Sometimes, Eliza
by Lilly Cross-Hall
Traditionally, a wedding marks the beginning of a new chapter in one's life, but does this apply to the mother of the bride? This is Lilly Hall's first published story.



     Eliza is wearing a purple wedding dress. Purple is Eliza’s favorite color. She’s also wearing the lace mantilla I wore when I married her father. The bridesmaids and the ushers are all in white, except for the ushers’ violet shirts and the bridesmaids’ violet sashes. They make a half circle around the minister, around Eliza and Kurt, a crescent of purple and white against the green lawn. Like violets in a formal garden.
     A young woman with wheat-colored cornrows is playing a John Lennon song on a dulcimer. She smiles while she plays, and even though she doesn’t sing the words, they’re in my mind. I was never a great Lennon fan, but as I say the words to myself...you may say I’m a dreamer...I shiver a little.
     Eliza calls her wedding untraditional. Because of the purple wedding dress, the dulcimer, the fact that everyone has been urged to bring shorts and tee shirts to change into right after the ceremony is finished. Eliza’s barefoot under the long purple skirt, but then she’s been barefoot in this yard her whole life. Also, she asked there be no gifts. Instead, there’s an over-sized brandy snifter set in the middle of the buffet table with a picture of an undernourished African child. There are already several checks resting on its glass bottom.
     We were in contention over that, Eliza and I. It hurt my sense of rightness to have that small sorrowing face among the bowls of vegetable dips and appetizers, the casseroles and salads.
     “It’s the wrong tone, Eliza,” I told her. “Your guests should be allowed to dip into the lasagna without feeling guilty.”
     “Sometimes, Mother,” she answered, looking at me with her father’s raised eyebrows, “I think it’s necessary to shake the illusions of the tribe.”
     “Sometimes, Eliza,” I started, and then I dropped it, because it is her wedding after all, and, unlike her mother, it has never occurred to her to do anything other than her own way.
     The dulcimer’s final note hangs in the air, taking a long time to die away. I think I’d like the music to continue, to go on and on because I feel very comfortable with this moment. The way I used to feel when Eliza and Michael were small and the four of us made the long trip back to see my parents in Indiana. On the dark highway with the occasional sounds of sleeping children from the back of the station wagon. David driving with two fingers at the bottom of the wheel. We’d listen to crazy late night radio, and he’d look over at me from time to time, smile at me in the dark, and I used to wish we could go on that way forever. Traveling toward a destination we would never reach.
     It was like being suspended in time. The way we are all now suspended on the fading vibration of a note in the air.
     Behind me, David clears his throat. We haven’t seen each other in seven years. Eliza did the counting.
     “Five years,” she said, looking from David to me, “no wait, more that that. Seven. My graduation. Seven years, can you imagine?”
     I looked in her eyes to see if there was any resentment left. Any seven-year-old resentment over her father having brought his new young wife to his daughter’s college graduation. But there was nothing in Eliza’s eyes stronger than interest. At twenty-eight, she’s past the late support checks, the anger, the blame. She no longer worries about who was the abandoner or who was the abandoned.
     David and Mona, however, don’t know that. They don’t know how to read Eliza’s eyes, and they both recoiled slightly at the mention of our last meeting.
     I imagine David and Mona blame me, my influence. For the wedding dress, the unconventional atmosphere, the brandy snifter. Blame me for Michael’s inevitable truculence. After all, I’ve been their only real model for ten years. It’s only natural that their failings are really mine.
     I turn my head and catch a blurred movement of Mona’s peach-colored dress. She doesn’t look a dozen years younger than I do. Not anymore. No one would take her for David’s daughter now. Mona has spread. Her ankles are thick, her eyes have narrowed, she has a double chin. Her hair remains fine, though, thick and golden, but somehow it doesn’t fit her anymore. And even though I know I should be past it all, down deep I can’t help feeling a certain sense of smug satisfaction.
     The air is quiet. Somewhere far off a car horn blows. The minister smiles and leans forward. His lips move. Eliza laughs, throwing her head back and shaking her hair like a colt. She’s enjoying herself. She and Kurt are enjoying their wedding.

