Tova smiles, allowing a smidge of her crossness to melt away. “I suppose you tromped all the way up here to nap on the job, didn’t you?” She strokes Cat’s side, which starts to rumble, purring.
The room is divided into three categories. It’s a start, anyhow. A system. Tomorrow, Barb and Janice are coming over along with Janice’s son, Timothy, and two or three of his friends. Voluntary labor for all of this sorting and hauling. Tova promised to order pizza for everyone, even though eating delivery food when her freezer is full of casseroles seems indulgent. But she does need the help, and better for it to come from people she knows rather than allowing a team of strangers to descend upon her family’s heirlooms. Besides, Barb and Janice have been calling nonstop, offering to help. This will mollify them.
The first category of items, and by far the smallest, is for things she’ll take to Charter Village: a couple of Erik’s old toy cars, a handful of photographs, what’s left of her mother’s porcelain tea set, which she fancies she’ll take coffee in once in a while. It’s quite a shame so much of this has gone unused for years. Decades.
The slip of tissue that had wrapped the saucer gets wadded into a ball and tossed into the section nearest the door: trash. Here, too, goes a large volume of photographs and other memorabilia. Although it feels odd to discard these things, so meticulously saved, where else could they go? Janice suggested a storage unit, but why? There is no one left to want them.
Then there’s the largest pile: the donation pile. A truck from the local secondhand shop is scheduled to do a pickup next week. Most of Erik’s toys are in this pile; perhaps they’ll be played with by someone else’s grandchildren. Alongside the old toys is her mother’s bone dinner china. It survived a trip across the ocean, so it should make it through a journey to the thrift shop downtown; whether anyone will buy it once it arrives there is another question. First, she’d tried to give it to Janice, but Janice said she didn’t have room. Barb, likewise, apparently does not have room among her elephants. She had considered offering it to Mackenzie, the girl who works the desk at the aquarium, or even the young lady who runs the paddling shop next to Jessica Snell’s office. But young women don’t want bone china anymore. They’ve no use for old Swedish things. They have their own dinnerware, probably from Ikea. New Swedish things.
Also in the donation section are five wooden Dala Horses, straight-legged figurines with their delicate paintwork in shades of yellow and blue and red. The sixth one, the one Erik broke, has been missing for ages. She always thought perhaps she’d find it and repair it, but what good would that do now? She takes one of the horses out and studies it. If she takes them with her, the whole lot will be left at Charter Village for someone else to dispose of. Not even a muckle-toothed lawyer and his private investigator will be able to find someone who wants them.
Still, the Dala Horses switch piles. They’ll go with her to the retirement home.
She picks up a stack of yellowing pillowcases; her mother had hand-embroidered the roses along the hem. The sheets let off a musty puff as Tova plops them onto the nearest linen pile, to be washed, of course, before being donated.
All of these things had been stored away for her to pass along someday, relics to be carried up the branches of the family tree. But the family tree stopped growing long ago, its canopy thinned and frayed, not a single sap springing from the old rotting trunk. Some trees aren’t meant to sprout tender new branches, but to stand stoically on the forest floor, silently decaying.
She unfolds the next item to be added to the pile: a linen apron, its sturdy fabric heavily creased. It’s what her mother wore when she baked. Tova holds it close to her face; it smells sour, like flour turned bad. Folding up the fraying strings, she tries to push away the thought that has been nagging at her all afternoon. There was a girl.
If Erik hadn’t died that night, the girl might have been a daughter-in-law. Tova herself might have worn this apron when she taught her son’s wife how to make his favorite butter cookies, then passed the apron along to her when the time came.
Such nonsensical thinking must stop. Whoever she was, Erik hadn’t cared for her enough to ever mention her.
This last thought, as usual, stings.
Cat’s afternoon nap comes to an end when a horsefly hurls itself against the window, enticing the sleeping gray hunter into an earnest, if fundamentally pointless, hunt. Tova watches the cat leap at the window, pawing the glass, as the fly hovers, unconcerned, outside.
“I know how you feel,” she says, with a sympathetic nod. To know something is there, yet be unable to grasp it, is torture indeed. With an antagonized mewl, Cat stalks off, winding back through the maze of stacks and vanishing down the stairs.
Tova glances at her wristwatch: almost five. “Suppose I should think about supper,” she mutters to no one, unfolding her aching joints from her low chair and picking her way through the mess. It isn’t like her to leave a project half-finished. A rush of rebellion swishes through her as she turns her back on the unfinished piles and, stepping lightly on her still-tender ankle, descends the staircase.
Egg salad sandwich is tonight’s supper plan . . . again. All week, it’s been nothing but egg salad. (There was a coupon in last week’s circular: buy a dozen, get a dozen free.) Tonight, however, she can’t bear to eat another crumbly sandwich.
It’s true, she’s been doing her shopping in the morning lately. Not because she’s avoiding Ethan and his coffee invitation. Of course not. She checks her watch again: she’s fairly certain he’ll be on shift now. She runs a hand down her face, which feels as worn as the relics in her attic, like the dust has settled into every crease and wrinkle. A friendly conversation with the Scot would be nice right now.
“I’m going up to the Shop-Way,” she informs Cat, who is now perched on the arm of the davenport, no doubt depositing a layer of gray fur which Tova will need to slough off with a lint brush later. Oh well. The davenport won’t be coming with her to the Charter Village, of course; it’s far too large. And, in any event, there are worse things than cat hair.
A hot, thick haze has settled over Sowell Bay, and a few bored-looking teenagers are encamped on the curb in front of the grocery, languid and lazy under the baking sun, limbs sprawled, reminding Tova of a collection of gangly insects. She tuts as she steps over one young man’s extended leg on her way to the front door.
The door chimes, and Ethan Mack glances up from his register with a broad grin and an “Afternoon, Tova!” An icy air-conditioned blast sends gooseflesh shivering up Tova’s arms. She ought to have brought a sweater.
“Good day, Ethan.” Suddenly out of any other words, she hurries toward the produce aisle. There, the temperature is even more frigid. She scoops a bagful of gleaming Rainier cherries and places it in her basket, then after a hesitation, fills a second bag. Cherry season is so short, and these do look delightful.
“Wow, three bucks a pound! What a steal.”
Tova turns to find a familiar woman nibbling on a cherry. It takes her a moment to realize it’s Sandy, from Mary Ann’s luncheon. Adam Wright’s lady friend. Unlisted-in-the-phone-book Adam Wright.