Distant Shores

Elizabeth sat back on her heels and looked up at Anita. "Why?"

Anita smiled sadly. Her platinum hair was a mass of curlers; thick night moisturizer glistened on her cheeks and forehead. A heavy blue-plaid-flannel nightdress covered her from throat to foot. She looked ten years older than her actual sixty-two. "I smelled her perfume once. "

Elizabeth felt a shiver. She remembered the pretty little bottle that had sat on her mamas vanity table. "Mamas?" she whispered.

"It was one of those days--when you were in a mood, as your daddy used to say--you disagreed with everything I said. So I stopped talkin at all. I came out here, ready to attack your mamas garden. I wanted to fight somethin I could see. But when I sat out here, all alone, feelin sorry for myself, I smelled your mamas perfume. Shalimar. It wasnt like she spoke to me or anything weird like that. I just . . . realized I was fightin with her baby girl, who was broken up inside. After that, whenever you made me crazy, I came out here to the garden. "

Elizabeth heard the pain in Anitas voice, and for once, she understood. "No wonder you were out here so often. "

"I should have done things differently, I guess. I knew you missed her somethin awful. "

"I started forgetting her. That was the worst part. Thats why I always asked Daddy about her. But he wouldnt say a thing, ever. He always said, Keep your memories close, Birdie. He never seemed to understand that my memories of her were like smoke. I couldnt hold on to them. "

"I imagine your mama is giving him a piece of her mind about that right now. "

"I dont think anyone held as much of Daddys heart as you did, Anita. " Try as she might, a slight bitterness tainted her final words.

"Thank you for that. " Anita gazed out over the fallow fields. "Why didnt you fly home with Jack and the girls?"

Elizabeth felt the cold suddenly. She shivered and stood up, crossing her arms. "He had to be at work first thing in the morning. I thought Id stay and help you clean the house. "

"Heloise cleans the house. She has since you were in pigtails. " Anita looked down at her. "You can tell me to mind my own business, y know. "

"The truth is I dont know why. I just wasnt ready to go back to New York. "

Anita took a step forward. Her silly pink slippers sank into the black earth. "Your daddy used to say to me, Mother, if that girl dont spread her wings, one day shes plumb gonna forget how to fly. He was worried that you were missing out on your own life. "

"I know. " Elizabeth didnt want to be talking about this. It hurt too much, and right now, in her mamas garden, she was fragile. She wiped her eyes--when had she started crying, anyway?--and looked at Anita. "What about you? Will you be okay?"

"Ill get by. "

It wasnt really an answer, but it was all there was. They had both known it would come, the day when Anita would be left alone in this white elephant of a hous

e. For a while, the phone would ring almost hourly and friends would show up on the porch with a casserole, but sooner or later, the stream would run dry, and Anita would have to look widowhood in the eye. "Ill call you when I get to New York, just to make sure everything is okay. "

"That would be nice. "

Silence fell between them again. Wind whispered through the shrubs and played the chimes that hung from the porch roof. A melancholy sound.

Elizabeth wished suddenly that things were different between her and Anita, that they could hold hands and comfort one another. But it was too late now to recraft a relationship whose time had come and gone.

"Weve missed our chance, havent we?" Anita asked softly.

Elizabeth nodded. She didnt know how else to respond.

"Its too bad," Anita said. "But dont you worry about me, honey. Ill be fine. You dont marry a man who is fourteen years older and expect to outlive him. I always knew Id be alone one day. "

Elizabeth had never considered that. To her, the age difference had always fallen on her daddys side of the equation. Shed seen it from a mans point of view. A younger wife made a man happy. Everyone knew that. Men--shallow as plate glass--had been proving it for years.

Now she saw the other side of that coin. Sure, Anita had gotten a good life and a lot of money. Shed been accepted into the local social scene and married a man who treated her like a piece of the finest French porcelain.

In return, Anita had no children now to comfort her, and no partner with whom to spend the hearing-aid years. She was sixty-two years old and a widow. Alone perhaps for the remainder of her life.

"Why didnt you and Daddy have children?" Elizabeth asked--finally--the question shed pondered for years.

Anita sighed. "Oh, honey, thats a question for another time, maybe between different women. "

"In other words, mind my own business. "