Tapestry of Fortunes A Novel

IT’S THE NIGHT BEFORE OUR TRIP, AND WE’RE ALL SITTING AROUND the living room, too full to move. Joni made a spectacular pasta pesto and mission fig salad and every one of us overindulged.

“We should go to bed,” Joni says. “We have to get up at five.”

“I’m not getting up at five,” Lise says. “Five-thirty.”

“Five-fifty,” I say.

Renie says nothing. She’s been quiet all night. But then Joni asks again if she’s sure she doesn’t want to come, and it’s as though a dam bursts. “What does she think?” she says. “Does she think I went into that hospital and delivered her and walked out and … and … went shopping? Which P.S. I hate under any circumstances? How can she believe I ever forgot about her? How can she think I didn’t care? Why can’t she see my side of it, how it was so hard for me to do that, how I did it for her?”

None of us answers.

“What kind of parents did she get, anyway? How could they raise such an insensitive child? And one with no apparent curiosity! Isn’t she even curious? Why is she still living in Winona, is she ever going to leave Winona? I don’t even … Is she even mine? Maybe I got the wrong information. My kid wouldn’t be such a jerk. I’m her mother, doesn’t she even want to see what I look like?”

Lise speaks up. “Maybe she—”

“I’m going to bed,” Renie says. “Have a great time, you guys. I won’t be getting up to send you off. But really, I hope you have a great time.”

After she’s left the room, Joni whispers, “Ten bucks she comes.”

“You’re on,” Lise whispers back. To me, “You in?”

“No,” I say.

It’s not funny. Or at least it’s nothing to bet on.

I go upstairs, too, wanting suddenly to be alone. I lie on my bed and look up at the ceiling, wondering if Renie will change her mind. I doubt it. I’m sorry about that. Without her, things won’t be as much fun. If it were anyone else, I’d try to think of some way to persuade her. But Renie is the kind who has to come to things herself, or she won’t come to them at all.





I’M UP EARLY, IN SPITE OF MYSELF. FOUR MINUTES OF FIVE. I turn on my bedside light, turn off the alarm, and sit at the edge of my bed, thinking about how we’ll soon be on our way. In my nightstand drawer is Dennis’s latest letter, received yesterday, and I read it again now.

Call me when you’re about five minutes away. I’m going to station myself at the window, and if you’re still good-looking, I’m not coming out. I’ve got some problems in the hair department, lost the main attraction there. The mane attraction. I’ve got some problems in the physique department, too. Think I won’t elaborate too much there. Suffice it to say I know you’ve gotten older, but I’ve really gotten older.

When I go into the kitchen after having taken a shower, I find Lise at the kitchen table. Something looks strange about her, and then I realize it’s that she doesn’t have her glasses on.

I get some coffee and slide into the booth with her, and she says, “What do you think?”

“About what?”

She points to her face.

“You mean no glasses?”

“Contacts.”

“You got contacts?”

“Yesterday.” She pushes her plate toward me. “Want half of an English muffin?”

I take a bite of muffin, look at her more carefully. “You look good. But you look good with glasses, too.”

“I just thought, you know, when we were together, I didn’t wear glasses.”

She blows some air out of her cheeks. “You know, maybe I … I’m thinking of not going. It’s probably a bad idea.”

“No it isn’t.”

She looks sharply at me. “Do you really think you’re the one to decide that?”

I shrug. “Guess not.”

She gets up to refill her cup. “I’m sorry. It’s just that …” She turns around, leans against the counter with her arms crossed. “I mean, as of now we’re … cordial. And if I go to see him, I could do something that could screw things up and he could end up not talking to me at all.”

“Or you could make things better. At least in terms of your daughter.”

“Maybe.”

“You don’t have to see him. You could just come along for the ride. It’ll be fun; we’ll stop at every funky thing we find. Nobody ever had a bad time on a road trip; it’s been well documented.”

“Yeah,” she says, but I can tell she’s not really listening.

“How about if you don’t decide about seeing him just yet? See how you feel when we get closer. You’ve taken time off from work for a vacation; take a vacation.”

Riley hears the newspaper land on the front porch and runs to the door, barking. “Riley, NO BARK!” Lise yells, and runs to get him. “I don’t want him to wake up Renie,” she tells me, pulling him into the room with us.

“I don’t know if he’ll wake her up. You might.”

“I wish she were coming,” Lise says. “She was up late last night, I heard her banging around in her room and then she went downstairs for a while. I think she’s really conflicted.”

“Maybe we should make noise,” I say. “What if she wakes up later and wishes she’d come with us?”

“I don’t know.”

“Joni, let’s GO!” I yell.

“Shhhhhh!” we hear Joni say, and then her suitcase comes bumping down the steps before her. “Damn it!” she says, chasing after it.

