She’s standing on the front porch, laughing as the gust of wind picks up her skirt.

“Just a minute,” Barbara says to her, feeling in her pockets. 

“Stand here for just a minute please. I’ll be right back, I forgot my keys.”

“You lost it?”

“Them, the keys. I didn’t say I lost them, I said I forgot them. No, don’t follow me, just wait right there. I’ll be right back. Here, hold on to your sweater.” It might be cool if the wind keeps up. So many things to think of. Endless. Barbara hurries, returns to find her standing on the porch, facing the front door.

Barbara turns the old key, slides the ring of keys into her shirt pocket and buttons the button. Finally. “Here we go, in our nice new white shoes.” Things go better if Barbara can keep it bright.

“White,” she repeats happily. “White, white, white,” pointing first to her own feet, then to Barbara’s.

“Yes, Mama,” says Barbara. “Nice new white shoes.” With nice new easy Velcro.

They walk carefully down the old wooden stairs, and Barbara hears her mother start her little humming sounds. Just what she needs, a sound track for the walk to town. Never a clear tune, on the other hand not particularly loud, thank goodness. It saves gas to walk, and it’s not far. A little exercise. Mama glances up at Barbara every now and then, and Barbara nods. Mama stops to watch a sparrow in the hedge.

“Let’s go, Mama. This way, let’s go please?” 

Have they done everything they needed to do to before they go to town? As they walk, Barbara runs over the list, which looked like endless hurdles but seem like nothing much now. Another hour and a half, spent and gone. Clean the kitchen, comb your hair, comb Mama’s hair. Make the beds, start the laundry. Dress yourself, dress Mama. Don’t turn on the radio. Explain everything. Feels endless, and like it’s forever. She glances at her mother, who is peering intently down the sidewalk. Her mother’s hair is pretty in the sunlight, now it’s brushed. Wavy, and snowy white. Barbara pats her own graying hair, cut short because Barbara hasn’t the patience, all she has to do.

Your life can feel like it’s never going to change, Barbara thinks, it can go along as if  it’s going to stay the same forever and then all at once, it’s not. Like her father, so long ago. Or the children, so many years of constant care and then, gone. Rooted in their new lives as if they’d always been someplace else. Or her and Mama, ten years at Wilcox’s market then one day it’s gone, bust. And Charlie. A strong man, her husband, then suddenly his heart.  

These days she’s back to being someone’s mother again. At sixty years of age. Pretty funny, a grandmother of three, retired even, and a mother again. Finally got the hang of it. No more comments from Mama as she vacuums the sofa, or doesn’t, stacks the dishes in the dish drainer, puts the soap in the washing machine before the clothes or after or any way she wants. No eternal voice saying, oh, you do it that way? Now it’s the humming all the time, don’t forget that. Still, some people get nastier with old age. Mama trusts Barbara, now. Accepts the way Barbara does it. You could say it makes the trouble worthwhile. Really, it’s as if Barbara finally has the mother she always wanted. She gets confused, but Mama’s fine, really. Cheerful, even, as long as Barbara is. The mother she always wanted? Barbara shrugs, knows it’s pretty close to the truth.

They turn a corner, and Mama hesitates. “There’s the bridge,” says Barbara. Two blocks ahead.

“The bridge.” Mama breaks into a smile, trots steadily along. “The bridge, we’re coming to the bridge,” she chants. At the end of the first block she looks at Barbara, smiling as if she expects something. Barbara tries to ignore it but her mother keeps looking at her with her eyes and mouth open wide. Oh, all right. Nobody else around. As they cross the street the two of them break into, “London Bridge is falling down, falling down....” Mama still knows all the words.

Halfway along the second block her mother slows and a shadow passes over her face. She pulls on Barbara’s hand and asks her question. “Falling down? The bridge is falling down?”

