Emmaline arrives back in Michigan for her mother’s funeral to discover the airline has lost her luggage. Through the fog of her grief, she makes it to a Target, which used to be the Dollar Store, which used to be the bike shop that her brother worked at for a summer. She would walk by while running errands for her father’s flower store, which is now a Starbucks. The cemetery behind her old house is still there, but people must buy their bouquets from the Target now.
Growing up, Emmaline was often banished from her house on summer mornings after breakfast. Placing a ham sandwich and apple in her hands, her mother would tell her not to come back until dinner, so she wandered over the acres of bodies in that cemetery for hours. One Mother’s Day, Emmaline stole a bundle of flowers from a grave and presented it to her mother, pride swelling in her tiny belly like a bug full of bitten blood. But her mother recognized her husband’s signature cemetery arrangement and knew immediately what Emmaline had done. She marched Emmaline back there and demanded she put the bouquet back where it came from. But Emmaline could not find the bare plot, so her mother threw the flowers on the ground and kept two paces ahead of her on the walk home. Her daughter followed in the long-strided shadow, wondering what exactly she’d done wrong.
In the Target, Emmaline pinches underwear and tights between her fingers with little interest in their color or size. She finds a black dress. That’s easy enough. But hanging it up later in the hotel closet, she realizes it is all wrong. More disco than death.
The next day, hovering over the open casket, Emmaline can practically hear her mother sneering, what in God’s name are you wearing, with the same grimace she wore when she accompanied her daughter wedding dress shopping. Every time Emmaline came out of the dressing room, her mother would scrunch up her face, let her know that the style didn’t flatter the bulk at her middle. All she could muster about the dress Emmaline selected was it’s your choice, but it’s not for me. She didn’t want Emmaline to get married, so she found no beauty in the moment, even as the weight of her dissatisfaction wore on Emmaline’s face. She was wrong about the dress, which Emmaline looked amazing in, but right about the ex-husband. Though even so, when Emmaline called her mother up crying in the midst of the divorce, she never once uttered, I told you so.
Yes, it wasn’t all bad. Sometimes Emmaline got the mother who cranked up ABBA on the car stereo and danced wildly while driving. Her pointer finger jabbing and fluttering while her other hand gripped the wheel as Emmaline groaned with fake embarrassment before matching her mother’s moves from the passenger seat. Her mother always said when she died to roll her inside her red Volvo into Lake Michigan with the radio blasting. And yet in the end, she chose an open casket before being buried in the neighborhood cemetery. Constantly changing her moods and her mind, she probably wanted one last opportunity to look up at Emmaline with disapproval and make sure she didn’t make any more mistakes.
After the funeral, Emmaline drives to the beach, takes the ABBA disc she’s kept all these years out of her purse, where she’d thankfully had the foresight to pack it instead of her checked bag. It reflects thousands of sparkling sunbeams like a mirrorball before she flings it into the lake. Now part of her mother is in the cemetery, and part of her is in the water. And after a lifetime of bruises from ricocheting between two versions of her, the knot in Emmaline’s jaw softens from the relief that she will never again have to wonder which one she will be. But the version she clings to in that moment is more disco.
Image by Bernhard Renner from Pixabay A CD with water droplets flying through the air reflecting rainbows.
literally stories 
This is beautiful, layered writing right from the offset. I love the opening paragraph listing the stores that have replaced one another with one including where the protagonist’s brother worked – adding a delicious sense of nostalgia. From there, as we learn more and more about the strict mother the young girl and then grown woman tried to repeatedly impress a sadness comes to the tale, yet with such attention to quotidian detail that makes is very real and true. Then, the gorgeous ending with CD’s light describing poetically is superb.
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thanks so much for your thoughtful note. I’m glad you enjoyed the story!
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Haley
Beautiful look at the hell we are on each other. The extra work gives it a sense of effortlessness impossible to gain without effort. That’s either a paradox or another fancy term defined. But none of that matters as long as the story works. And tgis works.
Leila
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thank you Leila! I’m glad the complexity comes through.
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A really brilliant look at the complicated relationships we have with our parents and that we all have with ourselves. I thought this was really perfectly constructed and fed so much information to a relatively small word count and the ending was perfect, moving and uplifting. Thank you – dd
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wow thank you so much!
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Hi Haley,
This is heart-felt and thought provoking.
There are some of those wonderful touches that take this off into many a recognisable tangent.
It’s brilliant to see this on the site today.
All the very best.
Hugh
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Thank you Hugh for believing in this piece and giving it a home!
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Compact & filled with telling detail. “She didn’t want Emmaline to get married, so she found no beauty in the moment . . .” A whole world in that line alone. Which mother will it be today? So many faces in a face – & this brings it home, powerfully.
Geraint
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Packs a real punch in such a short story! Captures perfectly the bewilderment a child can feel when their parent oscillates between extremes. Very well done.
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At first I thought — Oh, another story about an abusive parent. But with the dancing in the car scene, I realized this story is so much more—a haunting rendering of the Jekyll and Hyde aspect of many parent-child relationships. I already was intrigued by the title. Then the way it resonated with ending nailed it for me. First rate from beginning to end.
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thank you! I’m glad the complexity of the relationship came through.
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Haley,
I once had a disco bride, who had an indifferent mother, who tried to put controls in place. Luckily for me, this girl always went with the hot black dress.
Nice job! — gerry
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When you get to my age, you’ve been there. Spread ashes for both mother and father. Fisher and gardener father got spread in garden he’d kept for so many years and at places where he fished.
Late sister the sometimes shrink claimed that the two of us had toxic upbringing. I didn’d agree.
People seeing the same thing see different things based on how they are wired.
I can relate because of inlaws deaths shortly north of Detroit. Editor went on her own.
You can tell you have been in a place for a while when you notice change. After wondering around the country, we got used to it. Just got news that national drug stores where we go or have prescriptions are changing.
You never step in the same river twice.
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Thanks for sharing some of your own experience with me. I’m glad the story resonated!
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A story that took me as long to read as listening to an ABBA song. Then I had to go back and read it again. I like the description of the disc as a mirrorball….. reflecting thousands of sparkling sunbeams. An optimistic look but Emmaline threw it in the lake. As I remember, what one wore was a very big deal during the disco years, but even I’d approve black for a funeral. I related to the cemetery part. I used to sleep in them, very peaceful and safe, never took any flowers though.
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yes there is something beautiful about cemeteries for sure! I’m glad you enjoyed the story.
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