"You've beggared our mother, your wife," Annie yelled into her office phone. "Have you no shame?"
"Josie, you have to help her," they both pleaded. "If you really understood what was going on, you wouldn't do this. Please let Mommy come home."
After a while they realized that Josie did not want to understand what was going on, and they stopped calling him. They stopped answering his calls, as well. It had been months since either of them had heard his voice on anything but an answering machine.
Then Betty informed them that there was a standing lamp in the apartment that she absolutely had to have. Annie pointed out that there was no room in the cramped and cluttered cottage for another lamp. Miranda said Josie had probably sold the lamp anyway. But a few days later, Miranda and Annie found themselves driving their mother's old car into the city to pick up the lamp. It was Annie who had finally agreed to call Josie at his office to arrange the time.
"Josie? It's Annie."
"I know it's you, honey. How many people call me that?"
Annie thought she heard a catch in his voice. Do not weaken, she told herself.
"I've been calling you," Josie said, his voice hurt.
"I know." She glanced at the three pink memos with his name on them sitting on her desk.
"Well, never mind. Now you've called me back. How are you girls? How's your mother?"
"Look, I just need to get into the apartment. Mom wants the standing lamp from the bedroom." Annie hesitated, then said, "From her bedroom."
There was silence.
"Josie?"
"Okay. Right. I'll have Ozzie bring it down for you. Any day you say."
Ozzie was the handyman. Annie wondered if Ozzie missed her mother.
"That's okay," she said. "I have a key. I just wanted to let you know."
"Mmm," Josie said. "Well, actually, I had the locks changed."
Annie said, "What?" but she had heard him.
"It just seemed prudent," he said.
"Jesus, Josie."
"I know."
"Prudent? Jesus."
Then neither of them said anything. And neither one hung up.
"I'm sorry, honey," Josie finally murmured. "I'm so sorry."
Annie was in her office. It was a small room in the back of the building on the ground floor. There was a window that faced a wall covered with ivy. The window needed to be washed. Her back was aching. She hadn't gone swimming in a week. It was getting too cold, even with a wet suit. Maybe tomorrow she would go to the Y. She thought these things, noticed the shaft of thin city light that slanted in through the window and landed on her desk, but what she really thought was Oh, Josie. Josie, how could you?
"When are you coming?" he asked.
"Saturday."
"Right. Okay."
"Okay."
"Okay."
Annie thought, This is the man who brought me up, the man who was a father to me.
"Look, have dinner with me, okay?" Josie said. "You and Miranda?"
Annie was about to say no when he added in a truly pathetic voice, "Please?"
Now she and Miranda were driving into the city to pick up a useless lamp and have dinner with a useless father-manque.
"I hate him," Miranda said. "Why are we doing this?"
"Beats me. I weakened, I guess. His voice . . . it was heartbreaking."
"Hmmph." Miranda crossed her arms and held them against her chest, pouting. "I think men are big babies."
"Infantile grandiosity. I've always liked the sound of that. Rolls off the tongue."
"But real children aren't grandiose. They're actually grand. Look at Henry, for example."
Annie pictured Henry on the floor of the living room, four adults gazing adoringly at him as he pushed a car in circles. She remembered, too, a moment later in that same day. Henry had fallen asleep with Betty on the couch. Kit and Miranda, returning from a walk, had just come up the battered cement steps, leaving the door from the outside to the sunporch open. Annie was at the window facing the sunporch, picking dead roses from a bunch Kit had brought them a week earlier, and she was just aware of them, in the corner of her vision. They stood, one on each side of the door. Kit put out his hand and touched Miranda on the shoulder, a gentle, single, petting motion, like the soft swat of a cat. And they had both laughed softly and privately.