fiction by zoë blaylock

The Yellow Balloon

Knowing that Evelyn couldn’t otherwise afford it, as a seventieth-birthday gift her daughter, Bunny, and her daughter-in-law, Ginger, presented her with a Thanksgiving trip to Chicago. 

“You have three weeks to get ready, Mom,” Bunny’s self-congratulatory jubilance filled the room. “Ginger made all the arrangements, but it was entirely my idea.”

Ginger smiled indulgently at Bunny and drawled, “I did the wrapping too, Evelyn. Isn’t this embossed paper the most darling thing that you’ve ever seen?”  

She handed Evelyn an elegantly wrapped box that contained all the details: plane tickets; a brochure of the upscale hotel; a printed copy of an email that confirmed reservation at a Michelin starred restaurant. But better than all of these, the box also contained a note written in Ginger’s fine hand. It made clear that she and Bunny would accompany Evelyn on the trip. The Birthday Girl need not travel alone.  

The gift made Evelyn happier than she had been in years and, for a moment, she couldn’t find words to express her joy. Pretending there were no tears, she whispered, “I so wanted something to look forward to, and here it is. Chicago for Thanksgiving. Imagine.” 

She hugged each woman tightly and then excused herself to go search for tissues, explaining that she hadn’t kept a box handy in years.

It was the most thoughtful present the girls could have given her, Evelyn told them as they piled on coats and pulled on boots before heading home.

*

Still excited but eager to remain calm now that good-byes were dispensed with, Evelyn changed into her robe and slippers, made herself comfortable at the kitchen table, and started penning a list of all the things that needed doing before the big excursion. 

Her memory wasn’t what it used to be. Everything about her had slowed with age. She worried that three weeks would fly by, and she wouldn’t be prepared if she didn’t make lists and cross items off, each in good time.

On the other hand, she knew that each day until she reached Chicago would seem like forever, so eager was she to finally return. A family reunion was what she needed most at this juncture of her life. How wise of her Bunny and her Bunny’s lovely wife to have understood this without Evelyn having to say it aloud.

Each day that week she did a little something to get ready. 

On the day she’d scheduled a trip to the indoor mall, the drizzle turned to a downpour. But all the rain in heaven wasn’t going to dampen Evelyn’s spirits as she gathered her things for an afternoon of shopping. She hadn’t vacationed anywhere for ages, much less stayed in a hotel. New outfits were certainly in order. 

She looked up, listened to the rain fall heavy on the new roof, and frowned. Luckily, the temperature had not yet dipped below freezing, so there was little chance of snow. If she took it nice and easy, stayed off the highway and far from its impatient speeders, and if she returned home while it was still daylight, she would be fine. 

Evelyn was glad she had insisted on having only one cataract removed at a time. She hadn’t trusted that toothy doctor at all. If she had let him operate on her right eye, too, she would have been seeing starbursts from both eyes instead of just her left one. If worse came to worse and she got stuck in traffic so late in the day that the oncoming cars had their lights on, she could drive with her left eye closed.

She smiled to herself thinking how she had driven the back roads of her neck of the woods for almost thirty years. She knew every curve and dip of the asphalt so well that she could probably drive home blind if she had to. 

Evelyn reached in the corner of the hallway closet for her galoshes and sat on one of the foyer’s chairs to put them on. The image of red galoshes and little Raymond struggling to pull them over his sneakers flashed in her mind. She chuckled. Her youngest child had been a beautiful boy. It was a shame that his pale blonde hair had darkened just as he started kindergarten. Everyone said that dark hair framed blue eyes best, but she disagreed. No one had ever commented on Evelyn’s eyes, and they were as blue as blue could be. 

She bundled herself in her old black raincoat and made a mental note to add the purchase of a new one to her list. She would look for a London Fog—if the brand still existed—in light blue, not navy, so that it would not be mistaken for black under overcast skies. The thought crossed her mind that maybe a blue one would make the color of her eyes stand out at last, but she doubted it. And even if it did, who would care? These days nobody noticed anything other than her white hair—the hair that had once been chestnut and done nothing for her eyes. She wondered if the loss of its color would be what Raymond would notice first, and if he would be shocked by just how much his mother had aged. 

