The next morning, my mother was showering when Josh’s photo lit up on my phone. It was a shot I’d taken of him and Belle on the beach in Lake Michigan just a year earlier. It seemed so long ago that it might as well have been ten.
I thought about letting it go to voicemail. But divorce or no divorce, I owed it to Josh to tell him I was considering moving to New York to live with my mother. However, I needed to make sure that she didn’t catch wind of that—not before I’d spoken to my sisters, and yes, my husband—and she’d probably come traipsing out of the bathroom at any moment. I couldn’t go on the back patio, because the bathroom window was right there and you could hear everything through it. So I put on sunglasses and a hat and went out to sit on the stoop.
“Hey,” I said.
“Laine?” He sounded kind of panicky. “Are you in the middle of something?”
“Nope. The real question is, aren’t you?” It was Saturday, but Josh didn’t observe weekends, even when he was between launches. I used to tell myself that it was just what he was doing to get his projects off the ground, but in time, I’d come to see that he had the same aversion to downtime that I had to clutter.
“No,” he said. “Piper called me yesterday.”
I frowned. “Is she your divorce hotline or something?”
“No,” he said, drawing the word out like I was slow. “She’s my sister-in-law, Laine. And you know we’re friends. She’s been giving me some great marketing ideas for the app. But she also told me you’re talking about moving back to help with Mom. Is that true?”
Couldn’t Piper wait for me to share my own news, even if it wasn’t actually news yet? “Well, I guess you already know, then. And yeah, I’m considering it.”
“That’s the second weird, split-second decision you’ve made in less than a month. Are you sure you’re okay?”
Actually, I hadn’t made up my mind yet, and I could feel myself getting irritated. I took a deep breath, then another. “I still have a lot to think through,” I said as calmly as I was able.
“What about our place, Laine? What about your business?”
“It’s my mom, Josh. I have to at least entertain the possibility of helping her.”
“Well, we could move your mom here.”
My mother was a lifelong New Yorker who had once asked me if restaurants were open after eight in Ann Arbor; even though she’d visited a handful of times, she seemed convinced it was the sticks.
But wait, I thought suddenly. The real question is, why are you thinking about this as though moving back in with Josh is an option?
“Josh, do you really think you and I should be making ‘we’ decisions right now?”
“Lainey!” My mother had just opened the door. “I’ve been looking for you. Who’re you talking to?”
I stood and turned to face her. That’s when I realized she was wearing a silk negligee.
“Mom, I think you should go inside and put some clothes on, okay?” I said, trying to direct her toward the foyer.
“Don’t change the subject!” she said, stepping onto the stoop. “Who are you chatting with? You’ve got a big frown on your face.”
“It’s Josh, Mom.” I sighed. “Josh,” I said into the receiver, “as you can probably tell, my mother just came outside.” I added in a whisper, “She’s wearing her nightgown.”
“Yikes,” he said as my mother took the phone from my hands.
“Joshy! How are you? Tell me everything,” she said, leaning against the stoop’s wrought-iron handrail casually. She looked almost like a teenager. Except I somehow suspected that even a teen would have thought to throw on, say, a bra, if not a robe.
“Oh yes,” she twittered to Josh, either not registering or not caring that the passersby were gawking at her. Maybe I could cry in public without being paid any attention to, but a seventy-two-year-old self-made lingerie model did not go unnoticed.
“Mom, it’s time to say goodbye,” I told her, putting my hand on her back to guide her inside. But when I reached for the doorknob, the door didn’t budge—because my mother had removed the rock I’d used to prop the door open, and the lock had done what locks are supposed to do.
“Crap,” I muttered. Unless my mother had stashed her house keys in a cavity, she clearly didn’t have them on her. But it was my fault for relying on the rock—even as a young child, I’d known you didn’t leave the apartment without keys on you.
“That’s right. Oh yes, I will,” said my mother to Josh, who was clearly humoring her. “Absolutely. Hope to see you soon. Love you, dear boy. Bye!” She handed the phone to me. “Well, what is it? You still look like someone killed your dog.”
I winced, but she didn’t notice. “The thing is, Mom, neither of us have keys.”
“And?”
“And that means we’re locked out.”
“Oh, that’s no problem,” she said with a wave of her hand. Before I could ask her how that could possibly be so, she was already moseying down the block in her bare feet and negligee. A construction worker hanging scaffolding on a brownstone across the street whistled, and my mother turned and gave him a glowing smile and her best pageant wave.
I was too alarmed to be mortified. My mother had always loved the spotlight, but this was not that. And at once, I realized that whether I lived with her or not, caring for her was going to be a roller coaster—and we’d barely just begun the ride.
“Where are you going?” I called, beginning down the stairs. But my stomach sank when I realized I knew exactly where she was headed.
She was already at the door. “Reggie has a key,” she announced, pressing the doorbell for his apartment.
“What?” I was confused. She and Reggie had been friendly when Ben and I were young, but I’d gotten the impression they’d mostly done that for our benefit; by the time we were old enough to walk ourselves to the park, they’d gone back to being cordial, only occasionally stopping to chat with each other.
“Mom, Reggie doesn’t live there anymore,” I said, coming up behind her. “Ben does.”
“What?” Her face fell. “But I just spoke with him.”
My pulse quickened. It was far too early in the day for her to be drifting back to nowhere land. “No, Mom. He’s—”
Before I could continue, Ben was in the doorway. In spite of myself, I smiled, and he smiled back. Then I remembered that my mother was more than halfway to naked.
If my mother’s state registered, he didn’t show it. “Well, two Francises at one time! This is a pleasant surprise.” He met my eye. “Or did you change your last name? I don’t know if I ever asked you that.”
Of course he hadn’t. I wasn’t married the last time we’d spoken at length. “I didn’t,” I said quietly. “And I’m sorry to bother you. It’s just that—”
“Hello, Ben! We’re locked out!” my mother announced. “And I wanted to see if your father still had a key.”
“My father?” said Ben, arching an eyebrow. “He’s been living in New Jersey for almost a year now. You hadn’t heard?”
“Oh,” said my mother. Then her face brightened. “That’s right. Do you think you might have it? I think he kept it on a hook in the cupboard.”
Ben and I glanced at each other. “I don’t know, but why don’t you two come in and I’ll see if I can find it?”
“Such a gentleman!” I cringed as she put her hand on his arm, but his face didn’t change. He was a damned good actor.
As she leaned in toward him like they were old friends, it was all I could do not to throw her over my shoulder and run out the door. Who cared if we didn’t have a key? Anywhere was better than here. “Thank you, dear Ben. It’s so nice to see you after all this time.”
Kill me now, I thought. I had no idea if their paths had ever crossed after he and I stopped talking. But there was no reason to believe that he didn’t still think the same things about her that he had then. And yet here she was, clad in a nightgown, making demands.
“It’s nothing, Mrs. Francis.”