It was irrelevant really, because Celia wasn’t here. But Shay was, and she was fabulous, even when she ignored my questions or snapped at her dad.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to say you should want to be just like your mother. You’re your own person. And that’s exactly who you should be.”
“It’s not that I don’t want to be like her,” Shay said. “I’m just not.”
Chapter 5
I STAYED AT THE Fat Chance Café answering e-mails and writing next week’s to-do lists for an hour after Shay left. The waitress refilled my Royal Albert vintage teacup with hot water three times without being asked. I folded a ten-dollar bill and slid it all the way under the mismatched saucer before I left.
I headed away from Main Street and the town square, away from Lark Street, and toward the oldest part of town with the biggest trees, the smallest houses, and the most space that hadn’t been filled in with something new. Here, the sidewalks rippled from overgrown roots. The houses were stone or brick, two-or three-bedroom family homes built when no one had en suite bathrooms or attached garages. The residents either stayed for decades or left for the newer east side of town when their second or third babies were born, aching for a little more space inside and a little more space outside between themselves and their neighbors. That’s where I grew up, even though my parents never had that second baby. And now, even that part of town wasn’t new anymore.
I stood in the middle of the road and stared through the tunnel of arching oaks. The small stone cottage on the corner sat atop a hill. I’d always thought that house belonged in a fairy tale, or had been stolen from one. I crouched and looked up. The cottage looked like a mansion from this angle, pinned onto a bulletin board made from a cumulous sky.
House photographer, indeed.
A woman pushing a double stroller passed me and smiled, as if she always passed a woman in a dress squatting and holding a camera.
“Good morning,” I said. Maybe I’d seen her yesterday at the art show, or earlier on Main Street. If I hadn’t, I’d probably see her tomorrow—so, win-win. The toddler twisted his body to look back at me. I baby-waved and he waved back.
Then I saw my cousin, Maggie Myers, standing outside her one-story redbrick bungalow, with a bucket at her feet, dragging a squeegee across her first-floor windows. Or at least the bottom half of the windows. Maggie was my mother’s second cousin, but to me, she was always just Cousin Maggie. She had retired from her half century as head librarian at Chance Library, staying on even after the Union County Public Library had opened years before. She had e-mailed my mother that the whole town had thrown a surprise retirement party and announced the closing of Chance Library that very same day. I’d been convinced the town council kept it open just for her.
I turned my back to Maggie’s house, embarrassed that I hadn’t called her in years, guilty that I hadn’t yet stopped by or at least let her know I was coming. I’d come back later, or another day, to say hello and catch up on family gossip I’d already heard from my mother.
“Yoo-hoo!”
Step, slide. Step, slide. Step, slide.
“Yoo-hoo!”
I turned around. “Hi, Cousin Maggie.”
“Can you help me?” she asked.
“Sure.” I walked up Maggie’s steps and met her in front of the window.
“Can’t reach that corner,” she said.
I took the squeegee and maneuvered it into the upper right corner of the window. I twisted the handle and pulled, making it longer.
“Oh, I knew I forgot something.”
“How are you?” I asked. I waited to be scolded for something. Cousin Maggie had always been very kind to me but was also known for being no-nonsense.
“I’m good now that I can reach the top of the window.” Maggie looked at the window and ignored me. Then she turned to me and startled, as if I’d appeared out of nowhere. “You’re here.”
“I am. I’m…”
“Going to the wedding.”
Miles and Violet’s wedding was the event of the summer; everyone in town would know about it.
“You look well, dear.”
“Thank you, so do you.”
“Oh, don’t be ridiculous. I look about as well as my windows here, and they’re peeling and creaky and get stuck from the heat and then stuck from the cold.”
My parents had always complained of the same thing.
“What’s this I hear about you leaving?”
“I left six years ago and moved to Chicago. But I live mostly in San Francisco now, when I’m not traveling for work, that is.”
“How does someone live somewhere mostly? You either live somewhere or you don’t. And anyway, you and Lester have lived on Poppy Lane ever since the day you two got married. I don’t know why you are taking off in that contraption of yours.”
She thought I was my mother.
My thoughts shuffled. I didn’t know if I was supposed to correct her. I looked back down the street in search of help. No one was coming from either direction.
“Is anyone home?” I asked.
“You know Melvin passed more than twenty years ago.”
Okay, Cousin Melvin had died when I was in high school. Maybe Maggie was coming around to the present. With my arm around her, I led Cousin Maggie toward the front door, suddenly relieved it was me who she yoo-hooed to help her, and not some stranger.
“I’m not Joyce, Cousin Maggie. I’m Teddi, her daughter. My parents moved, remember? You were at their going-away party. You broke the bottle of champagne on the back of their Winnebago.”
Cousin Maggie looked at me and blinked a few times as if snapping her own mental pictures, or perhaps, scrolling back through her memories. “The trailer. They drove off in that god-awful trailer.”
My mother preferred the term “mobile home.”
“That’s right.”
“And you’re Teddi.”
“I am.”
“I always thought that was a silly name.”
Now I remembered why my mother didn’t like Cousin Maggie very much.
To me, Cousin Maggie had been like a fairy godmother in sensible shoes. She seemed to know what I needed, and when I needed it. It was Cousin Maggie who handed me Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret two months before I got my period when I was eleven. Cousin Maggie also gave me my first real camera for Hanukkah when I was fourteen.
“You can make the world look however you want it to look with this,” she’d said.
Not sure that was the best advice, but it was the best gift.
Just then, a petite black woman stepped out of the front door. She was dressed in bright coral capris and a sleeveless white blouse, with a short scarf tied around her neck like she was a character in Grease. Her hair was wide and loose and bounced with each step. Cousin Maggie was wearing seersucker Bermuda shorts, a royal blue polo shirt, and a visor. They both were dressed for a day out, though it didn’t seem as if they were going anywhere.
“You okay out here, Maggie? Who’ve we got here?” Her voice contained remnants of an island accent. She pursed her lips and stared at me.
“I’m Teddi Lerner, I grew up here. My mother is Maggie’s cousin, I mean, I’m Maggie’s cousin. I’m here—”
“For the wedding.”