Return To Little Hills

“She mentioned him.” An understatement. From the moment Viv picked her up at the airport the night before, her sister had talked about little else. Peter Darling: English, wife died of cancer, four small children, collects butterflies, Ray says he won’t last. Too pie-in-the sky. Twenty years of journalism had trained her to isolate and retain the salient facts of any information she was given. She’d retained these particular snippets because the idea of raising four small children with or without a spouse appalled her and because she’d probably meet Peter Darling tomorrow when she gave a talk to students at the school. Her brother-in-law, the assistant principal, had hit her with the request late last night and she’d agreed before she realized she didn’t particularly want to do it.

Too late now. She grabbed the keys, got out of the car and walked around to the passenger side. Waves of heat rose up from the parking lot. A line of sweat trickled down her back, pasting her cotton shirt to her skin. It had been nearly midnight when she’d stepped out of the airport and the warm, moist temperature had hit her like a slap in the face. This morning, the relentlessly cheerful weatherman on Maude’s ancient Magnavox had announced that the day promised to be another scorcher, even hotter than yesterday. She’d snapped off the set as he’d been yammering on about the misery index.

No one expects anything from you. She pulled open the heavy door and leaned inside to unfasten her mother’s seat belt. Maude’s hair, soft and fine as cobwebs, brushed against her cheek. Edie caught a whiff of mothballs and peppermint candy. But you’re glad I’m here, aren’t you, Mom? You miss me sometimes. Don’t you?

“Okay, there you go.” She stood back and extended her hand; Maude ignored it. “Going to be another hot day,” she said as Maude slowly swung her legs around. “You’re going to bake in that sweater. Want me to help you off with it?”

“Don’t rush me.” Maude’s little pink slippers were gingerly touching down on the asphalt. “I know you’re in a hurry, you’re always in a hurry, but it takes me a while these days.”

“Take your time, Mom. I’m not going anywhere.” Her mother’s face was flushed with heat and exertion and, as she helped her out of the car, Edie slid her palm under the shoulder of Maude’s black sweater and felt damp warmth. “Let me help you take it off, Mom. You’ll be more comfortable.”

Maude shook off Edie’s hand. “The store’s air-conditioned. I’ll need my sweater.”

“You got it.” Her arm linked in Maude’s, they made their way slowly across the parking lot. “Okay, toilet paper, denture cleaner and ham. Is that it?”

“Yams?” Maude shook her head. “Get some for yourself if you want, I won’t eat any.” She turned her pale blue eyes on Edie. “You probably ate that sort of thing in…where was it you were last? I can’t keep up with all the places you’re off to. I said to Vivian, no wonder Edith never married. What man would want to go traipsing around the world after her?”

“I’ll get you a basket.” At the entrance to the store, Edie separated a cart from the line and wheeled it over to Maude. “There you go. Want me to push it for you?”

“I need it to lean on.” Maude elbowed Edie aside. “Now, I’ll be as quick as I can,” she said as they progressed sedately along the dairy aisle. “Just don’t lose your temper with me. There’s no call for it. Vivian doesn’t snap at me the way you do, she knows it takes me longer these days. She said to me when we knew you were coming, she said, ‘Mom. Edith’s just going to upset you the way she always does.’ Viv thinks about these things.”

Edie bit the inside of her lower lip very hard and sent a prayer aloft. Please, please give me patience. Half of my sister’s saintliness would help, too. And please, please, I know it’s too late to expect much in the way of mother-daughter bonding. I know we’re not going to snuggle up in bed for heart-to-heart talks over mugs of cocoa, but please, please, let this be a…pleasant visit. And please, please, don’t let me snap at her. Even though I didn’t snap at her in the first place.

“EDIE ROBINSON!” the cashier shrieked some forty-five minutes later when Edie followed Maude with her brimming basket to the checkout line. “My God, I don’t believe it. When did you get back?”

