Read Sisterchicks Say Ooh La La! for Free Online Page A

Amy asked her mother if she would go to Paris with her.
    The DuPree graciousness shone through as Amy’s seventy-eight-year-old mother said, “Amelie, you will enjoy your first trip more if you aren’t waiting for me to catch up with every step. I have my memories. It’s time for you to gather your own. Promise me you’ll go while you’re young.”
    Amy and I were forty-four, and that didn’t feel young to either of us. We had a hard time figuring out how we had grown that old so fast. But then, I’m sure Amy’s mom would have said the same thing, if we asked her.
    I thought Amy would invite me on the Parisian adventure next, but she didn’t. We slept in a forest of boxes that night and the following. In between sleeps, we worked hard to designate every box either for Elie’s new place atMonarch Manor or for “storage,” which was Mark and Amy’s garage.
    Amy didn’t bring up the Paris trip again until Monday afternoon when the three of us were seated in the front cab of the U-Rent truck heading for Kentucky. We were following the moving van that contained all of the furniture and dozens of the boxes. The experience of sifting a lifetime of belongings down to the essentials that would fit into a two-room living space had been sobering for all three of us. No one thinks she is materialistic until she has to decide what to give up and what to keep.
    For the past few days I’d watched Amy’s mom tell her stories about lamps and porcelain curios simply because we were there to listen. That had been my gift to this woman who had filled my childhood with all the sweetness and frills that had never sprouted in the garden my mother had planted for her children. The DuPree women planted daffodils and forget-me-nots in the garden of life. My mother raised eggplants and parsley.
    When traffic on I-40 slowed down, Amy released a telling sigh. I knew that sigh. She was resolved.
    “Lisa?”
    “Yes?”
    “I’ve been thinking.”
    I had been thinking, too, and was pretty sure I knew what she was going to say. She wouldn’t ask Mark to go to Paris with her. Mark was a lot like my husband. Both Markand Joel were great at family road trips to Lake Michigan or mission trips with the youth group to any place the old church van would take them. Mark enjoyed fishing for hours from a collapsible chair set up on a river’s edge.
    Asking a man like that to fly across the Atlantic for the first time in his life to look at statues and buildings and art, to take pictures under the Eiffel Tower, and then to top it off by sipping dark coffee at a cramped sidewalk café where no one was speaking English was more than Amy would be willing to ask of her husband. He would be lost and silent the entire time and ruin the ambience for her. We all knew that.
    Amy’s daughters weren’t ready for Paris. Bright Jeanette was immersed in her job at a local pizza place that doubled as the meeting spot for all her friends. Her college plans were in full swing. Amy’s thirteen-year-old, Elizabeth, was a lot like her father when it came to vacation preferences. Lizzie forever had a paperback novel in her hand and would undoubtedly rather read about Paris than actually go there.
    In the end, I was the best choice for Amy’s travel companion to Paris. She had asked me to go with her three decades ago. I was pretty sure she was going to ask me again.
    “Lisa, I want to ask you something, but you don’t have to give me your answer right away.”
    “Okay.”
    “I want you to think about going to Paris with me.”
    “Of course I’ll go to Paris with you.” I grinned. “I told you I’d go all the way to Monarch Manor and help you unload this stuff at your mom’s new place.”
    For a moment Amy didn’t catch my silly joke. Then she looked irritated. “No! Not Paris, Kentucky. I mean the other Paris.”
    “The one with the big pointed tower and the fancy cathedral where the hunchback lived?”
    Ignoring my poor attempt at humor, she pushed