“No. Soren and I were going to drive to New Haven, see the Constable show. That’s all. Did you?”
She shook her head. She had planned to start putting the garden to bed. Any night now, there could be a frost. She might as well buy the hay. And then she thought, But wait. She had reached the moment she believed she’d been aiming toward throughout the past two years.
Morty’s mother no longer had significant belongings. Her few pieces of jewelry, none of great value, Morty kept in a box that Tommy knew he had stashed in his bureau. He did bring home, that afternoon, a framed photograph: young mother next to school-age son, behind them a nondescript building. He laid this artifact on the kitchen table.
“What happens now?” asked Tommy. Soren had volunteered to go to the grocery store and cook dinner that night.
“An inhumane amount of paperwork. Cremation. Then…” He shrugged. “There’s no family plot. No favorite body of water where she wants her ashes scattered. I suppose I’ll simply have to bring her here.”
Tommy picked up the photo. “Where was this taken?”
“Brooklyn, I’m not sure where. I must be at least eight or nine.”
Tommy put the picture back on the table. The two of them stared at it, as if it might speak for itself.
“What can I do right now?” she asked.
When Morty met her eyes, she could have sworn there was a flash of anxiety, as if he could read her mind. “Just what you always do,” he said. “Or please delete that just. The everyday miracles you perform.”
“Soren’s making us dinner,” she said, not knowing how to answer his praise.
Morty was still wearing his coat. He stood. “I’m going out to the studio for a couple of hours. I want to write a few notes, make some calls.”
Tommy should have returned to the computer; instead, she went to her room. She sat in the armchair and picked up the novel she was reading. But she didn’t open it. She looked out the windows, watched the fiery leaves falling from the trees, prodigiously now, in the strong afternoon gusts. At the height of summer, the boughs were so dense with greenery that she could hardly see the sky; now, as they went through their annual molting, the sun’s descent became more and more apparent. In January, from this room, brilliant sunsets pressed through the filigree of branches.
She heard Soren drive in, heard him clatter through the back door, cursing as he dropped a grocery bag. Would he call for her to help him? He didn’t.
Would Soren take over some of Tommy’s habitual tasks, after she left? He did cook on occasion. His repertoire was limited, but he was good enough. He made an excellent pot roast. Certainly Morty would never consider giving Soren responsibility for the complex web of relationships in his work life. Would he? She did not know what Morty really thought of Soren’s capabilities, and she wouldn’t dream of asking. Soren was a reader—he loved good stories, whether they came in the form of a classic Greek tragedy or a real-life scandal detailed in a Vanity Fair feature—and he liked mixing with Morty’s writer friends, but…Where was she going with this train of thought?
Soren turned on the kitchen radio. He tuned it away from NPR to a station that played classic rock, the songs that everyone knows. In his pleasant, well-trained voice, he sang along. Soren did have his talents, even if he didn’t put them to practical use.
Tommy dozed, waking when Soren called out, “Chow’s on, kids!” Outside, night had fallen—or late afternoon—and Tommy could see the lights in the studio window. She watched them flick off, one and two and three.
—
Had she not waited for another month, things might have turned out differently. But even if Morty’s eruptions of tearful sorrow seemed to cease after a few days, she wanted to give him a respectful margin of time. Later, she would look back and realize that the change in the air wasn’t the residue of grief—or not that grief. She did notice that things were somehow different between Morty and Soren, that she no longer heard them fighting, that they planned no parties, that Soren slept later than usual—and that, when he returned from the city, he had nothing to report. He seemed glum, at times even listless—not his usual prickly, prowling self. But weren’t these changes all effects of Frieda’s death? Even Soren had to feel Morty’s loss.
She decided that she would give her notice after Thanksgiving, offer to stay through February if he liked. Thanksgiving was always a crush. Morty reserved all six rooms at the Chanticleer, the one good bed-and-breakfast in the area, and filled them with a varying group of single or child-free friends from the city, those who looked forward to spending the holiday traipsing through dead leaves and drinking spiked cider by a radiant fire in an underheated country house. The past few years, Soren had cajoled everyone into playing charades. To witness this game played by a group of people who, for the most part, spent their lives crafting stories for children was supremely entertaining. Tommy would laugh so hard that she awoke the next morning feeling as if she might have cracked a rib.
A week beforehand, over breakfast, Tommy asked Morty when he wanted to sit down and plan the menu. They liked to change up the side dishes and make one new, adventuresome pie. “I read a recipe for a Sicilian date pie,” she suggested. “And of course I’ll make the plum.”
Morty stared over her shoulder out the window above the sink.
“Earth to Morty.” She waved.
He looked at her and smiled briefly.
“I ordered the usual gargantuan turkey,” she said.
“Already?”
“The farm was written up on Martha’s website last year. If you don’t order weeks in advance now, you’re in trouble.”
He nodded. “The thing is, I’ve decided we should go low key this year.”
“Okay.” She waited. “Then we’ll freeze a month’s worth of soup. I’ll learn to make tetrazzini.”
“Can you cancel the rooms? I think it’s not too late.”
“All of them?”
He shrugged.
“Morty?”
“I’ve been working hard on this book,” he said. “I need the holiday to be an actual holiday.”
How silly she had been to underestimate the fallout of his losing Frieda. “Of course. But are you saying…just the three of us?”
“Invite your dad,” he said. “He’s missed the last couple of years. Why is that? Let’s get him a driver if your brother won’t come.”
“I’m not sure he’s up for it, but I’ll see.” Tommy hadn’t told Morty that the large, loud gatherings were too arduous for her father, that he preferred being home in Brooklyn. Dani always had a girlfriend willing to pitch in, and there was a widow next door who flirted shamelessly, teasing out Dad’s dormant self, if just for the day.
“Or you could go in and be there for a change. I’m selfish, wanting you here every year. Soren and I could use a quiet weekend—whether he knows it or not.”
“You can’t play charades with two people.”
Morty laughed; he sounded so weary. “And thank God for that. Christ, do I hate that game. I always end up pulling or twisting something.”