Cloud was asleep. Bruises covered her face, blackened one eye; her lip was split open and seeped blood. Short gray hair, apparently cut with a dull knife, was matted to her head.
She didn't look anything like herself; rather, she looked like a frail old woman who'd been beaten by more than someone's fists—by life itself.
"Hey, Cloud," Tully said, surprised to find that her throat was tight. She gently stroked her mother's temple, the only place on her face that wasn't bloodied or bruised. As she felt the velvety soft skin, she realized that the last time she'd touched her mother had been in 1970, when they'd held hands on that crowded Seattle street.
She wished she knew what to say to this woman, with whom she had a history but no present. So she just talked. She told her about the show and her life and how successful she'd become. When that started to sound hollow and desperate, she talked about Kate and their fight and how it had left her feeling so alone. As the words formed themselves and spilled out, Tully heard the truth in them. Losing the Ryans and Mularkeys had left her devastatingly alone. Cloud was all she had left. How pathetic was that?
"We're all alone in this world, haven't you figured that out by now?"
Tully hadn't noticed her mother wake up, and yet she was conscious now, and looking at Tully through tired eyes. "Hey," she said, smiling, wiping her eyes. "What happened to you?"
"I got beat up."
"I wasn't asking what put you in the hospital. I was asking what happened to you."
Cloud flinched and turned away. "Oh. That. I guess your precious grandmother never told you, huh?" She sighed. "It doesn't matter now."
Tully drew in a sharp breath. This was the most meaningful conversation they'd ever had; she felt poised on the edge of some essential discovery that had eluded her for all her years. "I think it does."
"Go away, Tully." Cloud turned her face into the pillow.
"Not until you tell me why." Her voice trembled on that question; of course it did. "Why didn't you ever love me?"
"Forget about me."
"Honestly, I wish I could. But you're my mother."
Cloud turned back and stared at her, and for a moment, no longer than it took to blink, Tully saw sadness in her mother's eyes. "You break my heart," she said quietly.
"You break mine, too."
Cloud smiled for a second. "I wish . . ."
"What?"
"I could be what you need, but I can't. You need to let me go."
"I don't know how to do that. After everything, you're still my mother."
"I was never your mother. We both know that."
"I'll always keep coming back," Tully said, realizing just then that it was true. They might be damaged, she and her mother, but they were connected, too, in a strange and profound way. This dance of theirs, as painful as it had always been, wasn't quite over. "Someday you'll be ready for me."
"How do you keep hold of a dream like that?"
"With both hands." She would have added,no matter what,but the promise reminded her of Kate and hurt too much to utter aloud.
Her mother sighed and closed her eyes. "Go away."
Tully stood there a long time, her hands curled around the metal bed rails. She knew her mother was pretending sleep; she also knew when it became real. When intermittent snores filled the silence, she went to the small closet in the room, found a folded-up blanket, and grabbed it. That was when she noticed the small pile of clothes folded neatly in the corner on the closet's bottom self. Beside it was a brown paper grocery bag, rolled closed at the top.
She covered her mother with the blanket, tucked it up beneath her chin, and returned to the closet.
She wasn't sure why she went through her mother's things, what she was looking for. At first, it was the stuff she'd expected: dirty, worn clothes, shoes with holes along the soles, a makeshift toiletry set in a plastic baggie, cigarettes and a lighter.
Then she saw it, coiled neatly at the bottom of the sack—a frayed piece of string, knotted into a circle, with two pieces of dried macaroni and a single blue bead strung on it.
The necklace Tully had made in her Bible study class and given to her mother on that day, so many years ago, when they'd left Gran's house in the VW bus. Her mother had kept it, all this time.
