"I’m sorry, honey. So, you’re moving home?" Mom asks as a genuine smile pokes at her pale lips.
"No, she’s moving in with me," Journey says.
I spot my bag as it falls off the belt onto the moving conveyer, so I slip away from the conversation, happily so, and make a run for my luggage. I grab the handle of my black hard-case, but it catches on another bag, and I’m now running alongside my suitcase like a woman prancing with her four-legged friend at a dog show. I tug harder and harder until a hand shoves mine out of the way.
Him.The man I sat next to on the plane lifts my heavy bag effortlessly and places it down in front of me.
"You okay?" he asks with a small smile.
"Yes, thank you for helping me with this thing.” I laugh awkwardly and slap the side of the case.
I don’t know if he was asking if I was okay from chasing my bag or because he witnessed me crying with Mom and Journey a minute ago, but I leave with my bag before he has the chance to clarify his question.
"What a nice man," Mom says. "I don’t have my glasses on. Is he good-looking?"
"Mom," Journey snaps. "Not the time."
"Sorry, I thought you were about to end up on the moving belt with the bag," Mom continues.
I can see that to be the case because Journey is laughing so hard she’s doubled over. The thing about pain is, it comes out in every form of uncontrolled emotion. Journey rarely finds herself in a fit of hysterics. She’s more of a roll-her-eyes at a joke kind-of-girl.
"I’m parked in a thirty-minute visitor space. We need to get moving," Mom says, swaying her arms toward the exit.
With my hand on the door, I glance over my shoulder back at the baggage claim area. I spot the nameless man with his phone pinched between his cheek and shoulder. A wide smile stretches at his lips, and his eyes are staring right back at me. He holds up his hand for a motionless wave as if we became friends during the last few hours. Maybe he’s hoping I’ll call him.
3
Journey becomes car sick easily,so from the age when she was old enough to sit in the front seat of the car, she has had to claim the passenger seat, while I sit in the back. As much as I hate sitting in the backseat, it’s better than smelling vomit.
I slide into the black leather bucket seat in the back of Mom’s Lexus SUV. The car smells like Mom’s perfume, Chanel Number 5, the same scent she’s been wearing my entire life—or for as long as I can remember. The seats are clean and scuff free; proof that her children are older and not being carted around any longer. The only thing in the back seat is a pile of papers and her briefcase.
The papers are hospital release notes, so I leave them resting on the seat beside me.
Journey twists the volume knob on the dashboard display, blasting an old Celine Dion song Mom must have been listening to. Journey then presses the satellite radio button, but Mom slaps the power button. "I can’t listen to music right now. I’m sorry," Mom says.
Journey twists her head just enough to glance over her shoulder at me. We offer each other our sisterly wide-eye look, both wondering when music became too much for Mom.
"I’ve been learning to take over all the bills," Mom says. "I found a good plumber and a handyman. An electrician too. You never know when I might need some help, and I don’t want to become a burden on either of you."
It seems like she has known about Dad’s return condition for longer than a week.
"Mom, we aren’t going to walk away from you. We’re here. We’re all here, together," I remind her.
Not all of us. Dad won’t be with us much longer.
The ride from the airport was long enough to fill the car with painful strings of silence, but pulling into the driveway, the silence is taken over by the drumming of my heart.
Whenever I would come home from college for a long weekend or for a week after I moved to South Carolina, I would find Dad mowing the lawn or fixing the flower beds that line the driveway, but weeds are poking out of the black mulch, and leaves are covering the yard. "I hired a landscaper to do a fall-cleanup. He’s coming next week," Mom says, gesturing to the lawn.
"I can rake the leaves," I tell her.
"No, no, don’t be ridiculous. Our yard is large, and you’ll hurt your back or something."
"We’ll figure it out," Journey adds in.
Mom doesn’t respond. She rattles her keys in her hand and clunks her heavy heals against the stone walkway, which leads to the front door—the bare front door. There has never been a holiday or season to pass by without an oversized decorative wreath.
The door opens as Mom slips her key into the lock. Dad is standing before her with a weak smile and droopy eyes, but it’s easy to tell he’s filled with joy at the sight of us three.
