Emma Land

This is my third “Story For Shut-Ins,” and I hope you enjoy.  We’re all in this strange and separate world now, but somehow still together, zooming and calling and emailing and sharing what we can.  Be well and safe.

EMMA LAND

A short story by Gerald DiPego

My name is Sharon Best. People tell me I’m attractive and that I look to be about 25 years old. I don’t argue with them. After three hours on a plane, I’m tired and feeling like my clothes are tied in knots. I try to blow my hair out of my face, but it’s too limp. The year is 2002 on a Saturday in May at…four o’clockish, and I’m making my way through a large airport terminal in Chicago, heading for the doors and the cabs, bag strapped on my shoulder and a suitcase rolling behind, traveling light, that’s me. I don’t know if I actually hear the voice or if I just sense that someone is calling to me. This makes me nervous, and I walk, and roll, faster toward those doors.

The voice rises and follows me, and I have to glance behind, can’t help it, a very quick glance. Okay, I see him. Yes, I think I recognize him, about 60 or so, also with luggage, nearly dropping it as he rushes toward me. He’s gained weight. I don’t stop, and he doesn’t give up.

“Wait! Young lady…. Young woman! Wait!”

He’s almost on me, which makes my heart shrink to a stone. I can’t start running, not here, so I stop as he rushes toward me, very intense. He’s still shouting, even as he comes close, putting down his luggage, mostly letting it fall, and people are watching this.

“Please, I….” He’s no more than an arm’s length away, out of shape, breathing so hard, staring so deep. “You look…. You must be…. Do you know Emma? Emma Land? What’s your name?” He reaches out and touches my upper arm, and I take a step back, afraid now, noticing more people watching, some stopped and staring.

“Do you know me?” he asks, still shouting, and he reaches again, and I step back again, shaking my head no. He seems tortured, in actual pain. “You look like a woman…”

“I don’t know you,” I say, and it comes out loud and with fear in it, because there IS fear, tightening my throat. “My name is Sharon, Sharon Best. I don’t know…”

He tries the grab again, and he’s faster, desperate, holding my arm, and people are stepping closer as he shouts again, “You must know Emma…Emma Land.” I’m shaking my head which makes him grow even more intense, uncovering his teeth, shaking. Are those tears in his voice? Yes, his eyes are full. “Emma Land! You MUST be part of her family?! You look…”

I try to pull my arm out of his grip, but he holds on, and a tall man steps close to us, staring at the intense man…. “Hey, buddy – let her go.” A woman comes close, asking me… “Should I call the police?!” She has her phone in her hand. “Let her go,” the tall man says again, taking the man’s shoulder, and the man does let go, just standing there now, vibrating, staring. I speak while I’m backing away.

“I don’t know you! I don’t know this…Emma! Please! Leave me alone!” I turn and start for the doors again, and I don’t look back. I never look back. Sure, I know Emma Land. I know a lot of people.

I don’t begin to relax until I’m in my hotel room, taking a long hot shower, then putting on the fluffy robe, ordering soup, trying not to see his face over and over again, his wild eyes. I take long breaths and pull my thoughts to Amor, my daughter. I’m here in Chicago to see her. It’s been a long time. She’s not well, in a facility north of the city. I’ll rent a car in the morning. I’ll be with her. I’ll actually be with her. I see a tumbling mix of her now as a baby, at two, four, twelve. I feel all the hugs, ten thousand hugs. I sink into that.

It’s the next morning and I rented a car. I’m parking at the facility, but I don’t enter the building. They have me down for 1 pm, and its only noon. I walk through the grounds. The grass is exactly the green it’s supposed to be. The benches are newly painted. There are even flowers. I choose a bench that’s off alone and sit. I’m not breathing well, short breaths, shaky breaths. I ………

We named her Amor because my husband was Mexican-American. It means love, of course, and how we loved her. We had just finished business school, well…a small, inexpensive school teaching accounting at night. We got our diplomas, we got married, we got jobs. We were good at it, and the jobs got better. We had our child, we had our own accounting business, we even hired more accountants. Everything? You could say that. We loved each other and our daughter, didn’t worry about money, had good friends, had very few arguments…that’s everything, right?

When Amor was about twelve, I started noticing the edge. That’s what I call it. At first my husband went along with all the jokes about how young I looked. He was only two years older, just adding a little weight, losing a little hair, and I was still looking…the same. “Robbing the cradle,” all that silly stuff, and he went with it at first, proud of my looking so young, but as time went along, I saw him change. I would catch a look now and then, a serious look, an edge. The worst of it was when Amor began to show the edge, too — a 13 year-old-girl who had a mother who looked like an older sister. Funny at first. At first. It bothered them, and it showed in their eyes, a darkness. I could feel them begin to withdraw from me. Not that they blamed me. They just…couldn’t handle it. It was too…weird, and distancing began. My husband moved out. Amor spent more time with him than me, by choice. What was the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life? Yes. I left. I left the people I loved the most, my little tribe. It was a tearing. It hurt like that – a physical tearing away.

