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On that sober note we all got back into the car and headed east. Margaret slept again. Bitsey said that she’d agreed to spend the night with us but that tomorrow she was taking a bus back to Tempe.
“We’ll just see about that,” Cat said, gunning the motor. “We’ll just see.”
It took twenty-five miles and Tammy Wynette to settle us down. I don’t usually listen to country stations, but the choices were limited. Besides, there was something about our situation that called for the messy heartbreak of country music. So when “Stand by Your Man” came on and Cat started singing “Stand on your man,” the gray cloud hovering over us broke up and vanished.
Bits and I joined in, too, in our best Southern twang. “Stand on your man.”
“That’s me,” Cat said as Tammy kept on singing. “I stand on ’em. You two stand by them, and Margaret, too. But not me. Then I D.I.V.O.R.C.E. them.”
“Don’t act so smug,” Bitsey said. “You may cut and run, but only after they’ve stomped all over your heart.”
“Okay, okay. So we’ve all been stupid about men,” I said. “But isn’t that what this trip is about? Second chances?”
“Or third,” Cat said.
“No. It’s a second chance with your Boy Scout turned sheriff,” I said. “And Bitsey’s second chance with her Eddie.”
That’s when Cat’s eyes got big, and she gave me a sharp shake of her head. I didn’t understand why until Margaret shifted in the backseat, opened her eyes and stared at her mother. “Who’s Eddie?”
Bitsey
I wanted to kill Mary Jo. She should never have mentioned anything about Eddie, even if she thought Margaret was asleep. Even if she thought the girl was comatose.
But once the name was out of her mouth—Eddie—it hung in the air like the loud buzz of a faulty neon light. It sputtered and spat and wouldn’t go away.
“Mom?” Margaret said, and for a moment I was reminded of a seven-year-old Margaret who’d just been told by her older sister that there was no Santa Claus. “Who’s Eddie?” she repeated.
“Oh, Eddie.” I laughed and prayed I didn’t sound as nervous and guilty as I felt. “Eddie is the boy I went to the prom with. I told you about my high school reunion, didn’t I, sweetie? Well, that’s the whole point of this trip. I wasn’t going to go without your father,” I went on, talking much too loud and way too fast. I tried to slow down. “But he encouraged me to go anyway, and M.J. needed to get away after Frank died, and Cat wanted to visit her family. So we decided we’d all head down south together.”
Margaret stared at me; Tammy had subsided and now Randy Travis was singing “Forever and Ever, Amen.” Other than that, the car was absolutely silent.
“So…this Eddie was your date for the prom?”
“Yes,” I said. “And I’m praying he’s gained more weight than I have.” Again I laughed, but it was a strain.
“That’s why she’s been dieting,” M.J. jumped in, trying to help. “We’ve been working out together.”
“Yeah,” Cat added. “You’re too young to know this, but starting around the tenth high school reunion, looking slimmer and better dressed than the rest of your old classmates becomes a major motivator in a woman’s life.”
“I wasn’t going to go,” I repeated. “But M.J. convinced me I could lose twenty pounds by then. And I’m almost there.”
Margaret smiled then, and I wanted to breathe a huge sigh of relief. She said, “You’re looking good, Mom. I can see the difference already. This Eddie guy is gonna be sorry he ever let you get away. But I’m still mad at you,” she added. “You had no right to kidnap me. I could have you arrested, you know.”
I grabbed Cat’s shoulder before she could jump into the fray. This was between me and my daughter. “I have twenty-three years of right!” I said to Margaret, trembling with emotion. “I love you, Magpie. I always have and I always will. Even with your hair dyed black and streaked with red. If you ever have a daughter and find out she’s being abused, you’ll do the exact same thing.”
“I’m not being abused!”
God, but I wanted to shake her. Instead I tried to stroke her healing bruise, but she flinched away. I felt as if my heart were breaking. “Would you ignore a black eye on me?” I asked.
“That’s stupid. You don’t have a black eye—and neither do I.”
“You did. What would you think if I told you your father had given me a black eye?”
She shook her head. “Daddy would never do that.”
I gave her a grim smile. “My point exactly.”
She turned away from me, and the car sped on. Dusk fell before we pulled into a Motel 6 in a dusty town twenty miles or so from Las Cruces. I was exhausted, so when M.J. suggested a quick jog before supper, I didn’t even grace her with an answer. By silent assent Cat and Margaret took one room and M.J. and I took the adjoining one. I headed straight for the shower and only then did I fall apart. There was no real reason to cry. Tears never solved anything. How many times had my mother pointed that out in that brusque manner she always used with her supposed-to-be-perfect children? But as I undressed in the unblinking fluorescent glare and the unforgivingly mirrored confines of the bathroom, I couldn’t help it. No amount of dieting and exercise would ever erase the soft folds of my belly or the dimpled excess of my thighs. Arms, chin, jowls. I was fat. And even if I did lose all the weight I wanted, what would be left but saggy skin and shrinking breasts? Just gorgeous.
