Lauren Hoffman walked into her daughter’s room, dragged a chair next to the bed, dropped her purse beside the chair and sat.

Vanessa was lying on her side, pillows at her back, a pillow between her calves, two under her neck and head. Her hands were under the covers and the covers were pulled up to her chest and she looked as if she could disappear into all the bedding and if that happened it would be okay with her. She’d not been feeling well. Headache, shoulders aching a little, generally uncomfortable, generally feeling bum.

Her mother sat for a moment, settling in, then reached for her and when Vanessa shook her head, just noticeably, her mother’s eyes dimmed.

“Honey,” her mother said.

“Mom. I’m asking,” she said. This had been her idea. She wished she felt like sitting up, but the opposite was true. Despite that, the conversation was a go, and Vanessa wondered if she’d planned the whole thing, or if it was the natural order of things, if it was her condition saying do this. She wasn’t sure if there would be revelations, confessions, apologies and reminiscences, those sorts of things. Now, with her mother seated, doe-eyed and waiting, she realized she just wanted the being together – mother and daughter – and maybe some idle chat or shared grousing or some form of mother-daughter talk, focused or unfocused. How many times in her life had she hung on her mother? How many bandaged knees? She was on her way out, that’s how she felt, and she wanted her mother, her family, to hear how she thought about that. What could anyone do? She thought about trying to sit up, but didn’t have the energy. She didn’t feel like crying, but if tears arrived, she didn’t have the energy or the will to fight them back.

Her mother was quiet. Her mother looked unsure. She looked as if she’d prepared herself for whatever she was going to hear, and she had. She looked resigned. Had her mother known she looked resigned, she would have wept bitterly. She would never forgive herself.

Lately, at night, Vanessa wondered where all the tears she was supposed to be crying were. Shouldn’t she be weeping? She pictured tears waiting, being held back, being absorbed back into her, doing malevolent things to her eyes and face, to her lungs and her heart. She was aware that she’d learned how to stop them. It wasn’t all that difficult. Frowning sometimes worked. So did shaking her head and looking away. Also, a deep breath, in through the nose, and held.

“Tell me about you,” Vanessa said. “Mom, that’s what I want to hear, okay? Tell me how it was growing up with grandma and grandpa. High school. That stuff.” Eyebrows raised and lowered. Vanessa didn’t like the silence, didn’t know what to say, had no idea what she wanted to hear, so she took a stab at getting things going.

“How you met dad. That stuff. And Uncle Bill.” She worked up a smile, half the smile hidden by a pillow. “Uncle Bill is the world’s most dangerous bachelor, isn’t that what he says?”

Lauren Hoffman wanted to cry, and she would, later. She faked a smile – half discomfort, half surprise. She knew what Vanessa did not want to hear. She’d been saying those things and thinking those things for so long they no longer held any content. When she said those things to anyone, they sounded hopeless and hackneyed and she wanted to stop, but stopping was out of the question. So, sitting bedside, was this what Vanessa wanted? Family history? Her mother wasn’t sure, but here she was, they were in a hospital, together, and so whatever was said would be important, wouldn’t it?

“You’re not from Wainwright,” Vanessa said. She knew that. She’d known that forever. She was priming the pump. She wanted her mother to relax and be herself, be not-tangled and not-worried and not-observing. Be Lauren Hoffman, the Phys Ed major who’d tried teaching, passed on it, and who, with a friend (another ex-teacher), started a little catering business and came up with ideas that people seemed to enjoy.

Her mother bit at the end of her tongue, slid the tongue around, buying time. She’d learned her daughter had acquired a well-developed patience, or something very close to that, and that it exceeded hers.

“Well,” she said, “My name Lauren Piatkowski, I’m from West Liberty, Iowa, I have two wonderful parents, Leonard and Carol Piatkowski, and a younger brother, William. My parents are still alive, still in West Liberty, and my brother William is in sales and doing quite well, as you already know. I have three children: a daughter, Vanessa, seventeen, her older brother, Ethan, nineteen, and my first born, a son, Taylor, twenty-one.” She stopped and batted her eyes at her daughter. Okay, she thought, if this is what we’re doing, let’s do it. She felt better. It looked like her daughter was paying attention.

“You want more?”

“I do,” Vanessa said. “First grade. Tell me about first grade. You know. Grade school. That stuff.” She watched her mother scrunch her mouth and cock her head.

“West Liberty Elementary,” her mother said. “Mrs. Bishop was first grade.” She paused. “I don’t know … I barely remember.” Another pause. “I could walk there,” she said, “to West Liberty. It was only a couple blocks from my house. I walked most days, to and from, with a neighbor girl, Suzanne Betts.” She stopped, frowned. “Best, maybe. Suzanne Best. Bast? Something like that. She moved away, I remember that.” She looked at Vanessa and Vanessa looked pleased. She was a beautiful daughter. She’d been a lovely child. She looked like everybody in the family, with that familiar smile, a bit crooked. Lauren Hoffman wanted to hold her daughter’s face in her hands. She wanted to crawl into bed and hold onto her. She’d done that when Vanessa was a little girl. Hurt or upset, mother always held daughter. She wanted to pick her daughter up and walk out of the hospital. How much did she weigh now? Vanessa had been losing weight again and mother mustn’t think about that.

“Anyhow … I wasn’t … I don’t know … I guess I learned to read and write, huh? I mean, honestly, do you remember learning to read and write?” Was that smart? A smart comment? She blinked, raised her eyebrows and leaned toward her. “Vanessa, I’m forty-seven, so first grade is way back there for me and …”

“Twenty-nine,” Vanessa said. Big smile under sad eyes. Whenever she’d heard others ask her mother her age, whenever her mother gave her age, whenever asked, that was her answer. Twenty-nine. Always twenty-nine, always with a smile.

