Free Daughters for a Time by Jennifer Handford Page B

door was staring right at me. My heart buckled in a way that made me wonder if it was strong enough to endure such a stress test. I felt nauseated. This wasn’t a good idea. I wasn’t ready for confrontation tonight. I wasn’t ready to hear what he might have to say. I turned and felt the safety of seeing my car. The shortest distance between two points is a straight line.
    Just then, the front door opened. Larry stepped out, a Hefty garbage bag suspended in the air, his mouth falling open like a ventriloquist’s dummy’s, his eyes as wide as buttons.
    “Helen?” he said, staring at me as if I were a hologram.
    “In the flesh,” I said, in a stupidly casual voice.
    “God, you’re looking more and more like your mother.”
    “That must be weird,” I said, for lack of anything better to say.
    “Spitting image.”
    “Everyone always said that I looked like you.” When I was a little kid, I used to think that meant I looked like a man with a mustache. Claire got to be the one who looked just like Mom.
    “Is everything all right?” His hair was more white than gray; his face was corded with lines, worn and leathery. His voice was more gravelly than I remembered. He wore jeans and a Green Bay sweatshirt.
    “Yeah,” I said lightly. “Sorry to drop in like this. I was in the neighborhood…”
    “Are you hurt? In trouble?” he asked, setting down the Hefty bag.
    “No, I’m fine.”
    “Do you want to come in?”
    “I can’t stay.”
    Larry looked hard at me as he raked his fingers through his hair. The side of his mouth pulled sharply to the side. Oh yeah, the twitching.
    “So you still like Green Bay, huh?” I said, pointing to his sweatshirt.
    “It’s too hard to be a Redskins fan,” he said, offering a small smile. “How’s Claire?”
    “Good. Married with a daughter.”
    “I saw her once at Home Depot. She didn’t see me and I didn’t say anything.”
    “Yeah, that wouldn’t have ended well.”
    “What about you? Are you a mom?” He leaned against the doorframe, popped his knuckles.
    “No,” I said, and then added, “Not yet.”
    “Do you want to come in?”
    “I’ve got to go.”
    “Helen,” he said. “Why’d you come?”
    “I don’t know,” I said.
    “Are you sure you don’t know?”
    I turned my head, looked across the road to the park. I thought about the reasons why I was there, whether I understood for sure myself.
    “Helen,” he said again. “It’s been a long time. Tell me why you’re here.”
    “I miss Mom,” I said plainly. “I was just wondering, don’t you miss her, too?”
    “I do,” he said.
    “Claire never wants to talk about her.”
    “Come in, Helen,” he said. “Just for a minute.”
    I stepped over the threshold and into the front room: blue tweed recliner, leather sofa, television on a stand, a childhood photo of Claire and me at Christmas in red flannel nightgowns. Larry walked to the easy chair in the corner of the room and signaled in the direction of the couch for me to sit. I did.
    “I miss her, too,” Larry said softly.
    “I can’t believe that she’s been gone for so long,” I said. “I can barely remember being fourteen, but I remember every detail about Mom like it was yesterday.”
    Larry nodded, sitting back and crossing his legs. “Did your mother ever tell you how we met?”
    “No,” I said.
    “Let me get us something to drink,” he said, going to the refrigerator and cracking open two bottles of Sam Adams. “It was our first semester of college,” Larry said, handing me a cold beer. “I don’t know how we found each other in that sea of students, but somehow she and I sat down next to each other inhistory class. She grew up in Baltimore, right in the city. And of course, I was in West Virginia, out in the country. We were an odd match, but we hit it off right away and started dating.”
    I imagined Mom and Larry when they were young: a city girl and a country boy. The two of them wanting to be with each other;