My mother was on the patio when I got home from Hadley’s.
“Everything all right?” I said. She was sitting at the wrought-iron table that had been out there at least as long as I’d been alive; she brushed the rust off every few years and bought new cushions when the old ones fell apart. There was a pile of papers in front of her, held down with a large rock, and my first thought was that she was having another episode and had lost her train of thought.
But when she looked up at me, her gray eyes were clear and bright. “Everything’s fine, Laine,” she said. “Have a seat.”
“Sure,” I said, taking a chair on the other side of the table. “Are you working on bills?”
She had incredible posture, my mother, and even now, she sat with her back straight and her head held just so. I wondered if she’d do that even when her mind was long gone, or if she’d end up the way I remembered my Nana Meyers, slumped over and barely communicative. It was painful to imagine. “Actually, no. I was just reviewing some forms I filled out with George.”
George was my parents’ longtime friend, who also served as their attorney from time to time.
“When did you see him?” I asked.
“I can’t remember, exactly. But it was sometime before you got here. The first time this summer,” she clarified with a smile. “Not after you got back after our fight.”
“I see. Is this about the brownstone?”
“No,” she said matter-of-factly. “I granted you power of attorney and gave all three of you girls medical power of attorney. Since you have two roles, I wanted you to take a look at the paperwork and see if you were all right with it.”
I almost fell right off my chair. “You did what?”
“Exactly what I said.”
“I . . .” I didn’t know what to say. How could I possibly tell her that I was leaving when she’d just put me in charge of her wishes?
“It’s not too late for me to change it if you don’t want the responsibility. I just needed to make a decision in that moment, and I did.”
Stunned, I took the chair across from her. “Why did you pick me? I’ve been in Michigan.” And I’m going to stay there. “And Hadley’s the one who’s good with money.”
“Yes, and you’re the one who’s good with people,” she said, shuffling the papers into a neat stack. “Good with me, at least.”
“Thanks, Mom. But . . .”
“Well, what is it?” she said, watching me.
I would’ve rather have talked about almost anything than what I was about to tell her, but there was no way for us to have an honest conversation from here on out if I didn’t tell her what I’d decided. “Do you remember telling me that you wanted me to make the choice that was best for me?”
She considered it for a moment, then said, “Yes. In fact, I do.”
“Well, I don’t know that moving back is what’s best for me, Mom. Remember how I want to have a baby?” I said, and she nodded. I steadied myself, then said, “I don’t want to raise a kid in New York. And it’s going to be really tricky for me to . . . to take care of you and my child.”
“What about Ben?” she said.
I looked at her with surprise.
“Oh, Laine,” she said. “I’m not blind. I could tell when he dropped off you and the cats the other day that you two are so happy to be together again.”
I felt flustered. “He was a good friend to me. It’s especially nice to have someone like that around again.”
“I’ll bet it is. I’m sorry I encouraged you not to pursue him.”
“Thank you,” I said. “But you don’t have to keep apologizing.”
“I might forget that I’ve already done it, so I can’t promise to stop,” she said, and I smiled.
Then she looked down at the papers and sighed softly. “Reggie wanted me to marry him, Laine. He asked all the time at first, and then every year or two. Then one day, he stopped asking. And a while after that, he left. Said he was tired of waiting for me to tell my truth.”
“Mom. I wish you’d told me this earlier.”
“Well, Laine, I never wanted you to find out. Sometimes the truth is terrible for the people you love, and so you decide to keep it to yourself.” She reached across the table for my hand. “I know it doesn’t seem like it, but I am sorry. And I do want you to do what’s right for yourself—after all, you still have time. Don’t stay here with me unless you want to.”
I was overcome with emotion. My mother really did love me, even if her love didn’t look quite like what I’d always longed for. And now she was showing me that in the most generous way I could’ve imagined. “Mom,” I said, wiping my eyes. “I . . . don’t even know what to say.”
“Say you’ll do what’s right for you, Laine. But I do have a favor to ask you. Two, in fact.”
“Anything,” I said. Then I laughed and added, “Well, not so fast. What is it?”
“First, I’d like you to gather everyone here,” she said, nodding toward the brownstone. “I want to talk to the whole family at one time.”
“Absolutely,” I told her. “What’s second?”
She smiled, and oh, how I wished I could memorize that moment; there was almost nothing that made me feel as good as I did when my mother was smiling at me. “Go get that notebook, Lainey. There are a few things I’d like to tell you about me and Reggie.”
THIRTY-SIX
SALLY
I’d already told Laine more about Reggie than I’d ever intended to. And yet she deserved the rest of the story, so she could draw her own conclusions about what I’d done.
“Affair isn’t really the right word to describe what happened between me and Ben’s father, Laine,” I began, smiling sadly at her from across the table. “I know that may be hard for you to hear, but it’s true. Once in a lifetime, you meet a person and know, just as sure as you know the sun and the stars will continue to appear in the sky, that everything that comes next is going to be different. And so it was when Reggie Walker appeared on my doorstep on a muggy August afternoon.”
“Was this the year they moved in?” she asked, glancing up from her notebook.
“Yes, I think it must have been.”
“What happened?”
“Well, he was standing there, and he said, ‘Hello.’”
Laine laughed, and I couldn’t help but laugh with her, if only because she wasn’t upset with me.
“I know, I know. It was just a word, but what a word it was! His voice was rich and resonant, and I’d already decided I could listen to it all day. And his eyes—I’d say they were enormous, but really, it was the intensity with which he was looking at me. I wondered if he looked at everyone like that and found myself wishing that he didn’t. Don’t be a fool, Sally, I scolded myself, but I couldn’t turn away. ‘Hello,’ I said back to him.”
“And then?” asked Laine.
“Well, he said, ‘I live a few doors down.’ And I said, ‘I know,’ even though I knew no such thing.”
“So this must have been right after they moved in,” she murmured, her pen moving furiously across the page.
I nodded. “Then he said, ‘I was wondering if you happened to own this cat. I’ve been feeding it for a week or so now.’ And that was when it finally registered that Reggie was holding a Polaroid of a tabby perched on a fire escape. I took the photo from him, held it up to examine it.”
“Did you recognize it?” said Laine.
“No, but as I told him, I would’ve liked to. I already had a cat—do you remember old Chino, Laine?” I asked, thinking of our scruffy gray cat, and she nodded. “But your father was forever telling me that it was one too many. Anyway, the man broke into a smile, and told me I could have the cat if I wanted it. And I thought to myself, Can I? But, of course, I wasn’t thinking of the cat anymore.”