Her mother bit down on the side of her tongue and it worked.

“You know, West Liberty is small, right? You’ve been there. You know.”

Vanessa dropped her gaze, heaved a sigh, then gave a slight nod.

“Everybody knew everybody, it was like that, and to be honest …” and she stopped and looked up and away. It delighted both of them – right then – that they were talking like this, about nothing. Or something, maybe. Maybe nothing that was close to something, but not something important or crucial. “I did okay,” she said. “I guess I did. I mean, I never flunked, you know?” She laughed. “I was never held back … that’s something, isn’t it?”

A smile from daughter.

“So the big deal when I was growing up was going into Iowa City. That was the big thing, it really was. I looked forward to it. Weekends we’d go. Me and my friends. Angela Jensen, a close friend, always. Still. Dani Burke. Danielle. Friends on Facebook. Jerri Holmes. Friends on Facebook. Rebecca Stamps and Diane Hansen and Diane Wagner and Bobbie Cox.” She stopped and smiled, remembering those names, those girls. “What a bunch we were. The gang of us, when we were teenagers … oh my God … if our parents ever knew how often we’d go into Iowa City on a Friday night. On a Saturday night.” She felt good. Felt enthused. Her face was warm and her hands were down between her knees and she was leaning forward and remembering her friends and what they looked like and what the nights felt like when they were together and teenaged-up and having a time. “We’d go with boys. In their cars. I don’t know that I had the guts to drive into Iowa City. It was a twenty-minute drive! That’s all! I’m sure I did. I had to, at some point, right? And let me tell you something … this is awful. I thought it was awful at the time, too.” She leaned toward her daughter, eyes narrowed. “My dad would check the mileage on our car! He’d check to see how far I’d driven around on a Friday or Saturday night! I hated it! I couldn’t believe he did that! My mom and dad fought about it. Not like, a real fight, but I remember my mom telling my dad to back it up a bit.” She straightened up and Vanessa could see her mother’s eyes turn inward. Her mother’s smile spread, she leaned toward her daughter again, leaned down and swooped closer, getting ready to tell a secret. “There were college boys in Iowa City,” she said, and her smile went impish. Her eyebrows were raised and she raised a hand to her neck and held it there. “We’d go sometimes – just us girls – and we’d know just where to go, you know. All dolled up. That’s what we thought. All dolled up, thinking we were hot stuff.”

“You were chasing college boys?” No smile, eyes open and blinking, Vanessa stirring the pot again.

“No!” Lauren Hoffman dropped her chin and sighed, looked up and smiled. “Yes! But we figured, we were hoping they’d chase us.” Her shaking her head. Weren’t those wonderful years? Weren’t those years full of close friends something worth remembering? “If I remember correctly, we’d maybe talk to some guys or something like that, maybe, and if they made any, you know, moves or something, we’d get out of there.” She stopped and laughed. “We blamed it on Bobbie. Bobbie Cox. She was shy and she’d get so mad at us. We’d be laughing, driving back to West Liberty, and she’d be so mad at us, teasing her.” She stopped, closed her lips. “We knew the college boys were out of bounds. I sure did. My folks would have freaked out. We blamed Bobbie but she knew, we all knew, we weren’t up for those college parties. No way.” Lauren Hoffman went quiet, picturing her friends, herself, years gone by. “Bobbie was …” She stopped again and sighed.

“Bobbie Cox?” Had Vanessa ever heard that name before?

Bobbie Cox was killed by a drunk driver, driving I-74, back to West Liberty from Champaign, Illinois, where she was a sophomore at the University of Illinois. A car going south in a northbound lane struck her head on. Law enforcement said she died instantly.

“One of my dear friends,” his mother said. “Bobbie was the sweetest. Shy. Very pretty. Quite the student, too.” A smile; it took a bit to muster it up before she looked away.

“When did you meet dad?”

She sighed, looked at her daughter, scooched her chair closer and put an arm on the bed and snaked her hand forward until her daughter took it, and when she did, she bloomed. Her mother had told the story before. How often? Often. Her daughter liked hearing it.

“Stop me when this gets boring,” she said.

Did Vanessa laugh? Chuckle? She made a sound, and that was good.

“I met him when I was twenty-one and he was twenty-one and I was visiting friends and he was visiting friends and I think it was a long weekend and I’m sure I told you this before, but my first impression of your father was that he was a jock, something like that.” She shrugged and looked at her daughter. Her daughter looked tired and that frightened her mother. Seeing that, always looking for that and then seeing it, why did she do that all the time? Here’s what Lauren Hoffman asked herself, all the time, day or night: What should I do? What should I not do?

“Dad wasn’t a jock,” Vanessa said.

“I don’t know …” her mother replied. “He was a doggone good baseball player. At least that’s what I heard.” A pause. “Maybe he told me,” and she smiled and laughed again.

Vanessa pulled her legs up under the sheets, rolled her neck and head into the pillow and back out.

“You okay?” her mother asked.

“Yeah,” she said. She rolled her neck again, pushed her legs out and arched her back. Her mother stood, walked around the bed and started playing with the pillows. She’d grab each pillow and adjust it, say “good?” and Vanessa would say “no” or “little more” or “that’s good” and when Vanessa was all done moving around and back in pretty-much her original position, her mother stood behind her, put a hand on her shoulder and held it there until Vanessa put a hand up on hers and squeezed.

Neither intended to cry.

About the Author:

Victor Kreuiter’s stories have appeared in EQMM, Halfway Down The Stairs, Bewildering Stories, Tough, Frontier Tales, Del Sol SFF Review, Literally Stories, and other online and print publications.