Flying Fossils by Lynne Gentry

Author:Lynne Gentry
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Travel Light Press
Published: 2018-04-17T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 18

This Is How It Is

Put my mother’s suitcase on the bed.” Charlotte directs the uniformed fellow pushing my belongings on a rolling cart. “I’ll make room for her medical supplies in the bathroom.” She flits around the apartment rearranging this and that, obviously in a hurry to dump me and flee.

I’ve always thought that children were only as good as their raising. The theory is one I’ve stood by, especially when board members brought parental complaints to my attention. It’s rare when children surpass the unfortunate influences in their home. What is also equally as rare is for a child to fail in spite of having everything.

I watch Charlotte. Her face is tense. Her mind is miles away. She’s failing at everything. Taking care of me. Motherhood. Being happy.

So much for my apple-doesn’t-fall-far-from-the-tree theory.

A change creeps over me the way the smell of rain awakens hope after a long, dry spell. It is not a hammer to my hard shell, but more of a realization. I want Charlotte to excel as a mother. I want her to be happy. I want my daughter to be better than her raising.

“Careful with that suitcase,” Charlotte snaps at the bag boy. “I don’t want her walls banged up. Mother can you scoot your chair out of the way so he can get in the bedroom?” She’s bossing the poor moving man and me with the skill of a first-grade teacher, reminding me again at how far she strayed from her calling. “Mother, how about you come to the bedroom?”

“Make up your mind, Charlotte Ann. Do you want me to scoot or to come?”

“Come,” she hollers from the bedroom. “I need to know where you want your things.”

I don’t want my belongings placed here. I want them returned to my house and put in the same drawers and closets they’ve been in for forty-some years. But Charlotte needs to get back to Aria, so drop the name plate in my lap, wait until the moving man is clear of the extra-wide door, then wheel myself into the bedroom. “Just keep them handy.”

Charlotte surveys the empty closet with it’s low-hung shelves and waist-high clothing bar. “That should be easy enough.” As she flings the suitcase upon the bed she notices the name plate. “What’s this?”

I hold out Papa’s name plate. “A little something I’ve been saving for Aria.”

Charlotte runs her finger over her grandfather’s name. “Caroline and I used to peek in the bank window and watch him behind his desk.”

I take the placard out of her hands. “I’m sorry Burl Addison never had much to do with you girls. That was my fault. Not yours.”

She starts to say something, but then turns and quietly unzips the suitcase. The hurt look I catch in her eye unsettles me.

Charlotte paws through my bag and produces my flowered robe. “LaVera picked your sleepwear.” Any hurt she’d been on the verge of expressing has been banished and the equilibrium restored to the distance we’ve nurtured for so long.

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