Read If I Lose Her for Free Online

you’d hesitate before trying to find your dad,” Jo
said sitting up next to me and curling her legs beneath her. She had kicked off
her other slender red shoe and sat leaning on one arm. She was absolutely
beautiful in a white spring dress with red flowers she had bought just to meet
my mother. I loved that dress.
     “Don’t get
me wrong though,” I said. “When it’s just us, things are pretty good. Sometimes
I’ll come home late, after being out with friends or whatever, and I’ll see the
light on in her room. I’ll knock on the door and if there is no answer I know
she is out on her balcony smoking a cigarette. ‘Mom’, I’ll holler in through
the cracked door. ‘Yeah honey,’ she’ll say sliding open the glass door to the
balcony. ‘Come on in. I’m just out here watching the stars,’ she’ll tell me or
maybe, ‘I’m just out here thinking.’ Then she’ll put down her cigarette and
walk into the bedroom to give me a hug. If it’s cold out, she’ll be wearing a
full-length silver fox coat she bought off a customer in her store, and I’ll
wrap my arms around her, bury my face in the soft hairs of the fur and remind
her that she’s my favorite mom. Then she’ll laugh. ‘Well, that’s a good thing
because you’re my favorite son.’ Then I might go out on the balcony with her
and tell her what my day has been like or she’ll talk about some interesting
piece of jewelry that came into the store and pretty quick the conversation
will wonder onto whatever it is she’s reading.
     “My mother
never bothered to spend the money on a bed frame, but she loves her books. Her
mattress just lays on her bedroom floor with stacks of books piling up next to
it, sometimes two and three feet high against black and gold fabric that she’s
pinned to her walls as decoration. She might be pulling apart Shakespeare or
Whitman, reading the newspaper or writing in a journal; usually several at a
time. But the one thing that is always open by her bed is the Bible. I’ll sit
down and she’ll share with me some interesting nugget she’s found digging
through the Hebrew Scriptures. We’ll debate back and forth and more times than
not, before either of us know what’s happened, the sun will be rising on
another day.”
     While we
were talking raindrops started tickling our cheeks and arms. Jo looked at her
watch. “It’s four-fifteen. Should we get going?”
     “We had
better,” I told her. We folded up the blanket, got back into the car and wound
our way back down the mountain.
     I hadn’t
talked to anyone about my mother like that before that day, which meant I
hadn’t really thought about it. Not about her or my dad or what kind of awful
things she must have been fighting through. I mean, how often does a kid stop
and actually think about all the stuff their parents go through. You don’t
usually stop and look at them like they are real people until you get older,
when the weight of some of the decisions they made on your behalf finally
starts to crystallize, and the bit that sucks is that then it’s often too late.
     I squeezed
Jo’s hand, and we drove through the rain to my house.

Seven
     
     
     We got to my
house a little before five. The lite, evening rain had stopped, and as soon as
I opened the front door I could smell the wonderful smell of my favorite dish
in the world: Shepherd’s Pie. Louis Armstrong was tapping out the gravely notes
of ‘Star Dust’ in the kitchen.
     “Mom?” I
hollered.
     “I’m in the
kitchen. I wasn’t expecting you for another twenty minutes.”
     “I’ve got Jo
with me.”
     My mother
walked out into the hall wiping her hands on a tea towel. Her blonde hair was
pulled back and her feet were bare with pearl-pink painted toenails. “Welcome
Jo,” she said taking Jo’s hand. “Do you prefer Jo or Jolene?”
     “Jo’s fine
Ms. Douglas.”
     “Dawn.
Please call me Dawn.”
     “Okay,
Dawn.”
     “Alex, she’s
prettier than you said she