No wonder Jack found me so boring. No wonder my daughters didn’t look up to me as a role model. In the hot, enveloping steam of the pounding shower I cried and raged at the unfairness of it all. No wonder I felt so miserable all the time. I was miserable. A miserable, boring excuse of a woman.
I was in the shower so long that M.J. showered in Cat and Margaret’s room. I don’t know what kind of lecture Cat and M.J. had given Margaret, but by the time I was out, with my stupid short hair dry and spiky and sticking out like a teenager’s, they were all dressed and ready to go.
We piled into the car, heading for a Tex-Mex place the desk clerk had recommended, only the car wouldn’t start.
“Come on, baby,” M.J. crooned as she retried the ignition. “Come on, you can do it.” But the motor only sputtered and coughed in a vain effort to turn over and catch.
When M.J. finally gave up, Margaret started to laugh. “Serves you right. Now you’re stranded in nowhere New Mexico where they’ve probably never seen a Jag before, let alone tried to fix one.”
Thank goodness she was wrong. We ate at a diner across the street from the motel and discovered there was a mechanic who specialized in imported cars. As it turned out, nowhere New Mexico was a fairly with-it town. Though no Taos, it boasted a thriving artists’ and retirees’ community. The retirees all drove American with “These Colors Never Run” bumper stickers. The artists drove imports and I even saw three of those electric-gas hybrids.
First thing in the morning, a Eugene’s Imports tow truck came for the car. Over breakfast we discussed our options for the day. “Of course we’ll exercise,” M.J. told me. “Even though we missed out yesterday, you did very well with your caloric intake.”
I nodded as I ate my bowl of fruit with fat-free yogurt.
Cat stirred some sweetener—the pink stuff—into her second cup of coffee. “Sorry, M.J. Y’all can exercise, but I think I’ll check out the shops, maybe even buy a piece of outsider art. Who knows. I could discover the next great artist to sell to my clients, the ones with too much money and too little taste.”
“You ought to be nicer about your clients,” M.J. said. “If they had great taste they wouldn’t need to hire you.”
Cat shrugged and glanced at Margaret. “So. What are you going to do between now and the time the Greyhound leaves?”
My stomach clenched. She’d already checked the bus schedule?
Margaret yawned. “I don’t know. I saw a sign for an Internet Café last night. I might head over there. Check my e-mail. See if I still have a job.” She shot me a contemptuous look.
“She hates me,” I muttered to M.J. an hour later as the two of us stretched and warmed up for our jog. “Worse, she’s going back to that creep.”
“What can you do, besides cutting off the money?”
I shook my head. “Maybe her sisters can talk some sense into her.”
“But not Jack?”
“Oh, no.” I stretched my fingers toward the floor. “He’d have a fit.”
“Did you just touch your toes?”
I straightened and looked at M.J. “Did I?” I stared down my front. Breasts, belly and toes. I could see my toes without throwing my neck out of whack. Once more I bent down and sure enough, the tips of my fingernails flicked the tips of my Reebok trainers. I would have been ecstatic if I wasn’t so worried about my Magpie.
We jogged the length of the town, past a small brick school, an impressive town hall with a clock in the pediment and a combination firehouse, health clinic and sheriff’s office. It reminded me of the town in Back to the Future.
On the opposite side of a town square framed by gnarled cedar trees and underplanted with an impressive xeriscape garden, a row of wood-framed shops formed the downtown. We saw Cat inside a quaint art gallery haggling with a leather-faced woman and a man with a gray ponytail.
At least my face wasn’t all leathery, I told myself, and I wasn’t old enough to be an old hippie. But I was forty-eight and soon I’d be fifty. My kids didn’t need me anymore, and neither did my husband.
“Look,” M.J. said. She was barely perspiring. “There’s that Internet café. Why don’t we go in and say hi to Margaret? Better yet,” she amended, “You go. I’m going to do another fast mile back to the hotel. See you there.”
A good-looking cowboy type came out of the café as she trotted off. He was so intent on watching her that he nearly collided with me. I could just see the headlines: Rotund, Red-faced Woman Skewered on a Rodeo Buckle. But he dodged me, then gallantly held the café door open. I had no choice but to enter.
Inside it was cool. An iced coffee seemed like a good idea, but I hadn’t brought any money with me. So I scanned the high-tech decor and spotted Margaret at a back table, hunched over a glowing computer screen. I put on a determined smile. “Hi, sweetie.”
She glanced up, then back to the screen. “Hi.”
Okay. I cleared my throat. “Do you think you could treat me to something cool to drink? I forgot my wallet.”
She squinted at the screen, then briefly at me. “Sure.” With one foot she nudged her purse toward me while keeping her focus on the screen. “When you get back I have something to show you.”
