Mothers (pt.1)

When my best friend called to tell me she was dying, I had to take a moment, an extra beat, to grip the handle of my coffee mug. It lurched crazily from my shocked fingers. But I welcomed the distraction of scrubbing viciously at the dark drops which had fallen onto my pants.

The voice came from a distance. "Dee-Dee...? Dierdra?"
".... Yeah, yeah I'm here. I just... hang on a minute." I put the phone down, but not because I couldn't clean up with one hand. I had to stop listening to her breathing. It was even louder than before.
"Ok," I said. I tried to keep the cell phone on my shoulder as I gathered up wet napkins. "Ok."
"It's ok," she said, encompassing more than the pause on the phone.
"I don't understand, though. Four months ago you were perfectly healthy."
"Well, no I wasn't." Her sarcasm was still in tact. "We just didn't know it."

I wanted to say, "I miss you" but the air got caught in my throat and almost made me gag. I couldn't hear clearly for a few seconds.
"I can't believe this," I said lamely instead. I wanted to throw the mug across the room.

The anger welled even at the thought of losing the person in my life who had always been there, had always taken the time to listen and to give level-headed advice. My mind ran down the years.

"They don't know how much longer, really," she was saying. "Maybe a month or two." She spoke slowly. I couldn't tell whether it was for my benefit or because her lungs simply couldn't keep up.

"I'm coming to you. Tonight. What hospital are you in?"
"No. I'm not at a hospital. I don't want you to come home. The tickets will be expensive." It was irritating how logical she was being. And how illogical she assumed I was being. She kept talking in simple terms, about something so much more complicated.

"It's not like you have a choice. I'm not going to sit here..." The air caught again. "It's not your choice." I wasn't sure she heard me. The phone slid off my shoulder when I reached up to get my suitcase out of the closet. So I yelled again, "It's not your choice!" into the room, hoping she heard it from the floor.

---

The airport, was filled with pagers, cell phones, arrivals and departures, heartbreak and joy at seeing a face for the first time. The pain of saying goodbye for days, weeks, months, forever.

The airline queues were filled with baggage, which travelers-to-be kicked along as they shuffled to the kiosks. I felt like I should have been carrying much more than my small black carry-on when I checked in for my flight. I don't remember the woman who printed my boarding pass.

Karen had been my best friend all through grade school. We had had imaginary horses, a dozen each. I remember hers was named Prairie Dancer. Mine was a black horse named Obsidian. I thought I was clever. Karen thought she was Native American. When she met her biological grandmother years later, she found out she was actually Italian. Tomato, tomahto.

The engines of the DC-9 spooled up and the air tasted terrible, as exhaust mixed with my post nasal drip, and we pushed back on the tarmac. The safety talk speech started. Even though I'd seen it countless times, when the stewardess clutched the seat cushion in front of her and pushing the straps around her shoulders, I was reminded of Karen hugging her backpack in 1996, surveying the damage to her mom's Camry. I had just smashed the driver's side mirror into a drive-through window at McDonald's.

She hadn't wanted to drive and smoke a cigarette at the same time. She preferred to let it dangle out the window, with feigned aloofness, advertising her early maturity. When she had reached out to hold it in front of my lips for me to take a drag, we'd hit a bump in the drive thru and the filter went up into my lip and her fingernail went right up my nose. The cherry jumped out of the paper and landed in my lap in a shower of ash. I was coughing and clawing at my crotch when we felt the crunch of Camry on red and yellow painted brick.

Our mouths hung open for a few seconds, and then blinking she got out and walked warily to the front. The McWorker who witnessed the whole thing was hanging out the window, asking if it was ok. I still don't know if he was asking about the car or the building. From where I sat I could see a buckling in the hood... It didn't take long for Karen's ashen face to confirm there was more. She looked helplessly at me behind the wheel, then walked over to the curb and sat down.

I backed up the car, feeling the shimmy of a very unhappy engine through the wheel. Then I heard the tinkling of glass and plastic as the remains of the left headlight fell. I couldn't get the car to move forward, because the body had crunched into the wheel well and ground against the tire. So we just stood in the drive thru, and waited for Karen's mom to come.

Karen wasn't allowed to drive for six months, and I wasn't allowed near their garage for life. In fact, when Karen's mom drove me home from then on, she preferred I sit in the back seat.

The thought of our foolishness at seventeen, driving home after high school together, made me smile--

"Excuse me. Would you stop that?" The woman next to me cut through my reverie.

The pack of peanuts stopped in midair, just above my knee. I'd been smacking them against my leg since the perky, little flight attendant had handed them to me. It was a nervous habit, which I just realized had been slightly more maddening by the crinkling foil wrapper.

I was sure I had missed several irritated sighs, and quick glances.

"Sorry," I murmured, and immediately pretended to go to sleep.

When we landed, I found the pack of peanuts, crushed, on the floor next to my foot. They had probably fallen out of my hand when I had actually drifted off into a neck-cramping nap. The woman was still fussing as we waited at the gate to deplane. I was glad my snack had the last crunching laugh.

**Names are coincidental. This doesn't have to do with our own, very amazing, CouponWhore/HMMgirl. I just like her name, and think it's very fictionable.**