Evelyn pursed her lips at the thought. Surely, he would understand that women aged, even silly women who thought they could fool the world with hair-dyes and botox. The kind of woman his mother most certainly was not.

Looking around the foyer and noticing the heavy layer of dust on the small maple table between the chairs, Evelyn shook her head. She considered the wrought iron coat rack in the corner and the mallard prints hung above the wainscoting as if she were seeing them for the first time. Once she returned from Chicago, she would hire someone to paint the walls. The walls could use a lift, too. Everyone and everything could sooner or later.

Tilting her umbrella against the rain, she made her way out the front door, and carefully stepped over the last of the fallen leaves that littered the driveway.

Except for its bulky style, the twelve-year old Ford could pass for a car right off the lot. She mused that maybe she would buy an air-freshener that promised a new car smell. Reaching for the seatbelt she buckled herself in. She turned on the radio and reminded herself to send her yearly pledge to NPR before the year ended so she would not lose the tax write-off. When she realized that the on-air program was about children who were raised in gay and lesbian homes, she grimaced. 

For years now, she had heard more than enough about lesbians from Bunny, and she had had enough of it. She sighed and wondered why Bunny couldn’t be more like her lovely wife. Ginger never felt the need to talk about lesbians or The Lesbian Agenda. 

Ginger had been raised in the South, Evelyn once pointed out to her daughter, and all gracious Southern women knew that there were things that one did not talk about in polite company. Sex was one of those things, and sexual orientation undoubtedly was another.

At that, Bunny had hit the roof. “Unlike my prim and proper mother,” she ranted, “My wife doesn’t need to be regarded as a paragon of Southern gentility to consider herself feminine and valuable.”  

And that was only the beginning. Once Bunny wound herself up, little could keep her down. 

For the next hour, Evelyn and Ginger were forced to endure Bunny’s enraged sermon about gay pride and sexual politics and the marginalization of women, particularly in the South. 

Finally, Ginger shut Bunny up by tiptoeing behind her, planting a noisy kiss on her neck, and saying, “I’m so glad I married you, honey. You always stand up for what’s right.”  

Evelyn thought that it was Bunny who should be glad that she had married Ginger. Ginger was a good wife and a true lady—every mother’s idea of a perfect daughter-in-law. Evelyn liked her very much, but she still felt it odd that Ginger was her daughter’s wife instead of her son’s. 

Reminded of her son, it occurred to her that this would be the first time that Raymond would meet Ginger. Evelyn was sure he would like her. Come to think of it, in the first grade he had had a crush on a girl named Ginger, and just like Bunny’s Ginger, his girl had always worn her long red hair in a ponytail.

*

Once she turned into the main drag of town, Evelyn noticed that the store fronts and office buildings were already adorned with Christmas lights. Normally the ostentatious display of materialism would have simply soured her, but today it practically turned her stomach. She didn’t want anything to cloud the atmosphere a traditional family Thanksgiving. Not this year. 

She doubted if on the last Thanksgiving she’d spent with her son, Raymond had even noticed that it was holiday. All he’d cared about every autumn was football and his friends. Before a kick-off, his mother—anybody’s mother for that matter—was someone to be ignored and nothing more. 

Evelyn smiled thinking of how foolish the young could be. She knew that if he had only stopped to consider her feelings, he would have paused to give her a hug before darting toward the station wagon like a fugitive making for a getaway. He had taken off without so much as a good-bye. 

Evelyn sighed and forced herself to set her mind on other, more pleasant things. 

A balloon. A yellow helium-filled balloon. That’s what she would bring him. Her son would be delighted. 

From somewhere deep inside her, a shimmering memory entered her thoughts. It was of a bright autumn Chicago day with a cloudless sky. Raymond could have been no more than three, too young still to be seduced by the football season. Bunny would not have yet turned four. 

