The Patron Saint of Butterflies(76)

For a while I’m pissed that she’s sleeping. I mean, I haven’t seen the woman in fourteen years and now that we’re alone in the car together with a fourteen-hour trip ahead of us, she conks out? But when I calm down, I realize that I’m actually kind of glad she’s asleep. I mean, I don’t even know where to start to feel when it comes to the fact that I am actually sitting next to her. Shock and happiness and rage and fury are all balled up into this gigantic … thing inside my chest. Mostly it just feels unreal. I keep looking over, as if maybe she is simply a mirage and when I get close enough, she will vanish into thin air. But she doesn’t. For hours, little whistling sounds blow in and out of her nose, and her hands lie limp as sleeping kittens in her lap. Every time a car passes, its headlights flood her profile with a brief, sweeping light, making her hair look like an electric halo around her face.

I wonder if I will ever feel any love for her—now, or later, after some time passes. But I guess I shouldn’t worry about that. The real question is if I am ever going to trust her after everything that has happened. Mr. and Mrs. Little did a horrible thing, keeping the truth about my mother from me all these years—but then, so did Lillian. Her explanation for it made sense, and a part of me feels bad for her, having to go through all that rejection from her own brother and then Emmanuel. But I was her baby. I am her baby. And I should have come first. Before either of them. How do we get past the fact that I didn’t? That she listened to two men who told her she wasn’t good enough instead of her own heart? And then, just as I’m starting to feel really lousy about the whole deal, I remember one of the last things Nana Pete said to Agnes and me:

We’ve got to stay on the same team if we want to make it, okay?

Maybe all I’ve got to do, at least for now, is just try to stay on the same team. Slowly, I reach out and slide my hand inside Lillian’s. It is warm and soft.

As we pass Raleigh, I try to quell the anxiousness rising inside. Have things already been put into motion at Mount Blessing? Could Winky have possibly come through for me? Or have Agnes and Benny been snatched from Mr. and Mrs. Little upon their return and sent to Emmanuel’s room? I get a shooting pain in the front of my head when I think of the latter. Emmanuel will destroy Agnes completely if he gets his claws into her one last time. And there’s no telling what will become of Benny. I glance in the rearview mirror at the empty highway behind me and step down hard on the gas.

Lillian wakes up just outside of Baltimore as the sun is coming up. She rubs her eyes and stretches and then looks over at me. I turn the radio, which I have been listening to for the past six hours, down low.

“God, how long have I been asleep?” she asks.

“Five hours. Give or take.”

“Five hours?” she repeats. “Are you okay? Why didn’t you wake me?”

I shrug. “I’m fine. I’m a pretty good driver.”

Lillian rubs her eyes again. “I guess you are. Geez, Louise! I can’t believe you drove all that way without stopping!” She peers out the window. “And you know where you are?”

“I’ve just been following signs for 95 North,” I say.

Lillian shakes her head. “Amazing.”

“You hungry?” I ask.

Lillian rolls her eyes and pats her belly.

“Yeah. But I’m always hungry. Always. Ma used to say I had a tapeworm in my belly.” I smile when she says that. “Pull over at that Burger King,” Lillian says, pointing to a sign. “We’ll get something to eat and I’ll drive the rest of the way.”

We order the works at the Burger King drive-through: French Toast Sticks, two Croissan’wiches with eggs and ham, Cheesy Tots, hash browns, a large coffee for Lillian, and two orange juices for me. Lillian eats with one hand, steering the car with the other, and takes big bites without pausing for breath. She slurps her coffee, even though it is scalding hot, and sighs after the first sip.

“I miss Ma already,” she says in a quavering voice. I stare out the window at a green sign that says WASHINGTON, D.C. 25 MILES. In a little while, we will be back at Mount Blessing, hopefully to get Agnes and Benny out of there for good. But going back there without Nana Pete suddenly feels ominous, like going into battle without any armor.

“I still can’t believe she’s gone,” I say.

“How was she on the trip?” Lillian asks, taking another gulp of coffee.

“What do you mean?”

“The only road trip I ever took with her was just that short drive from Raleigh down to Atlanta. You got her for two whole days on the road. What was it like? Did she drive fast? Did she stop a lot? Did she tell you stories?”

I tell Lillian everything, starting at the very beginning with Nana Pete throwing us all into the Queen Mary and tearing out of Mount Blessing as if our shoes were on fire. Then the McDonald’s and Wal-Mart stops, the motel, me driving, her exhaustion, the discussions about God, Agnes’s waist string, and the pink barrette. To my surprise, I wind up talking for over an hour. My voice is raspy when I finish, but for some reason, I feel exhilarated. It is the first time since everything began that I realize I feel different. Older, maybe. Quieter.

“She was something,” Lillian says softly. “Wasn’t she?”

“Yeah,” I answer. “She really was.”

Five hours later, Lillian pulls on to Sanctity Road. She sits forward, practically on top of the steering wheel, and drives slowly. Tiny beads of sweat have broken out on her forehead. “God,” she says, surveying the empty landscape. “This is when I wish I still smoked.”