Page 28 of Devil in Disguise
“When I was little,” Dyma told her, “Grandma always said, ‘You should have gone before you left the house.’Man,I’d have to go bad. I can still remember that. How come it’s so hard to hold it when you’re six? I’d be justdancing.I could say that to you now, except, of course, that you did go. I guess that’s what happens when your bladder’s smashed like a pancake, huh?” The reason she was driving—because it was hard for her mom to get comfortable behind the wheel. Driving home would be bad enough, especially when she’d bet anything her mom wouldbe crying. “Find a good spot,” she told Jennifer, “and we’ll stop.”
The last thing Harlan had told her that morning, after he’d hugged her goodbye and slipped her a hundred bucks “just in case,” had been, “Take care of your mom today, OK? It’s hard for her to see you go.”
Her mom said, “Take the exit for Castle Rock. There’s a diner.” She sighed. “I really, really want a hot pastrami sandwich. With extra cheese. Processed meat, though. I guess I’ll have to have turkey instead. Not the same atall.”
“So you’re saying that when you’re in the hospital after the baby,” Dyma said, “I should bring you pastrami?”
“You’re not coming to the hospital after the baby. This is your freshman year, and you need to focus on your new life. Besides, I’m going to be fine.”
“Yeah, right,” Dyma said, taking the exit and heading up the overpass. “Except that you won’t have Grandma, and you won’t have Grandpa Oscar, and you probably won’t even have Harlan. You could think about poor Annabelle. What a weight.”
“Harlan’s taking a week off afterwards, remember,” Jennifer said. “Take a left into town. I’ll be all right. Hey. This isyourday. You’ve earned it, and now you’re almost there! How exciting.”
Dyma sighed. “Right, Mom. So is all this cheerful stuff aiming to get menotfocused on Owen, or is it about distracting yourself from being sad that I’m going?”
“I’m allowed to have mixed feelings, just like you are. I tell you what. We’ll play a game. Oh—take a right onto Main Street, then it’s on the left. Andthenwe’ll play a game.”
Dyma had a feeling that the game wasn’t going to be Scrabble.
* * *
She was right.
They had to wait, though, until Jennifer had devoured half of her turkey sandwich—with extra cheese—eaten all her potato chips, and sent Dyma up to the counter for more, “and don’t tell me about sodium. Especially don’t tellHarlanabout my sodium. My sodium is just fine. I’m eatingturkey.”
Dyma kept working on her own whole-wheat-and-BLAT-except-no-bacon, and hoped the “game” idea had gone the way of the potato chips. Unfortunately, no. Or maybe fortunately. Huh. You know—maybe she was honest and up-front because her mom was. And her grandma, of course. She always thought of her mom as being so tactful, but she did tell you what she thought, in between all the tact.
She said, deciding to head the game off at the pass, whatever it was, “I’m missing Grandma so much today. I wish she were here with us. She’d have been singing for sure.”
“Roll on, Columbia,”Jennifer said with a slightly misty smile as she ate another chip. “She always sang that if you were going to Washington. A song nobody else in the world probably knows all the words to anymore.”
“Except you and me,” Dyma said. “Through our maternal line.”
“Woody Guthrie. Power to the working man,” her mom said, and this time, they both smiled.
“She didn’t like rich people too much,” Dyma said. “‘Which side are you on, boys?’ I remember that one, too.”
“No, she didn’t.”
“What would she have thought about Harlan?”
“Oh, let’s hope she’d have made an exception for Harlan. She liked Blake, didn’t she? Eventually. They’re both down-home guys with down-home values, underneath the NFL. So, hey. Game. I’ll tell you what I think you’re feeling, and you can tell me what you thinkI’mfeeling, and we can see how right we get it. How’s that, adult-relationship-wise?”
“You mean for adjusting to our new power dynamic?” Dyma asked. “Not too horrible, I guess.”
“I’ll go first,” Jennifer said. “Just because I’m interested. I never did the whole going-off-to-college thing, or not exactly. No dorm, and so forth.”
“Seeing as you had a three-year-old.”
“Yep. So, my first thing is … I’m guessing it’s all really new. It’s exciting, because it’s what you’ve been wishing for all through high school, and it’s a little scary, too. Not whatever job you get, because one thing our maternal linealsohas is the ability to do crappy jobs and not get fired. It’s not much, but we’ve got it.” She saluted Dyma with the other half of her turkey sandwich. “Power to the working woman.”
“So what else am I scared of?” Dyma asked.
“Being alone, maybe? I don’t think you’re scared of your classes. I don’t think you’re even scared of going to such a big university, finding your way. I think being alone’s a little daunting, though. All the things we leave behind when we start something new.”
“Yeah.” There was that lump again, and Dyma swallowed it down with some iced tea. “Maybe. Maybe for you, too. My turn. I think you’re excited to see me start college, and a little sad, too. And guilty, because youalwaysfeel guilty. Probably guilty about being glad to be able to focus more on Harlan and Nick, and for feeling relieved that you got me here and now you’re kind of done. Also—do you sort of resent that I get to do this, when you didn’t?”
She held her breath some at that. She was up-front, sure. But she’d never said this.
