"She gave me details slowly over the years. We had a few hours together four years ago when I was connecting flights. I had met your father for that weekend in San Juan. He had some shore leave, and we thought it was a good opportunity for a little holiday. Remember?"
"Yes"
Every time Mommy mentioned Daddy in a passing reference, her smile deepened and warmed. I was jealous of her cherished memories, even though I had so many of my own.
"Dallas met me at the airport in West Palm Beach, and we had a nice time reminiscing, looking at each other's family photographs."
She paused when our food was served. She stared at her plate for a moment and then shook her head.
"Fate. I read once that we're all crossing paths, intersecting in ways we don't even realize. Here I am coming full circle and meeting up with Dallas again, something neither of us thought would ever be." She smiled quickly. "But you'll love her. honey. She's dawn-to-earth and always lots of fun."
I nodded. If Mommy said so, I was sure it would be.
"Eat up, and let's get on our way," she said with more enthusiasm. It was infectious. I felt a surge of interest and expectation. We were like two swimmers, pushed under the sea and held down in the dark cold until we almost drowned, and then permitted to come up for air, finding ourselves in an entirely new world.
I think Mommy and I were closer to each other than other mothers and daughters because Daddy had been gone so often and for such long periods, especially during the earlier years. However, even she and I. a mother and a daughter who couldn't be much closer, had much yet to learn about each other, mainly me learning about her. The reason became clearer to me as we traveled and she talked more and more about her own youth, her first boyfriend, her youthful adventures.
Mothers have to wait until their daughters are mature enough to appreciate and understand what they will tell them about themselves. She could have told me all she did now years ago, but I wouldn't have valued her revelations as much or understood as much. We really become different people, changing as we grow older, I thought. Mommy's confessions and descriptions of herself were far more frank and detailed than they would have been if she had told them to me even a year earlier.
Daddy's death had somehow plunged me into a stage of maturity perhaps years ahead of my time. It had certainly washed away much of my innocence. The world could be a very cruel and hard place, and the more you came to realize that, the more you cherished a true friend. What better or truer friend would I have than she was, I thought, and hoped she now felt the same about me. I was old enough now to hear her fears and concerns. She no longer had to be worried that I would suffer childish nightmares. I would address each problem alongside her, and together we would go on.
She had no hesitation about answering any question I asked about her younger days.
"Did you love anyone as much as you loved Daddy?" I wondered.
"Oh. I had some terrible crushes on boys and had my heart shattered like an eggshell when I learned they didn't feel anywhere near as much toward me as I did toward them. No." she concluded after a little more thought. "I know it's assumed or accepted that we all fall in love early and then try to find it again in someone who might resemble or remind us of that first love, but I can honestly say your father was very, very special."
She smiled that soft, deep smile to herself again as we drove on monotonously dawn the
superhighway, cars whizzing by with other people mesmerized by their own speed and thoughts, all of them looking to me like entrapped creatures in moving metal cages.
"Your father had so many wonderful qualities, but what was truly wonderful was how balanced they were. He had a great sense of humor, but boy he could turn serious on a dime. He was strong but so romantic and gentle. You know what most women suffer when they many?" she said suddenly, turning to me.
I shook my head, having no idea but fascinated with the topic.
"They suffer from gross expectation. They either don't want to face their husbands' limitations and admit them to themselves, or they honestly don't see them and so they are continually frustrated and disappointed. They marry and suddenly discover the men they have married are not the men they thought they had married. Sometimes it's not their fault, of course. They are deceived by promises. But I think most of the time they deceive themselves.
'Your father and I never lied to each other. Grace. That was the secret. No matter what the consequences, we told each other the truth, and that became the glue that cemented us forever."
She swallowed hard. "Forever," she muttered. "That was the only deception we permitted."
I turned and glared at the highway, which seemed liquefied now, a flow of macadam, lines going on and on. When will the ache stop? Will it ever stop?
"We'll be all right." Mommy chanted. She nodded at the windshield as if we had an audience along the way. "We'll be all right."
She dropped her right hand and reached for mine. We held hands for miles and miles, and then we talked about where we would stop and what we would have for dinner. Thinking about tomorrow was the only escape from today.
Finally we decided to pull in for the night. We always tried to find a motel that looked well maintained. Mommy believed that usually if the owner cared about how his property appeared to people passing by, he cared about how it appeared inside as well.
We had been in motels many times before, and when I was very young we would treat each like another magical adventure. One of our favorite games was trying to imagine who had been in our room before us.
We would lie awake for a while and make up stories about our room's invented former inhabitants. Almost by instinct, perhaps to protect ourselves from the darkness and the troubled thoughts it would bring, we did it this night.
"Two young women were just here. They're on an adventure before starting college," Mommy began.
"They want to see as much of America as they can and hope to have many interesting experiences."
We had two double beds with a small television mounted on the wall in front of us, but we didn't bother turning it on. We created our own pictures, our own stories, after we were snug in our beds. We were able to leave the screened windows open to get some fresh air. It wasn't home, but it wasn't unpleasant.