I stole forty dollars when I was sixteen so my best friend, Lois Kerner, and I could run off to see the ocean. We got as far as Ohio. We swore we’d try again when we were eighty, and three years ago Lois stopped calling. Her daughter told me, “Mom doesn’t want to see you anymore.”
The money came from the cash box at the feed mill in Rensselaer. My daddy managed the place, so it was his cash box, too. Lois had her brother’s Ford, and we had a road map and two Pepsis. We thought we had a plan.
We didn’t get far enough to see the ocean. State police picked us up at a gas station outside Lima and took us home. Daddy didn’t make a big speech. He told me I’d work every Saturday that summer until I’d paid back every dime.
“You knew that was my money,” he said.
“Yes, sir.”
“And you thought you could just take it?”
“I thought we’d get there before anybody noticed.”
He looked at me for a moment. “You’ll work it off.”
I did. I was ashamed for years. I’m still a little ashamed, though Lois and I got a lot of laughter out of that failed trip later. She teased me about it until the day she married.
“Next time we’re going all the way, Cindy,” she said. “When we’re eighty, and nobody can stop us.”
We shook on it. Then life came along.
I worked in the feed mill office for forty-one years. Everybody calls me Scoop because I weighed out grain for half of Jasper County. Lois raised four children on a farm outside Wolcott. We lived our separate lives, but neither of us let a birthday pass without getting in touch. Not one in sixty years.
Every October, she’d remind me, “You still owe me a Pepsi from Ohio.”
“Put it on my tab,” I’d say.
We’d laugh like girls, and for a while we were girls again. The joke belonged to us. So did the promise underneath it.
Lois called every Sunday afternoon on my landline. My grandkids think I’m a dinosaur for keeping it, but I liked knowing where to reach her. If I missed a call, I could call back. We didn’t need to arrange anything first.
Then the Sunday calls stopped.
At first, I thought she might be busy. I called her and got no answer. I sent a birthday card. Nothing came back. I tried again, then waited, telling myself I was being patient and not worried.
After a while I drove out to the farm. There was a sale sign in the yard. Lois had moved to her daughter Brooke’s house in Columbus, Indiana.
I called Brooke.
“Is Lois there?” I asked.
“She’s here,” Brooke said, but she sounded short with me.
“Can I talk to her?”
“Mom doesn’t want to see you anymore, Cindy. Please stop calling.”
I didn’t have an answer ready. “Did I do something?”
“She doesn’t want company.”
“Could you ask her to call me?”
“No. Please stop calling.”
The call ended. Sixty-three years of friendship, and I didn’t even know what I was supposed to apologize for.
I told myself there had to be a reason, though I couldn’t find one. I went back through old birthdays and visits in my mind, looking for the moment I’d missed. Maybe I’d said something careless. Maybe I’d stayed too long. Maybe Lois had simply grown tired of me. People do. I was afraid I had needed her more than she needed me.
Last month I saw Brooke at the county fair, in the pie tent. I went up to her before I could talk myself out of it.
“Brooke, is your mother mad at me?”
She looked down at her pie ticket. “She’s fine.”
“Then why won’t she speak to me?”
“She just doesn’t want company.”
“Is that what she told you?”
Brooke didn’t meet my eyes. “I have to go.”
She walked off and left her pie on the table. I stood there with my purse, hurt enough that I couldn’t breathe right for a moment. I went home without knowing whether I had asked too much or too little.
My son told me to let it go.
“Mom, you can’t go banging on that woman’s door,” he said.
“I wouldn’t bang.”
“You know what I mean. Folks up there will think you’ve lost it.”
“Then let them think it.”
He didn’t say I was wrong. He just asked me to be careful. That night, I lay awake wondering if showing up would be selfish. I also knew I couldn’t live with the question forever.
Our birthdays are three days apart in October. The week we both turned eighty, I packed a bag and a road map, for old times’ sake, and drove three hours south on 65 in my old Malibu. I’m not proud of my driving. I’m proud I made it.
Brooke’s house was a brick ranch with a wheelchair ramp out front. I hadn’t known Lois needed one. That made me pause, but it didn’t turn me around.
Brooke opened the door about four inches.
“Cindy,” she said. “What are you doing here?”
“It’s our eightieth. We had a promise. I want to see her.”
“You can’t.”
She stepped into the doorway with her arms out. Behind her I could hear a television turned up loud. Lois always did love The Price Is Right.
“Is she in there?” I asked.
“Please don’t.”
“Lois!” I called. “Lois, it’s Scoop!”
The television went quiet. Brooke’s face crumpled like a little girl’s.
“Please,” she said. “She made me promise.”
“Promise what? What did I do to her?”
“You didn’t do anything.”
“Then let me see her.”
Brooke started crying. “She’s got a coffee can in her closet with your name on it, Cindy. She’s been saving for that beach for three years.”
I looked past her into the house. “Then why on earth did she stop calling me?”
Brooke wiped her face on her sleeve and lowered her arms.
