Issue #1 Winter 2002
Long Distance
by Joan Michael
Six weeks after he is gone and here comes the insurance money. Frank's life was worth one hundred thousand big ones and Dot gets it all. She parks a new white Lincoln in the drive, puts thick blue carpet on her mother's floor downstairs and flies to Hawaii. She loved Frank, she really loved Frank, but oh, that awful wreck, that awful coma.
The men in Hawaii are all younger than she and dark skinned. The sun has darkened them down like mahogany and they keep it to a shine, swaying smooth on the dance floor. She can only sit at the bar, nursing a drink, the wellspring of a hundred former Fridays pulsing in her veins. She orders another drink, something tropical. It is a pinkish orangy color, but in the bar it looks red. She gulps it down. She leaves Hawaii depressed and gets off the plane swaying slightly.
Her niece meets her at the airport and Dot's mood lifts. Laura is good medicine. Laura is the one she always wants to see.
They embrace but when Dot pulls back, Laura pulls her closer.
"My goodness!" laughs Dot. "What's this?"
"It's Grandma," Laura tells her and when Dot doesn't respond, adds,
"Your mother."
They stand in silence as the luggage rolls around. Laura hoists the large suitcase; Dot takes the smaller ones.
Laura is a plump girl but her waist is thin; around it she wears a narrow olive belt looped over twice. She is wearing a black jumpsuit with lots of pockets and zippers and snaps. It has a military effect. Dot decides she isn't wearing it right. Laura needs a bracelet or a necklace or a pink chiffon scarf knotted about her waist. Yes, a scarf -- pink or maybe aqua. This way she looks too mannish.
"We tried to call you at the motel Tuesday night but you weren't in," Laura continues. "Grandma had really sharp pains in her stomach, so we took her to the hospital. The emergency room was packed but Mom got Grandma in right away." Laura sighs. "I wish I could be like mother, but I guess I'm a coward. I would have waited but that wouldn't have been right. Right?"
What's right? thinks Dot, I've waited for right all my life. She closes her eyes, seeing those boys with girls this time, swaying into the night.
"I couldn't have pulled it off either, Laura," Dot says finally. "But thanks for being there."
Her niece looks relieved as they carry the baggage to the car.
Dot wants to go home but she goes to the hospital to see her mother, instead. Lying flat against the white sheets, her mother, a fat woman, doesn't look so enormous.
"How was the trip?" Dot's mother is named Anna. Her teeth are out. "Did you meet any nice people?"
Dot blushes. She knows that when her mother says 'nice people' she really means eligible men and this makes her so angry she gives her mother a dirty look. Anna knows everything. She knows that even though Dot has said she will never remarry, that she isn't even looking, she went to Hawaii to...her mother's face reddens at the look, she knows it is the glare Dot reserves for busybodies and salesmen, any kind of salesmen. Anna looks as if she might implode. Dot feels angry that she has given herself away, angry that she has upset a sick woman. Mother and daughter are staring out the window when the orderly arrives.
"How are we today?" he asks, but neither of them answer.
The orderly pierces her mother's flabby flesh with a long needle, but the flesh proves stubborn. He taps the vial lightly, then harder until it fills. As soon as Dot sees her mother's blood, she knows what the doctor's diagnosis will be. Not even blood, she thinks, just thick, rusty syrup. She turns her head. Her stomach growls.
The orderly leaves. Her mother asks, "Have you eaten?"
Dot starts to shake her head, then says, "I ate some peanuts on the plane."
"Go home, then," says her mother. "Go."
She goes back to the house and takes a shower. Dot still lives at home, upstairs. She and Frank lived upstairs, and her mother lived downstairs. It is a big house, with lots of room and plenty of closet space. She and Frank both worked while her mother took care of their children. There were two of them: the boy is in the service and the girl lives in Seattle. The boy, Frankie, is her favorite. The girl she could never understand. She feels guilty that she didn't give them any of the money. She feels guilty about her mother. She will have to call her children. She calls Laura instead because she wants to talk and offers to take her to Lazelo's and buy her a steak. Laura says that's okay, she will buy her own steak, but Dot insists because she knows Laura would go with her whether she paid for her dinner or not. Laura is a good kid.
They meet in the parking lot. Laura is still wearing her jumpsuit, only now she has a red belt around it. Dot is annoyed. She thinks the red and the black together look like something a communist would wear. She wonders if Laura knows what she is doing, but then Laura is a plump girl, sometimes sloppy. Dot thinks she will thin down when she goes to Alaska to visit her fiancé, shiver some of her fat off. She wonders how she manages to keep her waist. They enter the restaurant.
