Free Tuesday Night Miracles by Kris Radish Page B

corners of her eyes, the almost invisible tiny white scar above her left eyebrow from a bicycle accident when she was ten years old.
    Ten years old when she started to wonder who she really was, because she didn’t look like her mother or her father. Ten years old when she started keeping secrets and discovering things a little girl should never have to know, or worry about simply because she’s adopted.
    Jane raises her hand to the scar, an imperfection that reminds her how much she has to lose if certain people find out about her wild outburst. After all, women like her aren’t allowed to have an outburst in public.
    Her mother made sure of that, always talking about the perfect this and the perfect that, and how a woman had a responsibility to set the stage, always be ready, prepare for her purpose in life, which meant both a fabulous, high-powered career and a family. You can have it all, her mother said constantly, while her father smiled in the background and waved his hand as if on cue.
    Many times Jane has imagined a conversation of total honesty with her mother, a mother who has also cared for her, tried what was probably her best even if it was based on a 1950s Good Housekeeping article about preparing for your husband’s nightly arrival from work. Make certain you have reapplied your makeup. Clean up the house so he can relax. Make certain the children are amused so as not to bother him. Always prepare him a drink—remember he had a very hard day at work while you were at home .
    Even with all that, Jane would love to put her head on her mother’s lap, feel the coolness of her hand stroking her face, and tell her about the dark ache in her heart. Jane remembers the few times that happened as if they have been seared into her memory.
    Her mother would call her over to the couch and pat the side of her leg almost as if she were calling a pet over for some affection. “Come,” she would say, and Jane would run.
    Her mother would hum a little bit and Jane would lie there, afraid to move, afraid to breathe, afraid to say a word, because her mother might remember that she was there on her lap and shoo her away.
    Sometimes they talked.
    “How was school, little Jane?”
    “Good, Mother. I was a good girl, and the math teacher told me I have a gift.”
    “Wonderful. You must keep at it. Work harder. Always work harder.”
    “I try very hard, Mother.” Jane knew what to say. It had to be just right. And her mother was always a mother, not a mom, a mommy, a mum—absolutely nothing but mother .
    “Someday you will be very glad you worked so hard,” her mother said, pushing her own hair back behind her ears.
    “Yes, Mother. Thank you so much.”
    Jane can recall even now what her mother smelled like. She wore the heavily scented perfume Tabu, and often Jane could smell her coming. It was like a scented invisible wave. When she set her head on her lap, she could feel the warmth of her mother’s legs rising slowly into her shoulders and then her neck. When her mother touched her face, it was as if a feather were dusting her cheeks or an angel kissing her face with the tip of its wings.
    One of Jane’s deep secrets is that she goes to this place when she’s sad and weary. Sometimes she actually lies down on the couch with her head on a pillow and imagines her mother there, the old clock on the mantel ticking, the refrigerator kicking in, her mother’s deep sighs, her own heart beating as if she had just run a race.
    When Derrick isn’t home, she sometimes talks to her mother in a way she can’t talk to her face-to-face or even on the phone.
    “Oh, Mother, I’m so tired. Tired of trying to be perfect, trying to have babies.”
    Then she will wait a moment, making up a reply that is usually filled with affirmation, before she continues.
    “Don’t you think I can let go now? Can’t I go shopping in my sweatpants and stop worrying about what’s fashionable and what’s not? And what is so wrong about