? ? ?
After we get home from dinner that night, I go to the couch and he goes to his office, shutting the door behind him. I lie awake on the couch, staring at the silhouette of my mother’s urn on the mantel. I keep the pictures of her in an ornamental box marked Paris. In some of them we are both about Cassie’s size. Then it’s just my mother who is about Cassie’s size, and she’s looking at my shrunken frame happily and I’m looking at the camera like I have no idea. Like I’m vacant. And I can see her illness, the diabetes and heart disease she never wanted to discuss, in the sheen on her skin, its flushed color, how her eyes are too bright, how tired she looks, so very tired, I never realized how tired until now. On the end table is a photo of Tom and me on her balcony, from the afternoon when he met her for the first time. He’s wearing a tie because this is the first time he’s meeting my mother. I’m wearing that dress I’ve never worn since. We’re standing side by side, but looking off in different directions—him at the camera, me at something off in the corner. I’m in open-toed heels, the toes freshly painted by my mother the night before. She didn’t just paint them, she clipped them, scrubbed the calluses off my heels. We were sitting on the balcony, and I said I wanted a pedicure and bitched that I couldn’t afford one and she said, Jesus Christ, and got up and left. I thought I had just pissed her off by complaining. But a few minutes later, she returned, panting a little, a towel over her broad shoulder, some old bottles of polish in one hand and a well-worn pumice stone in the other. She draped the towel over one thigh, then patted her thigh with her palm. Here, she said. Leaning back in her cast iron chair, I propped my foot on her thigh like it was an ottoman, and then for several minutes, there was my mother’s heavy frame bent over me, clipping and scraping and painting in silence, concentrating so hard her tongue slid out between her lips, because she really had no idea how to paint toenails, while I looked past her at the sun setting behind her over the lake. It was awkward because we never really touched, and yet here was all my mother’s flesh hunched over one foot. We did a blood red, which was the only color she had besides clear. It was one of the last times that she and I would be alone.
There, she said, slightly breathless, when she was done. How’s that?
Good, thanks, I said, my eyes to the right of her, fixed on the lake, the sun setting over it, not able to take her in just then.
? ? ?
She’s holding my hands up to the light to see if she should cut the cuticles. I’m staring at her breasts caged in flesh-colored lace. The sight makes my eyes sting. A tear, unbidden and hot, slides down my cheek. With the crook of an elbow, I brush it hastily away.
“You okay?” The furrow of concern deepens between her brows but today I am not moved, today I hate her for it.
“Fine.”
“You sure?”
She’s wearing a long, light blue sundress with thin, slippy straps. I remind myself of the store she had to buy it in. I look at how the straps sliding from her shoulders expose the thick bra straps beneath, which are a sad flesh tone. How heavy her burden, I tell myself. How hot she must feel in the sun. I even do the hospital visualization. But it’s no good. All I see is how the blue shade of the dress matches her eyes and the bright sky in the windows behind her. How she’s gotten even more of a tan over the past few days. Her red hair looks lighter, is grazing the sun-freckled flesh of her shoulder, now more brown than peach.
“Just tired,” I tell her. “I haven’t been sleeping much.”
“Oh, right. I’m sorry.”
“Me too.”
She still has my hands in hers.
“I bet you sleep well, though,” I say. “I bet most nights you’re out like a light.”
“Yeah,” she says, dropping my hands into the salt water bowls. “I don’t have too much trouble there.”
“You’re lucky. I’ve never been able to just drop off like that. Water’s a bit hot.”
“Sorry! I always try to get it on the hot side just ’cause it cools down so quickly? But I can—”
“It’s all right. It’ll cool down soon enough.”
“Well”—scooping brown sugar into her palms—“hopefully this’ll relax you a bit. Feel free to close your—”
“Cassie, are you happy?”
She looks up. Her brow’s still furrowed, probably from concentrating.
“Am I happy?” She blinks.
“In your life. With your husband?”
She lowers her eyes so her lashes cuddle each cheek. They’re so long and thick and perfectly curled, I asked her once if they were fakes. They aren’t. I still don’t believe it.
“Pretty much. I mean, for the most part yes. Why?”
“No reason.”
We’re silent for a bit.
She starts rubbing my forearm with what feels like a new force. I watch the sugar crystals dig into and chafe my skin.