The temperature isn’t so much warming as it is getting incrementally less cold. It’s the kind of change you don’t actually notice, because cold is cold until it drops to freezing or climbs to chilly, so does it really matter where in the range it falls? But the numbers insist it really is getting warmer.
Burying her face in the high collar of her coat until her eyes barely show, Mum swears the numbers are lying.
I’ve gotten used to it, though, because of chess and the walks, and a few more explorations with my camera. I’m still layered enough to feel like matryoshka dolls, but it takes longer for the tip of my nose to go numb. I wrap myself around Mum’s arm, leaning into her to give her whatever warmth I can share.
“Remind me why I’m doing this?” she asks, voice muffled by her scarf.
“Because it was your idea?”
“Well that’s stupid. You know better, why didn’t you stop me?”
“If I know better, why do I do this multiple times a week?”
“Fair point. We’re both idiots.” She dances in place as we wait for the crosswalk to flash go, making me sway with her. “I miss green things, Priya-love.”
“I offered to get you a plant.”
“If it’s made of fabric or plastic, it isn’t a plant.” She looks down at her heavy gloves and sighs. “I need dirt under my nails again.”
“We’ll stock up on seeds for France.” On second thought . . . “After we check and make sure we’re legally able to carry seeds into foreign countries.”
“That’s a silly law.”
“Invasive species, Mum. It’s a very real problem.”
“Marigolds are a problem?”
“Marigolds are always a problem.”
We stop at the grassy island in the middle of the parking lot. The pavilion is still there, one side rolled up and lashed. Probably so horny teens and twenty-somethings can’t crawl under and make use of privacy. The space heaters are gone, though, and the little generator they all plug in to. It’s a Sunday afternoon, so none of the vets are there.
“You sit out here in this weather?” Mum asks incredulously. “You don’t even like getting dressed.”
“Pajamas are clothes.”
“For going out of the house?”
“Well, no, but that’s not about the clothing, that’s about the people.”
“Oh, my dear antisocial girl.”
“I’m not antisocial; I’m anti-stupid.”
“Same thing.”
“How are you in Human Resources?”
“I lie well.”
I don’t tell Mum stories about chess because at her most supportive, she has exactly zero interest in the game. I keep her updated when and where I’m going, and that’s about the extent of that topic of conversation.
I have told her about Landon, given that he’s still following me into Starbucks. Not out of it, at least, which is something. I suspect she told Eddison about Landon, because I got a text asking if blue is actually my favorite color or if I simply felt it was representative, which would normally be weird except that it was followed by him making sure I was still right-handed. I told him sunshine yellow, not because it is, but because I’d really love to see him try to find a bright yellow Taser.
“I think my nipples are about to freeze off.”
Snickering, I pull Mum down the grass and aim us at the storefronts. “Come on, then. Food.”
After lunch, we head over to Kroger to pick up a few things. She’s considering making a treat to take into the office for her minions, which is fine so long as it’s nothing that requires the oven, mixing bowls, measuring cups, or tins.
Chavi and I were always close with Mum. There was a line there, firmly drawn, between friend and Mum, and if a situation ever neared the line, she was always going to come down on the Mum side. But up until that line, she could be—and was, and is—both. After Chavi, or maybe more importantly after Dad, the line shifted a little bit. It’s still there, still as firmly drawn and nonnegotiable as ever, but there’s a lot more territory where she’s as much friend and sister and instigator. I don’t think Vic believes me half the time when I swear my mother is the biggest reason I get in trouble at school. He likes to say it’s her influence, not her.
I know better. At least seven times out of ten, it is literally my mother at the school, raising hell. I’m usually willing to let insults slide; Mum isn’t, especially if the insults come from teachers.
But at the end of the day, one of my absolute favorite things about Mum is—
“Two ladies as beautiful as you should be smiling!”
“A man as interfering as you should go fuck himself!”
—she doesn’t tolerate bullshit. Not from anybody else, and not from herself. It’s not about being an asshole, though she can be if she thinks it’s the right response, but about being honest.
Mum is the biggest reason I can say I’m broken, and the reason I know that’s okay.
We pick up Oreos, sugar, cream cheese, chocolate chips, heavy cream, and parchment paper, then decide okay, we can buy one new mixing bowl without feeling stupid for not digging out our own, and then compromise further and pick out an enormous popcorn bowl with a lines-and-dots color scheme designed by someone who was clearly tripping. It is the ugliest goddamn bowl we have ever owned, and I’m including the handmade day-camp ceramics in there.
It is kind of amazing.
We get more milk, too, even though we’re going to regret it as soon as we start walking.
Mum complains the entire way home, putting the whine in her voice that always reduces me to giggles and coming up with more and more ridiculous things to say. I think I was eight the first time she did that, when we were at a restaurant and listening to a monstrous little darling having a meltdown. Dad made some comment about the girl’s parents needing to exhibit better control of her, and Mum went to town with the fake whines, until Dad finally gave up and ordered a drink.
Their marriage didn’t always work, but even when it did, it was always a mystery as to how.
The mailbox—because neither of us felt like going out to check it yesterday—is mostly junk, but it has a large envelope of paperwork from the school I’ll be attending in Paris, plus a normal-size envelope from Inara. I shove that one into my pocket to read later. I haven’t mentioned the letters to Mum yet, because she would probably tell Eddison, and that would give him a solid shove in the direction of a breakdown.
When he said a couple of Butterflies would destroy the world rather than be destroyed, I’m comfortable assuming Inara is one of them.
“Priya, look.”
Mum and I both stop short on our walk up, staring at the front step. There’s a bouquet of jonquils there, wrapped in spring-green tissue. They’re a mix of types, some of them yellow straight through, others yellow-throated with white petals like a fan behind. They’re tied with a bit of white curling ribbon near the base, a looser sheer white ribbon in a large bow up where the bouquet gains some width. There looks to be a half-dozen stalks, but multiple blooms add some size.
It’s not the first time flowers have just shown up at our door. After Chavi died, our step used to be full of them. Everybody brought flowers and food. As if we could ever eat that much food before it went bad. Most of the flowers we just threw out, because even with the few we kept, the scents got so heavy and they clashed and it got hard to breathe. Harder. It was always hard to breathe, those first few weeks. The perfumed air made it worse.
It’s been about a year, though. The last time we got surprise flowers, it was in Omaha, and someone in Mum’s office there found out about Chavi. That person was very quickly dissuaded from discussing it with anyone, least of all me or Mum. But the only person here I’ve told is Gunny, and he doesn’t have my address. Wouldn’t send flowers anyway, I don’t think. Before that was . . . San Diego. There were jonquils then, too.
“Mum, wait.”
She pauses in reaching forward for it, her eyebrows lifting when I pull my phone out of my pocket. “Seriously?”