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CHAPTER TWENTY
She was dreaming about her mother.
In her dream, she was a child of five, and her mother was chasing her around the kitchen table with the large wooden spoon she used for baking. The cake batter she’d been preparing to put in the oven was spreading across much of the linoleum floor, the result of Joan having snuck up behind her seconds earlier, shouting “boo!”
Joan felt her lips curve into a smile, recognizing this as a memory rather than a dream, although it was actually her mother’s memory. Still, her mother had told that story so many times, Joan had usurped it as her own. It was the only time her mother had ever struck her, and even though it was more of a tap than an actual slap, and Joan had forgotten about it by nightfall, her mother had felt bad about it for the rest of her life, repeating that story to anyone who’d listen, as if it were a penance.
Mothers are like that,Joan thought.They feel responsible—they feelguilty—about everything.
Joan’s smile was swallowed by a frown. Her mother hadn’t had an easy life. She’d suffered three miscarriages before Joan was born, then two in the years following. Her marriage had been strained, money was always tight, she had a weak heart, and she’d died of a stroke a week before her sixty-fifth birthday. Two years later, Joan’s father had succumbed to a massive heart attack at the age of sixty-eight.
Heart disease obviously ran in the family, which was why Joan had never expected to make it to seventy.
And yet here I am,she thought, sensing movement beside her but refusing to open her eyes, not ready to abandon her mother just yet. She marveled that, at her age, she still thought about her mother almost every day.
Would Paige think about her as often when she was gone? Joan wondered. Or would it be thoughts of her father that constituted the bulk of her reveries?
Not that she begrudged Paige the love she felt for her dad. Not that she could have competed, even if she’d tried. Robert Hamilton had been such an extraordinary man in every respect. As a businessman, a husband, a father, a lover. In all their years together, she’d never been tempted to stray, knowing she already had the best. After he died, she’d assumed her romantic life was a thing of the past. She certainly had no desire to marry again. She’d tucked away her libido and carried on.
She hadn’t counted on the loneliness.
Was that what was responsible for her recent behavior? Joining a dating site and, even more bizarre, imagining that a man thirty-six years her junior could be attracted to her? She hadn’t had even one response to her online profile, for heaven’s sake. That should have told her something. And that something was that she was no longer considered desirable. By men of any age.
Who settles for a wrinkly old lady when even the most grizzled, balding, flat-bottomed old man could wrangle a date with an attractive woman half his age? Assuming his wallet was as fat as his belly, she thought, considering, only half-facetiously, whether she should add the word “wealthy” to her profile.
“Mom, are you all right?” Paige asked from somewhere above her head.
Joan pushed herself up in bed, hating the concern she heard in her daughter’s voice. When had their roles reversed? she wondered. When had Paige become the anxious parent, watching her with nervous eyes, arms outstretched to grab her should she stumble and fall? “I’m fine, darling.” She opened her eyes and took a quick glance around her bedroom, trying to decide whether it was day or night. “What time is it?”
“Almost two o’clock. Monday,” Paige added.
“I know it’s Monday. Oh, my goodness.” She’d only meant to take a short nap after lunch, as the doctor had suggested after signing her release from the hospital the previous afternoon.
“You were making faces,” Paige told her.
“I was?”
“What were you thinking about?”
Joan shrugged, pretending not to remember.
“I have to leave in a few minutes,” Paige said. “I have that job interview at three thirty. Do I look all right?”
“You look beautiful. I’ve always loved that suit. And blue is such a nice color on you.”
“Thanks. I shouldn’t be too long.”
“You’ll do great. I have a good feeling about this one.”
“You say that about every interview,” Paige reminded her. “Are you going to be okay alone?”
“Of course I am.” Joan swung her legs out of bed, as if to underline her assertion. “You have to stop worrying about me, darling.” She felt immediately guilty. It was her fault that Paige was so worried. It wasn’t every day you got a phone call from a total stranger telling you your mother had suffered a possible heart attack and been rushed to the hospital. Her second such visit in less than a week.
Of course, it turned out that she hadn’t had a heart attack at all, even though the emergency room doctor had decided to keep her in the hospital overnight for observation. “Looks like it was a combination of indigestion, muscle strain, and anxiety,” he’d pronounced the next morning.
“I’m so embarrassed,” Joan had said.
“Better safe than sorry,” had come his automatic response.