“Because Mom can’t hear you on the phone anymore,” she said. “She kept missing what you said, and she was embarrassed. She made me promise not to tell you. She thought she could save enough, go with you at eighty, and you wouldn’t have to know.”
The answer was ordinary. It was also the first one that made sense. The loud television, the calls that ended, all those Sundays with no explanation. I had spent three years thinking Lois had stopped wanting me. She had been trying to keep one part of our promise.
Brooke opened the door wider. “She can hear some things if you’re close. But she’s been avoiding the phone.”
“Does she know I’m here?”
“She heard you call her name.”
“Then ask her if she wants to see me.”
Brooke looked toward the back of the house. “I was supposed to keep you away.”
“I know what you promised. Ask her now.”
She went inside. I stayed by the doorway, still holding my bag. I could hear a few quiet words, then Lois’s voice, rough and raised.
“Tell her to come in.”
Brooke came back alone. “She wants you.”
I walked in. Lois was seated in the living room, turned toward the doorway. She looked older than the last time I’d seen her, and so did I. I came close enough that she could make out my face.
“Hi, Lois,” I said.
She smiled. “Scoop.”
“Still owe you that Pepsi.”
“I didn’t forget.”
I wanted to tell her how many times I had called and how ashamed I was that I’d thought she was done with me. Instead I sat beside her. I had driven all that way, and there was no need to spend the first minutes making her carry my hurt.
Brooke stayed in the room. She seemed unsure whether to leave us alone or keep watch.
“Get the can,” Lois said.
Brooke hesitated. Lois turned her face toward her.
“Please.”
Brooke went down the hall and returned with a coffee can. She set it on the table between us. It had Lois’s name on it and mine. Inside were folded bills and coins. No number, no note explaining the years. Just the money she had put aside for our trip.
Lois touched the edge of the can. “I kept thinking I’d get enough.”
“You did,” Brooke said. “You saved it.”
“I wanted to call her.”
“You could have told me,” I said.
Lois looked at me, working to follow my words. I leaned closer and repeated them.
“I didn’t want you to hear me missing everything,” she said. “I didn’t want you to have to repeat yourself. It was easier to wait.”
“You could’ve asked me to repeat myself.”
“I know that now.”
Brooke glanced at the can. “I thought I was helping.”
“You told me Mom didn’t want to see me,” I said.
Brooke’s eyes dropped. “I didn’t know what else to say. She asked me not to tell you about her hearing, and I thought if I kept you away, she could explain it herself when she was ready.”
“You could have told me she wasn’t up for a visit,” I said. “You didn’t have to tell me she didn’t want me.”
“I know.” Brooke took a breath. “I was trying to keep her promise, and I made you think you’d lost her. I’m sorry.”
Lois’s mouth tightened. “You should have let her come.”
“I know, Mom.”
I had been waiting so long to hear there was a reason that part of me wanted to ask every question at once. But Lois was right there, and Brooke had admitted what she did. I didn’t need to make the room any harder for Lois to follow.
“I’m here now,” I said.
Lois nodded. “You came.”
Brooke moved the can closer to Lois. “That’s what she’s been saving.”
“I know,” I said. “We can still go.”
Lois laughed. “At eighty?”
“Especially at eighty.”
Brooke looked from her mother to me. “You can’t drive all that way by yourselves.”
“I can drive,” I said. “Just not as confidently as I used to.”
“That isn’t what I mean,” she said. “I can take you.”
Lois watched her daughter’s face. “You’ll come?”
“If you want me to.”
“I want Cindy.”
“I’ll come too,” Brooke said. “I can help.”
That was the first time since I arrived that Brooke seemed to understand this wasn’t a visit she had to manage for Lois. It was a promise Lois had made with me. Brooke had been trying to protect her mother, but she had also made herself the person who decided whether I could be part of Lois’s life. That stopped at the doorway.
“You don’t have to come,” I told her. “But you can help us get there.”
She nodded. “I’d like to.”
We didn’t leave that day. We spent the rest of the visit talking in short stretches, with me repeating things when Lois asked. When she got tired, I stopped. I had spent years imagining a dramatic explanation for her silence. The truth was that she had been embarrassed, and I had been left to guess.
Before I left, I told her I’d call the next Sunday.
“Not on the phone,” she said, smiling. “Come over.”
“I’ll come over.”
Brooke heard us. “I’ll make sure you get in.”
“You don’t have to make sure,” Lois said.
Brooke accepted that without arguing.
The next Sunday I drove back. Brooke opened the door all the way. Lois was waiting in the living room, and I sat close enough for her to hear me. We talked about the trip in pieces: where we might stop, what she wanted to bring, whether I should drive or let Brooke take the wheel. We did not decide everything in one afternoon. We did decide we were going.
Brooke drove us toward the ocean with the coffee can in the car. Lois kept it close, though she didn’t need to. We stopped when we needed to and took the rest of the trip at a pace we could manage. When we reached the beach, Lois and I stood together looking out at the water.
“I told you we’d make it,” she said.
“You said eighty.”
“I was right.”
For the first time since we were sixteen, the ocean was in front of us. We had made it together.
