Chasing Rainbows A Novel - By Long, Kathleen Page 0,28
my front door, wondering how many more steps I’d accumulated in the process.
o0o
A pair of feet showed beneath the bumper of my mother’s car when I parked in front of My mother’s house later that day.
“Mark?” I asked as I climbed out of the driver’s seat.
“How’s it going?” my brother answered.
“Good.” I shrugged, not that he could see me. Whatever he was doing had him so preoccupied, he didn’t move from his position. “You?” I asked his feet.
“Same. Mom’s inside.”
The front door sat slightly ajar, so I pushed my way inside. My mother appeared from the kitchen, pressed a kiss to my cheek and wrapped me in a hug. If she could bottle and sell the security and love I felt just then, she’d make a small fortune.
“What’s Mark doing?” I straightened and jerked my thumb toward the driveway.
“Someone hit my car up at the market. He’s trying to bang out the dent and touch-up the paint.” She looked through the storm door and smiled at my brother’s feet.
“So why is he under your car?”
“I’m sure he knows what he’s doing.”
An irrational bubble of emotion sprang to life inside me, a mix of jealousy and guilt. Mark had apparently rushed right over to help my mother fix her car when I still hadn’t looked at the paperwork I’d promised to take care of.
I cut my eyes toward the top of the stairs, hoping Dad would appear from his office, reading glasses in one hand, crossword puzzle in the other. He’d smile and tell me not to worry so much, and that thought just made me miss him more.
Silence hung over my mother and me, as if she knew exactly what I was thinking.
I wondered how many times she stood in this same spot and stared up at the door to the office, praying she’d imagined everything that had happened. Wishing Daddy would appear at any moment--alive and laughing.
“You won’t believe the nightmare I had,” she’d say, and then they’d happily sit out back on their porch and listen to big band music as they read the paper.
“You ready to go?” Her voice cut through my thoughts, her tight, choked tone not escaping my notice.
I nodded as she gathered up a pair of rubber gloves, a small jug of water and a bucket she’d left by the front door. I didn’t ask her what they were for. I already knew.
Once, when we’d visited Emma’s grave, the brass marker had been caked with mud, and the sight had brought me to my emotional knees. It was hard enough to visit the cemetery, but the dirt and unkempt marker had added insult to injury.
My mother had gone prepared to scrub ever since.
I wondered if I would have been that sort of mother if Emma had lived. I hoped so.
“Where are you two going?” Mark called out as we climbed into my car. He’d emerged from beneath Mom’s Buick and stood frowning at the fender.
“Running some errands,” my mother answered. “We’ll be back in a little bit. There’s lunchmeat in the fridge if you get hungry.”
“Why don’t you tell him the truth?” I asked after we’d both shut our doors and sat safely out of earshot inside my car. “Tell him today’s his niece’s birthday and we’re going to the cemetery. She’s my daughter, Mom, not an errand.”
I regretted my sharp tone as soon as I spoke the words, but my mother merely gave me a tight smile and patted my knee. “Everyone grieves differently, honey.”
No kidding.
“Did he pick one of Dad’s jackets yet?” I was not about to let this go. It felt good to sink my teeth into something, even if it was at my brother’s expense.
“Give him some time.”
Our family had done an oddly polite dance around each other for as long as I could remember. Sometimes, I wanted to scream, but my mother’s voice was so flat when she answered me, I knew I’d better shut up.
“Sorry,” I mumbled.
“Nothing to be sorry for.” But she turned her head toward the window, as if she didn’t want me to see her face. “And don’t mumble. Nothing drove your father crazier than your mumbling.”
I rolled my eyes and pulled the car out onto the street.
We didn’t say another word to each other until I’d parked along the side of the lane next to Emma’s cemetery section. My mother and I climbed out. She grabbed the bucket and gloves as I reached for the water.