Even though I hadn’t exercised in any consistent way for the entirety of my marriage, I’d hoped my muscles had excellent memory and I’d magically get back to running without the awkward walk/jog stage. I started off strong, tearing down Southeast Dolphin Road at what felt like a respectable pace. It was only five houses’ worth of distance, but I was crushing it, even with a hangover.
I stopped to wait for a car so I could cross the street, and when I tried to pick up speed again it was agony. My body had warmed up and was telling me to fuck off. My fat hurt; thighs swooshing and crashing with every step. Muscle memory counts for jack shit when everything jiggles. I ran harder than my lungs could handle and stopped at the end of each street, holding the stitch in my side, gasping for air, until I had enough breath to take off again. The sweat made my skin itch. When I scratched my legs, welts appeared in the marks my nails left.
I saw Mo from across the street, sprinting like a gazelle in short shorts and a sports bra, unaffected by all the tequila.
“Kay!” she shouted. “Do you want to run together?”
I shook my head. She crossed the street in a few graceful strides.
“How come you stopped?” she asked.
“Are you okay?” Her abs were tan and taut. She wasn’t even breathing hard.
“I’m . . .” Gasp. “Doing . . .” Gasp. “Interval training,” I said, hoping she’d allow me some dignity by pretending to believe me.
She laughed. “You look like you’re about to pass out. Come on! Run with me.”
“Then I will pass out.”
“Hysterical!” she said, shoving my sweaty arm. She wiped her hand on her shorts and started jogging. “So fun last night,” she called over her shoulder. “We need to do that again soon!” Then she was a blur, turning the corner.
I looped back on Carnation Road, doing a slow jog that was more like a limp. By the time I’d gotten to Bitsie’s house, I was flat-out walking.
Bitsie was outside in Bunny’s floppy straw hat, watering plants. “Look what the cat hacked up!” she shouted.
“Sometimes people say nice things,” I yelled. “Like ‘Hi’ or ‘Good morning.’ ”
Bitsie laughed. “How ’bout ‘Coffee!’ ”
“Nicest thing I ever heard.”
She handed me the hose. “This one, and then that one,” she said, pointing at Bunny’s rosebushes.
I watered until the ground was damp, but not soggy, like Bunny taught me. I used to house-sit for them when they went out of town. Bunny had a morning garden routine that took the better part of an hour. It was strange to think of Bitsie taking over. She wasn’t usually patient in that way, but the roses were still vibrant.
Bitsie came out with two mugs of coffee and handed me one. We sat on the stoop. I tried not to scratch my legs.
“I told Bun we should go with native plants,” Bitsie said. “Less work. Less water. And here I am, watering these roses by hand every morning because she swore the sprinkler flooded the roots.” She leaned over to sniff one of the orange Gypsy roses, pulling the bloom toward her. “They’re worth the work, aren’t they?” She held the stem for a moment longer, like she was holding hands with the rosebush.
“Bunny told me the work was the whole point.”
Bitsie smiled. “That sounds like Bunny.” She took a sip of coffee. “Ladies at your place?”
I nodded.
“I need one morning off, you know?”
I raised my eyebrows.
“Oh, don’t look shocked,” she said. “You know you have a limit too. That’s what this is, right?” She gestured to my shorts.
It was funny to hear her admit she had the same need for retreat, although it made sense when I thought about it. Bitsie was always the one to volunteer to run to the store for a forgotten stick of butter, to mind the roux that needed stirring in the kitchen, or rock someone’s fussy grandbaby to sleep in the other room. But when she was on, she was on. The life of the party. I’d always assumed it was effortless.
“There’s a name for what we are, Kay,” Bitsie said, clinking her coffee mug against mine.
“Yeah?”
“Introverts. Such a beautiful term, isn’t it? When I was your age, they called it ‘weird.’ ”
“Have you been reading internet memes?” I asked, laughing.
“I don’t know what that is.” She shook her head. “Bunny bought me a book about introverts. It made me realize that it’s okay to take some space when you need it.”
“You, though? You’re so . . .”
“Loud?” she said.
“I was going to say ‘loquacious.’ ”
“Don’t pull your fancy college words on me!” She nudged my shoulder with hers.
“Fine. Loud,” I said, nudging back.