"How about a drink?" asks Dot. Laura says okay. They sit at the bar. Laura orders a glass of Chablis; Dot gets a bourbon.
"I bet it seems cold here after Hawaii," says Laura.
"Yeah, in a way."
Laura runs her fingers up and down the stem of her glass. She sighs. Slowly, her eyes fill with tears.
"I'm worried sick about Grandma. I mean I know she's old and she's got to die sometime, but she's my grandmother and she's always been there."
Laura is looking Dot straight in the face, wanting comfort, expecting sympathy, and counting on the common bond of the sick woman between them. Dot looks away and fiddles with her lighter. When it doesn't work, she takes out a box of matches designed to strike anywhere but rather than using the side of the box, she strikes one on the sole of her shoe. The sudden bite of sulfur causes Laura's tears to flow.
"You don't think it's--"
"Cancer of the colon," Dot says quickly and takes a draw.
Dot knows her mother is dying. There was something other than embarrassment in the flush on her mother's face today, something pushing on the inside. It reminded her of the afternoon her sister, Ruth -- Laura's mother -- upset their mother when they were sitting under the shade in the side yard. Ruth has a way of upsetting Anna more than anyone Dot knows. It is as if Ruth were the parent and her mother the child, so eagerly does their mother want Ruth's approval. Dot has never wanted Ruth's approval. She knows her sister has always been jealous of the fact that she never had to leave home and of her naturally curly hair, which makes her look years younger.
When Dot got the insurance money, Ruth was livid.
"Well, you certainly don't have anything to worry about." She had snapped.
As soon as the words came out, Dot knew where Ruth was heading. She had not wanted to continue in that vein. Just a moment before, they had all been sitting comfortably in folding chairs, padded cushions underneath, and talking about Florida oranges. Now everything had changed.
"Oh, I don't know," Dot had said lightly. "No one is ever free from worry."
"No, sir," Ruth continued, "Not with all of Frank's insurance and all of this when--"
"Ruth!" Dot shouted, not wanting to upset their mother yet knowing her tone had upset her more.
Anna's face had turned beet red. Even the creases in her cheeks were on fire -- purple lines dark as birthmarks spread across her face, threatening to break her apart. Couldn't Ruth see? Didn't she care?
Dot thinks of the blood that came out of her mother's arm today. Yes, her mother is dying but she regrets admitting it to her niece so soon. Now, she wants to say something encouraging but the memory of that afternoon must play out first.
"I'm not like you are, Mother," Ruth had continued. "I wouldn't leave nothing to nobody who wasn't good to me. I would leave Laura a dime if she wasn't good to me. No sir, when I'm dead and gone, no one is going to get a cent who hasn't been good to me."
A deep silence had followed before their mother cried out, "And who hasn't been good to me? Who am I going to leave something to that hasn't been good to me?"
"Aunt Dot?" Laura asks, hesitant.
"There's nothing to worry about, Laura," she says, flipping an ash. "I over-reacted. People beat cancer all the time. Grandma will be all right."
Laura downs her wine.
"It's in the diet," a man, two stools away, interrupts. He is not drunk, just friendly. "Refined sugar, additives. They foul up your blood. Life is in the blood."
"Could be," Laura agrees reflectively. "Now that you've brought it up, it makes sense."
Dot gulps her drink. One stool away a man about her age, probably older, is talking to Laura.
"Do you know this girl is going to Alaska?" she interjects.
The man jumps a seat and looks at Dot, interested. "You don't say?"
"That's why I brought her here tonight, to talk her out of it. Can you imagine Alaska?" Dot's voice ends on a wail and she grabs the man by the arm. "Tell her not to go to Alaska!"
The man orders them another round of drinks.
"You won't be happy there," he tells Laura. "My wife was always wanting to travel. She wanted to go out west. Now, she's got leukemia."
"I'm sorry to hear that," Laura says sincerely.
When the fresh drinks arrive, Dot grabs hers and goes to a table. In a few minutes, Laura joins her.
"Ready to eat now?" Laura asks, as if nothing had happened.
