A Thousand Miles to Graceland

Grace? Grace. If you're there, pick up…" There was complete silence, which amplified sounds of the passing traffic and the lull of my car engine. Mama still didn't understand the difference between an answering machine and voice mail.

"Well, okay then. I just wanted to talk to you about something. I know you're always very busy…" I suddenly felt bad for always feeding her that line, but it was the nicest way I could put her off and not feel engulfed in guilt.

"But if you could please give me a call back, that would be great. Thanks." She paused again, and in a different, less friendly tone added, "Oh, it's your mama." She emphasized the m's, which was her way of expressing her disappointment that we hadn't spoken in a while. At least, that's what it felt like to me. I called her out on it a few times, and she shrugged it off, saying I was just hearing things. "You were always so sensitive, Grace!" as if that were a bad thing. And she wondered why we were on a strict once-a-month call schedule. I needed the full twenty-nine or so days to gear up.

I tried to convince her that she would hear from me more often if she'd just text, but she refused to upgrade her flip phone, which made texting harder for her than solving a quadratic equation.

"When you come visit, you can take me to the store and get me a new phone that texts you. All my friends have those little smiley faces. I want little smiley faces."

"Emojis, Mama. They're called 'emojis.'" The fact that they had a name blew her mind. Then every time she remembered to use the word she felt so smug.

I pulled up to a stoplight. "Siri, call Mama." It was rare to get a call from her outside of our scheduled monthly check-in, so I figured I might regret not using the twenty minutes I was about to spend in traffic talking to her.

"Hello?!" Her twangy voice squeaked upward, as if she were surprised that she was getting a phone call from me. I preferred to believe it was because she was still unsure how to use her phone and skeptical that anyone would actually be on the other end when she picked up.

"Mama. It's Grace. I got your message. You do realize that no one else can hear you, right? It's voice mail."

"Grace, you know I'm just not good at these thangs." Mama's accent still gave me a jolt, even though I'd heard it my entire life. After years living up North, the sound of it felt like the electric shock I'd get from rubbing my feet on the carpet and touching a metal door handle.

I'd spent my entire college career trying to ditch my southern accent, thanks to a vocal coach who traded me lessons for tax preparation services. When Mama came up to Boston for graduation, people looked at her, then me, then back at her, and me again, like they were watching a tennis match whenever she spoke. I suppose you don't often hear a Chinese woman speak with a southern accent, let alone one who looks like she's been dragged off the stage at the Grand Ole Opry.

"Okay, it's just that I tell you this all the time. But whatever. What's up? Is everything all right?"

"Oh, never better, darlin', but you know, my birthday is coming up, and I wanted to make a big splash this year. The big seven-oh!"

I knew what was coming, so I tried to head it off to lessen the sting. "I know, Mama, and I know I promised that I would come down, but the client extensions this year…" My voice trailed off, which was the tell that I was completely full of shit. I had plenty of time between now and mid-October to get them done.

"Oh, hush, I don't want a visit. I'm turning SE-VEN-TY. I want something bigger, Grace."

I couldn't quite imagine what would be bigger than a visit from me, not because I think I'm so special and important, but because Mama hadn't done anything but the same thing for years. No amount of Xanax could get her on a plane, and the cataract taking over her left eye made it hard for her to do anything outside of daytime hours.

"I'm taking a road trip…to Graceland!" Her statement was followed by a single white-girl "woo-hoo!" And then silence, as if she were reading from a script and giving me the space for my next line.

I suddenly wished that I had just waited to call her back until I was sitting on my couch with a glass of wine in my hand.

"Wasn't one trip to Graceland enough?" I could have sworn she had taken a bus trip with her retirement village buddies a few years back. Even then I was surprised that it had taken her that long, but her fear of anything with wings—birds and planes—forced her into a bus or car, and Mama could barely drive herself to the grocery store on a cloudy day, let alone a thousand miles to Memphis.

