paper. “Here,” she said. “Hold these.”

My mother and I watched her walk away, flip-flops slapping on the floor.

“She looks good,” my mother said quietly. I knew what she meant. Elise was naturally tall and thin, but when she was under stress, she could lose so much weight that her head looked too big for her body, her face gaunt, all the color gone. These bouts never lasted long, but my mother had worried about them for fifteen years. Given the way my sister had described her life in California, I think both my mother and I had expected her to be too thin. But she looked fine. She looked healthy, even curvy, her backside swinging as she disappeared into the restroom.

“What’d you get her?”

“For Christmas?” I turned around on my tiptoes, searching for the bag carousel. “A candle holder.” That was another lie. I had already gift wrapped my “Math Is Hard” Barbie for Elise. When I’d told her about it a year ago, she wanted one for herself, but she couldn’t find another on eBay. I didn’t want to talk about it with my mother, to have to analyze the doll again; why Elise might want it, why I no longer did. It just seemed like the perfect gift, not least of all because it was free and I didn’t have any money.

“What did you get her?” I asked.

“Earrings.” She frowned. “I don’t know if they’re right. I never know what she’ll like.”

By the time we left the airport, Elise was wearing a gray wool coat over a turtleneck and black pants that were somehow not wrinkled. She opened the side door of the van to put her bags in. “Why does it smell like bad perfume in here?” She waved a gloved hand in front of her face. “Oh my God. Lilacs? More like chemicals. Yuck!”

We rode with the windows down, snow coming in, Elise in the passenger seat. She told us about her irritating seatmate on the plane, a man who had not brought anything to occupy him during the flight. Apparently, he assumed it was Elise’s responsibility to converse with him, and he kept attempting to talk to her about the pitfalls of his job as an auto-parts salesman, even though it was clear she was trying to read.

“He wasn’t hitting on me,” Elise said. “He mentioned his wife twice. He just seemed to think I should be there for him. I should have brought crayons for him, I guess, or maybe stickers. After a while, I handed him the in-flight magazine. I thought that was pretty pointed, but he just kept gabbing, asking questions. I said, ‘Sorry I can’t talk. I’ve got to have these briefs read by Tuesday.’ So then he starts to ask me for legal advice! Some kind of property dispute with his cousin. He starts telling me about it. I’m serious. The whole time, I’ve got my glasses on, my head down. I’m clearly trying to read.” She smacked both hands against her forehead, just the way our father would have done it. “Finally, I go, ‘Excuse me, sir. I have work to do. I’m sorry you’re bored. But it’s not my problem. Don’t talk to me anymore.’ I hurt his feelings, I think. He sulked for the rest of the flight.”

In the backseat, I listened and wondered what I would have done if I had been on the airplane, held captive by the chatty man. I would have been annoyed, but I might have felt sorry for him. So I would have talked to him, and gotten even more annoyed, mostly with myself. There was much to admire in Elise: her straightforwardness, her courage. I’d been admiring her for these traits and more my whole life. It was comforting to think that she would have been a bad RA, to think that she would have lost her temper with Marley long before I did. But I wasn’t sure that was true. It had not been Elise’s job to entertain the man on the plane. That was the point she had made. If it had been her job, she would have excelled at it. She would have done it better than anyone else ever could.

“That always happens to me,” my mother said. “In waiting rooms, especially, I get next to a talker when I want to read a book. I’m never brave enough to be so firm.”

She pulled into the parking lot of a pizza parlor, explaining that not much was open on Christmas Eve and that I had said no to Indian. When we got out of the van, she exited on one side; Elise and I got out on the other. In those few seconds of separation, Elise hooked her arm in mine and lowered her mouth to my ear.

“How has she been?”

We were walking. I could see our mother’s head through the windows on the other side of the van. She cleared the corner, heading toward us around the back. In just a few steps, we would meet up.

“She’s fine,” I said. “She’s okay.”

Ordering pizza with Elise always required negotiation. The rules went back almost twenty years. We could get pepperoni if I was willing to give up green peppers. She would forgo olives if my mother allowed pineapple. She only wanted breadsticks if we could get them with cheese. When we reached an agreement, she made the final order, stacking all of our menus and handing them to the waitress. My mother looked at the edge of the table, smiling with just half of her mouth.

She shook her head and took a sip of water.

“You usually order right away. You’re a caffeine freak.”

“I’m turning over a new leaf.” She poked my knee under the table. “So how’s school? Are they letting you cut up dead bodies yet?”

My mother frowned. “Elise. We’re about to eat.”

I gave my mother an appreciative glance. She wasn’t at all squeamish. She’d just given me an out.

Elise clicked her tongue. “If she wants to be a doctor, it shouldn’t bother her.” But now she was looking at my mother. “Your hair is different.”

My mother touched the side of her head. “I’ve let it go. I know.”

