“I’m a table sitter, just like my Mother.”
Knowing she wouldn’t be joining me allowed me the freedom to stretch out on her well-worn sofa.
Hallie eased herself into her usual spot next to a blinded window. A heavy sigh accompanied the release of her weight onto a vinyl captain’s chair, and the years washed away in my anticipation of her next move. Both hands went to her head, grasping at gossamer wisps which had rudely escaped the band she’d swept them into that morning. Another sigh and her hands went to the tabletop. Her lips pursed as her hands moved about the table, straightening a pencil against the edge of a writing tablet, carefully lining up book spines along their mitered corners, and touching each of three small stacks of paper.
As she took assurance in the precision of her surroundings I remembered rows of pencils, sorted by color and length, lying alongside a notebook in the laboratory where she worked. On quiet days, and sometimes just during a lull, I took particular delight in flicking one end of the pencil closest to me and watching the others careen like pick-up-sticks. She feigned disgust, but I understood the satisfaction she took in realigning her environment.
As she sighed, and sorted, and sorted, and sighed, I searched her face for change. Other than a slight gravitational pull around the corners of her mouth, there was none. Despite her claim of green, her eyes had always been of indeterminate color. They snapped just as they always had, behind eyeglasses whose shape demanded the word “spectacles”. The freckles that had always danced across her cream-colored skin were just where I’d left them, and her small, colorless mouth pursed between spurts of speech enriched with invectives.
“Remind me to give you a blow job later!”
It was the fall of 1992, the year the Braves won the pennant. Both of us had followed the Braves throughout the season. We knew stats. We referred to the players in such a way as to suggest we might have had them over to dinner the night before, and each of us had our favorites. John Smoltz was mine. We both agreed he bore an eerie resemblance to my wayward husband, who Hallie described as “poetic looking”. Hallie appreciated the talents of the wiry Otis Nixon and the second baseman, who she referred to as “Little Lemke”.
Sometime over the course of the Championship series, we had begun to watch the games together, by telephone; she ensconced inside her cozy duplex less than ten miles away from my little farmhouse, filled by the sounds of soundly sleeping children. The call usually came sometime after the seventh-inning-stretch.
It was the bottom of the ninth, and the Pirates were up two to zip. In an era free of steroid controversy, we thought nothing peculiar about the guns on Ron Gant, as he took the plate with the bases loaded. He sacrificed, making the score two to one. Brian Hunter popped up, leaving us with scant hope as a little-known pinch-hitter, named Francisco Cabrera, loped towards the plate. He singled, scoring David Justice, and an oft-traded, unlikely hero named Sid Bream. As Sid slid into home, securing the pennant, Hallie shouted her reminder into the receiver. I remember collapsing with laughter, and would recall little else about that game, or the ensuing World Series.
“I thought you were bringing Shane!”
Hallie stood on the steps leading to her front door.
“This can’t be Shane! Shane’s just a little guy! Who is this tall boy you brought with you?”
Color seeped into Shane’s cheeks as he shut the car door and walked, sheepishly, in the direction of my friend.
“Hi, Aunt Hallie.”, he said into his chest.
He walked, obligatorily, into her waiting arms and hugged her back. There was less than two inches difference in their height.
Gathering the few things I needed before leaving in search of a hotel room, I left the car and replaced Shane’s body with mine. My arms embraced her shoulders as hers encircled my waist. Time had carved precious inches from her already diminutive stature.
“Come in, honey.” She always calls me “honey”. “Be careful with that door. I need to fix the latch.”
Our love for each other spans twenty years, one birth, two marriages, two divorces, and the deaths of two children, both our mothers, and her beloved Aunt Flo. As I study her face for change, I realize mine is the one that is different. I am where she was when I left her to start over, again. Her changing was done. Mine had just begun. I shifted against the soft fabric of the sofa I rested upon, uncomfortable with the knowledge.
“I see you’ve changed your hair.” She made no effort to hide the disdain in her voice. “You’re wearing it like everyone else; like you haven’t combed it in days.” Ill health forced another sigh. “I don’t know why you want to do that. You have such nice hair. I liked it when you flipped it back.”
The fingers of her left hand weaved themselves into my hair.
“Oh, it’s very soft. It doesn’t look soft. It looks hard, but it’s very soft…just like it always was.”
And, it is…just like it always was.
“You’re my touchstone…”
© Copyright 2007-2009 Stacye Carroll All Rights Reserved
Are We There Yet? 
