“There’s a community garden. Lydia has a plot. And I can have window boxes and planters on the balcony, of course. I mean, I’ll be left off the garden tour, but if it means I don’t have to manage three floors by myself, it will be worth it. I’ve been run off my feet with no housekeeper since Renata left. Honestly. Who gets married during planting season? That girl doesn’t have the sense God gave little green apples.”
“Mother!” I said sharply, interrupting what I knew was bound to be a detailed recounting of how much work the house was to keep up and how terribly busy she was all the time, interspersed with (and I am not kidding here) exegeses on how hard it was to find good help these days. No normal person would consider the housekeeper’s not planning her wedding around my mother’s gardening schedule a selfish act, but my mother was not normal. She was the star of her own movie. “When are you selling the house?”
“That’s why Sharon’s here. She’s a real estate agent. Her mother and I are on the Garden Society board.”
The mind boggled at the idea of Sharon’s having an actual job. We’d had geometry together first period sophomore year and she had regularly stumbled in late, smelling of cigarettes and coffee, asking to borrow a pencil. And now she was going to sell my mother’s house?
“You can’t sell it now! It’s too soon!” My emotions were already off-kilter, and the idea of her selling the house struck me with dumb terror.
“Too soon for what? If you had to take care of this place all on your own, you wouldn’t be saying that. Why, just last week the wiring in the living room was going absolutely haywire . . .”
My mother launched into a lengthy complaint about finding an electrician, and I tuned her out, trying to get my emotions under control. I hadn’t lived in my parents’ house for years. I went back to visit once a year and spent the entire time arguing with my mother and bumping into the enormous antique furniture that always seemed to be lurking around corners, waiting to surprise me. I had never had any particular feelings toward the house, but right then it seemed like the most important place in the whole world, as if it were a monument slated for demolition, to be replaced by a shopping mall.
“Mother, you’ve lived in this house for over fifty years! How can you sell it?”
“Don’t yell, Madeleine.” My mother flipped her hands into the air, her balletic fingers waving me away. “I’m right here.”
“I’m not yelling,” I said, even though I was.
“Sharon is here to go through the house with me, and I’d appreciate it if you’d stop with your hysterics long enough for us to do that.”
“I’m hardly hysterical,” I said, and that, at least, was true.
On cue, Sharon reappeared at the doorway and my mother turned to her as though she were an enormous relief, which she probably was, for all kinds of reasons. The two of them walked into the front room and I followed, mostly because I didn’t have anything better to do. As my mother guided Sharon around as though they were on the Parade of Homes tour, and Sharon took pictures and made notes to herself, I looked around, trying to see the house through someone else’s eyes. I could hear Sharon’s tone, and I knew she was making a colossal list of things my mother was going to have to fix or change or update. I couldn’t wait to hear that conversation.
My parents’ house had always been a showplace, more museum and shrine to family heritage than home. As a child, I had longed to touch everything, largely because it was off-limits, but also because everything was so beautiful. There were delicate bone china teacups to use for tea parties, tiny porcelain figurines I could pose and shift around to tell the stories that were always running wild through my mind (I was an only child of older parents, and often dreadfully lonely), antique furniture to climb, silver to smudge, and perfectly ironed, handmade table linens to drape myself in for costumes—bride, sheik, Greek goddess, attendant at the queen’s ball.
When I was a child, my parents had maintained a few employees—a cook, a housekeeper as well as a maid, a gardener, and the occasional backup dancer, a handyman or a builder, usually. Having “help” had always seemed old-fashioned and indulgent, but looking at the house now, I understood. It had been built for a large family and lots of guests. The furnishings were from another time, when there had been a full staff to take care of the endless dust, the silver that oxidized without any attention, the linens in need of ironing. And my mother was busy. You could make fun of ladies who lunched all you wanted—really, it was my favorite hobby—but my mother’s work mattered. She had raised and contributed literally millions of dollars to charities. And that, even I had to admit, was more important than vacuuming.
I carried my suitcase upstairs and tossed it into my old bedroom, watching Sharon making another note as I did. Probably “Madeleine should put her suitcase away instead of throwing it on the floor.” Duly noted.
“Can I see the attic?” Sharon asked.