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

best part came a week later, when Miriam walked by the playground and saw all three children playing ring around the rosy. “He said he was sorry,” Talia explained with a shrug.

That was her daughter in a nutshell: she’d fly off the handle in an instant, but she was just as quick to forgive.

A wind gust slapped Miriam’s face with grit. For a second, she couldn’t breathe, her mind processing a realization that had never occurred to her before:

Talia would have forgiven her too.

As bad as things were in her last months with her daughter, there had been good moments too. The hilarity of playing Apples to Apples the night they’d been snowed in—a term that only loosely applied in Georgia. The seamless ensemble as they played Christmas carols at a fundraiser for the children’s shelter. The very existence of the road trip app.

Yes, things had been strained, but they wouldn’t have stayed that way. Not forever. Talia would have grown. Miriam would have grown. They would have bickered and struggled and eventually found each other again.

What she’d lost when Talia went into the sea was not a lifetime of butting heads, of hurled accusations and simmering resentments. What she’d lost was everything that came after: lunch dates, college graduation, taking grandchildren to the pool.

The wind scoured away the walls Miriam had been hiding behind for so long. The truth was, excoriating herself for her mistakes was less painful than facing the reality of what she’d lost. Here, from this windswept ridge that towered above the vast plain, she could see everything, from the town to the east, to the fields and ridges and undeveloped plains stretching out of sight in every other direction. It was like standing on the threshold of heaven, the world spread before her in all its far-flung beauty, its wounds and pock marks reduced by distance to texture on a vast tapestry. Not flat. Not featureless. Beautiful.

Her life was like that too. Not the wasteland of tedium and obligation she’d perceived it to be, but a richly textured mosaic stretching into a tantalizing unknown.

Except now, she would traverse it alone.

The weight of the word, the sorrow it carried, nearly crushed her. Miriam could feel it pressing down on her shoulders, the gaping emptiness where there should have been a lifetime of experiences yet to unfold. It was too great a weight for anyone.

And she knew, too, that what death had stolen from her and Talia, she’d willfully withheld from her own mother. Jo was right about that, at least.

Dicey had the camera trained on her now. Miriam could see it in her peripheral vision, but she didn’t protest. It was only right that this moment should be captured—from a distance. As for herself, she only wanted to settle into the moment, to let it imprint on her memory. It hurt. Oh, how it hurt. But there was peace in it too. Because despite all the dysfunction, Talia had loved her. It was too late to repair that relationship, but it was not too late for Miriam and her own mother.

For now, that was enough.

 28

Thursday, May 5

Scottsbluff, Nebraska

DICEY AND MIRIAM SAT at a table beneath the awning of an old-fashioned drive-in, nibbling burgers and fries beneath a neon sign that read “Scotty’s.”

“So I decided with such archaic video editing equipment, two seconds and a fade was enough. No need to get fancy. But you were already dead to the world. And you … are not paying attention. Earth to Miriam.”

Miriam blinked, her finger freezing where it had idly been scrolling her phone. “What?”

Dicey sighed and wadded up her waxed paper. She’d stayed up half the night assembling a video montage of photos of Chimney Rock and Scotts Bluff, and she had a sort of wild-eyed manic vibe going on. “You planning to eat that sometime today?” she said, motioning to the French fry in Miriam’s other hand. “Or are you just going to stir your ketchup all day? Excuse me, miss?” She flagged down the teenager who was emptying trash bins. “Do you happen to have salt packets?”

“How many you need?”

“A handful, if you can spare them.”

“Sure, back in a jiff.”

Miriam shook her head.

Dicey coughed a few times. “Anyway,” she went on, “clearly something is eating at you. You never scroll your phone that much. Why don’t you tell me what’s bugging you?”

Miriam ate the fry. It was soggy from all the ketchup. “Jo quit calling,” she said. “And that worries me.”

“I think I’d be relieved.”

Miriam shook her head. “It means she’s moved on to phase two. Whatever phase two is.” Her phone dinged. Gus: Gorgeous video and a gorgeous shot of you. You can use it for the album cover when you record Blaise’s sonata.

Yesterday he’d been all Stevie Stalker, and today he was giving her compliments?

“What’s up?” asked Dicey.

Miriam turned the phone toward her.

Dicey raised her eyebrows. “What is with that guy? Didn’t you say he’s married?”

“Mm-hmm. This is totally Gus. It’s part of his charm.”

“Yeah, you say charm, I hear ‘asshole.’”

Miriam smiled. “And you want me to go talk to him.”

“Well, he likes my video. That’s bona fide charming.”

Miriam laughed; Dicey touched her phone, and the soaring strains of Dvořák’s New World Symphony started up. It had to be the fourth time she’d enjoyed her handiwork since they sat down.

The employee came back and dumped a handful of salt packets on the table; Dicey ripped one open and started dipping fries in it.

The sun went behind a cloud. A puff of wind whisked away a napkin; Miriam managed to catch it by stomping on it. The big, billowy clouds racing across the plains were getting closer together. There was something unsettling about the feel of the air. Something that made the back of Miriam’s head prickle. As if someone were watching.

She looked around but saw nothing noteworthy.

“Miriam.”

“Hmm?”

Dicey leaned forward, resting her elbows on her knees, her legs splayed wide to accommodate her belly. “You’re still not talking.”

Miriam pulled together their trash. “Dicey, I