Tapestry of Fortunes A Novel

LAST SEPTEMBER, BEFORE PENNY WAS DIAGNOSED, THERE WAS an unseasonably cold Sunday near the end of the month. Snow was predicted, though it never came. Penny and I were sitting out on her front porch under electric blankets, leafing through our respective backlogs of magazines. “You know what you are?” she said.

“What?” I asked, barely looking up from my magazine.

“A flaming hypocrite.”

Now I did look up. “Flaming, huh?”

“Yes.” She flipped a couple pages of her magazine. Angrily, I thought.

“What’s your problem?” I asked.

She looked over at me. “My problem is that you tell other people how to do things you yourself need to do, and don’t. You write books for other people full of advice that you never follow.”

“Now, now. You know what they say in couples therapy about the use of always and never.”

“Yeah, well, we’re not a couple. We’re best friends. Supposedly.”

I sighed. “Okay. You want to talk again about how we need to travel somewhere together?”

“No. I want to talk about how you say you want to simplify your life, how you want to downsize, and clarify what’s important, and do what you really need to do, and then you … don’t.”

I sat there for a moment, then said, “Is this about the bamboo sheets I just ordered?” There’d been an 800 number in one of the magazines.

Nothing.

“I wanted those sheets. They’re really beautiful and they feel—”

“You have bamboo sheets.”

“Not in light green. I have them in white and light blue.”

“How many do you need?”

“Listen, Penny, I work hard. As you know. I like nice things. I can afford nice things. And so I buy them. Okay? I like to own nice things.”

“They own you. You don’t stop working so much because you have to keep making money to pay for things you buy that you do not need.”

I looked at her. Licked my lips and pushed my hair back off my shoulders. “Let me ask you something.”

“Ask.”

“Do you need everything you’ve got?”

“No. No! And that’s why I’m getting rid of it! You just helped me fill up all those bags of clothes to give away. And I’ve brought nearly all the stuff I had in the attic to Goodwill.”

“Where, next time we go, you’ll buy it all back,” I said.

“No, I won’t. In case you haven’t noticed, Miss Perceptive, I have not been buying much of anything but groceries.”

“Well, good for you. Why don’t you get rid of everything you don’t need?”

“I will. That’s my goal. I don’t want these … things anymore. They’re an unnecessary complication. A hindrance.”

“You know what? You’re the hypocrite, Penny. You will never give away all the stuff you don’t need! Look at all the kitchen toys you have. I never saw anyone with more kitchen toys than you, and you hardly ever even cook! Why don’t you give away one of your precious Microplanes? You have three different sizes!”

“I gave them all away.”

“What? To whom?”

“To Kate Webster, who loves them and who cooks a lot and will use them.”

I sniffed. “You might have asked me. I would have wanted them.”

“Why? You cook less often than I!”

“I just like them. I would have wanted them.”

Penny shook her head. “For a smart woman, you are really dense. You just keep on.… And here’s another thing. What about how you say you want a meaningful and lasting relationship? What do you do about that?”

“Hasn’t worked out.”

“You don’t let it work out!”

Silence.

Then, more gently, she said, “What about that hippy-dippy love affair you had, that guy you never got over?”

“Who, Dennis Halsinger?”

“Yeah.”

“He’s not here.”

“Well, he’s not dead!”

“Well, he’s not here.”

“Well … Google him!”

“I’ve tried! He’s not … Googleable! And anyway, what good would it do? He’s in Tahiti!”

“You are so stubborn. When are you going to see that you keep moving in the wrong direction to get the things you say you really want?”

“I suppose when Miss Guru finally gets through to me.”

“I’m saying this for your benefit, you a*shole!”

I threw down my magazine. “You know, Penny, you are not yourself lately. I don’t know if you need more sleep or what, but you are not yourself. You’re always so pissed off!”

She looked down. “I know. I don’t feel good. I’m going to the doctor tomorrow to get some tests done. I’m probably anemic or something. I’m tired all the time.”

Three days later, she walked in my door and said, “Come and sit down with me. I’ve got something to tell you.”

We cried, of course, both of us. We talked statistics, prognoses. I saw that my hands were shaking and I made them stop. I asked her, “What should I do for you?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know, be with me, I guess, as much as you can.”

“Do you want to go somewhere? Do you want to take a road trip?”

Her answer was in her smile: too late. But then she said, “You know what you can do for me? Use your skills in some meaningful way right here instead of running all over the country. Slow down, step back, be inside your own skin, live. Open yourself to love. And give back in some meaningful way!”

I sat still, listening.

Then she said, “I think you should volunteer at the Arms.”

“What’s that?”