There was only enough money to buy one balloon and she told them they would have to share it. They took turns holding it—Bunny as she walked alongside her mother, Raymond as he sat in the stroller. 

They had to stop mid-block so Evelyn could sit on a bench to rest. The wind picked up. As Bunny handed the balloon to Raymond, he lost his grip. The yellow orb rose toward the sky—“Like a wee sun heading home,” Evelyn told them.

Bunny shrieked and broke into loud tears of dismay, but Raymond looked up, delighted. He smiled and chortled joyfully as his gaze followed the balloon rising higher and higher. He continued to look up, mesmerized, long after the balloon disappeared. 

It had taken a good half-hour to calm Bunny, but Raymond had remained pensive and tranquil for the rest of the day. 

Evelyn was so engrossed in the memory that she drove past the mall entrance and had to make a U-turn on a waterlogged intersection. The road was too slick for comfort. She worried she wouldn’t be able to maneuver the sedan, but soon enough she realized that she could, and her thoughts returned to the yellow balloon. 

She knew that Raymond had been too young to remember that day, but she had reminded him of it when he was a little older—maybe seven or eight. The following Mother’s Day, he had drawn a picture of a balloon for her and colored it neatly with a bright yellow crayon so that she also would never forget. 

She kept that picture. 

In fact, she had seldom thrown any of her children’s things away. One never knew when a grandchild might come along and want a memento of their parent’s youth—especially these days when gay people were having children, too.

Cheered at the thought of children and balloons, Evelyn parked her car at the far end of the lot—because she liked the exercise, or she told herself—and, under cover of her umbrella, she strolled to the main entrance of the mall. 

On a whim she decided she would buy a bottle of Chanel N°5. It had been years since she’d worn perfume. Both her children had liked the fragrance. She grinned remembering how they’d snuggled up to get a sniff every time she dabbed some behind her ears on special occasions. She had read that the olfactory sense was the most ingrained. She would wear it on Thanksgiving Day. The scent might help keep Bunny in the Thanksgiving mood of yore, and it would please Raymond also. He was a softie, too.

Evelyn was surprised to hear herself humming as she walked through the mall. In store after store, she found every item she needed; even a pretty gray-blue raincoat. 

The shopping all done, as a special treat she went to the food court and ordered coffee and a flaky pastry from her favorite bakery, The Quebecois Café. As she savored every mouthful, she thought of how she would handle her visit with Raymond. 

She would buy the balloon the night before and rise before daybreak on Thanksgiving morning. If she planned it well, Bunny and Ginger wouldn’t know she had gone ahead without them. They could join her later. It was important to her to be alone with her son, at least for a little while. 

She would take a taxi to a street close by, but not too close—she wanted to walk part of the way, even if it rained. She wanted time to compose herself. She wasn’t sure what she would say to him, or if she would say anything at all.

Evelyn quickly finished her pastry, but she sipped her coffee slowly. 

In her mind’s eye, she saw herself walking toward Raymond and when she got there, when she was sure she had reached his place, she would look for a heavy rock and securely tie the balloon to it. 

She imagined herself standing silently next to her beautiful son, then kneeling to set the tethered offering on his grave. 

But as a million images of herself and Raymond formed more clearly in her mind, she shook her head. No. No.

Suddenly inspired, she knew she would not secure the balloon to any rock or to anything at all, nor would she remain silent. 

Yes. She would speak to her son again, and this time, unlike the last time, he would be able to hear her clearly.

“Look, Raymond,” she would look up and smile the biggest, happiest smile she could muster. “Look, sweetheart. Look what Mama brought for you.”  

And she would release the yellow balloon into the sky.

Zoë Blaylock was mostly educated in the school of hard knocks and droll encounters, but conventionally credentialed by Harvard. She works in research/healthcare ethics in San Diego where she lives with her husband and a series of old, large, and gentle dogs. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in La Piccioletta Barca, The Examined Life, the other side of hope: journeys in refugee and immigrant literature, The Metaworker, and in other journals. HereForThePresent.com