It was true. I hadn’t noticed before, but now, even in the low light of the pizza parlor, I could see a definite horizontal line in her hair, almost at the level of her ears. Below the line, her hair was all dark, the same color as mine. Above the line, there were several curling strands of gray.

Elise nodded, with no further comment. “So how’s the mall? Do you like it? Is it fun?”

My mother nodded. She took a sip of water as she smiled. “It’s fine,” she said. In the center of the table was a flickering candle in a small red holder and a list of weekly specials encased in plastic. The list was green on one side, red on the other, and a little uneven in the frame. My mother picked it up and fixed it.

“How’s your new apartment? Where is it?”

My mother waved her hand as if clearing smoke. “It’s an apartment. Not much to say. I want to hear how you’re doing, honey.” She reached over to pat Elise’s hand. The diamond on Elise’s ring glinted brightly in the low light of the candle.

At the table next to ours, a man and woman sang “Happy Birthday” to a little girl. We all looked over and smiled.

Elise leaned forward, elbows on the table. “You really want to know how I’m doing?”

I sat back, ready to listen. For almost a year now, Elise had been telling us how busy she was, too busy to come home for a visit, too busy to even stay on the phone. But now, finally, here she was in the flesh, and though she often reminded my mother and me that we couldn’t possibly understand how much work she did, that really, we had no idea, I expected her to tell us all about it now. There would be funny impersonations of a demanding boss, maybe, or a needy client. She had my father’s small, blue eyes, and they were glimmering the way his did when he prepared to command our attention.

“Hmm. How am I doing?” She stretched back, her pale arms raised, her gaze moving over our heads. “Pretty good, I guess.” She smiled at me, and then at my mother. “I’m pregnant.”

My mother knocked over her water glass. “Oh!” she said, jumping a little. “Oh! I didn’t expect that at all!” She stood up to hug Elise, and her wrapped silverware fell to the floor.

Elise mouthed
Help me!
over my mother’s shoulder, though she was clearly enjoying the excitement.

“Hug you?” I asked, standing up. “You said you want me to hug you?”

When the waitress arrived with the pizza, Elise waved us both away.

“Okay, you two. Down. Sorry, yes, it’s wonderful, la la la, okay. I want to eat.” She thanked the waitress and reached between us to take a slice. “Whatever’s in there, boy or girl, it’s always hungry.”

I tried to stop staring. Her belly, if she had one yet, was hidden by the table. A boy or a girl. A niece or a nephew. Aunt Veronica, I would be. I used my napkin to sop up the spilled water. “Are you going to find out?”

She held up a finger, chewing. She covered her mouth with her hand. “Soon. In a month. I’m due in June.”

“It’s good you’re hungry,” my mother said, with something like doubt in her voice. Her face was still flush, excited. “With both of you girls, I was nauseous the whole time. Even in the second trimester.” She looked down at the pizza and wrinkled her nose. “Just the smell of this would have sent me over the edge.”

“That’s how I was just until a month ago.” Elise leaned back and rested her hand on her belly, and as soon as she did this, she looked pregnant. I couldn’t see any bump or swelling, but it just looked like something a pregnant woman did. “I felt like I was on a boat for two months,” she said. “Bobbing. Bobbing.” She crossed her eyes. “Even in my sleep, I was bobbing. I had to keep bags in my car. More in my desk. One in my briefcase.”

I ate and listened as they kept talking, about cravings, about fatigue. Elise had taken naps in her office, under her desk. My mother said she’d done the same when she was teaching, when her students had gone to lunch.

“Ginger helps,” she said. “Not for being tired, but for the stomach. I used to suck on candied ginger, I remember.”

My gaze rested on the candle in its little red holder, and their words moved over my head. This was a new situation. My mother and Elise were usually awkward together, hesitant, two strangers at a party hell-bent on talking but without much to say to one another. Now they had this thing between them. I already detected a shift, our old triangle changing slants.

“You have a good OB?” my mother asked. “You want to get references, Elise. It’s important.”

“Hmm.” She took a long sip of water. “Well. We thought we would wait and find an OB out here.” She blinked at both of us. “Since we’re moving back to KC in the spring.”

Bombshell number two. My mother looked too happy to breathe. It was like watching a game show where the prizes just get bigger and bigger, until the winning contestant goes into convulsions. My mother had just won a grandchild and both of her daughters living close to home. I was pretty happy, too. Maybe everything wouldn’t feel so over, so sad, once Elise came back.

She reached for another piece of pizza. “Charlie got a great offer, and he knew how much I wanted to come back here. They want him right away. He’ll start in February.” She rolled her eyes. “I’m the one who gets to stay behind and pack up all our stuff.”

“Oh, honey.” My mother looked a little crestfallen. “That’s a lot to do when you’re pregnant.” She shook her head, lips pursed. “And knowing you, you’ll work right up until you leave.”

We were quiet for a while. The birthday people had gotten up and left, and most of the tables were empty. “Crimson and Clover” played on a neon jukebox in the corner. We chewed and swallowed, all of us still smiling, but avoiding each other’s eyes. A question, I knew, hung in the air. My mother had her hand over her mouth.

