“To the person I was, once, a long time ago.”
“Okay, yes, to who you were. But Edith is sick, and Owen is trying to put her in some retirement facility against her will. He wants to get rid of her and take over the property, push us all out of our homes and rent them for six times as much.”
Song’s face had not turned. Her peace rivaled a houseplant’s.
“He’s rough with her, Song. He herds her around like she’s his inmate.”
“Oh.” Her eyes closed briefly, and he could sense her muffling a response, pushing memories down as they surfaced, like things in a basin of water not yet clean. She gripped the arms of the chair, and a bellicose purple stood out in the veins of her throat.
“Please present your purpose.”
Thomas went to Song and knelt, as if positioning himself like that might let him catch some of the unwanted, unhappy recollections that spilled from her.
“You have to take the house, Jenny,” he opened gently, careful about how he called out to her past, careful not to send it scurrying away from the light. “You have to save her like she wanted to save you.”
She released a ragged sound, as though some long-struggling part of her body was trying to open.
“Jenny,” he said.
“Jenny,” she said.
Almost as soon as her moan filled the room, it seemed replaced, eliminated by the atmosphere’s familiar muting of extremes—the structure never too cold or warm, the sun always filtered by trees, only the necessary words spoken—as if snatched up by some invisible maid who didn’t prefer the messiness of suffering, and swept back out into the wild. Thomas couldn’t locate the moment before, the split second when he’d connected her to who she had once been, and her eyes, placid again, revealed nothing.
“A sweet person,” she said, with apparent regret. “The girl you’re looking for doesn’t exist, don’t you see? I gave up my past when I came here. I made a commitment. I was born after, do you understand? I don’t have any right to that place. In fact, the system we built here precludes ownership.”
“But—”
It felt as though his blood were moving through him at a perilously slow rate, but he continued, even knowing how little power he held. “But she was your mother. She was your mother and—” His voice broke as he thought of the photo, of Edith on the lumped and sun-strewn bed, holding up the tiny new human to the concentration of light; then he recalled his own mother, throwing an arm across his chest at sudden stoplights, the bashful smile she always gave him after.
“She never stopped missing you, do you understand? She was sorry her whole life. She never stopped looking.”
Song turned away with a long gaze, taking in the horizon in no hurry, but Jenny’s mouth softened and quavered. In an expeditious series of motions Thomas wouldn’t have thought her capable of, she was up and at the door, lacing up her boots, reaching for a hat.
“I’m going for a walk,” she said without affording him a glance. “I have some listening to do.”
AS HE MOVED through her home, picking things up and letting them drop like some machine sent to methodically dismantle, Adeleine practiced her ability to live remembered moments in full detail, to focus on the greens and whites of other days and forget her current circumstances completely. After he had carried her up from the street, he had arranged her back on the chaise and flashed a palm across his mother’s field of vision, as if to alert her to his upcoming performance. He pulled the curtains open, one by one, with his thumb and forefinger. Although Adeleine had bucked as he placed her there, sent her legs up in a few frantic kicks, her body, spent from its failed escape and stunned by the brightness and volume of the outside world, soon collapsed. Adeleine had not replied when Owen had asked her whether she would let him borrow a few things, had not watched as he approached the bowed bookshelf as though it were an infestation he intended to eliminate. She was already recalling a former life, sinking into another time.