What We Keep - Elizabeth Berg [2]
Martha breathes out. “Jesus. I’m sorry.”
“Well.”
She touches my arm. “Are you all right?”
“Me? Yes! It’s … this is old. It’s so old. I didn’t intend ever to see my mother again, and I was perfectly comfortable with that. I won’t see her after this visit; I know that. I’m just doing this for my sister. Even though I don’t really think she’s sick. She can’t be.”
Martha nods, cracks an ice cube with her teeth, then looks at me, one eyebrow raised.
“Right,” I say. “I know.”
“I’ll tell you something,” Martha says. “I was in a cemetery last week, walking my dog. You’re not supposed to walk your dog there, so when I heard someone coming, I hid behind this big marker. I saw a woman stop just a few graves away. She knelt down and started talking out loud. She was apparently talking about one of her kids who was giving her a really hard time, and then she said, ‘I didn’t do that to you, Ma, did I? Did I?’ And then she lay down and just started crying. She cried so hard! It was one of those things where the grief is so raw, you can’t help yourself—you start crying, too. And when I started crying, my dog started barking. The woman looked up and saw me, of course. She got all embarrassed—jumped up and wiped her face, started straightening her clothes and rummaging around in her purse for something or other. And I felt terrible. It was terrible to have a dog there, those rules are absolutely right. I apologized, but I still felt like a jerk.
“All the way home, I wondered what that woman was crying about, what she had remembered. I wondered if other daughters talk to their mothers when they visit their graves, whether if, when my mother dies, I will. Seems like a good party question, doesn’t it?—What would you say at your mother’s grave? Well, maybe not a party question. But an interesting one. At least you’ll have the chance to speak to her in person.”
“Right,” I say, although what I’m thinking is, there’s nothing I want to tell my mother. I’m only going for Sharla. I love my sister; I’m finished with my mother, have been for a long time. Not for nothing did I sit in therapists’ offices going through a forest’s worth of Kleenex.
“Where does your sister live?” Martha asks.
“Texas. San Antonio. She’ll be at the airport waiting; her flight gets in twenty minutes before mine.”
“Has she seen your mother in all this time?”
“No.”
“Wow. This will be some meeting.”
“I know,” I say, and drain what’s left of the scotch. Then I squeeze the plastic glass to see how far I can bend it. Not far: it cracks in my hand. I put it in the throw-up bag, fold the top over, place it neatly in the center of my tray table. I don’t want to talk anymore. I lean back, look out the window. I have my reasons, I tell myself—and Martha, too, in case she’s picking up on my thoughts—she’s from California, after all; they do stuff like that. But I do have my reasons. I absolutely do.
“Miss?” the flight attendant asks. “Breakfast?” I startle, then smile and nod yes to the fat slices of French toast she is offering me. I am probably the only one in the world who likes airline food. I appreciate the inventive garnishes, the only-for-you serving sizes. I like the taste of the salad dressings. When the entrée is something like pizza, I think, well, isn’t that the cutest thing. Naturally, I don’t admit this to anyone.
Martha has opted for the cheese omelet, and when I watch her cut it neatly in half, I wish I’d gotten one, too. She shrugs after her first bite, the physical equivalent of “Yuck.” I smile, shrug back, pour the thick artificial maple syrup over my French toast. It looks delicious.
“I saw a row of three across open back there,” Martha says, after she’s eaten most of her breakfast. “I think I’ll go on back and stretch out for a while.”
“Okay.”
“Unless you were thinking of that, too. In that case, we could flip for it.”
“No, this is fine,” I say. “I’ll have more room, too. Anyway, I’m not going to sleep.”
“Really? Any plane trip over an hour, I have to sleep.