     “Did you know Mama runs now?” Eliza smiles at me. Behind her someone deposits a check in the brandy snifter.
     “Runs?” David looks at her.
     “Five miles every morning. Before she opens the studio.”
     Then he looks at me as though she’s told him I’ve been to Jupiter and back.
     “You run?”
     I nod.
     “No wonder you look so good,” he says.
     Mona shifts her weight from one thick ankle to the other.
     “She’s great.” Michael, who has said nothing until now, rests his arm on top of my shoulder, carefully keeping his wine glass steady. “She ran with me and Josh yesterday. I lost sight of both of them at five-and-a-half, and didn’t catch up ‘til I walked through the kitchen door.”
     “All right, all right,” I say, looking up at him, feeling his winey breath on my face. “I confess. We took the bus.”
     Everyone laughs.
     If I could, I would send him to his room. Where I know he and the rest of us will be safe. Unlike Eliza, Michael carries his resentment like a shield. And the wine may very well produce a sword before the afternoon is over.
     “She’s great,” he repeats. He squeezes down a little on my shoulder and I imagine the wine tipping toward my chest.
     At the age of eight, Michael declared war on his father. He thinks he’s angry because David left me. He never mentions the fact he got left as well. As if somehow that doesn’t really matter. The war has changed somewhat as he’s grown older, gone cold and subtle.
     There have been attempts at peace, negotiations here and there, but they all ended badly. Like the time Michael broke a leaded vase practicing his soccer pick-up in Mona’s living room. He used to tell the story to his friends when he thought I wasn’t around, mimic the look on her face when she came into the room. They’d all laugh when he told how she took the ball to the front door and threw it outside, how it rolled into the street and caused an accident when a truck stopped short to avoid it.
     Mona sent him home in a taxi that day. Collect. I didn’t blame her. There were too many times I wished I had the same option. But then I, at least, had all those softening memories. The feel of him asleep in my arms. The way he used to cry when it thundered. The violets he’d pick for me out of Mrs. Cronin’s garden.
     All Mona had was a sullen twelve-year-old kicking a ball at her glassware.
     I turn to her, prompted now to be kind, hoping Michael will follow my lead. “Are you still working with David?”
     She nods.
     “Don’t know what I’d do without her,” David says.
     Michael makes a noise. A cough, perhaps a snort. He and David look at each other. Twins. Twins separated by time and circumstances, who no longer recognize one another. And now they're acting like Sir Galahad and Sir Gawain, rivals defending their women.
     I look past them and see Kurt and his father coming toward us. Eliza breaks away from us and meets them half-way. She takes Kurt’s hand and pulls him along.
     Kurt’s father is Kurt Sr. He smiles at me. I’ve wondered once or twice if Eliza and Kurt have gone through with this ceremony just to bring him from the west coast to meet me.
     He and I have a lot in common according to our children. We each spend a lot of time looking at art in museums. Our drink is gin and tonic. We both support Greenpeace. We do the Times crossword with a pen.
     I smile back at him. Michael’s arm comes off my shoulder and I feel him drift away. I relax a little. After Eliza makes certain everyone has been introduced, I’ll take Kurt Sr. by the arm and casually maneuver both of us as far away from David and Mona as I can.

     “I like this one better. Tastier.” Kurt Sr. holds his carrot stick in the air like a fencing foil, then plunges it into the guacamole. “Eliza’s a great girl.” He chews slowly. He narrows his eyes and stares at me. “She looks like you. A lot like you.”
     I smile. “I’m glad she and Kurt found each other.” And then I wonder why I put it that way. As though having someone makes it all easier, when I know very well it can make it all harder.
     He nods. “It’s very nice.” And in the silence that follows, he repeats it. “Very nice.”
     Last night after dinner, he told me stories about Kurt as a little boy. He told me about his house in Los Angeles and how the last tremor spun a crack through the bathroom mirror. He talked about his wife, and then he wiped his eyes and blamed it on the wine. He can’t get used to the emptiness when he comes home. He tries to keep up her garden, but he doesn’t really have the knack.