Dot frowns, but inwardly she is pleased. This is what she likes about Laura; she takes things so matter-of-factly. She is so simple to be around -- much simpler than her own daughter, Carolyn. Dot could never go out like this with Carolyn. The last time she tried was about five years ago and it was a disaster. Carolyn kept saying "Oh, Mom!" until Dot thought she would scream. Carolyn is a blonde and Dot was a blonde then, too, and every time someone told them they looked like sisters, Carolyn kept saying
MOTHER! Dot thought it undignified. She lights another cigarette, knowing Laura won't mind if she smokes.
"The nerve of some men," she tells Laura, exhaling. "They think you'll fall for anything just because you're alone. Did you pick up on that line about his wife?"
Laura starts to reply, but the waitress comes to take their orders.
"And bring another round of drinks," Dot calls after her, eyeing Laura through the veil of her smoke. Although they have already ordered, Laura is still reading the menu.
"The honey glazed chicken sounds good, too," she says.
"Undoubtedly."
Laura is such a simple girl, she thinks, just look at the way she wears her jumpsuit. It looks like a designer -- no, it is a designer. Laura is an only child and her parents are constantly buying her fine things. And then there is that boyfriend in Alaska. She hears he has plenty of money, too. All the salaries out there are inflated.
"So it's all set?" asks Dot.
"What?"
"The wedding."
"Not really. We're just engaged."
"What about Ruth? Does your mother like him?"
"Mom likes him a lot. Dad, he--"
"Well, that's good." Dot jokes. "At least this way she won't cut you out of her will."
"Her will? Who . . . Mom? Good heavens!" Laura shrugs, then raises her eyes to meet Dot's. "You can't count on that kind of thing."
The waitress brings their drinks.
"Take the menus this time," Dot tells her.
"May I have one of your cigarettes?" Laura is an occasional smoker.
"Sure."
Dot wants to talk but is annoyed by Laura's plumpness, her clear, good skin and the slight way her hair curls around her temples. When she speaks, her voice comes out in a tone other than what she expected.
"Are you really going to Alaska?" she asks harshly.
Laura takes a drag off her cigarette, then gently grinds the ashes on the side of the tray. She is so smooth. Dot wonders if she ever thinks. Does she ever worry about her weight problem, for instance, or what her boyfriend might be doing this very minute?
"I guess so," she says, finally. "Mom said I should fly out there first and see if I liked it."
Dot takes another drink and thinks of her sister. The bourbon, combined with the thought of Ruth, makes her stomach burn. Ruth is just like their mother, a quiet woman except when it comes to family matters. Ruth has always meddled in Laura's life, and Laura doesn't seem to mind it. Anna was like that. In the house with her mother all day long, Frank gone off for the railroad, Dot could never do anything right. She started working when Carolyn was six months old. Now, thinking of Ruth's advice to her daughter, Dot feels a closeness toward her niece she would never have imagined.
Ruth is out to trick her daughter. She has probably read up on Alaska in the Encyclopedia Britannica they bought for Laura as a child and knows all about their lousy weather. She knows when it is the worst, and that is when she will send her. Because of her mother's deviousness, Laura will meet with dark, cold, and continuous snow flurries. She will never see the light. She will sit around in an igloo or an igloo-shaped lodge until she goes crazy, and then she will come home. Then, if he really loves her, the boyfriend will follow and they will have a church wedding which all the relatives can attend. Ruth will buy them a trailer and put it on the back of their double lot. Dot suspects her sister is already planning to offer them free utilities.
She wants to warn Laura, but she doesn't know where to begin.
"It's five hundred dollars one way," Laura continues. "I guess I could use some of my college money."
"And what if you don't like Alaska?"
Laura starts to answer, but their food arrives.
"Who gets the baked potato?" asks the waitress.
"I do," says Laura.
Dot takes the salad and grilled steak off the tray. The waitress looks startled, then walks away.
"What if you don't like Alaska?" she asks again.
"I don't know." Laura sprinkles salt and pepper over her sour cream. "I guess I'll come back home."
"But don't you love him?" Dot leans forward urgently. Her voice is too loud, but she doesn't care. "I thought you said you loved Jimmy."
"Jerry."
"Okay, I thought you said you loved Jerry."
"I do," Laura speaks through her food. "With all my heart."
"Then don't let anyone talk you out of going to Alaska. Forget everything I said. If you love him, you'll go there and stay. If you don't go, you'll regret it for the rest of your life. Go to Alaska. Don't have a life like mine."
"Don't talk sad, Aunt Dot. When you talk sad, you make me feel blue."
