“Oh, I had my hard times,” she said easily. This was comfortable territory for her; the hard times were what made her Kiki Sparks. “But it was different with Mira. People have always had difficulty really understanding her.”
“Mom?”
“Yeah.” When it was just the two of us, she’d eventually drop most of her Kiki-ness and become my mom again. But you always had to give it a while.
“Were you,” I asked hesitantly, “were you always so brave?”
There was a pause as she absorbed this. “Brave?” she said. “Me?”
“Come on,” I told her. “You know you are.”
She thought about it for a second. “I don’t think of myself as brave, Colie. You don’t remember how hard we had it in the Fat Years. And I’m glad for that. I wasn’t always so strong.”
I did remember. But she didn’t need to know that.
“You know what I think it is?” she said suddenly. I could hear her moving around and I pictured her in the hotel bed, pillows fluffed behind her. “I think that losing the weight was a big part of it, me starting to be unafraid. But more, I think it was when other people really started to believe in me. All those women who looked to me to be strong and capable for them, to show them the way. So I faked it.”
“You faked it,” I repeated slowly.
“Yeah, I did. But then, somehow,” she went on, “somewhere along the way, I started to believe it myself. I think that being brave and self-confident doesn’t necessarily start inside, honey. It starts with the rest of the world, and it leads back to you.”
The rest of the world, I thought. Okay.
“Why are you asking?” my mother said, suddenly suspicious. “What’s going on?”
“Nothing,” I said. “I just wondered. That’s all.”
I was at the table eating cereal when Mira came downstairs. I could hear her in the kitchen, opening cabinets and starting coffee and talking to Cat Norman, who eventually found his way to me and leapt up on to the table, knocking my spoon out of the bowl and splattering milk everywhere.
“You think you’re so smart, don’t you,” I said as he bent his head to lap it up, his tongue scratching against the tabletop.
“Good morning!” Mira said cheerfully as she came through the door, carrying an overflowing bowl of Trix, the paper tucked under her arm. “How are you?”
“Good,” I said, nodding toward the paper. “What’s your day looking like?”
“Ah!” she said, putting down her bowl. She unfolded the paper, smoothing it out on the table. “‘Today is a seven.’ Ooh, that’s good.” She cleared her throat. “‘A day for solitude and quiet: you have a lot to think about. Recycling, renewal, big things to come are on your mind.’ ”
“Wow,” I said.
“I know.” She scanned the page. “And your day is a four. Listen to this: ‘Sometimes, words are louder than actions. Keep your eyes open. Pisces involved.’ ”
“Hmmmm.”
She turned in her chair, glancing at the calendar behind her. “So for me, ‘Big things to come’ has got to be that lunar eclipse … or maybe the church bazaar?”
“Or the Fourth of July,” I offered.
“Pssh,” she said. “Not my kind of holiday: lots of tourists, too noisy. I’ll go with the eclipse. Or a bountiful day at the bazaar.” She dug into her cereal, chewing thoughtfully.
“You know, Mira,” I said, “I wonder what else you could possibly need at the bazaar.”
She looked at me. “What do you mean?”
“Well,” I said, somewhat delicately, “it’s just that you have so much here that’s already secondhand and not quite working. I just wonder…”
“Not working?” she said, putting down her spoon. “Why, everything works, Colie.”
I glanced at the TV—jiggle to get 11—then at the toaster, which was labeled burns things fast! “Yeah,” I said, “but don’t you ever want something that works perfectly, every time?”
She considered this, looking out at the birdfeeders. “I don’t know,” she said, as if it had never occurred to her. “I mean, perfect is a lot to expect from something, right? We all have our faults.”
“It’s not about us,” I said gently. “It’s a toaster.”
“It doesn’t matter.” She sat back in her chair. “If something doesn’t work exactly right, or maybe needs some special treatment,
you don’t just throw it away. Everything can’t be fully operational all the time. Sometimes, we need to have the patience to give something the little nudge it needs.”
“To jiggle eleven,” I said.
“Exactly,” she said, pointing at me with her spoon. “See, Colie, it’s about understanding. We’re all worth something!’
She went back to her cereal and I glanced around the room, thinking of all her little notes—faucet off is hard left, big
KNIFE IS SLIGHTLY DULL, WINDOW NEEDS GOOD KNOCK TO OPEN-- and her secondhand things, all eventually to be fixed--or at least partially fixed, but used in some way. For Mira, there were no lost causes. Everything, and everyone, had its purpose. The rest of the world, too often, might have missed that.
That afternoon I was working with Morgan. She showed up with two dozen deviled eggs. Isabel had warned me about this.
“What?” Morgan said suddenly, putting down the tray of eggs, all white and yellow and perfectly formed, between us. “What is it?”
“Nothing,” I said.
“You don’t like deviled eggs?”
“I love them.”
“Then what is that look for?” Clearly she wasn’t her normal cheery self. Still, as she went behind the counter to start the tea machine she picked up my stack of rags and folded them quickly, setting them at a right angle to the silverware station.
“Nothing,” I said again, watching her folding, folding, folding, her face irritated. The kitchen door slammed and I looked through the food window to see Norman coming in, a book tucked under his arm. He waved and I was suddenly embarrassed, remembering him shirtless, asleep. I told myself to smile.
“You don’t have to eat them,” Morgan snapped. When she was angry her face seemed more square. Her hair was newly cut too, straight across her forehead, adding to the effect. “I was trying to be nice!’ She flipped over the napkins.
“I’m sorry,” I said. I didn’t want Morgan mad at me. “It’s just that Isabel told me you’d probably bring in deviled eggs today.”
She just looked at me.