I had visions of some diatribe e-mail from her employer, or perhaps the section of the Arizona legal code pertaining to kidnappings. What she showed me when I sat down beside her, however, was a Web site for my high school class reunion. “This is it, right?” she asked.
“Yes. Wow.” After a page about the reunion particulars all the seniors’ photos were displayed.
“There’s you,” Margaret said. “Look at that hair.”
“And every bit of it natural. Well, maybe a little lemon juice to brighten it a bit,” I conceded.
“You were a real hottie, Mom. Look, there’s a picture of the cheerleaders. You didn’t tell me you were captain of the squad.”
“I was, wasn’t I?” Captain of the cheerleaders. Homecoming queen. Most likely to succeed. Anything less would have disappointed my mother.
“So where’s this Eddie guy you dated?”
“Look in the Ds,” I said, then took a nervous sip of my iced coffee. She scrolled slowly down a page. “There.”
“Edward Joseph Dusson,” she said.
Eddie.
His hair was thick and long over his eyebrows. Twice the vice-principal had sent him home for a haircut. He had sideburns, a piercing gaze and a serious look on his face.
“He looks kind of geeky,” Margaret said. “How’d he get to go out with the head cheerleader?”
“He was no geek,” I said. “Quite the opposite. He had a motorcycle.”
“Ooh, Mom.” She grinned. “What, you were the good girl dating the bad boy?”
“Something like that.”
“So what does he do now?”
“I hear he’s a lawyer.”
“Aw. How boring.”
“Yep. He’s a boring lawyer. I’m a boring housewife. Who would have thought we’d come to this, right? Oh, look,” I said, wanting to change the subject. “There’s Vivian O’Neil. You remember meeting her the last time we were in New Orleans. We had taken Daddy to lunch at Commander’s and she was there with her sisters.”
Margaret shrugged. “Do you want to find out more about that Eddie guy?”
“No.” Yes. “Not really.”
She gave me a sidelong grin. “Come on, Mom. You know you’re curious.”
“Not really,” I repeated. But when she switched to Google and entered his name, I leaned forward. “That’s all you have to do to find out about somebody?”
“Probably. Oh, yeah,” she said when the screen filled with lists of Eddie Dussons, Edward Dussons and Edward every-middle-initial-possible Dussons. Within a few minutes we weeded through them to discover that the rebel Eddie I once adored had not really changed at all. He was a lawyer, yes, but he was still a rebel as Director of the New Orleans Office of the American Civil Liberties Union. The computer was full of newspaper articles about cases and issues he’d been involved with.
“Geez,” Margaret said. “He’s famous.”
“He always was a man of strong opinions.”
“Look, he represented this lady who police said had too many cats.”
He might have defended people on death row, saved communities from dangerous pollution and protected government whistle-blowers, but with his stance on pet ownership, Eddie’s reputation was safe. My Magpie was nothing if not an ardent animal lover. She looked at me. “So how come you two broke up? I mean, I’m glad you did, but still, I’m curious.”
“You of all people are asking me that? Given the number of boys you dated and dumped, I’d be amazed if you even remember which one took you to your prom. Eddie and I were young, that’s all. Neither of us was ready to settle down.”
“That makes sense. But for your information, I went to the prom with Rusty Calhoun,” Meg said. “Last I heard he was in med school somewhere up in Oregon.” She leaned back, drumming her fingers on the table lip, and studied me. “So, what about Cat and M.J? Who are they going to see?”
We spent two hours on that computer. Cat found us in the café, then called the motel and told M.J. to join us, and the time just flew. It turned out that Matt Blanchard was not merely the sheriff of St. Charles Parish, Louisiana, he was also a highly decorated former member and hero of the New Orleans police force. He’d been shot twice, burned while saving a disabled grandmother from a house fire, and credited with busting one of the most vicious drug gangs in eastern New Orleans. He’d moved back to his hometown twelve years ago when the sheriff’s position became available, and he showed no indication of wanting to leave.
“No mention of a wife,” M.J. said to Cat, who was uncharacteristically silent. “He’s probably divorced.”
“So who isn’t?”
“We aren’t,” M.J. retorted for the both of us.
“Well, you should have been. A long time ago.”
Margaret tilted her head to frown at Cat. “You don’t like my dad, do you?”
Cat scrunched up her face. “Sorry, Margaret. When it comes to men I’m in a grouchy mood. But M.J.’s old boyfriend has potential. There was nothing about any wives or children, was there?”
M.J. smiled at a photograph of the coaching staff of the New Orleans Saints and pointed him out to us. Dark brown hair, light eyes and really broad shoulders. Oh, yes, he was quite a fine specimen of a man. “He hasn’t changed a bit,” she said.
“That’s not necessarily a good thing,” Cat said. “You want a grown-up, not a teenager. Or do you?”
“I just don’t want an old man,” M.J. replied. But she was smiling. Maybe Jeff Cole was exactly what she needed.
“So why did y’all break up?” Margaret asked.