“So you’ll get a job here, too?” I asked. I pretended to be fascinated with a string of cheese hanging off the side of my pizza. Half of what made Elise so intimidating was the way she could focus her gaze, making any question I asked feel stupid. “After the baby, I mean?”

“Nope.” She picked something off her shoulder, her nails manicured, her polish clear. “I’m just going to stay home with Junior for a while. Or Juniorette.”

“How long is a while?”

Elise chuckled, as if my mother had asked her about the weather in Australia, or how many seconds were in a year. “I don’t know. First grade?”

My mother put her pizza down. “Honey, you can’t be serious.”

Elise stopped chewing. She gave my mother the look—the long, steady gaze that said to any opponent,
You are about to be devoured.

“This is a problem for you?”

“Anyone want parmesan?” I held up the shaker. We all knew my dad’s old joke:
It’s a free topping. Learn to like it!

“Elise. You love your work.”

Elise raised her eyebrows and shook her head. “These days? Not so much. You know what it’s like? Remember when I was little I used to love Rice Krispie treats? Remember I used to beg you to make them? And then one day Veronica was sick and you went upstairs to lie down with her, and I stayed down in the kitchen and made a huge batch of Rice Krispie goo and then ate right out of the bowl before you came back downstairs. You remember that?”

“I remember,” I said, still holding the parmesan. Elise had thrown up the rest of the day, stealing my sickness thunder.

“Well it cured me. I haven’t wanted a Rice Krispie treat since. It’s been almost twenty years, and I can barely look at one at a bake sale. That’s kind of how I feel about work right now. I’ve had a little too much of it lately, and to tell the truth, it’ll be nice to have a little break.”

“Five years isn’t a little break.” My mother spoke through a frozen smile. “You could go back a little sooner? Part-time?”

I chewed more slowly, the pizza heavy and dry in my mouth. I was unnerved by the way our mother’s worried eyes moved back and forth between me and Elise. I didn’t think it was a fair comparison. I was only changing majors. What Elise was doing was more extreme.

Elise shook her head. “You know what part-time is at a law firm, Mom? About fifty hours a week. I’d like to actually know my child. And we can afford it. The cost of living is so much lower here.” She cocked her head, her face impassive. “Is there a reason you need me to work? Is there something going on with you?”

My mother lowered her gaze. “I’m just surprised,” she said.

“I don’t know why.” Elise took another bite of pizza. She used her napkin to daintily wipe her mouth. “I’ve always given a hundred percent to everything I’ve done. I don’t see why this should be any different.” She gazed out the window, out at big snowflakes, falling slowly, meandering to the ground. It was clear, from her placid expression, that she considered the matter closed.

My mother leaned forward, elbows on the table. “Because of money,” she said.

“Jingle Bell Rock” started up on the jukebox.

“Money isn’t a problem,” Elise said. “I just told you that.”

“Your money. You need your own money.”

Elise straightened her posture. “Our marriage is fine. I’m not you. Charlie isn’t Dad.” She took another bite of pizza. My mother still wasn’t eating. But Elise, like my father, had no problem eating and arguing at the same time. It was like breathing to them.

“You don’t know the future.” My mother’s voice wasn’t loud, but her tone was so firm, so certain, that someone at another table turned around. She fixed her gaze on Elise. “You should keep working. At least part-time.”

Elise waved the words away. “You haven’t practiced law. You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“And you haven’t been divorced. You don’t know how that works, Elise.”

Elise stopped chewing. She put her pizza down. She wiped her mouth with her napkin and looked away.

“Honey, I’m just trying to—”

“You’re confusing me with you,” she said. She looked back at my mother. “I’m the one who invests our money. My name is on every document. I balance our checkbook. It’s a partnership. It’s equal. And it will still be equal when I stay home.”

My mother covered her eyes with her hands. After a while, Elise glanced at me, worried. I looked away. A lot had happened since she’d last called me from California. There was much she did not yet know. I did not think our mother was crazy. I was not certain she was even wrong.

Elise reached across the table and squeezed her arm, her expression softer now. “You big hypocrite,” she said, smiling a little. I just want to be as good of a mother as you were. And you were so good, Mom. You’re telling me you regret it?”

I leaned forward, shaking my head, trying to make eye contact with Elise. She thought her questions were nice. She didn’t know just how bad things had gotten. She hadn’t seen all our mother’s things in the back of the van.

My mother looked up and shook her head. She did not appear especially pained. “No,” she said. “No, I don’t. I don’t regret what I did. But I don’t want you to do it.”

Elise sat back slowly, her smile turned into a smirk. In her mind, she’d just won the argument. “That doesn’t make any sense,” she said.

My mother shrugged. She looked at Elise and then at me. She pushed her half-eaten pizza away from her.

“It doesn’t,” she said. “I know.”