     “She fussed with those plants all the time,” he told me. “Pruning, pinching, spraying.” He shook his head and half-smiled at me. “They’ve gone wild. A jungle.”
     He wants me to come with Eliza and Kurt when they visit in January. “Get away from the snow and ice a while,” he says. “I’ll guarantee you seventy-five degrees every day.”
     I tell him I’ll see how things work out. That it’s difficult to rearrange students and classes. That I can’t always anticipate my schedule for commissions.
     He nods and smiles and expects to see me in January.

     “Mona’s fat.” Michael grins at me and then he looks away so my return stare has no impact.
     He leans against the trunk of the big maple. He tips his head back and drains the beer from the bottle neck. A spray of dark violet circles spreads down the front of his shirt.
     “She jiggles,” he hoots, “she’s a regular whale.”
     He reaches over to put the empty bottle in the elbow between the trunk and the huge low limb that runs out almost perpendicular to the big chestnut. In certain winds, branches from that limb knock against my studio windows, and even though I know what it is, I always look up. When Michael was small, he used to sit there and watch me while I worked. Sometimes he’d make faces or noises, do stunts six feet off the ground...headstands and somersaults. He’d keep it up until he made me laugh and ruined my concentration. Once, he somersaulted right off the limb. He hit the ground head first, and by the time I ran out of the studio to the tree, the side of his head was already soaked with blood. My stomach always sinks when I think about it, just the way it did then.
     Michael looks at Kurt’s friend, Josh. Josh pulls himself up to sit on the limb. His violet shirt is unbuttoned, the tie gone. He hasn’t had any wine or beer. He’s a long distance runner, always in training.
     “Let’s give her a present,” Michael tells him. “Six weeks at Diet Workshop.” He slurs the words, laughs. Or how about sixteen? Sixty maybe?”
     Josh smiles. He seems older than Eliza and Kurt and the others in the wedding party. He’s more contained. He was a silent running partner yesterday. Though we exchanged glances once or twice. When the old woman sitting next to the sleeping old man on the park bench whacked him awake with her newspaper. When the pigeons waited until we were almost on top of them before flying up, and the sound of their wings drowned out all other noise.
     He’s asked if he can stay here in October for a week when he runs the marathon. He said I should work toward entering next year, and he actually seemed serious. He offered to help me train. “You could do it,” he said. Now, he looks from Michael to me and I read in his eyes that we’re aligned, he and I, that for once I won’t have to ward off Michael’s belligerence alone. His eyes linger, then slide off and beyond me.
     “Let’s go find her,” Michael says, “c’mon, Josh. We’ll tell her about her present.”
     “Michael...”I say.
     But before I can finish, Josh pushes himself up with his hands and drops to the ground. “C’mon, Mike.” He puts his arm around Michael’s shoulders. “I think Kate and Trish are looking a little bored. Whatdaya say we go liven things up for them, huh?”
     He moves Michael along, glances back at me, and then beyond me, before they disappear around the side of the studio.
     I turn around and see Mona approaching. She smiles. She looks apologetic. “I need a safety pin,” she says, pivoting a little to show me the back of her skirt. “The hem’s coming down. Or maybe a needle and thread?”
     Inside the studio, I kneel on the cool floor while she stands in front of me, protesting that she can do it herself.
     “It’ll only take a minute,” I tell her. “The color’s not right. You’ll have to redo it later.”
     “So this is where you work.” She looks around. “I have no artistic ability whatsoever.” She laughs a little. A nervous laugh.
     “Maybe you do. Maybe you’ve just never given it a chance to come out.” I look up at her. “Have you ever tried? Painting? Working with wood? Clay?”
     She shakes her head. “I’m all thumbs. Clumsy. David says I’m the most uncoordinated person he’s ever known.” Then she laughs her nervous laugh again.
     She points to the top shelf where I keep half-finished work I never seem to get back to. “You sculpted David.”
     I look at the shelf. They’re mostly heads of Eliza and Michael at different ages.
“That’s Michael,” I say, “not David.” I take one more stitch. “There, it’s all done.” I stand up.
