“Mom.”
I knew what she was going to say next. Well, bless her for not insisting we discuss it yesterday evening. After years of being a night owl, I find that I’m far sharper in the morning these days.
“Do you want to talk about the upstairs apartment?”
“What’s to talk about?” I didn’t mean to sound the way I did, so snappish. “I’m sorry. I brought some things up there, is all.”
“I know, and that was smart of you. But when exactly did Roger and Rohit move out?”
“This spring. Or maybe it was late winter. A while ago.” The exact timing escaped me.
“Why didn’t you tell us?”
“I thought I did.” Or at least I don’t remember not telling them.
“So they moved out and you didn’t find another tenant?”
“I was going to. In fact, I was going to ask you to help me with that while you’re here.”
Laine nodded and took another sip of her coffee. “That makes sense.”
Yes, yes, it did, and I was glad she thought so, too. The way she’d been peering at me not minutes earlier made me think that she was going to have me sent away to the place where old people go. The infirmary. No, the nursery. Not that, either. The . . .
Nursing home. The very thought of it made me shudder. My mother’s moaning and crying had rung in my ears like gunfire each time I left her. What if that happened to me?
What if it was already happening?
No, I thought, shaking my head. No, Sally Francis, you have a choice here. You give in to that kind of thinking and you’re already a goner. You fight to stay among the living. I just needed to exercise my brain. Wasn’t that it? Maybe I would go for a long walk. That was supposed to be good for sharp thinking. I could do a crossword puzzle. Though it always left me puzzled. But I could try. Maybe I could even call Iwona and practice my Polish. Learn a foreign language. Wasn’t that what one of those health stories Laine wrote said to do? I’d have to see if I could find the clipping in my files. I used to collect all her articles. But I wasn’t about to ask her now.
“You okay?” Laine’s hand was on my arm.
I spilled the beans before I could think not to. “Just thinking about something unpleasant.”
She smiled at me, looking like the spitting image of herself as a young girl. She was so pretty, with her dark wavy hair and big brown eyes. Why she carried herself like someone far less attractive was anyone’s guess. “You are very lovely, my dear Laine. You should really try to take advantage of that.”
“You’re sweet, Mom.”
“I’m honest.” No one has ever accused me of being sweet. Selfish. That’s what Hank said to me. Only once, when I’d asked him to put down those damn models of his and take me out dancing. Or to dinner. Something that didn’t involve going all the way to northern New York just to have a little bit of romance. But you can’t take words back. Once they’re out of your mouth, they take on a life of their own.
“I do have another question.”
“Anything.” Because Laine wouldn’t judge me. Wasn’t that what I had been telling myself? That had never been her way; no reason to think it was about to change now.
“When did you start boxing up your apartment?”
Had I done that? I didn’t think I had. “I’m not sure, exactly.”
“But you decided to store the boxes in Roger—er, the upstairs apartment.”
I nodded, because that part, at least, was right.
“Why there, instead of, I don’t know, Piper’s bedroom?”
There was no easy answer for this. Why did a person do anything? Hadley had made some comments about my boxes, about how they were multiplying like barn animals. So I took one little package upstairs to make things look tidier. One package, up we went. Then another. And maybe another. I suppose I hadn’t been paying enough attention to just how many I’d let stack up. But I was going to go through them all, and soon. That had always been the plan.
But the papers. So many papers. Decades’ worth of bills and art projects and report cards and tax documents, all gathering dust in Piper’s room. I’d needed space to sort through them all, and the upstairs apartment offered the perfect solution. Because I couldn’t just throw them out without a second glance. Nor could I leave them for the girls to sort through after I was gone. My journals were in there, somewhere. And sure enough—I found most of them. Those familiar memories; that bittersweet time in my life. I’d loved to write, if only for myself. I didn’t want to forget a thing about how love had found me in the most unexpected place. Now I couldn’t even manage to write more than a sentence or two at a time without losing my train of thought. How I missed all that.
“Mom.” Laine broke through my thoughts. “It’s okay, we can figure it out later. But I do think it would be a good idea for us to go upstairs again before I leave, just to get an idea of how many boxes you have and where we can put them, so you can get another tenant in there. We can do it together, okay? So it’s not too overwhelming.”
We. The very word made my heart swell. This was why a woman had children: to go through this life and know that she was never truly alone. “I’d love that. Do you have time?”
“Of course, Mom. I’m here all week, remember?”
I clapped my hands together with delight, and she shot me a big smile. “You’re welcome to stay here as long as you’d like, Laine. You and Josh can move in with me if you want! Lord knows I have the space.”
She immediately stopped smiling and had started poking at her croissant like a tiny bird. Strange. Piper was the one I’d had to convince to eat.
“Darling, are you and Josh doing okay these days? I know work has been up and down for both of you.”
She didn’t respond.
“Oh, Laine, love, know that I’m not criticizing you. I just want to make sure you’re . . .” I could not seem to locate the word I was searching for and was forced to improvise. “That you’re going to be able to support a family. I assume you’re almost ready for that.”
I’d offended her. I could tell. Sometimes the truth was the hardest thing to hear, and I was having a difficult time keeping it bottled up lately. Just the other day, I’d told my friend Mary that yellow just wasn’t her color. I shouldn’t have jabbered like that, obviously, but judging from her reaction, you’d think I’d just informed her that her beloved son was the second coming of Ted Bundy. Everyone says they want the truth. If that were actually true, people wouldn’t take such measures to avoid it.
“I’m fine, Mom,” she said. “I’ve started working as an organizer—remember?”
I hadn’t until she said that.
“I’m between jobs right now, but it’s been going really well,” she continued. “That’s why I can’t move to Brooklyn. My clients are in Michigan. Anyway, I want to raise my child in Ann Arbor.” She covered her mouth, like she’d said something wrong. But what could be wrong about that? I’d been waiting for years for her to say she was ready to have a family of her own.
“I understand, and I’m so happy to hear you talking about children,” I said, patting her hand. How silly of me to think she would move back. Besides, I didn’t need her to babysit me. I just needed to get things in order so the girls could see that I was fine. “Love, would you mind if I spent an hour or so upstairs before you join me? I just want to go sort through a few things.” Laine wouldn’t judge me. She never had. But I did want to try to make it look less . . . overwhelming, let’s say, before she started poking around.
“Of course not.” She squeezed my fingers, which I took as a sign that all was well. “I was thinking about taking a walk, anyway—I want to see how the neighborhood has held up. Then I’m going to have lunch with Piper and Hadley. We’ll have some time before this afternoon, and maybe we can look again tomorrow afternoon after brunch when we go to Hadley and Topper’s.”