Mom’s Eight Thousand Dollar Hot Tub

What my mother did

Nobody said anything for a while. The steam drifted up between the three of us.

Over the fence, I could hear Judy Harper’s screen door bang, and then go quiet, like she had decided this was not her business after all.

I’ll be honest. Part of me wanted Mom to say something hard.

Part of me wanted Tiffany to stand there in the cold a while longer, the way she had made my mother sit at that dinner table.

Mom didn’t say anything hard. She looked at Tiffany for a long time, and then she reached over to the side of the tub where her bag sat, and she pulled out a second swim cap.

It was white, with little rubber daisies all over it. I had never seen it before.

“I bought this at the Walmart in Wellington three weeks ago,” Mom said. “I’ve been bringing it every Saturday in case you ever came out.”

Tiffany stared at the cap in my mother’s hand.

“Take off that robe, honey,” Mom said. “You’ve got a suit on under there, I can see the strap. Get in this water. It’s yours as much as mine, and I’ve been hogging it for six weeks.”

Tiffany started crying in earnest then. She put her face in her hands and her shoulders shook.

Mom just held the daisy cap out over the water and waited, patient as anything, the way she used to wait for me to finish a tantrum.

After a while, Tiffany took the cap. She put it on with shaking hands.

Then she let the white robe drop onto the patio chair, and I helped her down the steps by one arm, and she sank into the hot water across from my mother.

She closed her eyes. She let out a breath that seemed to go on forever.

“There,” Mom said. “There, now.”

The soak

They sat in that water for a full half hour. I stood beside them with my striped towel and listened, and I don’t think either of them remembered I was there.

Tiffany told Mom about the pain. About the nights she lay on the living room floor because the bed was too soft.

About how she had stopped going to the boys’ games because the bleachers were murder. About how she had felt like a ghost in her own house since January.

Mom listened. She said “oh, honey” in all the right places. And then she told Tiffany about Dad’s last year, about how he would not admit how much the cancer hurt until the very end, and how she wished every day that he had just told her.

“Pain is not a thing to be ashamed of,” Mom said. “Lying about it is what makes it lonesome. You don’t ever have to lie to me about hurting, Tiffany. You hear me? Not ever again.”

“I hear you,” Tiffany said. Her eyes were closed. Her face was pink from the heat. For the first time since I had known her, she did not look like she was bracing for something.

Then Mom told her about Saturdays. About the sale barn café and the biscuits and gravy and the crop tours. About the four years of sitting home listening to the clock.

Tiffany opened her eyes. “Bev,” she said. “Every Saturday. You come every Saturday. I’ll leave the gate code just like it is.”

“I’ll bring the coffee,” Mom said.

“I’ll make the coffee,” Tiffany said. “You bring that cap.”