Margie stood up. “Of course. I knew how hard this would be for you. But you’ve been hiding long enough. ”
Dorothy felt her knees almost give out. She had never had a good friend in her life, not one of those women who would be there for you if you needed them. Until now. She reached out for the wooden chair beside her, held on to it.
There were three chairs out here. Dorothy had spent months restoring these wooden rockers that she’d found at the Goodwill. When she’d finished sanding and painting them—a wild array of colors—she’d painted names on the back. Dorothy. Tully. Kate.
At the time, it had seemed romantic and optimistic. As she held the paintbrush and smeared the bright colors along the rough wood, she’d imagined what Tully would say when she woke up. Now, though, all she saw was the presumption of her actions. What made her think that Tully would want to sit with her mother in the morning and have a cup of tea … or that it wouldn’t break her heart to sit next to a chair that was always empty, its seat waiting for a woman who would never return?
“Do you remember what I told you about motherhood?” Margie said in the darkness, exhaling smoke.
Dorothy eased around an empty basket and sat down in the chair with her name on it. Margie, she noticed, was sitting in Tully’s chair.
“You told me a lot of things,” Dorothy said, leaning back with a sigh.
“When you’re a mom, you learn about fear. You’re always afraid. Always. About everything from cupboard doors to kidnappers to weather. There is nothing that can’t hurt our kids, I swear. ” She turned. “The irony is they need us to be strong. ”
Dorothy swallowed hard.
“I was strong for my Katie,” Margie said.
Dorothy heard the way her friend’s voice broke on that, and without even thinking, she got up from her chair, crossed the small space between them, and pulled Margie up into her arms. She felt how thin the woman was, how she trembled at this touch, and Dorothy understood. Sometimes it hurt worse to be comforted than to be left alone.
“Johnny wants to scatter her ashes in the summer. I don’t know how to do it, but I know it’s time. ”
Dorothy had no idea what to say, so she just held on.
When Margie drew back, her eyes were wet with tears. “You helped me get through it, you know that, right? In case I never told you. All those times you let me sit over here and smoke my cigarettes while you planted your seeds and pulled up your weeds. ”
“I didn’t say anything. ”
“You were there for me, Dorothy. Like you were there for Tully. ” She wiped her eyes and tried to smile, then said quietly, “Go see your daughter. ”
* * *
Tully woke from a deep sleep, disoriented. She sat up quickly—too quickly; dizziness made the unfamiliar room spin around her for just a moment.
“Tully, are you okay?”
She blinked slowly and remembered where she was. In her old bedroom, in the house on Firefly Lane. She turned on the bedside lamp.
Her mother sat in a chair against the wall. She got up awkwardly, clasping her hands together. She was wearing bag-lady clothes, white socks, and Birkenstock sandals. And the tattered remnant of that macaroni necklace Tully had made for her in Bible camp. All these years later, her mother had kept it.
“I … was worried,” her mother said. “Your first night here and all. I hope you don’t mind that I’m here. ”
“Hey, Cloud,” Tully said quietly.
“I’m Dorothy now,” her mother said. She gave a hitching, apologetic smile and moved toward the bed. “I picked the name ‘Cloud’ at a commune in the early seventies. We were high all the time, and naked. A lot of bad ideas seemed good back then. ” She looked down at Tully.
“I’m told you took care of me. ”
“It was nothing. ”
“A year of caring for a woman in a coma? That’s not nothing. ”
Her mother reached into her pocket and pulled out a small token. It was goldish in color, and round, a little bigger than a quarter. A triangle was stamped onto the coin; on the left side of the triangle was the word sobriety in black, on the right side was the word anniversary. Inside the triangle was the Roman numeral X. “Remember that night you saw me in the hospital, back in ’05?”
Tully remembered every time she’d ever seen her mother. “Yes. ”
“That was rock bottom for me. A woman gets tired of being hit. I went into rehab not long after that. You paid for it, by the way, so thanks for that. ”