When Your Mother Doesn't by Jill Kelly

Author:Jill Kelly
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Skyhorse Publishing
Published: 2014-12-31T16:00:00+00:00

The Reunion

Part III

When the three of them got to Lola’s the next morning, there was a dirty white pickup parked in the driveway behind the old convertible. Frankie was glad they had waited until late.

Callie put her hand on the sliding door but Frankie stopped her. “Let’s knock,” she said.

It wasn’t her mother who came to the door, but a tall lanky man with weather-worn skin and a huge belt buckle between his jeans and the open blue work shirt. His feet were bare. He pulled open the slider and said over his shoulder, “Lolie, I think your girls are here.” He stood aside to let them in. The house smelled of bacon and pancakes and cigarettes and bad coffee.

Her mother sat smoking at the far end of the table in the middle of the big room. The table was still piled high with papers and coats and all manner of life, but a spot had been cleared for two plates and two coffee mugs and a jug of syrup and a glass ashtray big enough to do real harm. She wore a silky robe of blues and greens that fell open over her thin tanned chest. Her hair was long and loose, just as Frankie had remembered, but a different blonde, something bottled. She was thin, way too thin, her dark eyes huge in her face. The only signs of aging were the deep squint lines that creased her brow and marked her eyes and the loose skin of her throat.

Callie went over and put her arm around her mother in a kind of hug, but Lola didn’t take her eyes off Frankie. And Frankie refused to speak first. The rage she’d expected had been too brief and she felt a messy snarl of things that she couldn’t sort out. Something in her pulled toward the woman at the table, some kind of yearning, but it was weak and very old. Mostly she just didn’t want to be there.

Finally, her mother spoke. “Jackson, thanks for the ride home. You should head on out now. You don’t want to listen to our girl talk.” She gave him a loving smile, one that Frankie had seen men get from her mother a thousand times.

The man went in the back and came out with his boots on, his jacket in hand. He gave Lola a long kiss on the mouth, nodded to the daughters, and disappeared out the slider. They heard the pickup start up and rumble away. Callie poured herself some coffee and sat down at the table. Frankie felt frozen to the linoleum. The only thing holding her up was the boy, whose warm, shy weight leaned into her side.

“You look good, Frances. Too heavy and too plain, but you look good.” Lola crushed out the cigarette and lit another and the spell was broken. This is my mother, Frankie thought, as the hurt slid down her throat and wrapped itself around her heart. This is what I had before.

Lola seemed to notice T.

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