Chapter Eighteen Lillian
Chapter Eighteen
Lillian
I welcomed the chance to walk off my nervous energy by retrieving Elsie from the pool.
The hospital visit and my daughter’s pain would have been enough to rattle me.
And my insides still absolutely vibrated with anger from the parking lot encounter, although I was more frustrated with myself than the idiot who’d parked illegally.
I’d met plenty of entitled—sometimes simply uninformed—individuals.
But that day, the weight of my burdens had become too much to bear. My husband’s latest setback had been far worse than I’d let on. Rosalynn was already suffering enough from exhaustion and stress.
Which I’d increased by losing my cool.
Dragging in deep breaths of night air, I pushed through the pool gate.
Three teens climbed the ladder and grabbed towels, calling out “goodbye” and “good luck” and “follow me online.” Shoulders slumped, Elsie waved goodbye as she sat on a pool lounger, clutching her phone.
She looked at them wistfully as they left.
Until her gaze settled on me and the neutral mask slid back into place.
Closing the space between us, I stopped by a table, the umbrella closed for the day. Halogen lights hummed overhead, traffic and music from the pub next door echoing. “Everything okay?”
Elsie placed her cell phone on the nearby table—face down. “I guess she sent you to get me.”
I decided to ignore—for now—the fact that Elsie hadn’t answered my question. “Your mom’s worried about you.”
“Grammie, I’m seventeen,” she said, making a big deal out of squeezing the water from her hair. “And I’m a stone’s throw from the room.”
“This isn’t a normal hotel stop and it’s late.
” I passed her a towel, the bristly fabric a little threadbare.
“People take advantage of evacuation situations, snatch up the vulnerable, disappear in the chaos. As for following them online, you can’t trust everyone is on the up and up on social media. ”
Elsie went still as a church mouse.
I guessed I’d finally succeeded in getting through to her about something at least. I patted an empty chair at the plastic table. “We can sit out here together for a minute if you want, while your mom falls asleep.”
Elsie wrapped the towel around herself and took the seat, toying with a pair of abandoned goggles. “She looked tired. Today was probably a lot for her.”
There. Finally. Empathy. I sat across from her. “She doesn’t like for us to make a fuss, but that makes it all the harder for me not to worry. I guess I was a bit over the top about the parking space.”
“Today’s been a lot for all of us. You’ve always told me we’re all entitled to a little grace.” She twisted the goggles strap around her water-pruned fingers. “Actually, Grammie, I thought that was pretty badass.”
“Thanks, but no it wasn’t.” Still, I couldn’t stop my answering smile. Some of the tension left me and I reached to pat her knee. “What’s going on? Really. I know you’ve let us believe you want to leave because of your mom and dad splitting, but I’m starting to wonder.”
“I just want to go.” She wrapped the band tighter and tighter. “I hate it at school. They’re all so immature. I’m ready to go to college.”
“I wouldn’t argue with that.” I eased the goggles from her grip.
“No joke?” She looked up hopefully. “You think I’m mature?”
“I believe in many ways you’re more mature than your peers.”
Snorting, Elsie tapped her cell phone. “That’s not saying much.”
I still wasn’t sure I’d gotten the whole story. “You should talk this through with your mom. She’s more than a little hurt by your request.”
“You’re siding with her.” She fidgeted with the PopSocket on the back of her phone, clicking it open and closed. “Willow warned me you two would stick together in some kind of parent code that the kid always has to be wrong.”
“Maybe it’s because parents have already experienced being a teen, so we understand our children and grandchildren don’t always get how much we love them and how hard we’re trying.” I rested a hand on top of hers. “We’re human too, you know.”
She drew away and went back to clicking the PopSocket. “Your teen years were nothing like mine. Mom’s either.”
I wanted to snatch that device from her hand and insist she focus on this world. Not the one on the other end of that digital connection.
“Hers were harder,” I reminded her gently.
Her eyes sheened with tears, but she blinked them away and stayed silent, so I continued, “Your mother is so independent, I realize it’s easy for you to minimize the challenges she’s tackled.
And make no mistake, she’s taken them head-on.
You could learn something from her, if you would just pay attention. ”
“Fine,” she said, softly but with an edge as she flipped her cell face down on the table. “I’m listening.”
“Being honest with each other is important. It helps to have the full picture.”
“You talk about the big picture? Well, the way I see it, when have you and Mom ever been anything other than super successful?” Her voice picked up speed and fire. “It’s a lot of pressure to live up to. I guess that’s why I got so excited to see you yell at that lady in the parking lot.”
The conversation wasn’t going as I would have hoped, and I needed to connect with her in some way. My instincts nudged me to peel off some of the plaster I’d pasted over my past to the raw bits beneath.
I could show my granddaughter that she wasn’t alone. “Okay, so would you like to hear the undiluted version of my first big road trip to DC all those years ago? When I learned the most effective ways to protest for what you want out of life?”
