She was right, of course: I had left too many friends behind. I told myself it was because I traveled so much, because my life was so chaotic. But, really, maybe I should have sent a few more cards myself. Also, maybe I should have picked up on Richard’s philandering. Everybody else in town knew.
“I thought we could have some Paul Newman’s and then maybe when we had dessert we could light those little devotional lights and have a moment’s silence, remembering your father.”
“Fine,” I said.
“We’ll need to go to the drugstore to get candles,” she said. “They burned out the night Drake and I had champagne and toasted our future.” She stood. She put on her hat. “I can drive,” she said.
I straggled behind her like a little kid in a cartoon. I could imagine myself kicking dirt. Some man she hardly knew. It was the last thing I’d expected. “So give me the scenario,” I said. “He wrote you a note and you wrote back, and then he came for champagne?”
“Oh, all right, so it hasn’t been a great romance,” my mother said. “But a person gets tired of all the highs and lows. You get to the point where you need things to be a little easier. In fact, I didn’t write him a note. I thought about it for three days, then I just knocked on his door.”
The candles were cinnamon-scented and made my throat feel constricted. She lit them at the beginning of the meal, and by the end she seemed to have forgotten about talking about my father. She mentioned a book she’d been reading about Arizona. She offered to show me some pictures, but they, too, were forgotten. We watched a movie on TV about a dying ballerina. As she died, she imagined herself doing a pas de deux with an obviously gay actor. We ate M&M’s, which my mother has always maintained are not really candy, and went to bed early. I slept on the foldout sofa. She made me wear one of her nightgowns, saying that Drake might knock on the door in the morning. I traveled light: toothbrush, but nothing to sleep in. Drake did not knock the next morning, but he did put a note under the door saying that he had car problems and would be at the repair shop. My mother seemed very sad. “Maybe you’d want to write him a teeny little note before you go?” she said.
“What could I possibly say?”
“Well, you think up dialogue for characters, don’t you? What would you imagine yourself saying?” She put her hands to her lips. “Never mind,” she said. “If you do write, I’d appreciate it if you’d at least give me a sense of what you said.”
“Mom,” I said, “please give him my best wishes. I don’t want to write him a note.”
She said, “He’s DrDrake@aol.com, if you want to e-mail.”
I nodded. Best just to nod. I thought that I might have reached the point she’d talked about, where you have an overwhelming desire for things to be simple.
We hugged, and I kissed her well-moisturized cheek. She came out to the front lawn to wave as I pulled away.
On the way back to the airport, there was a sudden, brief shower that forced me to the shoulder of the road, during which time I thought that there were obvious advantages in having a priest to call on. I felt that my mother needed someone halfway between a lawyer and a psychiatrist, and that a priest would be perfect. I conjured up a poker-faced Robert De Niro in clerical garb as Cyndi Lauper sang about girls who just wanted to have fun.
But I wasn’t getting away as fast as I hoped. Back at the car-rental lot, my credit card was declined. “It might be my handheld,” the young man said to me, to cover either my embarrassment or his. “Do you have another card, or would you please try inside?”
I didn’t know why there was trouble with the card. It was AmEx, which I always pay immediately, not wanting to forfeit Membership Rewards points by paying late. I was slightly worried. Only one woman was in front of me in line, and after two people behind the counter got out of their huddle, both turned to me. I chose the young man.
“There was some problem processing my credit card outside,” I said.
The man took the card and swiped it. “No problem now,” he said. “It is my pleasure to inform you that today we can offer you an upgrade to a Ford Mustang for only an additional seven dollars a day.”
“I’m returning a car,” I said. “The machine outside wouldn’t process my card.”
“Thank you for bringing that to my attention,” the young man said. He was wearing a badge that said “Trainee” above his name. His name, written smaller, was Jim Brown. He had a kind face and a bad haircut. “Your charges stay on American Express, then?”
An older man walked over to him. “What’s up?” he said.
“The lady’s card was declined, but I ran it through and it was fine,” he said.
The older man looked at me. It was cooler inside, but still, I felt as if I were melting. “She’s returning, not renting?” the man said, as if I weren’t there.
“Yes, sir,” Jim Brown said.
This was getting tedious. I reached for the receipt.
“What was that about the Mustang?” the man said.
“I mistakenly thought—”
“I mentioned to him how much I like Mustangs,” I said.