“No, no, not this bridge,” Barbara tells her, again. “That’s London Bridge, not our bridge.” This bridge goes over a county creek, not the River Thames. It’s just an ugly old cement and iron-pipe footbridge, a WPA relic. This whole town is a relic, only old people and dairy farms left around here. All this part of Pennsylvania is empty, no business, no young people. “London Bridge is far away. We’re going over a good bridge.” Far away, all right. Barbara would love to see London, she’d settle for Dallas. “What are you going to have for lunch, Mama?” She puts her hand under her mother’s elbow, keeping her moving. Barbara is hungry, looking forward to the weekly meal at the sandwich shop. As they inch along she smoothes her shirt front, looks down at her good black slacks, sees her stomach. She might skip the pie special today. “What are you going to eat?”

Mama pats her skirt pocket, smiles slyly over at Barbara.  “My lunch money,” she whispers.

Barbara knows better than to joke about eating the lunch money. “Yes, Mama, you have the money.” Yes, you have the money, yes, for the nth time. Holding the money, she always did like that. Almost every week Barbara manages to set aside twelve dollars, for lunch in town. When Mama gets the lunch money she is serious. She takes it, turns it over, solemnly puts it into the pocket in her skirt. Still careful as a banker, with her money.  Everything she wears now has pockets, of course. Purses are headache and disaster.

Her mother stops walking altogether. Barbara eyes a nearby bench, holding her tongue. Now what?  Mama looks at Barbara with brows drawn together, closes her lips tightly and fumbles to put her hand into her pocket.

“Still there?” asks Barbara, reaching to help in the search. Mama shakes her head and pulls back but Barbara holds tight, checks quickly. No reason to doubt it, but still. “Come on, Mama. Your money’s there. Let’s go.” The wind gusts again, blowing the skirt awry once more. Mama frowns, smoothes it down, pats at the pocket. She nods, and her face relaxes. She reaches to take Barbara’s hand and, smiling, leads the way to the second corner, across the empty street and up the cracked old concrete bridge walkway. The wild tiger lilies put their heads through the railing on this side.

In the middle of the span she stops. Barbara waits as her mother stares

down at the busy little crick, the way she always does. “Water! All that water!” Mama exclaims. Bubbles collect and vanish around the small rocks and occasional soda can; a clump of grass whirls by, rushes on down the stream. Mama watches it out of sight, then looks down again

for what will appear next, stops smiling. There’s a paperback book stuck in the mud around the bridge footing.  A few pages fan in the wind. She purses her mouth tight, stretches her hand toward the book.  Flutter, flutter. She blinks. Then as the next breeze catches her skirt and picks it up again she turns around, laughing and pushing her skirt down. “My knees!” Standing beside her, Barbara taps her foot, saying nothing. It’s good that Mama enjoys this nice day. Her mother laughs as a grasshopper sails through the air between them and clatters down onto the grass by the stream.

“Lots of fresh air today,” smiles Barbara. “Everything is going flying.”

“Flying?” Mama frowns, concentrating. “Flying?” She digs a hand into each pocket of her skirt, a meditative look on her face. Out come her fists, the bills fluttering in her left hand. “No!” Barbara cries as Mama’s arms reach wide.

“Flying!” Mama waves both hands and opens her fingers.  “Flying!” she sings out.

Too late. Barbara grabs through the railing at the money but the wind whisks the pieces away, scatters them along the water.

Mama leans over the rail, laughing and waving. “Flying!” Her fingers trail in the air like knobby feathers.

Twelve dollars gone. Barbara bites at her lip, strides to the end of the bridge, comes back to her mother.

Let the money go. Forget the restaurant, eat at home, as usual. She looks down at the creek again. A few of the bills are voyaging on out of sight but others have fetched up in the muddy grass at the edge.

“Mama.”  She reaches for her mother’s hands. “Here, hold on tight. Wait right here.”  The old woman can take care of herself for five minutes. She presses the gnarled fingers around the smooth pipe. “Don’t you let go, stay right here. You’ll be all right.” Her mother’s mouth opens. “No!  Stay here.” Barbara turns away. She hurries off the bridge onto the grass, takes little sliding steps down to the soft, dirty margin of the water.