She scrunched her nose. “I assume you’re insinuating that me shouting at the children distracting Dusty and you turning the walker into a weapon would be the wrong kind of dissent?”
Dissent. Great word. Pride swelled. This kid had promise. She just lacked confidence. “Well, let’s simply say I learned a more effective way.”
“I’d like to hear. I mean, it’s not like I have anywhere else to be tonight or anyone else to hang out with.” She motioned toward the abandoned pool.
The parking lot was quiet. Lights slowly winked off in the windows of the motel. Music from the pub cranked up, masking the sound of the traffic.
We were, for all intents and purposes, alone.
“It was a bit of a journey, so you’ll have to pardon me if I take the scenic route.” Although hadn’t this whole trip taken me on an emotional, bumpy ride to the past? “I was a mess, both from Rosalynn’s accident and my marriage falling apart.”
“Mom mentioned some of that when she told me she understood how I felt about her and Dad splitting.” Her hands clenched. “Except my dad is a loser and she got a fire chief hero for a father.”
An image of Grady in his firefighter uniform caught me by surprise. In a bittersweet way. So handsome, and so somber. “He definitely served with honor and saved countless lives over the years. But what made him most honorable? That wasn’t his dream job. Not by a long shot.”
“Then why did he do it?”
“To pay the bills.” My mind filled with memories of him coming home from a shift smelling of soot, his spirit weary.
I could sense his longing for the days he’d worked on a deep-sea-fishing charter boat.
Yet he’d forged ahead even though each step forward took him further from us as he closed down, drank more, and shut us out.
“This trip has brought up a lot of those memories.”
“Like the song game in the van?”
“Exactly. And your grandfather’s guitar.
From the moment I heard your first piano recital, I knew you’d inherited his musical talent.
” Seeing the acoustic six string had delivered a particularly strong gut punch.
“He honed his technique practicing during quiet shifts at the station. On that special trip in particular, he had a whole campground outside of Alexandria, Virginia, singing along.”
“So about that undiluted version of your trip to Washington, DC? To march in the protest?”
“Peaceful protests and speeches over the span of a few days,” I reminded her.
“To bring awareness for the Americans with Disabilities Act, right?” she asked, increasingly engaged. “Except wasn’t that passed, like, forever ago?”
“Well, we didn’t ride to DC in a horse and buggy,” I said, although some days it felt like even longer.
“It was 1990, a little over a year after your mother’s accident.
The protests were in March, and the pressure from those ‘wheels of justice’ demonstrations led to the president signing the ADA into law on July the twenty-sixth of that year. ”
“I guess I knew that date in my head. It just didn’t register that . . .”
“That it affected your mother so directly.” I wished I could say I’d been as aware of the need for such a bill before Rosalynn’s accident. How easy it was to be patient waiting for change until the matter became personal.
“I guess I thought it came around just in time for her. Like it was a piece of luck in a tough situation.”
Luck? I tamped down the urge to snap at her poor choice of words. The me of those days would have lost my cool. Now? I’d learned to employ a more measured approach, one of education and persuasion.
“It wasn’t simply luck, Elsie. We were a lot of voices being heard.
We were people insisting that the 1968 Architectural Barriers Act and the 1973 Rehabilitation Act weren’t enough.
It wasn’t okay for my child to miss a performance of The Sleeping Beauty ballet because her wheelchair was considered a fire hazard.
Or how she wasn’t eligible for a weekend field trip to Disney due to lack of accommodations. ”
I still suffered from a bit of regret knowing it wasn’t a fight I’d paid much attention to until it affected my own life. Maybe that regret had also pushed me to fight all the harder to become a lawyer.
Somewhere along the line, that personal connection moved me past just fighting for my daughter in a wheelchair. I was protesting for all the children with other disabilities. The adults too, of course, but my heart and my fire were especially focused on the kids.
“Okay, Grammie, sure, but the law passed and there are special parking spots.” She paused, then sighed with understanding. “Spots that people ignore.”
“Some people. Yes. Because laws don’t transform attitudes.
And the way I handled things today was a missed opportunity to help change her mind.
” Although some people would never see outside their own four walls.
But I tried to focus on the many who would when shown a perspective they hadn’t considered, those who needed us to keep marching in order to recognize someone else’s hardship.
“So I wish I’d handled the situation differently, but like you reminded me, I should give myself some grace. ”
“Slay,” she said with the slightest of smiles.
I took that to mean something good. It was tough to keep up with the language. “Do you think you could give your mom some grace too, rather than just jumping ship a year early? Going through a divorce is painful. It’s more than losing a loved one. It’s the death of a million hopes and dreams.”
“For me too.” Her hand slid to her cell again, covering the pink seashell case.
But she didn’t flip it over to check for messages. I saw that as a sign I still had her attention to share my story, while also recognizing I could lose her to a flurry of texts at a moment’s notice.
“So you understand,” I pressed. “Whatever’s going on in your world right now, figure out how to talk to your mother. She’s on your side. She’s Team Elsie. Just as I’ve always been Team Rosalynn.”