“It’s a hospice in Saint Paul. They do really good work. I thought about going there when I … I thought about going there but Brice and I decided I’d stay home.”

“A hospice?” I said.

“Will you do it?”

“Oh God, that would be so—” I stopped myself, but she knew what I’d been going to say.

“It’s not depressing,” she said. “It’s a very life-affirming place. I promise you.”

“Yes,” I told her. “Yes, I will volunteer at the Arms. And I’ll … I’ll work on doing all those other things, too.”

“Promise?”

“Promise.”

She smiled and leaned back in the chair.

I did stay with her as much as I could. I went with her to medical appointments and we always did something fun afterward—once it was trying on ridiculous evening wear. We did the things we used to do, too—we went to movies and browsed in stores, we had lunch out in pretty restaurants, we got pedicures, and we sat on a bench by the lake and fed the ducks. Finally, it got too hard for her to go out: she’d be worn out by the time she buttoned her coat. So we stayed in. We watched movies on television, we played cards. And we talked. Mostly it was about things we’d always talked about: what was in the paper, books, dreams, Brice, her nutty brother. But once she said, “Remember when we were packing up my clothes to give away, how I’d said that moving forward, I just wanted to travel lighter? Well. Be careful what you wish for, right?”

Then we talked about what it might be like, dying. Being dead. Whether either of us truly believed in a kind of awareness after death. I said I did, but I wouldn’t look at her, saying it. But then when she said she did, too, I did look at her, and it felt to me like we made some sort of promise to each other. It was on that day, too, that she said, “Remember when we went to that Weight Watchers meeting and they told us that the time to stop eating was when you still wanted a little more? Maybe it’s good for me to go now. I won’t get old and start losing everything. You know, my sight. My hearing. My marbles. I won’t be wishing I’d die, already.”

“True,” I said, and I tried to latch on to that fragile optimism. But I couldn’t. I didn’t want her to go. I wanted us to get old together and complain to each other about our aching joints and failing memories, the many pills that we had to take every day. I wanted her and Brice and me to continue to be next-door neighbors in some old-age community, where we’d sit out by the garden with blankets on our laps until they called us in for dinner.

On the last day, I came over in the morning and she’d gotten quite bad; her breathing was rough. I knelt by the bed and took her hands in mine, and she said, “Oh, my wonderful …” Her face changed then, I saw a soft regret, and she said, “Just Brice, now. Okay?”

“Okay,” I said, and I kissed her forehead and said, “See you.”

I went downstairs and waited out the final hours there. It was right for her to be with just Brice, I honored that request in my head and in my heart. I have also never in my life felt so bitterly isolated. I was sleeping on the sofa with a magazine in my hand when Brice came down and tapped me on the shoulder. My eyes flew open. He nodded. He was in his stocking feet, his shirt twisted off to one side. His face looked like it had been delicately, gingerly put into place, as though it were ready to fall off, or break apart into a million pieces.

“What time is it?” I asked, absurdly.

He looked at his watch. “Four-seventeen?”

We stared at each other and then we both burst into tears.

I went home and sat at my kitchen table and resolved to do every single thing she’d asked me to do. And then I am sorry to say that I did not.

Now, finally, I will. Now I can. I haven’t yet committed to the last speaking engagement I was offered. I just turned in my latest book. I can take a break. I can, in fact, stop altogether, if I want to.

I go to my computer and get the number for the Arms. I’ll make an appointment for an interview, just to get a sense of the place, just to see what I might be able to offer—and, to be honest, to see if I can offer anything. Then I’ll call a realtor to come and see my house, and I’ll start looking for another place to live.

Perhaps most important, I’ll find a way to see Dennis. It comes to me that hearing from him is what has loosened the lynchpin, and that even if nothing else happens with him, I owe him a debt of gratitude for that.

I breathe out, and feel a kind of lightness move into me. It appears that what I wrote in my last book is true: Once you start making decisions in which your heart, mind, and soul are congruent, you’ll feel it as a kind of lift, if not liftoff.





SATURDAY MORNING, I FIND A PLACE TO PARK DIRECTLY IN front of HavenCrest, where my mother lives. I go into the lobby and greet the few people I see there. Then I head up to my mother’s apartment, the last one at the end of a long hall, so she has a great view of the woods that surround this place, and the little creek that runs behind it. Walking down the hall, I feel a kind of envy. She did it. She moved into a much smaller place; it’s all done, and she’s thriving.

“It’s open!” she calls when I knock on the door.

