“Take the money,” Sue tells her. “That’s the legacy.”
So Shelby does. She leans over and kisses her mom. “It will be good for emergencies. Like if I ever have to leave Ben.” She’s said aloud what she’s been thinking about for a long time. They’re not suited for each other. They’re like strangers on a train, only they live in the same apartment and sleep together, but they don’t know each other in any deep way. How would you want to die? What would you do for love?
Sue studies her. “Is something wrong between you two?”
The tables are jammed together, ensuring that customers have zero privacy. There is an older couple sitting next to them who have suddenly stopped talking. Obviously, Shelby’s conversation with her mother is more interesting then anything they have to say to each other.
“It’s a what-if situation,” Shelby says. “Like if I catch him having an affair.”
“Your dad’s having an affair,” Sue says.
“What?” Shelby’s ears are ringing. She must have heard wrong.
Their onion soups are delivered, so Sue doesn’t speak until the waiter leaves them more or less in peace. The couple next to them are rapt. They don’t say a word.
“Someone at Macy’s. She got him the job.”
“How do you know this?”
Sue gives Shelby a look. “You know these things, Shelby. Plus Sheila Davis next door told me. She saw them walk out of the store and get into your dad’s car and drive away. Anyway, it’s nothing new.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Sue shrugs. “It’s been going on, Shelby. He considers himself to be a ladies’ man. I think it makes him feel better about himself. Do you think he wanted to take over his father’s store?”
“What the hell did he want?”
“He wanted to be a singer.”
“Seriously?”
“I thought he looked like Paul McCartney.”
“Dad?” Shelby can’t help but laugh.
“Before he was bald.” Sue is laughing as well.
The couple beside them order the onion soup. They tell the waitress it looks good. “It is, isn’t it?” the woman asks Shelby.
“First-rate,” Shelby says to her. “Like it’s from Paris.”
“Oh, and you got this.” Sue opens her purse and hands over a postcard. “I’m forgetting everything today.”
“Great. My stalker.” Shelby’s started to wonder why this person has never come forward. Lately it feels like someone is playing a game with her. He knows everything about her and she knows nothing about him.
“Your angel,” Sue says. “This time I saw him. He drives a black car.”
“I doubt he’s an angel. Probably just some lunatic who read about me in the paper.”
On the postcard there is a drawing of a woman wearing a blindfold. It’s a beautiful little drawing actually, something worth framing. The message is See something.
It’s then Shelby notices that her mom’s hand is shaking. Just the way Shelby’s hand tremors when she’s anxious and upset. Shelby has been so busy feeling sorry for herself, she hasn’t seen what her mom is going through. Her mother is truly unhappy. Shelby reaches to take her hand. “I’m sorry,” she says. “Dad is a shit.”
“We just got stuck in a marriage that is sadder than being alone. If you don’t love someone, don’t stay. I mean it, Shelby. Even if you need more than five hundred dollars to get your own place. Even if you hurt Ben.”
What Shelby sees is that her mother loves her, that she’s driven in from Huntington to have onion soup that is not particularly good, and that she’s bold enough to ask the waitress if she can put a candle in the éclair they share for dessert. No one else would sing “Happy Birthday” to Shelby in a restaurant on Ninth Avenue or tell her that, despite everything she has been led to believe, love is the only thing that matters.
One bright day, when the leaves on the plane trees have turned green in Union Square and Shelby is on her way to work, the crowd in front of her swells, then moves aside. Shelby has been keeping her eyes open. She sees that a man has collapsed in the crosswalk, hitting his head. Blood sends people skittering away. Shelby should keep going like -everyone else. Instead, she runs over to the fallen man.