“I make my own dinner lots.”
She patted him on the shoulder. “Of course you do.” He looked so small in her husband's shirt and socks, a stickboy elbows, hips, and shoulders sharp against the flannel. Fatherless child. She wanted to wrap her arms around him and rock and soothe him until his sadness went away. Standing on a stepstool, he had climbed onto the counter to take down the bowls and plates for dinner. She brought the silverware and napkins, two glasses of milk. They sat at an adjoining corner, saving a space for Norah, who would not be down.
“Your mother works late sometimes. You have to take care of yourself?”
“Sometimes.” He slurped in a long fat noodle. “Monday, Wednesday, Friday. Saturday morning, sometimes.”
“Do you get lonesome?”
“No, I kinda like having time to myself.” He paused, remembering Norah's instructions. “Do you?”
“Get lonesome? Heavens, no … Sometimes.”
“I miss my dad. Do you miss your daughter?”
She nibbled at the burnt crust, showering crumbs. “At first you miss them all of the time. You start to say something, call them for dinner, and then you catch yourself. Or you look up from the crossword or the soaps or your book expecting to see her in the doorway, but she isn't there, she isn't anywhere. And you wonder what is she doing this very minute, wonder if she ever thinks of you, or thinks of you as often as you think of her.” Margaret looked at Sean. “Of course, your dad misses you as much as you miss him, but it's the same, isn't it, for us all? We go on not understanding how it happened this way.”
He set his spoon down in the bowl and stared at the triangle of his sandwich. Beguiled by the memories he had opened, she went on talking to herself.
“All day long every day I thought of nothing but her. For months. To the point where I had completely lost all sense of anything else. Then one morning, Paul brought home a bunch of ripe cherries, picked them up at the farmers’ market, and they were perfect. You know, just the cherriest cherries. Temptation. So I sat there, right where you are sitting now, and ate one, and the first sweet bite reminded me of summers gone by and when I was a girl myself, just a girl, and I loved cherries more than any other part of summer, more than blueberries or strawberries or even peaches. More than the Fourth of July or swimming at the shore or just wandering on a sunny day. I had forgotten how good fresh cherries taste. So I sat there and ate one after the other, and when Paul came back in the kitchen, he saw the pits piled high in a saucer, the nearly empty bowl, and me, my lips stained with sin. I couldn't resist, and there was a look in his eyes, a happy sadness. He was relieved that I had come back from the dead.”
With the point of her bread she motioned for him to pick up his sandwich, and they ate in silence, the ticking clock accenting the rhythm of their thoughts. She pushed away her empty plate. The boy became an afterthought.
“You become more careful about letting in happiness, because if you do, and it leaves again … The everyday part of missing her was less acute in time, but it lingers, just waiting to strike like a panther. When Paul took sick, I had him to worry about, and when he went into the hospital—” She covered her mouth with her hand to catch her shame before it escaped. “I did not feel it as much as I thought I should, as much as I probably would, but you see, I was already numb. Erica had been gone three years, and he, he coped somehow, went on. And I think I resented him a little bit his peace. Or how he managed himself, and I was angry, too, that now there was no one to talk to about Erica. No one like my husband.”
Outside in the fading light, the snow fell in striations of white against the black, and through the window, Sean watched the particles pass through the faint light bending from the room above.
“Then a letter came. New Mexico. They were heading for California the whole time, but she got lost along the way, thank God. I expected her to have so much more to say, but it was just cold and factual. Not to a mother, but to a complete stranger, and that's when I knew they had brainwashed her, filled her head with their radical ideas. When nothing followed, I came to resent her again, came to wish—sometimes—that I hadn't heard from her, would never hear from her again because she chose to exclude me from her life, she chose to leave with him, she chose to reject me after … Still. If she walked through that door this very minute, all would be forgiven and restored. This is what love brings you to.”