“True. It’s about Mom.”
It often was; Hadley was forever complaining about our mother. Unfortunately, most of her complaints were valid—and I’d made it my personal mission not to focus on our mother’s shortcomings, as there was no reason for life to be any more unpleasant than it already was.
“Let me guess: either her favorite shade of lipstick has been discontinued or she’s been buried beneath her belongings,” I said. Our mother believed herself a collector of fine objects, but she was a hoarder by any other name. (You can see, then, why I had a thing about organizing.) When my father had been alive, he complained enough that she’d kept her stockpiling somewhat under control. But since he’d died four years earlier, the Brooklyn apartment where we’d grown up and she still lived had become uncomfortably packed.
“I wish,” said Hadley. “Unfortunately, Bashir found her wandering through the aisles this morning.”
Bashir ran the bodega down the street from my childhood home. We’d spent our adolescence lurking around there. Sometimes he’d give us free candy and tell us to get lost, but mostly he’d played the part of friendly uncle, showing us the right way to count out change or demanding the name of whoever had broken our hearts so he could have a word with them. “So?” I said. “Maybe she was hungry.”
“She was buying cat food.”
Phone still to my ear, I stood to stretch my legs, which were as stiff as sticks. Every day, my body presented new evidence of its rapid entropy. This didn’t bode well for my uterus. “And?”
“And she hasn’t had a cat since before Dad died.”
“How do we know she hasn’t adopted another one?” My mother was not a dog person, which was another reason I rarely made the trip from Ann Arbor. But she had yet to meet a feral feline she didn’t want to call her own.
“Because I was just at the apartment last week.” Unlike you—we both knew that was what she meant.
“I was just in town in January, Had,” I reminded her. “I saw Mom plenty while I was there, and she seemed just fine.” In fact, the visit had been unusually easy; Asher and Ainsley’s arrival had put her in a nostalgic mood, and she told all kinds of stories about what the three of us had been like as babies. Apparently Hadley had walked and talked early, and Piper had come out looking like she belonged on a jar of baby food. And if my mother were to be believed, I’d bypassed first words and waited until I could clearly articulate an entire sentence to begin interacting with the rest of my family.
“Maybe she did, but she’s not now. Do you know what Bashir told me? Mom was in her nightgown. I bet it was one of those lacy ones that she has no business wearing.”
“Well, if I live to be seventy-two, I’m going to wear whatever the heck I want, too. Anyway, that’s just like Mom. You know she thrives on attention.”
“For the love, Lainey.”
I snorted. There was nothing offensive about that nickname, except that whenever I heard it, I immediately became my fourteen-year-old self. And that self was markedly less tolerant of her older sister, who had long mistaken her for someone who needed a second mother. Granted, Hadley had often played the role out of necessity—forging my parents’ signatures on permission slips and report cards that my mother had neglected, slipping me cash so I could get a hot lunch when I’d forgotten the one Hadley had packed for me, even taking me shopping for my first bra. Still. I was fast approaching forty. “I clearly don’t get what you’re trying to say, Had. Feel free to enlighten me.”
Hadley let out a long sigh, which was followed by a wail from one of her twins in the background. “Mom’s losing it, Laine. And we need to talk about what we’re going to do about that.” Another cry rang out, and a mix of envy and sadness began swirling inside of me. I knew infertility had been a struggle for my sister. But now that she was on the other side of it, I wondered how often she thought about how lucky she was.
“Leticia!” Hadley yelled directly into the receiver. “Can you please check on Ainsley!”
“That was my ear,” I said, wincing. “But for the record, I really don’t think Mom is ‘losing it.’”
“You haven’t noticed that she keeps forgetting the words for things?”
“We’ve talked about this before.” Our mother had been more scatterbrained since our father had died, but it had yet to cause any major problems for her. “Being alone isn’t great for clear thinking,” I added. I knew this because I’d done a story on surprising causes of memory loss for a health website a few months earlier. In fact, that was probably why I’d been unable to pluck the term garment box from the recesses of my mind while shopping at the Container Store the week before. Josh had always worked out of coffee shops and shared office spaces; he claimed the hum of human activity was essential for his creativity. But Belle had been my sounding board and de facto colleague. Now it was just me, rattling around in a tiny office that suddenly seemed far too large. Evenings aside, my life as a divorcée wouldn’t be all that different from my current existence, which seemed doubly depressing.
“Lonely? She’s a social butterfly,” said Hadley. “She’s seeing her wine club and bridge buddies instead of spending all her time by herself. Regardless, something’s wrong. The other day, she started talking about Dad like he was still alive.”
“I do that with Belle.” It was true: her urn was on a small table beside my desk, and more than once, I’d spoken to it just as I used to when she’d hang out on the futon while I typed away. At first, I was alarmed by my own behavior, but according to Google, this was a relatively normal way to deal with grief.
Still, hearing that my mother was having one-woman conversations made me feel guilty. I’d decided long ago not to bother trying to peer beneath her glossy facade. In my twenties, I’d once asked her if she resented my father, who was always hiding out in the small workshop he’d built on the back patio; when he was around, she practically had to do circus tricks to get his attention (and even then, he often rewarded her by grousing about how the house was a mess). The only time they ever seemed happy was when they were on their way to the cabin they rented in the Berkshires, which I cannot describe because we girls had never been invited—not once. At any rate, she’d looked at me like I’d just sprouted a second head. “Laine Francis, that’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard. Your father and I have a wonderful marriage,” she’d scoffed. “We’re incredibly lucky.” Going deep with her was a fool’s errand.
Except now I wondered if maybe I should’ve tried harder anyway.
“Sure, Laine, but Belle’s only been gone three weeks,” said Hadley.
Maybe it was the fact that she remembered how long it had been and hadn’t called Belle “the dog” like everyone else did, but my throat had gotten tight and I couldn’t respond right away.
“Laine? You still there?”
I swallowed hard. “I’m here.”
“What’s coming up for you?” she asked in what I recognized as her coaching voice. Hadley had become a life coach because—well, because of course she had. Telling other people how to live was what she was born to do. I paused in a futile attempt to enjoy my last moment of peace for the foreseeable future. She believed all problems were fixable, and my marriage would be no exception. And yet now that we were on the phone, it felt dishonest not to tell her.
Also, maybe deep down I was hoping she would fix me.
“Um, nothing?” I said. “Except Josh and I are getting divorced, and before you ask why, I’m not ready to talk about it yet.”
There was silence on the other end, which told me that she was just as stunned as I felt. Sure, I’d already told Josh. But admitting it to my sister made the decision feel . . . real.