“There was a lot of pressure to have personality when I was younger. My mother used to tell me, ‘You’ll never be pretty, but you can be charming.’ ”
“That’s terrible!”
“I know!” she said, swirling the coffee around in her mug. “And she meant it to be hopeful. Like I could still find a way to be okay.”
“I think you’re beautiful,” I said. No one else’s eyes sparkled quite so brightly.
“I’ve got a beak like a toucan and a neck like a turtle,” Bitsie said, “so the charm must be working on you.”
“Oh, Bits!”
“I never had my own kids, of course,” Bitsie said, “but I think every mother should believe her little girl is the most beautiful being in the whole wide world.” She tapped my knee. “And then she should tell her she’s smart, funny, and kind, instead.”
I forced a smile, remembering my mother telling me it was too bad I’d inherited my father’s cleft chin. “It’s weird on a girl,” she said, smoothing foundation on my face before the third grade play. It was the tiniest cleft. Barely even noticeable. Gone, once I gained a little weight when I hit puberty, but her attention to it made me feel like I was walking around with the Grand Canyon right there at the end of my face. Every picture through fifth grade has me chin in hand, like a serious 1980s businessman.
“What are you thinking when your face gets like that?” Bitsie asked.
“Like what?”
“Beautiful. And smart, and funny, and kind, of course. But faraway. Like you’re gone.”
“Something my mom said about my chin being weird.”
“Good lord! You were a stunning child. Those big brown eyes. You charmed the heck out of all of us, and you barely even said a word. I don’t know how anyone could have looked at that sad little face and tried to break your heart.”
“It was just a stupid thing about my chin,” I said, pulling a baby dandelion sprout from the dirt, slowly, so the root wouldn’t break.
“I heard how she talked to you, kiddo. After your dad died, when she brought you to visit. It wasn’t nice things she said.”
I broke the stem of the dandelion and sniffed it. Bitsie was right. I remembered the disgusted sighs when I didn’t move quickly enough if my mother asked me to do something. The glares I’d get across the dinner table for nothing in particular. After my father died, she got more and more annoyed with me. Nothing I said or did would make it better. At least not in any reliable way. But it didn’t stop me from trying. Again and again, until she was gone.
“I think,” Bitsie said, “sometimes mothers attack when they feel raw about the parts of themselves they don’t like.”
“Maybe,” I said, twisting the two pieces of dandelion together. The white sap made my fingers sticky.
Bitsie smiled at me. “Hey, did you see all of Bunny’s fabric in the sewing room?”
“Yeah.”
“You should have it.”
“Oh no,” I whispered. It felt like too much to take. Those fabrics were the remainders of Bunny’s life story. “I could make you clothes. I saw a pretty sundress pattern in her files, and she has some nice ginghams.”
“No,” Bitsie said, tapping Bunny’s hat. “This is one thing. I can wear it at home. And sometimes I sleep in one of her shirts, but those are messy nights.” She sighed. “If I tried to wear her clothes to Publix, I’d end up wailing in the produce aisle.”
I felt that way about my dad’s old shirts. They lived in a box in Nan’s attic.
“Same with her fabric,” Bitsie said. “I remember all the times she dragged me to the store and labored over which print to choose. They look like her. I can’t go around wearing memories and expect myself to act like a normal human being.”
“We can leave it all right where it is,” I said. “I don’t need to—”
“Bunny would want you to have her fabric,” Bitsie said. “I am certain of it. Make yourself something. That’s what I’d like. To see her memories spread around.”
“If I do and it’s not okay, you promise you’ll tell me?”
“Promise,” she said, and squeezed my arm. “You coming to sew today?”
“Yeah.” I stood up. “I think I can get those curtains done and hung this afternoon.” I crumpled the dandelion remains in my hand. “And maybe we can talk about your tail.” I laughed as soon as I said it.
“My tail is worth talking about!” Bitsie said, laughing too.
“Thanks for the coffee.” I handed her my empty mug.
“You can hide over here any time you want.”
“Thank you,” I said, thinking Friday morning jogs would have to become a regular thing.
“Don’t tell them I’m awake yet!” Bitsie called when I was halfway down the driveway.
I carried the dandelion on my jog back to Nan’s and threw it in the garbage can in the garage so there was no way its offspring could invade Bunny’s roses.