"Didn't I ever tell you that we never made it on that bus trip? Sally Rogers passed away right before we were going to leave, and then I just couldn't ever bring myself to go."

That was right. "Bad juju," I recalled. I felt slightly relieved that I wasn't going completely nuts.

"Very bad juju."

I guess Mama had talked so much about the trip that it felt like she had gone. It didn't help that when I'm on the phone with her, I'm thinking about all the things I have to do, and her rambling just becomes background noise to my thoughts. I suddenly started to question other things I thought she had done. Or hadn't done. But with the therapist's office right around the corner, I wisely stopped myself before diving headfirst into that swirling cesspool of memories and guilt.

"But still, Mama. You driving alone all that way is just not an option. Listen, I'm about to pull up to my meeting…" Liar. She interrupted me.

"I'm not going alone…"

I did a quick scan of all the people she knew who could possibly drive her, and I ended up playing a game of "dead or senile" with the first few names that came to mind.

"…I want you to take me! Think about how fun it will be. Just the two of us ladies, hair blowing in the wind, sun beating down on our faces."

It sounded like she was describing a movie she had just seen.

"…Like Thelma and Louise."

And there it was. "Mama, Thelma and Louise become criminals who kill themselves."

"Oh god, you are so dramatic, Grace. That's not at all what I meant."

Mama always accused me of being dramatic when my truth-telling harshed the buzz of her rich fantasy life, like the time she was convinced she could somehow get an invite to Lisa Marie and Michael Jackson's wedding.

How exactly did she think this would work? "Mama, I'd love to if I could." Liar, liar. "But this stupid job. And Jeff. And…"

"Gracie! I've got the whole thing planned out. All you have to do is drive. And take some vacation days. I'm sure Jeff would understand."

He'd probably be glad to have some space. But I wasn't about to tell her that.

I pulled into a parking spot right in front of the office. Apparently it was my lucky night. "Some? Mama, okay, now I really have to go. I promise I'll think about it."

That wasn't a lie. I would think about it, along with all the times we'd spent longer than a few hours in the same room together, let alone crammed in a car for days on end, and then I would come up with some excuse to get out of it. Whenever we'd get together, it was like a master class in guilt trips, and she was the guest teacher, which would end with me feeling like I was rationalizing all my life choices to someone who wasn't really known for making good ones. To be fair, I never believed that her intention was to make me feel like a failure, but that doesn't quite matter when you're being judged by your own mother.

So avoidance had become second nature to me. And while I couldn't keep skirting around the large, probably neon and bedazzled, elephant in the room, I'm pretty sure that this was not the time to call it out.

"Well, just think about it, Grace. It'll be amaaaaaazing."

I hung up, then turned my car off, slumping heavily back in my seat, like someone had pushed me, still a few minutes early for my session. I could feel the faint pounding of a headache about to make its full presence known, so I shut my eyes, hoping that might fend it off before I had to reach for some ibuprofen.

"Grace! Hey, Grace!" It was Jeff, standing in front of my car on the sidewalk outside our therapist's building, as if we were about to go get a massage or see our favorite band play. He was always cheerful and smiling, even in the most uncomfortable situations, which made him super easy to be around—something I was definitely not used to when I met him. And it came in handy, like the time he ended up getting me my new Subaru Outback at the friends-and-family price. No one ever gets a deal on a Subaru.

"You ready?!" He gestured toward the therapist's office building, and I reluctantly nodded back, pushing my door open and climbing from the car.

"I guess," I whispered to myself, slamming the door.

"Everything okay?"

"Fine." I pushed a smile out through my lips and grabbed his outstretched hand. It was cold and sweaty, but I didn't think twice.

The receptionist du jour called Jeff's name, and he popped up out of his seat like a jack-in-the-box. I followed him through the door, down the long hallway lined with diplomas and certificates that I had never really paid much attention to before this very second.