I went to a different city. I started a different life. Accounting job? Easy. Taking care of myself? No problem. Friends? What the hell do you do? They thought I was 25. I was 38. I didn’t tell them the truth. The lies began. There were men interested. I was lonely, so I began to date a man, a good man named Lenny. There were friends from work, too…. I began to have fun in spite of the pain and the loss. Because of it. Lenny wanted to marry me after a year. I kept checking myself in the goddamn mirror until I couldn’t stand to look at me anymore. I said no to marriage, afraid that damn edge that might appear all over again, but we kept seeing each other, being lovers. So, I was being held and loved and had someone to laugh and cry with and friends, too. They all thought I was 27 now, or 28, still looking like 25. They were good to me. They were fun, and I needed that because the pain of leaving Amor and my husband – that was still in me like claws. Still is.

Three years later, I began to see it, traces of that damn edge, that slight darkness in the look, almost a fear. He left me, saying that it was because I wouldn’t marry him, but I knew that my looks were starting to feel strange to him, and to my friends. So, did I have to leave again, leave a life behind again, be alone again?

I remember walking out on a bridge, stopping, looking at the rocks and water below. Do I start all over again, or just drop the curtain? I couldn’t do it. Amor was in the world. Maybe someday I could see her, and all the while, my face didn’t change, neither did my body. I FELT like I could be 25. I didn’t want to break my body on those rocks, didn’t want to leave the world.

I went to a distant town. This time I changed my name. I picked Laura Mozer off a grave stone so I could get a copy of a birth certificate. And research? Over the years I’ve read all I could find on aging: ‘cell energy’ ‘skin formation’ Nothing is there, nothing that helps. The skin is 80 percent genetic, but there’s no one like me in my family or I would’ve heard about it. What was the answer? A curse? A gift?

Most any town can use another accountant, and I had kept up, kept learning. I was good. I am good. When I had left my husband, he gave me half of our savings. I’ve built on that. I’m okay.

I decided, in this new town, that I would be a loner, and maybe that would help. I even bought products that would help me look older. What a switch, right? I also bought a dog. A dog would NOT show me that edge, and of course, it didn’t, but after three years I was too lonely and had to get close to someone. There was a girlfriend, a best friend, so much fun and so much giving between us, giving and taking. We were very close in every way, every way. I was happy. We took some trips together. I felt more free than…than ever.

Of course, she noticed that I stayed young, and she busted me on the ‘aging’ face products. We kind of laughed it off. Kind of. On one of her birthdays, we celebrated in our home, living together now. We both got a bit drunk. She was chiding me again for looking so damn young. I felt so close to her. Yes. That’s right. I did it. I told her, not all of it, but told her I just wasn’t aging, at all, for years, a lot of years, that I had to move away from people, keep moving on. She just stared at me. She said nothing. She drank more, and then she left. I was shouting at her to come back, screaming that she shouldn’t drive. She drove away. She did come back, late next morning, sober then. She stared hard at me and made me promise I would never screw with her mind again, never invent something like that again. I swore and said I was sorry. I didn’t want to lose her. But after another six months the edge was in her eyes, full force. So, I left. I still had the dog.

Next was another large city – get lost in a crowd, right? I kept my Laura Moser name, rose up in an accounting firm, and became very good at investing my money. I was able to work less. What did I do? I learned. I play the guitar now, good enough for open mike. I’m even on a few recordings – with friends. I can’t do life without friends. I speak Spanish and French. I lecture sometimes – not on aging – on accounting. I’ve published a book on the subject. I volunteer at the museum and study art. I dance very well:  ballroom, swing and funk. And I still weep over my daughter. Once, while weeping, I phoned my husband and wondered how he, how Amor, would feel about a brief meeting. He said, in a shaking voice, that he was glad I was all right, but please, no meeting. “Amor is teaching now. She has…a full life. It would be devastating to see you. For her…for me, too.” Please. I asked, what about a phone call? “Don’t bring it all back,” he said, “and please don’t try to reach Amor. She couldn’t take it.” A door slammed that day. He couldn’t even stand to hear my voice. My still-youthful voice. I don’t blame him.

Well, there were more cities and towns, more name changes, more dogs, too. And a few lovers. There was a man around forty, and we fell in love. Yes, I know, but try it. Try being alone forever. I couldn’t. It wasn’t torrid and didn’t shake the timbers, but it was love. I kept a door open, saying someday I would need to go take care of my parents who were aging and needing me (they had long passed by then) and they lived in Spain, I said, and I would have to go there to live someday. I faked the calls. Even some letters. By year three he said he would give up his job and live in Spain. He loved me entirely – those were his words and I believe him. I believe him still. He was the man in the airport last night when I came to Chicago. I had been Emma Land with him – so many years ago.

The time is almost here – my visit with Amor. I’m so nervous. I don’t think she’ll know me. She’s losing her memory. I don’t want to make her afraid, don’t want to shock her. She’s 92 and very frail. I better take some long breaths before I go in there, many long breaths. I wonder if I’ll see my child within the aging woman. I wonder if she’ll have a glimmer, even a thought, of her mother, her endless mother.

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