“Last night.” A package of toilet paper in one hand, Edie grinned at the woman she’d last seen at their twenty-year high-school reunion which—she did a quick mental calculation—was nearly three years ago. Honey Jones, she immediately observed, was probably fifteen pounds heavier than she’d been back then and her blond hair was gray at the roots. God, you’re shallow, Edie scolded herself as she began piling stuff on the conveyor belt. Yeah, but when you’re barreling along the road to middle age, she justified, you notice these things. “So, Honey,” she said. “What’s going on with you these days?”

Honey grinned broadly. “Same old, same old. Get up, go to work, come home, get dinner for Jim and the kids. Go to bed. Do it all over again the next day. But what about you?” She glanced at Maude, who had dug a fistful of coupons from her purse and now held them close to her face as she slowly inspected each one. “The last I heard, your mom said you were in…”

“Afghanistan,” Edie said when it became clear the answer wasn’t on the tip of Honey’s tongue “Before that, Bosnia.” Chechnya, Somalia, Rwanda. She’d covered them all. Dangerous, difficult, complex, frustrating. But a piece of cake compared to Little Hills, Missouri. “Doing okay, Mom? Want me to help you sort through those coupons?”

“Frozen peas,” Maude said. “Too much sodium in the canned ones.”

“So you’re just back for a visit?” Honey asked.

“A month. Mom’s decided the house is too much for her, living alone and everything. My sister thinks Mom would be happier in a…more structured environment, so I’m back to help her find something.”

“Viv’s such a doll,” Honey said. “So patient. Always a smile. I don’t know how she does it.”

“Yeah.” Edie forced a smile of her own. “Mom’s lucky to have her living close by.”

“Edie’s giving a talk at Ray’s school tomorrow,” Maude said. “Ray’s the principal. He’s married to my daughter Vivian.”

“I know, Mrs. Robinson,” Honey said, kindly as though to a child. “I was a bridesmaid at their wedding.” She looked at Edie. “Assistant principal, right? My kid’s a junior there. I guess you’ve heard all about the new principal, huh?”

“Yeah. Viv filled me in. Everyone seems all agog.”

“That’s small-town life for you,” Honey said and shook her head. “I can’t even imagine your life. The farthest I’ve ever been is New Jersey. Do you get scared? I mean, all that shooting and everything.”

Edie shrugged and thought about the bullet in Sarajevo. She’d left her room for five minutes to talk to a photographer about the story they were working on. She returned to a cloud of dust and a .50-caliber slug embedded in the wall behind the desk she’d been using. If she’d been there, the bullet would have gone right through her forehead. She’d kept the bullet. “You take your chances,” she said. “It’s part of the deal.”

“I’ve got coupons,” Maude announced. “Here, Edith, you sort them out. Don’t know why they make the writing so small. Did Edith tell you about her big award?” she asked Honey. “Twenty-five cents off the coffee, the coupon is here somewhere. And the canned salmon is two for three dollars. Edith, look at these coupons. I know you can’t be bothered with that sort of thing, but it’s a savings, let me tell you. My daughter thinks money grows on trees,” she said with a glance at the cashier. “Always been that way. I remember Vivian used to save her allowance until she could get something she really wanted, but not Edith. As soon as she got it, she spent it. Still that way.”

Edie exchanged glances with the cashier, who smiled sympathetically.

“In your mother’s eyes you never grow up.” Honey scanned a roll of paper towels. “Doesn’t matter if you’re fifteen or fifty, you’re always this kid who doesn’t have sense enough to cross the road.” She reached for a can of pineapple chunks. “So. Tell me about your award.”

“Oh…” Edie started sorting Maude’s coupons into little piles. “I got a Pulitzer for a series on the rebels in El Salvador.” She picked up a ten-cents off coupon for grape jelly and checked the contents of the basket to see if she’d actually picked up the jelly as Maude had asked her to. “It was a team effort though, three other reporters and myself. I couldn’t have done it without them.”

“Wow.” Honey’s eyes were shining. “I am so proud of you, Edie. But, hey, we always knew you were smart. So…no husband on the horizon?”

