“Mom, come on. You need to shower. It’s not terrible water pressure, and I brought some Kiehl’s so you don’t have to use the soap.” The water-pressure comment was a lie; she also knew her mother would object to the thin, dingy white towels, barely thick enough for Valeriya, wherever she was working now, to approve for dusting. “Mom, please? Rudy said we had to be in the lobby at eight-thirty.” Evelyn moved back toward the bathroom. “I’ll get the water started for you, okay? It takes a minute to heat up.”
Her mother raised an arm over her supine body, then let it arc down heavily. “I feel just terrible. I can barely move. I think I must have food poisoning.”
“You haven’t eaten anything since the sandwich you had in the car last night.”
“It was oozing with mayonnaise. Mayonnaise is swimming with germs. I don’t understand why people at these delicatessens put mayonnaise on absolutely everything. Valeriya never used to put mayonnaise on my sandwiches.”
“You had Valeriya make you sandwiches?”
“It gave her something to do,” Barbara said.
“Cleaning the house probably kept her occupied. But, Mom, you get food poisoning, like, four hours after you eat something. It’s been overnight. I’m sure you’re fine.” Evelyn started for the bed, but stopped herself; she didn’t want to have to see her mother in her nightgown, the outline of her aging body under the thin material, smelling of morning and seeming far too vulnerable.
“Mayonnaise…,” Barbara mumbled, and drew the cover, a rough paisley print, closer to her underarm. “Evelyn, please, turn off that ghastly light.”
“In the bathroom?”
“It’s giving me a headache. I can feel a migraine starting to come on, and I can’t have any light when I’m getting a migraine. Evelyn, I just don’t think there’s any way I can go today. You’ll have to apologize to your father for me.”
“What?”
“Don’t say ‘what,’ Evelyn, how many times do I have to tell you? It’s ‘pardon.’”
“Mom, you have to. Rudy said it’s really important that we’re both there. It could help with the sentence.”
“Well, you’ll have to tell Rudy that I’m feeling just miserable. Your father has managed to do all the rest of this on his own so far. I’m sure me with a blinding headache standing behind your father as he does the perp walk will do no one any good.”
“It’s not a—I don’t think it’s a perp walk, Mom. Please get out of bed. You have to go.”
Now Barbara had pulled the thin cover, a mélange in rust and orange, over her head. “Phowhit blan whaffle,” she said.
“What?” Evelyn glowered at this creature. She could see the gray roots of her mother’s blond hair above the paisley bedspread. Her mother was opting out, but opting out left all the responsibility on Evelyn’s shoulders. Barbara was acting like a toddler at a moment when Evelyn badly needed a mother. Evelyn felt tears coming into her eyes but blinked to erase them; one of them had to stay stable, and apparently that had to be her. “Get up. Mom, get up.”
Barbara moved the cover down to just below her mouth. “You don’t know what it’s been like, I was saying. All these people with their false concern: ‘How is Dale?’ What answer am I supposed to give to that?”
“I don’t know, Mom. Please. Get out of bed.”
“It’s why I simply don’t go out anymore.”
“Today, you have to.” Evelyn looked at the alarm clock, with its 1980s white-block lettering; 7:58 thirrupped to 7:59. “We now have half an hour. You need to get dressed. I don’t care if it’s the last thing you want to do. It will help with Dad’s sentence and you have to do it. Please. Just get up.”
Barbara was silent and Evelyn watched the clock flip to 8:00 and then 8:01. “I just can’t get out of bed today,” Barbara said finally. “Tell your father I feel nauseated and dreadful. I have tried, Evelyn—I came all this way. I can’t face everyone like this. I need to rest.”
Evelyn shut her eyes tight, then opened them and stalked over to the curtains and yanked them open wide, scraping the rings along the metal rod, eliciting a muffled moan from her mother. She returned to the bathroom and tried to slam the door, but the wafer-thin wood only gently puffed shut. She slammed down her hairbrush and threw a lipstick against the mirror so it left a chunk of pink wax dangling against the glass, then marched back to the room.
“One more chance,” Evelyn said, her voice even and cold. “Do your duty.”
Her mother laboriously opened her eyes. “Don’t you think you should put your hair up?”
Evelyn’s arms searched for something else to throw, but there was nothing nearby, and so Evelyn stamped her foot and let out a cry of frustration. Barbara’s eyes were already closed. Her mother started to say, “Tell your father…” but Evelyn grabbed her purse and pulled the door to the room shut as hard as she could, getting out before she could hear the end of the sentence.
The elevator stank of instant coffee and cigarettes. In the lobby, a child was carefully peeling an orange into the steaming breakfast-buffet tin of scrambled eggs. She saw Rudy in front of the automatic doors, which were opening and shutting and opening and shutting as he waved his hands.