When the dog was satisfied, it tugged on the leash, and the man obediently continued his walk,
"What do you think you're doing. Grace?" I heard, and turned to see Mommy in our car. She had driven up and pulled to the curb. "Get in." she ordered.
I did, and she started away.
"I think I've been quite lenient and
understanding when it has come to your moods, your emotional trauma, and your needs. Grace. I also think you are old enough and smart enough to treat me as fairly and as understandingly as I have treated you. What you did back there was very embarrassing for me. You behaved like a petulant child, a spoiled brat," she continued, her voice harder than ever.
"Yes," she went on. "I did wear my hair the way your father liked it. I did everything I could to please him. Many times when you were younger and I had to rip us up out of one home and go to another, I swallowed my own tears and anxiety. I did what I had to do to keep my marriage and to keep your father from having too much worry and burden. We loved each other more than most people who marry love each other, and I don't regret a moment. but I am in a different world now, a different state of existence. and I can't live in the past or in memories. I have our welfare to think about and our futures to consider.
"I'm not going to be the same person I was. That person died with your father. Grace. If I don't let go. I can't go on. and I have no right to wallow in selfpity. That was why I chose to move and to take the job and start in a completely different sort of environment in the first place.
"I need you to be just as grown-up and as realistic as I have to be." She looked at me. "There is just no more time to waste in mourning and feeling sorry for ourselves. I'm not going to permit it. but I can't do it without your full cooperation. Will I have it or won't I? Will you grow with me or not?"
She looked ahead at the bridge we were going to cross again, her eyes narrowing. "There are many bridges to cross in this life, and this just happens to be another, but it's a possible bridge to a better life for us."
Her lips trembled. She brought her hand to her eyes and wiped away tears. "I wish more than you know that this was all a nightmare and we would bath wake up and your daddy would be coming home to us again, but he's not He's not! Damn this world, he's not!" she cried, and pulled over and stopped the vehicle.
I was crying so hard I couldn't breathe. I barely got out the words. "I'm sorry. Mommy."
She reached for me, and we hugged and held each other. We were like that so long a police patrol car came up behind us, and a policeman approached.
"Are you all right, miss?" he asked. "Is there something wrong with your car?"
Mommy pulled back and looked out at him and then at me. "No, the car's fine, and yes," she said, "we're all right. We're always going to be all right."
He tilted back his cap, a smile of confusion written across his young face. "Okay, but you can't stay here."
"I'm sorry. officer. We'll move." She smiled at him through her tears. "But we'll be back."
He smiled and shook his head, and
we drove on, both of us staring ahead, both of us somehow stronger.
11
The Myth of Icarus
.
"I Mess I didn't realize how tired I was and haw
much we did today," Mommy said a short time after we arrived home.. We were going to have a simple dinner, just same scrambled eggs. She was almost too tired to eat that and drifted off every once in a while even while we ate. "I'd better get to sleep," she decided, "I want to be fresh and energetic tomorrow."
Randy finally reached me early in the evening. I could tell he was reluctant to reveal just how gleeful Phoebe and her friends were about the outcome of my altercation with Ashley. but I drew it out of him, his stuttering even more pronounced, especially when he revealed how he had spoken in my defense and made some enemies.
"Which was the one thing I asked you not to do. Randy," I chastised.
"I don... don't care," he said. "You're mo... more
impor... portant to me than they are."
"Well, thank you, but please don't do anything
else. Promise me," I said. "Promise me. or I will avoid
you as much as I will avoid them."