Dany
After the burial, I stand with Sylvie, Gerry, Cleo and my mother at the graveside. The drizzle that began days ago is finally starting to clear. A little ray of sun twinkles on the pink and white of the granite headstone. Matilda is resting next to Steve.
“Darling, how about your friends come over for early dinner?” asks my mother.
She twists her hands together and has a hesitant half smile on her face.
“That’s really nice, but what about…”
“Your father?”
I nod.
She shrugs then tilts her face to the sky.
“He’s in Chicago,” she says. She closes her eyes and her shoulders sag.
“Why is he in Chicago?” I have the urge to reach out and take her hand. She doesn’t look like my formidable mother. She looks lost.
“He left me weeks ago, darling. Your father decided that I was an old hag with neck wrinkles and he’d rather be with his twenty-two-year-old intern.”
I shake my head and stare at her in shock. “But you said I couldn’t stay because you were having a second wind. Boinking on the printer—”
“Fax machine.”
“Fine, making dirty on the fax machine.”
“That was your father and the intern. That’s where I found them copulating.”
I thread my fingers through hers. I had no idea.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I was embarrassed,” she says.
“What? Why?”
“He’s right. I have neck wrinkles. Saggy breasts. I’m a tacky sixty-year-old attempting to look like a twenty-something—”
“Mother—”
“He said I embarrassed him. That everyone but me knew I was over the hill. That makeup can’t hide old.”
“Mom—”
“Darling.” She turns and takes both my hands.
I look at her pristinely applied makeup, her perfectly sculpted brows, her dyed blonde hair. I don’t see tacky or old, I see my classy mom.
“He’s wrong,” I say.
She shakes her head and drops my hands. “He’s right. My whole life I’ve put on my face in the morning, made myself the picture perfect wife, just so he wouldn’t leave. So you would have a father.”
“Oh, Mom.”
She presses a tissue to her eyes. “I’ve spent nearly twenty years being Mrs. John Drake. Designer clothing, makeup, cocktail parties, concentrating on pleasing him. Daniella, I don’t know who I am if I’m not…I don’t have anything else. I don’t know who I am if not his wife.”
She drops her head and sniffs into her tissue.
I sigh.
I understand. Oh boy, do I understand.
It looks like my mother passed down more than her hair color.
I hold out my hand to her.
She looks up and frowns.
“Hello,” I say.
“Pardon?”
“Hello, I’m Dany. I like to dance, sing to eighties music, be spontaneous, and garden. I just lost a good friend, but I’ve gained friends too.”
My mom tilts her head and her lips wobble. Then she reaches out and shakes my hand.
“Hello, I’m Bernice. I hate makeup and tight dresses. I love tacos, reading trashy books, and cooking. I just lost my husband, but I hope I’m gaining my daughter.”
There is such an air of hope. It’s like the spring morning before the first bulb pokes its green leaves through the cold ground. I take a breath.
“Nice to meet you,” I say.
A smile blossoms on her face.
“Nice to meet you, too.”
Then we’re hugging.
Thirty minutes later we’re all in the kitchen at my childhood home.
“Who knew? Dany is little miss money bags. Did you see the bathroom? The soap has 24 karat gold flecks in it. Tell me, do you wipe your tush with dollar bills?” asks Gerry.
I choke on a laugh.
“Rude,” says Cleo.
Gerry shrugs. “Truth is rude.”
“Sit down and eat,” I say. I point at the long butcher block table. On one side there’s a low bench, on the other, comfy upholstered chairs.
My mom’s at the stove. She brings over tacos, five cheese nachos, and guacamole.
The kitchen is French farmhouse chic. To me, it always felt cold. Until now. I guess what it was missing was friends.
“Tell us the rest of the story, Gerry. We want to hear about David,” says Sylvie.
“Humph,” says Cleopatra.
I reach for a chip and dip it in the tomatillo salsa. “This is really good,” I say.
My mom beams at me. For the first time in my memory, she’s in jeans and a blouse.
I turn. The girls are all looking at me.
“Oh, sorry. No interruptions.”
“Wait, who’s David?” asks my mom. She’s at the stove again plating up enchiladas. She’s a cooking wonder.
“A figment of Gerry’s imagination,” says Cleo.
“He’s the love of Gerry’s life. She went searching for him across the world,” I say.
“Ooh,” says my mom. She plops the enchiladas on the table, then slides onto the bench.
Karl brings a tray in from the bar full of drinks. I grab the glass of watermelon agua fresca.
“Have a seat,” I say.
“Thank you, Miss,” says Karl.
“Enough interruptions,” says Sylvie.
Gerry begins.
“From Finland, I traveled to China. I traced David to the Tarim Basin in Northwest China. There, I learned of a foreigner who was working on a peach plantation. I was certain, absolutely certain that I’d found my David. I arrived at the plantation during harvest time. I ran down the rows of trees. Searching the faces of the men and women picking. Finally, at the end of the day, when dusk arrived and the sky turned as dusky orange as the fruit on the trees, I found him.”
“He’s real?” asks Cleo. Her mouth is a perfect O of disbelief.
“No interruptions,” says my mom.
I laugh. It’s like Matilda is still here enforcing the no interruption rule.
“Slowly, I made my way to him. His hair was glinting bronze in the setting sun. All my dreams had come true. My David. Thousands of peach trees. They’re considered the fruit of immortality in China. A good omen. I called out to him. He turned. He was happy to see me. Of course he was. An American man in China meeting an American woman. But…he wasn’t David.”
“I knew it,” says Cleo.
We all shush her.
“Bah,” she says.
“David’s trail was cold. Any whisper of him had disappeared. As dead as a peach pit in winter. I went home. And gave up my search.”
“Ugh,” I say.
“This one doesn’t have a happy ending?” asks my mom.
“Oh, it does,” says Sylvie.
Gerry nods. “It does. I met and married my husband Russ. He owned the Five and Dime here in Stanton. We had thirty-eight fabulous years before he passed.”
I crunch down hard on a tortilla chip. “Why didn’t you start with that?” I ask.
“Because chemo is painfully boring and I like stories.”
Sylvie snorts, “Take up knitting.”
Gerry’s eyes twinkle. “And I wanted to show that every apparent tragedy brings an equal or greater opportunity.”
“Bah, fortune cookie blather,” says Cleo.
“You never heard from David?” I ask, not quite ready to let it go.
“Never,” she says with a smile. “But if he popped up today, I’d marry him. I’m too old to bother with preliminaries. I want the juicy bits right now.”
“Humph,” says Cleo.
“So that’s how the story ends,” I say. I sigh. I really wanted Gerry to find her David.
“Wasn’t real,” says Cleo.
I start to laugh. Then everyone joins in.
We stuff ourselves with nachos, tacos, and enchiladas and talk into the night.