“Come back!  Come back!” It starts as soon as Barbara’s shoes leave the pavement, follows her down to the stream.

Here are two dollars together, bobbing on top of the pebbles. Come back, come back, Barbara mutters, bending down. “Come back!” Another few ills ride up against a dead birch branch, brown leaves dancing as their tips catch in the water. The green paper joins in the dance as Barbara snatches for them, and the toes of her new white shoes slip into the muddy edge of the flow. A last dollar has submerged itself farther out against a big rock; at least one step right into the water. Might as well. Barbara walks back up onto the bridge holding nine dollars, new white shoes dirty and wet.

Mama’s chin is trembling. Barbara is in front of her but the pale lips still whisper frightened commands. “Come back, come back.”

“I’m back, Mama,” Barbara says, but her voice is small, strangled. She gulps her breath. “I got the lunch money,” she says, more loudly.

“Come back,” Mama begins again.

“Mama—.”  Barbara’s voice breaks. Another gulp and the words blast out. “Stop it!  Mama, I’m right here! I’m back!” She seizes her mother by the shoulders.

Mama’s hands fly up to her ears and the old knees begin to give, as if a blow has unbalanced her. Barbara tries to hold her up, to steady her. Mama’s eyes stare, so wide open the lower lids show vivid red inside, the seamed mouth sags loose. “It’s all right, Mama. Hush, I said.  It’s all right.” But Barbara’s lips are stiff with frustration, and they make the sounds of anger.  She clutches the small bent body before her, and sees something.“Mama?”

Under the terror in the blank staring eyes Barbara sees that her mother is gone. Fallen away from those empty eyes and dropped down, lost, to some nowhere. The thousand little lines accumulated over her mother’s face in eighty-nine years, intensifying the eyes, burdening the mouth, folding in the cheeks, have no sum. The total of all the lines is null. They add up to no one at all. Mama’s voice is here, and the frail shoulders trembling under Barbara’s hands, but no one is looking up at Barbara now. One day while Barbara wasn’t seeing, Mama has gone, to some place outside of time.

“Come back!” Why hadn’t she seen it before, that this has happened to her mother? “Mama! I’m sorry I frightened you,” she tries. “I didn’t mean it. I love you.” Her mother shuts her eyes. Barbara makes her voice louder and slower. “Mama. I love you.” How can it be that a person is here, and then some different day, they’re not? “Come back!”

The shoulders shift and Barbara lets go, cold, alone in a sudden waste. She stands there confused.  Feeling that somehow, her Mama is safe now. Is this a way of being safe?  Gone, like Wilcox’s Market? Before they tore the building down.

Barbara steps back, and her shoes squelch. She looks down at the worn cement. Isn’t it cracking beneath their feet, crumbling, isn’t Mama even now sliding, falling out of the sunlit day, slipping through some widening crack into distant, dark depths?

“I’m hungry,” Mama says.

The bridge is the same as it was a few minutes ago. The bridge is the same. She puts a hand on the old bent railing, looks past it, watching the water dance over the bright rocks on its way downstream. “London Bridge is falling down,” she mutters. Funny.

“My fair lady,” comes a voice.

Barbara turns her head and sees her mother looking at her expectantly. Mama is smiling, her hair fluffy white in the sun. Barbara straightens up, nods.“Build it up with iron bars,” she says.

“My fair lady,” Barbara and her mother sing together. Barbara takes a tissue from her pocket and wipes at her eyes. She looks around. They are nearly at the restaurant. It is lunchtime and they still have nine dollars. She wasn’t going to get the pie anyway.“I’m hungry too,” Barbara says finally, and takes her mother’s hand. “What do you want to eat, Mama? What are you going to have for lunch today?”