A Simple Distance Read Free Page B

dat ’oman a lesson, na , rough her up like only a man could. The rumor was repeated to my mom by the old man with the apple-core head who used to sleep in her shed at night in exchange for dinner; an arrangement which gave him food and shelter and gave my mom a second presence on the estate when she was asleep and most vulnerable.
    Turned out to just be a rumor though. Unsettling only because it came from Sommerset.
    * * *
    My studio sat half a block from one of those trendy Bay Area streets, like 24th Street or Castro in San Francisco; 4th Street in Berkeley; mine being Piedmont in Oakland, and the whiteness of the walls offered me a blank slate of which I appeared to be in particular need.
    It occurred to me, as I drove my mother home, that I had yet to place anything on those walls, and while for so long their lack of clutter had perhaps provided me with a certain solace, they had now turned into something of a little pebble fallen in my shoe that rubbed and rubbed and rubbed against my skin. I knew the walls would strike her as freakish. Again I’d be the odd duck, a failure at all things feminine, like simple decoration and sleeping with men.
    I turned into the tight driveway that separated my building from the next, parked in the dirt under the lemon tree in back, not really a spot but big enough for my practical hatchback.
    Jean, you’ll have to back up for me to get out. I’m right in the dirt here.
    I backed up, let her out on the cement, re-parked, and began unloading her bags as she walked up to the back door; the curve of her neck, more pronounced than ever before, made her look older than merely middle-aged.
    Here, Mom, I’ll let you in. You must be tired.
    I unlocked the door for her, returned to the luggage as she disappeared inside.
    By the time I’d carried in the last of her belongings, she was asleep on my futon, still folded into a couch. That night, I slept on the air mattress.

CHAPTER 4
    She woke me placing her bags one by one by one on my creaky futon, though I lay still a minute before I mumbled, Morning , wiped the sleep from my eyes, and rose from the air mattress.
    She’d done that to me all my life. When I was a teenager, she’d vacuum right outside my bedroom door weekend mornings when she thought it was time for me to get up and get to work on something or another.
    I mustered up maturity.
    Jean , she said, why haven’t you done anything with these walls? I feel I’m in an insane asylum.
    Irritated, I ignored her, retreated to the bathroom for an inordinately long time, washing my hair squeaky-clean; wondering if we couldn’t, maybe, catch a double-feature that afternoon at the theater down the street; kicking myself for not thinking—scheduling her arrival to fall on a weekend instead of a weekday when I’d have a reason to be at work.
    Perhaps I had no excuse to be acting like such a child. But her being in my space, it all came back. Ours was an uneasy reunion.
    Everything would be fine if we could just speak to each other as little as possible.
    I was thinking about a movie later, Mom. Maybe a double-feature, down the street.
    I didn’t tell her the only double-feature was back-to-back Star Wars : the last one, and then the prequel. She might have balked.
    The movie didn’t start until 2:00, but it was hard enough spending the entire morning locked in my studio with her, unpacking and unpacking and unpacking for what seemed like forever, her clothes taking up more of my closet than mine. Every five minutes commenting on my absence of décor.
    So we bought our tickets right after lunch. I figured we’d wait out the last forty-five minutes standing first in line at the theater.
    But I hadn’t figured on running into anyone. My heart stopped for just a second when I saw walking toward us on the same side of the street as our nonexistent queue: Linda, my client Cynthia’s ex, and their daughter Sadie—the subject of the custody battle. Hand in hand.
    Neither of them knew my