Free Detours by Jane Vollbrecht Page B

when she’ll actually stop talking and settle down to sleep. If I start around seven-thirty, by the time she’s bathed, changed, and out of arguments, I can get her there by nine.” Mary tried to decipher the look on Ellis’s face. “You must think I’m some kind of nut case.”
    “Not at all. I don’t pretend to understand what it feels like to have a child.” She gave Sam’s head a generous rub. “I know how warm and fuzzy it makes me feel when ol’ Sam here acts like I’m the best thing in her life. That’s probably as close as I’ll ever get to knowing what a mother feels.”
    “You never wanted kids?” Mary asked. “The two-legged kind, I mean.” She paused in her collection process long enough to give Sam a quick scratch behind her ears. “No disrespect intended, Sam.”
    Mary anticipated a quick answer and was surprised when Ellis seemed to contemplate her response. “Not of my own, no.”
    Mary dropped the armload of miscellany she’d rounded up onto the ottoman. “Did you want someone else’s kids?”
    Once again, Ellis seemed to take a long time to answer. “No, I wouldn’t say that, either.”
    Mary sat down in the glider, the chair she’d spent most of the afternoon and early evening in as she and Ellis compared notes on their lives. “Then what would you say?” Mary was greeted with yet another uncomfortably elongated lull in the conversation.
    “I’m afraid anything I say will come out all wrong.” Ellis used her good foot to push against the far end of the sofa and sit up a little straighter. “We’ve had a good day together, and I don’t want to ruin it.”
    “We talked about everything from our families to religion to sperm banks, and we got along fabulously well. Why would talking about kids ruin things?”
    “It wouldn’t. It’s just that—”
    The ringing of the portable phone on the end table interrupted Ellis’s thought.
    Mary checked the clock. “Twenty minutes to eight. That’ll be Natalie. Nathan has probably told her it’s time to start getting ready for bed, and calling me is one of her typical delay maneuvers.” Mary lifted the phone. She said to Ellis, “I’ll only be a minute or two,” and pushed the talk button. She pointed to her chest and then to the hallway. She mouthed the word, “bedroom,” then held her index finger across her lips and pointed to the TV.
     
    Ellis nodded. She heard Mary’s side of the conversation as she left the room. “Hi, honey. How was the movie? What did you eat for dinner tonight?” Sam jumped up from her place by the sofa and followed Mary.
    Ellis fixed her eyes on the television screen. Maybe she could pick up the thread of the story Leslie Stahl was reporting, or at least get a chuckle out of Andy Rooney’s witticisms.
    And maybe she’d run for president or form a rock band or win a Nobel Prize in physics. She hit the “off” button on the remote control. The memories of one of her last conversations with her ex-lover, Becky Blumfeld, washed over her like the surge from behind a burst dam.

    ∗ ∗ ∗ ∗

    She and Becky had stood in the entryway to their jointly-owned house in the Candler Park neighborhood in east Atlanta. They’d been together almost ten years—ten great years, in Ellis’s estimation. Ten great years minus one essential ingredient by Becky’s reckoning.
    “You know I don’t want to lose you, Becky.” Ellis fought the tangle of emotions inside her. Losing Becky would be worse than death. The argument had grown old from hundreds of repetitions, but the prospect of life without Becky made Ellis hope their differences could be resolved.
    “I don’t want to lose you, either, Ellis, but I told you right from the start that I wanted to have a family.”
    “We are a family. You, me, two cats, a dog. We live in a nice house. We’re both doing jobs we love. We’ve got a few bucks in the bank. Your parents like me. My brother and sister ignore us—which is just fine.” Ellis lifted