I took the spot at the far end of the couch, but instead of sitting closer to me, in the middle of the fancy leather sofa that practically swallowed us when we sat, Jeff sat clear on the other end, then started gushing over Dr. Wakefield's pretty basic blue tie, which turned into a rather bizarre but not surprising conversation about tie storage options. I started to braid the tassels on the pillow, when Dr. Wakefield abruptly interrupted Jeff's snore-fest about the restaurant customer who once offered to pay him for the tie he was wearing.

"Jeff, I don't want to interrupt you…"

Even though his face totally said, "Please stop now or I'm going to need therapy."

"…but didn't you have something you wanted to talk to Grace about this evening?"

Jeff smiled, of course, then puttered like an old, dying car about to run out of gas. "Um, well, yeah, so, uh, yep…"

I turned toward him, hoping it would ease all our pain.

"I…I…met someone." He mumbled the last words under his breath. "And we're in love," he added. Knife inserted, then twisted.

"What the hell?!" My eyes instantly filled with tears, and it felt like I was looking at the room through a fishbowl. I reached my hand out toward Dr. Wakefield, and waved it around, which I think is the universal sign for "hand me the damn tissue box," though I would have taken a pair of boxing gloves had he offered.

"Grace, I understand you're upset. Jeff felt that it would be best to tell you about his relationship in a safe, neutral environment. It was important for him to be respectful to you." He stumbled over the word "respectful," and I wondered if even he thought this whole thing would have been better done behind our own closed doors.

"Best?" The heat of my anger was burning my throat, making my voice sound pressured and gruff. "Telling me in our own house, where I can use my own goddamn tissues, would have been the actual best, asshole." I wiped my eyes, then my nose, which was now embarrassingly stuffy, while Jeff just sat there, looking down at the floor, biting his nubs of nails. Respectful, my ass.

"Being respectful means considering how the other person might feel, not doing what you think is right because you saw it on Intervention or some bullshit show. Did you think about that in your grand scheme?" I turned to Dr. Wakefield, who looked as comfortable as someone getting a blood test with a drill bit. "Aren't you supposed to be our therapist?"

"Well, I'm technically your marriage's therapist…" he replied hesitantly, as if changing "our" to "your" would somehow quell my anger. The regret in his response was almost palpable, so I did my best to toss it right back at him, hoping it would take form and land on his head like seagull crap at the beach.

"My husband just tells me he's cheating on me and you're going to be technical? I'm pretty sure you know exactly what I'm trying to say." Dr. Wakefield wiped his brow, and I imagined the beads of sweat like stinky bird shit.

I scowled at Jeff. "So, wait, all this time we're essentially paying enough in marriage counseling fees to send his kid to college, you're rendering it completely pointless with your dick?"

I thought that might get a rise out of him, but instead, he just sat, staring at the wall past Dr. Wakefield.

"I just didn't know how else to tell you, Grace." His eyes remained fixed, his voice calm, like always.

"Well, you were certainly able to ask me to marry you all by yourself. How do you throw away something so easily that you wanted so badly?"

Jeff's glare remained unmoved, but I could see tears slowly sliding down his cheeks. The therapist handed him a tissue box, but he refused, choosing to use his fingertips instead.

"Or maybe you never really wanted it in the first place."

His head whipped around at me so fast I thought it might keep going and fly off his neck. I'd never seen him show an actual negative emotion like this in the entire time we had been together. He leaned in, and I could hear his breath getting heavier as he pushed out the words through his gritted teeth and tight jaw. "Maybe you should be asking yourself that question."

Jeff wasn't completely wrong, but I didn't want to get into it now. Not like this.

He stood and took a step toward the door, but I jumped up.

"You can stay. I'll go." I walked right past him and grabbed the doorknob.

"Grace, I feel really uncomfortable letting you leave like this," Dr. Wakefield interjected.

I turned around. "What about me? Did either of you think about how I feel?"

Only Dr. Wakefield responded as Jeff sat, head in his hands. "You're right, Grace. How you're feeling is important."

"You mean you're actually feeling something, Grace? So this is what it takes?" Jeff looked like he startled himself with the outburst.