She comes out of the bathroom with one eyebrow drawn in, one to go. She must have just had her hair done; it curls nicely along the sides of her face, bringing out her still-lovely cheekbones. She’s wearing a blue dress that matches her eyes, and a gold bracelet and earrings. She has on her fancy orthopedic shoes that hardly look like orthopedic shoes at all: they’re a kind of Mary Jane. The place must be having one of its events, an ice cream social, perhaps. I hug her and her head barely comes up to the middle of my chest; I think she must have shrunk again.

“I’m just putting my face on,” she tells me. “Wait for me in the kitchen. There’s coffee cake. Say hello to your father.”

I go into the kitchen and sit down at the little table, which is set for two. My father died three years ago, but my mother still sets a place for him, still talks to him, still feels his presence. I sit at the table opposite his place, see how she’s put the sports page next to his plate as usual, folded the way he liked to do it.

“Hi, Dad,” I say to the empty chair.

My mother comes into the kitchen. “Cup of coffee?”

“No thanks.”

“What are you doing here?”

“Nice to see you, too.”

“Well, it’s always nice to see you, you know that. But you never come in the morning. And why aren’t you in Cincinnati? Is something wrong?”

“It was Atlanta, and I got home yesterday.”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake, I know you went to Atlanta. I have a date; I’m a little nervous. When I get nervous, I forget everything.”

“You have a date?”

“Does that happen to you? When you get nervous, does everything just fly out of your brain?”

“Yes, Mom. But … did you say you have a date?”

“I’m just going out to lunch with Spencer Thompson. You know Spencer, the big ears. We’re just going over to the Olive Garden. We’ve got coupons ready to expire.”

“The Olive Garden where you and Dad used to go all the time?”

“Yes. And never mind, your father thinks it’s just fine. It was his idea! But how was your talk?”

“It was great. The women were really nice. So, Mom, are you—”

“Did you bring me the amenities?”

I pull out a plastic bag from my purse, and show her the lotion and shampoo, the shower cap and cream rinse and mouthwash.

“Good girl. You know, I use those shower caps to cover leftovers. They work just great!”

She’s told me this at least two hundred times.

Now she’ll tell me how the products in the little containers are superior to those in the big containers. She’ll tell me that that’s how they get you to buy the big size, which is then watered down.

But that’s not what happens. What happens is, she sits opposite me and says, “Are you still thinking of selling your house?”

“Who said that?”

“You did, last time you were here.”

“Oh.” I’d forgotten all about it.

“Well,” I say, “it seems as though it’s time. I’m reminded of Penny too much, living there. And I really want to downsize. I’m going to look for a smaller place.”

“Oh, honey, I’m glad. You’ll be surprised at how freeing it is. And here’s the thing. Bess Templeton told me that her granddaughter is looking for a roommate. She has a lovely house over by Como Park. One of the women who lived there just moved out.”

“Yeah, I don’t think I can live with roommates again, though. I don’t think I’d want to do that. But thanks for—”

“I’m just saying you might consider it. Why go somewhere and live all by yourself again? I worry about you getting lonely, with Penny gone.”

“I’ll be fine,” I tell her, but the truth is, she’s right. I already am lonely.

“Let me go over to Bess’s and get the address. If the place is still available. Apparently, it’s real cute. ‘Just darling!’ Bess said. And one of the women who lives there is a chef!”

Well, my mother knows how to play her cards. I love to eat and I don’t really like cooking that much, especially when it’s just for me.

“I’ll be right back. Talk to your father.”

After my mother leaves, I look around her kitchen, thinking of how difficult it was for her when she moved out of her beloved house and into this place a few years ago, though she never complained. It must have been a hard adjustment, complicated by the fact that my father had just died. But now she really likes it here.

In a couple of minutes she’s back, handing me a piece of paper with an address in Saint Paul. “The room is still available, but Bess said they’re meeting with someone who might rent it this morning. She called and made an appointment for you this afternoon. She told them not to make a decision until they’d met you.”

“Mom. I—”

“Oh, just go over and meet the people. What have you got to lose? It might just be an option to consider until you decide what you really want to do.”

This is codespeak for settle down and get married, which my mother has been waiting for me to do for … well, I would say since I was born.

My mother looks at her watch. “You’d better go, you don’t want to be late.”

“Where’s the phone number? I should call and cancel; I’m really not comfortable with this idea.”

“I don’t think she gave me the phone number,” my mother says, a tad vaguely, and before I can accuse her of purposefully not taking it, she says, “Is my lipstick in the lines?”

I lean forward to look and tell her that it is. This makes for a little prick of tenderness in my heart and now I can’t yell at her for trying to help me.

“Let me know how it goes,” she says, as I pick up my purse to head out.

“Yeah you too,” I say. “Have a nice time on your date.”

My mother puts her finger to her lips and points to my dad’s chair.

I smile. “You said it was his idea!”