Things I Want to Say by Cyndi Myers Read Free Book Online Page A

sister hadn’t given her a chance to object. Frannie had bought two tickets to California with Mama’s credit card and withdrawn all the money she’d saved from her job at Weisman’s Drug Store and hadn’t even mentioned the trip to Mama until our suitcases were packed and waiting in the front hall.
    When the taxi came to take us to the airport, Mama didn’t even bother to get up out of her chair. Frannie and I kissed her goodbye, one daughter’s lips pressed to either cheek, but she didn’t look at us or say anything.
    Every time we talked on the phone after that, I pictured her sitting in that same chair, in the same gray-and-black dress she’d worn to my father’s funeral. Even when the call came that she was dead, I half expected to walk into the house and find her there, fixed in place, perhaps in need of dusting.
    “My mother died two years ago,” Marsha said. “A heart attack. She was only fifty-nine.” She shook her head. “Losing a parent like that is always a shock.” She looked around the table at the rest of us. “It’s one of those things that makes you realize how old we’re all getting.”
    “Speak for yourself,” Alice said. She drained the last of a bottle of beer and set it down on the table with a thunk. “Haven’t you heard forty is the new thirty? If we wait long enough, forty will soon be the new twenty-five. We’ll never have to get old.”
    “Does that mean my kids will never grow up, either?” Bill shook his head. “Give me old age over perpetual teenagers any day. Or else just take me out back and shoot me.”
    We all laughed at that, and the talk turned then to children and grandchildren—whose son played football and whose daughter had won a prize at her dance recital. Someone set a wine cooler in front of me and I accepted it, letting themurmur of conversation and the buzz of the alcohol wrap around me like a soft blanket.
    Just before sunset, a band began setting up at the end of the pavilion. The caterers carted away the leftovers from the barbecue and a different crew draped the picnic tables with white cloths and set out hurricane lamps every two feet down the middle of each table.
    Mothers and fathers began corralling children and sending them off with relatives or babysitters. Some people left altogether, but most stayed, drinking and talking and watching the transformation from family picnic to adult reunion.
    A woman in a white chef’s coat moved around the pavilion, lighting the lamps. Other white-coated helpers filled the buffet table with trays of hors d’oeuvres. The band stopped the random twanging that had constituted tuning their instruments and played the first chords of “Glory Days” and the party began.
    Bill surprised me by pulling me onto the dance floor. “I don’t know how to dance,” I said, raising my voice to be heard above the music.
    “You don’t have to,” he countered. “Just move.”
    Ordinarily I wouldn’t have dared, but no less than three wine coolers had stripped me of my normal reticence. I raised my arms and gave an experimental shimmy. It felt good. Smiling, I began to move in rhythm with the music, my moves somewhere between tai chi and aerobics.
    I caught sight of Alice across the dance floor. She was partnered with Scott, doing an energetic jitterbug that had the people around them clapping and whistling. I smiled. That was Alice—the life of any party.
    After Bill, I danced with Scott and Paul and some other man I didn’t even know until sweat ran down my face and made my dress stick to my back. “I’ve got to rest,” I finally pleaded.
    I found the ladies’ room and applied a wet paper towel tothe back of my neck. I stared at the woman in the mirror—my face was flushed and my bangs were plastered to my forehead by perspiration. But my eyes shone with happiness.
    I couldn’t help but wonder how different things would have been if Frannie and I hadn’t left for California, if we’d stayed and I’d graduated