“Is there anything you want?” her mother asked.
“Nothing comes to mind,” Colleen said, “but I’ll look around.” And with that they were off in separate directions, each one burning with anger and perhaps a little embarrassment from the turn their conversation in the car had taken.
Colleen found herself on the breakfast aisle, and her eyes scanned boxes of cereal, Pop-Tarts, instant grits, and oatmeal as she walked toward the back of the store. She’d had only dry toast for breakfast, and her stomach clenched at the sight of some of the sugary offerings. Her headache now squeezed at her temples and narrowed her vision, and she found her forehead sweating and felt her neck grow flushed.
When she reached the end of the aisle and turned left to round another, she spotted a woman at the far end pushing a young baby in a stroller. Colleen recognized her immediately. It was Myra Page, a girl she’d been friends with in high school but had hardly seen since they both left home for college. Myra didn’t see her, and Colleen stood for a moment, watching the baby in the stroller, who looked to be a little boy. He was chewing on something as if his teeth hurt, and Colleen thought of the Brazelton book and tried to gauge his age, but something in her stomach turned, and she suddenly feared that she was going to vomit right there on the floor.
She spun away from Myra toward the meat counter, where great slabs of steaks and ground hamburger sat on crushed ice behind thick glass. She tried to remember the layout of the store, to recall where the restrooms were. She scanned the back wall for a sign, and then she saw it on her left and made a beeline for it.
Colleen was barely able to close the stall door and lift the lid of the toilet seat before that morning’s coffee and dry toast and whatever remained from last night’s dinner left her stomach in a weak, brown stream that trickled into the toilet. She coughed, spit what was left in her mouth into the water. She flushed the toilet and grabbed a fistful of toilet paper and dabbed at her face and neck. She opened the stall door and walked to the sink. She ran the water and splashed it over her face, cupped some of it into her mouth, swished, and spit it out. Her pale face stared at her from the mirror. She winced at the dark circles under her eyes. Her blond hair still looked damp where she’d pulled it back in the stubby ponytail. Her pocketbook was in her mother’s shopping cart, so she didn’t have anything with her. No lip gloss. No brush. Nothing to improve what she was seeing before her. She pinched her cheeks to bring color back into them, gave them a few light slaps. She opened her mouth, smiled gruesomely at herself.
Outside the bathroom, Colleen saw that Myra Page had reached the end of the aisle and was now standing by the butcher’s counter, a woman beside her. To her great horror, Colleen discovered that the woman with Myra was her own mother, and she was holding Myra’s baby in her arms, her fingers clasping the teething toy and passing it in and out of the baby’s mouth while its flailing arms reached for it. Myra and her mother were laughing. Both women looked up and saw Colleen at the same time. Her mother smiled a smile that looked like elation to Colleen. Myra simply waved as if she and Colleen were still girlfriends.
Myra, as if remembering or intuiting the great upheaval of Colleen’s life, cocked her head to the side and looked at Colleen as if she were a child. “And how are you?” she asked once Colleen was close enough. “You’re in”—she paused as if trying to remember something—“Texas now, right?”
“Yeah,” Colleen said. “Dallas. My husband took a job there.”
“Wow,” Myra said. “I bet it’s really beautiful out there.”
“It’s nice,” Colleen said. She tried to smile, tried to keep her eyes off Myra’s baby boy. “It’s growing on me.”
“Well, now she’s home visiting her mama,” Colleen’s mother said, rocking her body and the baby from side to side at the word mama. She laughed a little and looked at Colleen. Her face changed. “Are you okay?” she asked. Colleen nodded her head and did her best to smile. “Honey, did you just throw up?”
Colleen was crying by the time they made it out to the car. Her mother sat in the passenger’s seat while Colleen lifted the paper bags full of groceries into the trunk. When she was finished, she slammed it closed and left the cart sitting where it was. She pulled her shirtsleeves over her hands and wiped her eyes, and then she opened the driver’s door and climbed inside. She started the engine and backed out of the space without looking at her mother.
“I’m sorry,” her mother said. “I don’t know what I was thinking.”
“It’s okay,” Colleen said. She sniffed, wiped at her eyes again.
“I wasn’t thinking at all,” her mother said. “I just saw Myra and didn’t think a thing about holding her baby. I just forgot.”
“Forgot what?” Colleen asked. They had come to a stop at a red light before leaving the parking lot and turning onto Beach Road. “Forgot that I was with you? Forgot that I lost my son? Forgot that you lost your grandson?”
“I don’t know, Colleen,” she said. “Maybe, for a minute, I forgot to be sad.” Her face broke and she closed her eyes. Colleen knew she was fighting tears. She had rarely seen her mother cry, and seeing it now surprised her.
Colleen reached out and closed her hand over her mother’s. “It’s okay,” she said. “I’m not mad. I’m definitely not mad at you. I’m just sad, and I know you are too. It just is what it is.”
The light turned green, and Colleen eased onto the gas and turned out of the parking lot. They rode in silence for a moment.
“I shouldn’t have held that stupid baby,” her mother finally said.
Colleen smiled a little, looked over at her. “It did look stupid, didn’t it?” she said.
Her mother smiled too. “Yes, it did. It looked pretty stupid.”
Colleen laughed. She reached for the radio. “Stupid baby,” she said.
They left the radio on once they crossed the bridge and returned to the island, and Prince’s song “When Doves Cry” played while they drove up and down the gridded streets, leaving campaign leaflets in people’s mailboxes, the cold and frozen groceries almost forgotten in the trunk. And they talked, really talked. About Scott’s new job and how much he was gone. About her mother’s uncertainty over whether or not she wanted Colleen’s father to take on another term as sheriff. About the airplane and what it could mean for her father’s reelection, for the investigation into Rodney’s death that would now take so much of his time.
Colleen wanted to stay in the car with her mother, their windows rolled down, the radio on, their conversation moving freely and loosely among topics that were connected by memory and shared history and kinship. But they had the groceries to unload, and Marie had a round of medicine due with her lunch, and so Colleen was forced to point her mother’s car toward home.
The phone was ringing when they walked into the house, and Colleen, carrying a bag of groceries in each arm, walked into the kitchen and set them down on the counter. She answered the phone, immediately recognizing the man’s voice on the other end.