Untitled

PART TWO

Chapter Fifteen

Lisa sat in one of the provincial antique chairs that adorned a sitting room in the luxurious mansion. Her left hand tightly gripped one of the finely polished chair arms and with the other she held the phone tightly to her ear. Through the French doors leading to the veranda the brilliance reflected from the rippling blue Pacific filled the room. Lisa waited for the ringing to stop and then, hopefully, would come a familiar voice from the past. Bernice lounged on the veranda in the warm afternoon sun, waiting in anticipation.
Finally Lisa was shocked to attention at the sound of her mother's voice. "Hello." A spurt of emotion caused Lisa to choke, she couldn't speak. Her heart was beating rapidly. "Hello, hello is anybody there?"
Lisa managed to respond. "Hello Mama. Mama this is Lisa."
Lisa's mother was filled with emotions of both fear and joy. Her first instinct was to plead with her estranged daughter. "Lisa, Lisa honey please don't hang up. Promise me you won't hang up. I miss you so much and I'm so sorry. I can't bare to lose you again. Oh, baby please don't hang the phone up on your mama."
Lisa began to relax in a wave of relief. A great weight had been lifted from her shoulders. Her mother was alive and after all these years, she harbored no blame and still loved her. "Mama, I won't hang up on you. I promise. Mama how are you? How is Willy treating you?" There was a pause. Lisa remembered that her mother was never quick to answer important questions.
Bernice, unable to stand the suspense, came in from the veranda and looked at Lisa for a sign. Lisa smiled and gave her the "A OK" sign. Bernice happily scurried away holding her right hand over heart and breathing a sigh of relief.
Lisa's mother proceeded with a long answer to a short question. "I'm fine honey and Willy ain't here no more. About two years after you left I was still drinking a lot. One morning when I sobered up, Sissy came to me and said that Willy was messin' with her. I died a little that day baby. Willy was still sleeping and I went at him with a board. He took it away but not after your Mama got her licks in. He hit me and I went after Daddy's shotgun. I was gonna kill him, Lisa, and he knew it. He took off saying he was gonna get me.
"He showed up drunk a couple days later and came at me. So I took daddy's shotgun up to him. I shot a hole in the wall and the buckshot grazed his arm, cut it up. I told him I wasn't scared and he wasn't gonna hurt my girls no more. The sheriff and people in town knowed how mean he was so they warned him to stay away.
"I stopped drinking then too. It was cause of Willy I started drinking anyway. It got so he couldn't keep a job so Charlie gave him a job cleaning the saloon. Willy died two years ago Lisa. Finally drank himself to death."
Lisa recalled that once her mother got going she could talk endlessly. So she just listened.

Bernice brought out two glasses of ice tea and the two of them, Lisa, with the portable phone to her ear, went out on the veranda and settled into comfortably padded lounge chairs. Bernice glanced affectionately at her friend and was taken by the sparkle in Lisa's eyes that most assuredly reflected a blissful inner peace, so long in absent.
She brushed a tear from her own eye and smiled contentedly allowing herself a little self-indulgence as she thought, 'Lisa certainly deserves this and I helped bring it about. No greater gift can one give to oneself than to give her compassion and love to another. Allowing Lisa to come into my life that day on the cruise ship Sunbeam has brought to my attention this profound truth. A lesson in truth that the masters have been trying to teach us for centuries. Lisa is grateful to me, but I too am grateful to God for her.'

"What about Sissy Mama? How's she doing?"
"She's doing fine honey. She's married now and has two little ones and lives out in the country. Her husband is real good to her, you're gonna like him. I still live in the old house. All alone now, though. I work at Grumps store now and then to get a little extra spending money. Only bad thing Lisa, is I got a cancer. It's down in my female parts and my lung too, I think. It don't bother me much though so I don't worry about it." This was one of those rare times that Lisa's mother lied. "Don't worry..."
Lisa interjected. "Of course I'm gonna worry. What does the doctor say?"
"I went to the big hospital in Atlanta and they cut as much of it out as they could. They wanted me to get radiation and chemotherapy, but I won't have it. That stuff never did no good for anybody me and your Daddy knew. And Doc Summers said it was up to me."
At the mention of Daddy, Lisa noted choking followed by deep breathing by her mother. Mama quickly changed the subject.
"Ya know honey," she said. "I dream about your Daddy a lot. Probably sounds crazy to you but these dreams are what keep me going sometimes. When I get down I sometimes look forward to going to bed because I know he'll be there when I need him. I couldn't believe it, but he told me in one of those dreams not long ago that I would be seeing you again pretty soon.
"Oh, baby, I want to see you so bad and want to hold you. I don't deserve it but I need you. I love you honey." Lisa could hear her mother sobbing, as was she.
"It will be soon Mama, it will be soon, I promise you." Lisa put the phone receiver down and walked solemnly to the rear of the veranda. She stood at the railing staring aimlessly into the boundless expanse of Pacific Ocean before her. From behind, came Bernice's voice.
"What's the matter dear?"
Lisa's earlier joy having been submerged by retrospective regret, turned to face a concerned supporter. "I wasted all those years. Willy died a couple years ago and he's been out my family's life for a long time. Why did I wait so long? I feel terrible, and sick inside." Lisa's eyes were glassy and her face reflected intense emotional agony. Bernice struggled for the right words.
"You mustn't look back with remorse," she said, not sure what her next words would be. "You can't change the past. You have to look forward now, with new hope.
"Dear, you're not alone. The world is full of people who walk in the shadow of phantom fears, blind to the real truth. We have all done it to a certain extent. Believe me, Lisa, it's taken me a long time to figure it out and I'm still working on it. And now... and now you know! You have learned a great lesson today. A lesson that some people never learn. They go through their entire lives not realizing they can't run away from the truth. Regardless of what the fear may be, there comes a day when it must be faced. And you know, when that day comes, it can be one of the happiest days of their lives. They are finally free. And at peace.
"You were happy just a few minutes ago and there's no reason why you shouldn't stay with it. Things happen for a reason, Lisa. Someday you will come to understand that. Just think-you're going to see your family again. Come on, lets see that smile."
Lisa ran across the veranda to her friend and hugged her tightly, in gratitude. "Thanks," she said quietly. And the warm glow she experienced earlier, while talking to Mama, found its way back.