“I thought at least this one would go to college,” my mother was saying, and then she covered her mouth with her hands.
I looked at her. Maybe I already was a failure in her eyes.
She pulled a hand from her mouth and put it on my wrist and held it there. “I’m sorry, Moonie.”
“It’s fine. I like my life.”
“I’m all over the place these days.”
“You don’t have to live my life, so don’t you worry about it.” I was yelling now. I did not know where this anger was coming from. I stood up. My whole body was tall and felt hard. My forehead was heating up.
“Moonie,” said my mother. Her voice was cracking, and the cigarette trembled between her fingertips, the smoke wavering with the motion. “Don’t you hate me, too.”
I could imagine for a moment how sad my mother must have been. She had wanted so much more for herself, and had hoped we wanted the same. If we had been bolder and flew higher, she could have at least lived through us.
It was a weird logic that ruled her life, though she never would have admitted it: in order to be closer to her, we would make our lives different from hers. Jenny maybe had big dreams, but she let her mistakes get in the way. I was too small town though. I had small dreams. I could only see as far as the edge of the highway in one direction, and the thick forest of cornfields in the other direction. If I were a bird, I would never fly south for winter; I would ask that someone put me in a cage in a nice warm home and raise me as their own. It could be a fine life for my mother, too, if she had only accepted it as her own. She had resigned herself, sure, I saw that every time she pulled the beer can to her pretty, crumbling lips. But she had never accepted it.
“WHERE DID SHE WANT TO GO?” said Valka. “What did she want to do?”
“I do not know,” I mumbled. “France, I guess.”
“But you said she turned right around and came back.” Valka offered me the bottle of champagne again. I shook my head no. “She sounds like a coward to me.” Valka seemed settled with this judgment.
“Could be,” I said, but I knew that was not the truth either. She got lost in the city. That would scare anyone.
I TOOK A PULL OFF my beer and when I looked up my mother was trembling. “You know I will always love you and I will never, ever leave you,” I said. She smiled such a brutal smile, like it was at all these angles, pursed in the middle, down on one end, up on the other. I did not even know if you could call it a smile. It was something to see. My mother was really something.
I did hug her goodbye when I left. I had to touch her. I did not like the idea of her feeling alone, even if she had done it to herself. I pictured her sitting in her bath-robe at the kitchen table, crying into her Budweiser, hungering for the press of flesh upon hers, even just for a few seconds. I thought it was the least I could do. I wanted to tell her to be careful though, to warn her. But she was a grown woman, on her own at the same time. She should be able to take care of herself. A part of me knew though: Who was I kidding? I would be back again.
“YOU CAN’T ESCAPE your family,” said Valka.
“Sure you can,” I said, and then at last I took a swig of champagne.
I THOUGHT ABOUT JENNY and my mother as I drove to the diner. It was just a short ride, through the downtown and just to the other side, past the library, but I drove slow and cautious, my mind thick with worry. I waved to a few people I knew as I drove: Kira Lynn, an old classmate of mine now pregnant with her third baby, who was driving a minivan full of baby seats and drywall for her husband’s construction business; Prairie, a girl who worked in the Internet café and went to school with Jenny; and white-haired Fred Folsom, the town groundskeeper, as he drove around the lawn of the library on his mower. I liked knowing everyone in town. It made me feel safe. My breathing returned to normal. My skin cooled. I was myself again.
At the diner, I sat on the stool and waited for Timber to finish his business with other customers. There were only a few down at the end of the counter, the last stragglers from the after-church crowd. Not one of the booths was full. I pictured the place when it was full; it was like it was breathing in deep then, sucking in all the life and energy and noise of the town, and then, come 3 P.M, there was a big exhale, and suddenly there was nothing left but a few gasps of air.
Timber finally came down to greet me.
“What are you doing up front today?” I said.
“I’m working the floor now,” he said. “I graduated.” He put his hands over his head and clasped them like a champion. His arms were so skinny. Every part of him had always been narrow. He looked like he would bend with the wind like a willow tree. “Pop said, ‘I’ve been on my feet for thirty years, and you know what? My feet are tired.’ ”