A Song for the Road by Kathleen Basi (classic literature books txt) 📕

What if that fight had been, for Talia, a moment as formative as the one that haunted Miriam?

The flowered dress, still unworn, now sat at the bottom of her suitcase, reminding her every night and every morning of the broken relationship with her daughter. A break she’d never get to repair.

She’d tried. A few hours after the fight, she’d knocked on Talia’s door, but Talia pretended to be asleep. Miriam and Teo had sat outside on the swing for another hour, trying to decide what to do. Even Teo recognized that the day before leaving for a national competition was not the time to drop a bombshell on the kids.

As for the Facebook message that started it all, she’d never sent it. She’d been grateful for that in the end, when Gus turned out to be the kids’ competition coordinator in San Francisco.

“Not like this,” Teo had told her on the phone after the awards ceremony, and he’d been right. As he’d been right about so many things. She’d tried to do everything in the wrong order. Gus might have been her unresolved past, but he wasn’t the first person who deserved an explanation.

The Bluetooth overrode the soft classical music Miriam had playing. Dicey was asleep, so Miriam glanced quickly at the screen. Jo—again. It was the third time in eighteen hours.

For the third time, she ignored it. She knew she couldn’t put her sister off much longer. But telling Josephine Lewis-Thurston no took a lot of emotional energy, and right now Miriam simply didn’t have any.

Chimney Rock turned out to be more a photo op than a destination. They stopped briefly; Dicey took Miriam’s picture with the distinctive rock formation jutting up in the background like a birthday candle jammed into a giant mole hill. There was a small museum, but Dicey hated reading signs as much as Talia had.

When they realized the bluffs twenty miles down the road offered a more substantial attraction, they decided to finish the day with a shuttle bus to the summit and a hike back down.

Dicey spent the ten-minute ride watching a Latino couple wrestle their whirlwind of a little girl whose perpetual motion made her too slippery to hold onto. When the bus stopped, the girl took off across the parking lot while her parents were still gathering paraphernalia.

“Lena!” called the man. “Wait for a’pá! Annamaria, go. I’ll get this.”

“How old is she?” Dicey asked, when she and Miriam joined the family on the sun-swept plateau.

“Three,” said Annamaria.

“Going on thirteen,” added the father wryly.

Miriam smiled. She remembered Talia perfecting a teen-worthy eye roll at this age. More than once she’d told her parents, “Talk to the hand!” Where she’d even picked that up, Miriam and Teo had no idea. They came down hard on her, but sometimes it was all they could do not to collapse into giggles. Almost every night when they went to bed, they’d trade Talia stories, laughing until tears squeezed out of their eyes.

Nothing Lena was doing qualified as “going on thirteen,” but Miriam refrained from saying so. She remembered how condescending comments from older parents had infuriated her. As if her experiences were without value, her frustrations without justification.

“How much longer?” she asked instead, gesturing to the bump around the woman’s waist.

“Fourteen weeks.”

“Ah, you’re in the good part of pregnancy.”

“That’s why we’re traveling now instead of in June. We’re on our way to Omaha. Lena is crazy about zoos.”

The wind gusts on top of the bluff made Miriam grateful she’d worn her jacket. Lena buried her face in her father’s legs. He picked her up, and she wrapped her arms around him so tightly, it was a wonder she didn’t cut off his circulation.

“Give me a break-me hug!” Talia again. That was one of Miriam’s favorite memories of parenthood: the warm, chubby arms and legs wrapping her up in sweetness.

“What brings you across Nebraska?” asked Annamaria.

Miriam shrugged. “Just seeing the country.”

Dicey shot her a look razor-sharp with disapproval, but thankfully, she held her peace.

“There’s a lot to see. I want my little girl to see it all!” Annamaria patted her daughter’s back.

“Lena,” said the father, peeling his daughter’s arms away from his neck, “you can’t squeeze that hard.”

“But, a’pá, I love you!”

“Yes, but I can’t breathe, chiquita.”

Miriam smiled to see how Dicey watched them: hungrily, fixedly, as if trying to see into her own future. Miriam could have told her there was no being ready for parenthood, no anticipating the experience. But she didn’t. Some things had to be discovered for oneself.

“I guess I have to tickle you!” roared the father, and the little girl, giggling, made a dive for freedom. She landed on her feet and scampered away, her parents scurrying after her. “Good luck with your trip!” Annamaria called over her shoulder. Little Lena grabbed both her parents’ hands. “One-two-three-WHEE!” said the father, and they hoisted her, giggling, into the air.

Apparently every young child was born knowing that game. The twins had certainly loved it. It was a constant battle, the two of them bickering over whose turn and how many swings. Miriam and Teo tired of it long before the kids ever did.

“Bitter grace,” Dicey murmured, watching the young family walk away.

Miriam looked at her. “What?”

“Annamaria. It means ‘bitter grace.’ Although that’s a German thing.” Dicey took a deep breath. “Never mind, just thinking out loud.” She wandered away, snapping photo after photo on her phone.

Miriam took a few photos too, but her heart wasn’t in it. She glanced back at the little family. Would Annamaria, too, someday face a daughter who saw only the worst in her? Motherhood could be a bitter grace indeed.

The little girl’s giggle floated back on the wind. Talia had such an enchanting giggle. Like audible silver. And such a temper! On her third day at St. Gregory Elementary, she’d tackled a second-grader for making fun of a kindergarten classmate who was crying for her parents. Miriam had been ridiculously proud.

But the