“You got grape jelly.” Maude shoved the jar under Edie’s nose.

“I know, Mom.” She looked at Maude, whose eyes, brimming and clouded by cataracts, could look frighteningly hostile. “You said that’s what you wanted.”

“I said strawberry.”

“You said grape.”

“Strawberry,” Maude said. “That’s my daughter for you,” she said with a sigh. “Never listens. Never has. Snaps at me too.”

Edie held her breath. I won’t snap again if it kills me. And it might.

Honey winked at Edie. “So, no handsome man in your life?” she asked, rephrasing the question this time.

“No man, handsome or otherwise.” Edie took the grape jelly from Maude. “Wait right there, Mom. I’ll go back and get the strawberry. Anything else while I’m at it?” Maude didn’t answer, but as Edie walked away, she could hear Maude’s voice telling Honey, “Edie’ll never marry. Too darn independent and set in her ways.”

LUTHER HIGH SCHOOL principal Peter Darling stood in the sweltering heat at the side of the quad watching the faces of the assembled students for signs that they were actually listening to the tall woman up at the podium. To his vast relief, he saw no signs of the pushing and snickering and not-so-muffled yawns that had turned last week’s spotlight-on-careers program into an embarrassing fiasco. The assistant principal, openly skeptical about a weekly spotlight on careers, had smirked afterward that maybe they should line up hookers and pimps to discuss their work, with possibly a spotlight on auto theft and strong-arm robbery—the lines of work for which most Luther High kids were destined. Then to Peter’s surprise, Ray had done an apparent about-face and suggested that his sister-in-law would be willing to speak.

Peter watched the kids who, from their intent expressions, all appeared to be contemplating a career in journalism. Of course, Edie Robinson—with her sleek toffee-colored hair and photogenic smile—was no doubt part of the appeal.

“What do I like best about my job?” she’d just asked in response to a question thrown out by a girl in the front row. “Everything. The excitement, the variety. I think people often become unhappy because they’re just dissatisfied with the way things are in the place where they live. That doesn’t happen to me. I’m always going somewhere else. If I don’t like my current circumstance…oh well, tomorrow I’ll get on a plane and be on the other side of the world. New situation, new country, new experiences. I live in hotels. I eat in restaurants. I leave my laundry in a plastic bag in the hall outside my door. Almost all my friends are other journalists. My life is exclusively travel and work. And that’s exactly the way I like it.”

“Or to put it another way,” Ray Jenkins muttered in Peter’s ear, “Edith never has to think about anyone but herself. Which she never did anyway, even before she got to be a hotshot journalist. Kind of explains why she’s forty and never been married. You wanna hear about the stuff she’s not telling you, ask me. I used to go with her before I came to my senses and married her sister.”

Apart from mild surprise that the assistant principal might have anything at all in common with the woman at the podium, Peter had no interest in Ray Jenkins’s personal life, so he ignored the remark and made his way over to the stage just as Edie, having wrapped up her talk, was stepping down. He motioned for her to stay put and addressed the students himself, inviting them to show their appreciation for the interesting and informative talk. They complied with great enthusiasm, punctuating their applause with a few whoops and whistles.

He followed Edie off the stage, where she was now regarding him with very faint amusement in her light, amber-colored eyes. Her face and throat were lightly tanned and she wore an off-white trouser suit in a thin material that draped gracefully on her tall, angular figure. There was a cool confidence about her that made it quite easy for him to imagine her calmly reading in a bathtub as mortar shells flew around. The image intrigued him.

“Riveting talk. The students were captivated and, trust me, they’re a tough audience.”

She eyed him for a moment. “North of London, but not as far north as, say, Birmingham. Lived in the States for…oh, ten years or so. Long enough to have lost a little of the accent.”

He laughed, taken aback. “Very good. Malvern, actually. And I’ve been here twelve years. You’ve spent time in England, have you?”

“Five years in the London bureau, some time ago, though. I used to be a whiz at identifying regional accents. I thought I might have lost my touch.”

“Clearly, you haven’t.”