stay with him, and I wanted to stay in California. I wanted both, but both wasn’t a choice. I didn’t know if I had made the right decision, and I wanted someone, anyone, to tell me what I should do. Trying to figure this out felt like being pulled apart down the middle, with Dad tugging on one arm and Mom on the other. I tried concentrating on the happy parts of my trip—the player piano and the bowls of spaghetti with my new Italian relatives—but knowing I could only borrow them made me cry even harder.
The stewardess returned and knelt down in the aisle and handed me a tissue. She patted my arm and told me everything was going to be all right. I looked away from her stupid promises. She didn’t know me, and she didn’t know what was wrong, and she was just saying that because I was making the other passengers uncomfortable. I kept crying at full tilt, ignoring the coloring book, crayons and Cracker Jacks she placed in my lap. I wept until my nose was so stuffed up I couldn’t cry anymore. I leaned my head against the round window, closed my eyes and wished the heavens above would swallow me whole.
I slept fitfully on the flight, cycling through a pattern of waking up, wondering where I was, remembering, and going numb all over again. By the time the plane touched down, I was cranky, hungry and a bit more skeptical of the us-versus-him family tree Mom and Granny had drawn for me.
Granny was waiting for me at the airport gate, and to my surprise Mom was standing by her side. I took this as a sign that Mom must have missed me. I relaxed a bit; perhaps California was the right decision. We made small talk on our way to the car, me answering that the weather was nice and that the trip was good. Yes, it was “nice” to see my father.
“That’s nice,” Granny said.
We had a two-hour drive ahead of us, and I stretched out on the back seat, while Granny started the engine. Mom snapped on her seat belt in the passenger seat. Then she turned around to face me.
“What does she look like?”
It took me a second to figure out whom she meant.
“I don’t know. She has dark hair.”
“What do you mean, ‘you don’t know’? Is she prettier than me?”
I picked at my fingernails rather than tell the truth.
“How old is she?”
I told Mom that I hadn’t asked.
“Well, would you say she looks younger or older than me?”
I turned my head away and stared at the ceiling.
“Meredith! Did you hear me?”
I tried to say I was tired. I tried to fall asleep. Granny drove in silence as Mom interrogated. I tuned her out until her words were a blur, and I transported my body back to Stella’s house, with the marinara sauce bubbling on the stove and Grandpa Duke cracking open a beer and talking about his golf game as Dad pretended to be interested in the sport. Uncle Roland was in the driveway, patching a hole in his canoe. Uncle Jeff was pushing me in the tire swing. A football game was on in the background.
Mom wanted to know if I had retrieved everything on her list.
Granny kept her eyes on the road. “Answer your mother,” she ordered.
I mumbled that I only had the baby pictures. Mom wrinkled her face as if she had just sniffed a carton of expired milk.
“Meredith, dammit! I told you! One simple thing. You can’t even do one simple thing!”
Mom and Granny argued back and forth over whether I should call Dad when we got home and demand he mail the missing items, or if Granny should write him another letter. Mom wanted me to call immediately and let her listen in. Granny talked her back down, and they finally agreed to try a letter first. Their side conversation gave me fifteen minutes in peace. Then Mom turned her attention back to me.
She asked me about Dad’s new house. How big it was. What kind of cars they drove. Did D’Ann cook? What did she cook? I gave one-word answers, which only angered her more. She threw up her hands.
“What did you do, sleep the whole time?”
I told her we went to church on Sunday. Mom snorted in disgust.
“She’s Catholic, isn’t she? What does her family think about all this? Divorced Catholics aren’t allowed to remarry, you know!”
I lost my patience and kicked