I wrote:
Keychain:
Object which holds keys -
keeps keys in place, makes keys easier to use.
Keychain. Links. Ties. Knit.
Together.
Weakest link. Strength
there. Not in the strongest, but in the weakest. Make sure your weakest is
strong enough.
Blather but fodder for
future writing, perhaps.
Keychain.
= = =
Laura’s eyes
looked across the prairie, wide, and vast, much like her beloved Pacific Ocean
in its seeming to be endless. She had come to trust the ocean, though. She
couldn’t adequately describe what she was feeling for this prairie after what
had happened
She had loved it when she arrived two days ago. It was serene and comforting in its yellows and greens. She had watched the sunset last night with such profound joy yet with that sun went her last shreds of optimism. The prairie had swallowed any evidence of progress in its grass waving taunts.
The Missouri
River mocked her now, too. Damn the River. Damn all rivers. Damn grasses, damn
oceans, damn interstate highways. Damn plans made and broken and lost.
She opened
the door to the café and listened as her heels clackety clacked across the
faded formica floor. She could trust time. She could trust a cup of coffee. She
could trust people would leave her alone as she took solace, for just a few
moments she could be apart from the wide eyes of her daughter, looking to her
with that, “I know Mom can solve everything” expression Laura knew was about to
evaporate.
The time had
come for her motherhood status to finally fail and her sweet Lindsey would
become the latest victim of circumstance.
She sat, as
if comatose, drinking coffee and sighing, unaware of anything in the room
except her desire for silence. Her breath soon relaxed into a steady, melodic
rhythm which seemed to encourage her to say something. Anything.
Her words
were veiled with blown engine exhaust fumes. Tumbling from her mouth were some
form of language but so tired, with a slight hint of motor oil laced with
sweaty hopelessness she didn’t make much sense. “Why don’t more people respond
like they should?” Laura mumbled to herself.
“Whaaaaaa?”
came another voice, attached to a pair of chicken-like-legs and more than
likely, hair that hadn’t moved since 1986. “You need more coffee, sweetie?”
Laura didn’t
want to look up. She was terrified she might look into the eyes of her own
destiny. Worn out waitress in the middle of nowhere pouring coffee on the
graveyard shift to fading truckers and exhausted travelers praying for an angel
of mercy.
“No, thanks –
I’ve had enough…” Laura answered. She finally looked up, for just a moment,
“Just the check.”
She had no
idea how she was getting out of this mess, she just knew she must get out of
it. Her chipped nails tapped on the formica tabletop before in her restlessness
she fished her journal from her backpack to write while the waitress took an
order for chicken fried steak from a guy wearing a fishing cap at the counter.
“11:25 pm,
June 16. Chamberlain, SD.
“I wish I
could say I feel blessed here. I’m trying, oh, how I am trying. I’m convinced my
story is going to look like a Lifetime Movie with a twist. The heroine doesn’t
rise triumphant, there’s no appealing, everyday Joe-Widower Young Cop or
Fireman waiting to sweep her off her feet and Lindsey is a sometimes sullen
sixteen-year-old with an Ipod permanently attached to her ears rather than an
appealing six-year-old with a lisp and pigtails. Nope, my story is even too
pitiful for Lifetime.”
Chicken-Like-Legs-Stuck-in-1986-hair-waitress
returned, looking much softer around her eyes than Laura had given her credit
for in the first place.
“You staying
at the motel?” she asked.
“Yeah,” Laura
admitted, slightly embarrassed.
“Where you on
your way to, anyway?”
Laura sighed,
embarrassed even more than before. “Right now, I don’t know. My daughter and I
were headed to Massachusetts but our car…”
“Had a
different plan?” the waitress asked, finishing Laura’s sentence for her.
Laura
couldn’t help but laugh, her first laugh of the last two days. “Do I look as
pitiful as I feel?”
“M’name’s
Rhoda,” the waitress said, reaching out her hand, an offering. Laura took it,
her enthusiasm increasing as her tiredness fell from her skin. “I wouldn’t say
you looked pitiful, I would say you look…. Like you need a good night’s sleep
and a friend to cook you breakfast in the morning.”
Laura doubted
the motel was the most likely spot for either.
The bells over the door jangled, a throw back even further than Rhoda’s big
hair style. It was Lindsay, looking much younger than her sixteen years. “Mom?
You coming back to the room?”
Rhoda and
Laura turned together to face the chestnut haired teen. “She’s yours?” Rhoda
asked.
Laura nodded
and was surprised to feel a blush of pride well up within her.
“Mom?”
“Yes, honey,
I was just talking to Rhoda….” She took the check from the table and turned to
her new, thirty-second friend with the legs-like-a-chicken and the hair, which
needed an update as much as Laura needed that good night’s sleep and a friend
to cook her breakfast.
Rhoda reached
out her hand to the teen whose nose and eyebrows were now scrunched into a
question mark. “Hi there, Sweetie. I was just inviting your Mom to breakfast,
on the house, tomorrow morning.” Lindsey’s question mark eyebrows turned into a
frown.
“Oh, we
couldn’t…” Laura started.
“Oh, yes. You
can.” Rhoda interrupted, a sureness in her voice which hadn’t been heard yet.
“I’m thinking
you don’t have many folks around here you could call friend. Well, now you have
me and I am offering and around here, if a friend offers you say yes, as simple
as that.”
Lindsey and
Laura looked at each other. Lindsey paused in the center of their eye contact, her face blank now, and shrugged.
The mother in Laura saw her daughter’s muscles relax upon hearing the word
“friend” which had somehow become a prayer in the hushed quiet of midnight in
the South Dakota roadside coffee shop. Obedience became the only answer.
Laura put her
arm around Lindsay’s shoulder. “Yes, Rhoda. Breakfast, tomorrow.” Sometimes plans, modified, weren't so bad after all. Breakfast with a friend was better than a Sausage McMuffin or nothing.
Mother and daughter turned
to leave, together, a sudden weight lifted.