     “That’s Michael?” She stares at the clay head. “You know, I never realized there was such a resemblance before.” Then she looks at me as though she’s realized for the first time that Michael is really David’s son.
     I tell her I have something to take care of before I leave, and close the door after her. Beyond the windows, the reception resembles a wheel. The hub is a volley ball game with Eliza on one side of the net and Kurt on the other. People stroll around the edges, smiling, stopping to watch, visiting the buffet table, where the snifter looks almost full.
     I step out of my shoes and stretch my arms up toward the raftered ceiling. Then I curve down slowly, trying to stretch away the tension in my back and neck, until my fingers touch the floor, then my palms. I imagine the tension flowing down my arms, into the scuffed pine boards, then I curve slowly up.
     I count the number of hours since my last run. Twenty-nine. It almost feels the way needing a cigarette used to, only less desperate.
     As I walk across the studio, the wooden faces on the shelf watch me. Rough carvings, smooth, Eliza and Michael changing. Looking back at them, I realize Mona was right, that David is there, in every one.
     I walk between the tables, looking at my student’s work, reminding myself that there is life after the wedding, and my students will be back in two days, asking me to help them find the contours hidden inside their blocks.
     I pull one toward me. A form is emerging from the flat plane, the curve of a wing perhaps. I rub my fingers over the rough grain. Some of them will copy this, the first one to become recognizable. And I’ll have to urge them to look again. “Work the wood,” I tell them, “into what you want it to be. Into something unique. But remember to work with it, too. It has its own nature. It’s been alive. Under pressures and stresses. Find that tension. Expose it.”
     “But how?” they ask. “How do you know when you find it?”
     “You have to work it,” I say. There’s no easy answer. “You have to work it until you begin to recognize the form the wood needs to take.”
     I hear laughter outside and I scan the windows for Michael. I see him with two bridesmaids, an arm around each one. In September, he’ll go off to college. We’ve already begun to pack his trunk. I think sometimes about what his leaving will mean. How I’ll be able to work right through dinner if I choose. How the car keys will always be where I left them. How three a.m. on Sunday mornings will come and go with no car doors slamming in the driveway. In general, I know I’ll get more sleep.
     Beyond Michael, Eliza and Kurt duck under the net, wrap their arms around each other and swing in circles while their teams clap and hoot. I see Mona stepping out of her shoes, one at a time, bracing herself against David, her hand on his forearm. She bends down and picks them up, stands there much shorter now, her hand still resting on his arm. He glances at her and sips his wine.
     The space separating me from the wedding seems to widen. It’s the coupling. Eliza and Kurt holding each other. Mona’s hand on David’s arm. Making me feel as though I’m a single point far outside the circle.
     Kurt Sr. wanders across the edge of my vision, looking from side to side. Looking for someone. For me. This evening, after everyone’s gone, we’re going out to dinner. We’ll probably talk about the wedding, and he’ll lean back in his chair and tell me what pleasant company Eliza’s mother is.
     Tomorrow morning, I’ll drive him to the airport, and before he gets on the plane, he’ll remind about January. “Please come,” he’ll say.
     I stand there for a while, looking across my gulf, watching David and Mona walk away together, trying to remember the feel of someone’s arm, thinking how long and cold a month January can be, how quiet the house will seem.
     Beneath the window, a pair of my old running shoes sit, toe to heel. It’s the pair I wore when running was something I had to force myself to do every day, day after day. I walk over and poke them with my toes. Tonight, after everyone’s gone to bed, I’ll put on my shorts and a tee shirt. I’ll take a flashlight and run the route I used to run. Two miles. Easy. But it will be late, and I’ll be tired, and it will remind me a little of the way it used to feel. How after a while, I had to will each step and how much I wanted not to keep moving.
     I look up, see Josh standing off to one side, alone. In my mind, I hear him say it again, you could do it, and imagine that I could, could run a marathon.
     He seems to be staring straight at me, although I know he can’t see me, can’t see anything beyond the reflection off the glass. And knowing this, I take a step forward and open my arms to him.





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