"I'd like to be young again." Dot jabs into a tomato. "Not ridiculously young, but somewhere in my thirties. I always thought the thirties were a good age. If you're a man, you're already making money if you're going to and if you're a woman and play your cards right, your children will be half grown." She chews thoughtfully. "I'd like to be thirty three years old again. The same age as Jesus Christ."
"You've led a good life, Aunt Dot," says Laura quickly.
"Married to a wimp. We lived with my mother. I gave her all those years that should have belonged to me, years when I should have been doing something. All my husband wanted to do was sit around and read the newspapers. And sex, he wanted that, too." She pushes aside her plate and takes out another cigarette. "There was a man once, a Lebanese. That's when Frank was living downtown. We were still married, but you know how things are sometimes. Anyway, this guy and I had sort of a love affair. His name was William Ray. He was a traveling man, sold office equipment and supplies, stuff like that. Every time he would come into town, he would phone and we would go dancing. He was so handsome and dark. I had blonde hair then, do you remember?"
"I remember."
"We were a couple. Nobody on the floor but us. This went on for, oh, I don't know how long, but in the end do you know what he did to me? He came to see my mother while I was at work.
My Mother! Can you believe that? He wanted her to tell me he was going away. What a spineless scum! And then he had the nerve to say I was taking away his manhood."
Dot stops to take a drink. She breaks an unlit cigarette in half.
"Jerry has a real good job out there," Laura says carefully. "He says I wouldn't have to work unless I wanted to."
"If you don't go, you'll always regret it." Dot repeats, tracing the rim of her glass. She eyes Laura's Chablis. Her own drink is gone.
"Go ahead," says Laura.
An orchestrated version of a country western song comes over the stereo system. The man at the bar leaves.
"Well, there goes another one," says Dot, raising Laura's glass in a salute. "But that's okay. At my age, you can't be too careful."
"That's right, Aunt Dot."
"Hey, what's all this 'Aunt' Dot business?"
Laura smiles.
"I tell you, a lot of these divorced men are just looking for a place to stay. They're just looking for a woman with an empty house, so they can move in with her."
Laura loosens a notch on her belt and sighs, "Whew! I'll have to walk this off in the morning."
"I tell you what I'd do if I had a jumpsuit like that. I'd put a scarf around it. I'd --" Dot pauses and then decides she doesn't care. "-- lose some weight and put a pink chiffon scarf around it. Then, I'd get long earrings, a necklace and a couple of bracelets, too. All silver. Silver attracts the light."
"Oh, I know," Laura rolls her eyes. "But it's so hard for me to reduce. Maybe once I get to Alaska."
Dot wants to pinch her, but instead she closes her eyes. If she had Laura's jumpsuit, she would buy silver, as much as she could afford. No, this time money wouldn't be a problem. She'd buy tons of silver, load herself down with it, and unsnap the first three buttons . . . Dot imagines herself on the dance floor. At first she is alone, spinning slowly just for the feel of it, then the boys join in, those brown-skinned adolescents, but she won't let them touch her. She high-kicks in their faces, only inches from their chins. She shimmies by, soundless in her silver, weaving away, waving them away, way far away she sees William Ray and still farther, Frank. Poor Frank. Because he is dead, he can't join in the dancing. He must sit with her mother and Ruth on either bandaged side. Dot toe-steps before their astonished eyes, step, ball, change, step, ball, change and the silver is clanking. There are hundreds of eyes on her, eyes she has felt, has wanted to feel all her life while her mother, sister, and dead husband sit helplessly by, marking time. It is no hallucination. She feels the blood pounding through her veins, her throat, her wrists, all her pulse points. The scarf slips loose from her waist and her mother gasps. Anna never knew she was like this. She would dance in a blaze of undulating fire and sweep herself up in it, sweep herself up in it high.
"You'd better go," she tells Laura, turning up the glass until she sees light through the bottom, knowing she will never be this transparent again. "You'd better go just as fast as you can."
©2002 Joan Michael
This story won a PEN/Syndicated Fiction Award (judged by Jayne Anne Phillips) but has never previously been published. Joan Michael is an MFA candidate at Wichita State University. She has published stories in The Laurel Review, The Cottonwood Review, The Sheridan Edwards Review, and Short Story International. Her story, "After the Rain," was included in the anthology, And Now The Magpie: an anthology of appalachian fiction, published by Bethel College. Contrary to many first impressions, she is not the cousin of writer Richard Spilman; she is his wife.