Crybaby Ranch Read Free Page B

in the country.”
    â€œWhere do you work?” I don’t care where it is—I want her life. An announcement begins and we pause to listen. “That’s my flight.” Reluctantly I gather my coat and purse.
    She says, “When you just up and move to Jackson, find me. I work at the bookstore.” She grins. “I recognize your magnet.” She offers her hand. “I’m Tessa.”
    I give her my hand. “Suzannah. I love bookstores.”
    I dispose of my cup with its dregs of thin coffee and wave goodbye to Tessa. In line for the airplane, I wonder why I don’t just step over to the Delta counter and change my ticket for Wyoming. Tessa and I could talk about books all the way to Jackson Hole. I don’t go anywhere without a novel tucked in my purse. Then I’ll tell her about Beckett, who applied to the University of Wyoming in Laramie because he heard it was the number-one party school in the country and because he thought all of Wyoming looked like Jackson Hole.
    Once in my window seat, I wish I’d shown Tessa the small stone I carry in my coat pocket. I found it along the Snake River; a lavender oval, smooth as the water flow that polished it. I’ve never loved a place more than Jackson Hole, or felt so immediately at one with the dry air, the wild peaks, the scream of the red-tailed hawks. A woman slides past the knees of the boy in the aisle seat and slips herself into the vacant slot between us. I gather my coat tighter around me to give the woman space while tugging on the leash of my purpose for making this trip.
    I calculate how many years since my mother began drinking heavily. Six, seven years ago she’d drink her dinners. The late-night phone calls began a couple years after that. Effusively cheery the first thirty minutes, followed by tears the next thirty. My gift to her was sympathetic listening, my cost was trudging scratchy-eyed through the workdays that followed. The almost sickening need for sleep dulled the anger that began building toward her self-involvement, which, in time, turned me from friend into audience.
    Two years more before I accepted the fact that if she didn’t remember calling me in the night, she didn’t remember the loving support I offered. Eventually, I pulled the phone jack before going to bed and doubled up on daytime calls to her. But more and more she sounded uninterested in conversation and was still forgetful about things I told her concerning my life—a punishment I probably deserved after refusing her late-night calls.
    My failure to draw boundaries didn’t begin with Erik and Beck; it began long ago with her. More than once Mom said to me as a child, “I wish you were the mother and me the daughter.” Often over the years we both seemed to forget which of us was which. She taught me to make decisions for us both when I was three years old. But that can’t be right. A three-year-old with ultimate responsibility?
    My plane lays over forty minutes in Cincinnati. Murals I remember seeing as a child in the now defunct art deco train station were moved long ago to the airport, and I go looking for them. At a mosaic depicting a burly worker feeding a printing press, I abruptly veer off track at a pay phone and dial Aunt Anne’s number. My father’s sister and I haven’t been close since Erik and I moved from Cincinnati to Findlay a dozen years ago, so I give her time to get over her surprise at hearing from me, and then I ask: Is it true that I helped my mother make up her mind when I was quite young?
    â€œOh, absolutely,” Aunt Anne says. “Why, I remember telling your uncle Roy, ‘Lizzie sure does lean on that little girl.’ You weren’t even in school yet.”
    Soon I have to hang up so I can rush to wait in another line, this time in the restroom. There I recall the rest of Aunt Anne’s talk. “Honey, how’s your mother doing? There isn’t a