“Well,” I say, “she’s certainly had her chance to wake up.”

We go out into the pale colors of dawn to my SUV. We stash our bags in the way-back and take our places. I’ll drive first, Lise will ride shotgun, Joni will be in the back with Riley. And with Renie, too, apparently, because just as I’m pulling away from the curb, we hear Renie calling, “Wait for me, wait for me, wait for me!” She’s running after us in her hunting-dog pajamas and sneakers, her briefcase over her shoulder and banging into her hip. She jumps in the backseat and says, “What.”

“You’re coming in your pajamas?” Joni asks.

“I’ll change later.”

“Into what?”

Renie looks at her. “Into what I buy to wear.”

“You’re going to buy everything you need?” I ask.

She straightens the collar of her pajama top, pushes her hair off her face. “Didn’t you ever want to do that? Take a trip without packing one single thing?”

Silence. It seems that yes, we all have.

“First purchase, toothpaste,” she says.

“You can borrow mine,” Joni says, and Renie says, “Nope, I’m getting a kind I never had before. I’m doing that this whole trip.”

“What kind of toothpaste have you never had before?” Lise asks.

“Licorice kind, there’s a licorice kind.”

“There is?” I ask.

“See?” Renie says. “Also, I’m getting a light-up toothbrush.” Then, before we can ask, “Target, kids’ section.”

“So … Winona is two and half hours from here …” I say.

“Yes,” Renie says. “I’m going to try. I just sent her an email that I would be at the Acoustic Café at noon.”

“Where is it?” Lise asks.

“You’re not coming. Nobody’s coming. I’m going alone. I’ll just go there and wait for one hour and see if she comes.”

“We have to get you there,” I remind her.

“I’ll have you drop me around the corner,” Renie says. “It’s at 77 Lafayette.”

“How will you recognize each other?” I ask.

“I said I’d put a rose on the table. It’s stupid, but it’s all I could think of. I’ll find a rose somewhere.”

“That’s not stupid,” I say.

We stop to gas up, and Lise puts the address in the GPS. Then we’re all quiet, listening to NPR, until Renie says, “You know that saying Be kind, for everyone is carrying a heavy burden? It’s not true.”

“Yes, it is,” I say.

“Not necessarily,” Joni says.

“Depends on how you define burden,” Lise says. And then, “Oh, look, cows. Riley, look! Look at the big dogs!”

I pull over and Riley stands to look out the open window and regard the cows. He wags his tail slowly.

“Let’s see if they’ll let him sniff them,” Renie says.

“We’ve gone seventeen miles,” I say. “Do you really think we should stop again already?”

“Stopping for gas doesn’t count,” Joni says.

Renie says, “And then after this, I need to pee.”

“I told you not to get that huge-size coffee at the gas station!” Lise says. She snaps on Riley’s leash.

“Oh, okay, I won’t,” Renie says and takes Riley’s leash from Lise. “I’ll take him. You won’t let him get close enough.”

“Don’t let him get hurt,” Lise says. “He’s an old dog. Be careful. Don’t let him get hurt.”

“They’re not bulls,” Renie says. She brings Riley over to the fence and he takes a leisurely pee, pointedly facing away from the cows. Then he walks over to the one nearest him, his tail low and still.

“Riley, this is Elsie the cow,” Renie says.

Elsie lowers her head and Riley sniffs her, then licks her nose. The cow’s head jerks up and Lise leans out the window to say, “Okay, that’s enough, back in the car. Come on.”

Renie turns around. “How about if I just take his leash off and let him stampede a little bit?” But she gets back into the car, and after I pull onto the road, she says, “Seriously, though. About the burden thing? Some people have no more burden than an avocado going bad.”

“That’s not true!” I say, and so we pass the time until we come to a truck stop–type gas station, where Renie says she’ll find some clothes and change in the ladies’ room. The rest of us walk Riley. Again.

“I can’t believe she walked into that store wearing pajamas,” Joni says.

Lise shrugs. “Everybody wears pajamas outside now. When Sandy was in high school they had to ban kids showing up for class in their sleepwear.”

“Yeah, well, Renie’s not a kid,” Joni says, and Lise says, “Oh?”

“I’M THE PERSON YOUR MOTHER WARNED YOU ABOUT?” Joni says, when Renie gets back in the car, about what’s emblazoned across the front of the T-shirt she’s wearing over a pair of surprisingly not-bad jeans.

Renie shrugs. “It was this or HOW CAN I LOVE YOU IF YOU WON’T LIE DOWN?”

“See, you’re just being provocative right off the bat,” Lise says. “This is how you get when you’re scared.”

“What?” Renie says. I tell her I’ve got a plain white blouse and a black blazer she can wear, and she goes back inside to change. I’m nervous for her. I wish she wasn’t the first stop. I wish I could know that her daughter would show up and give her a chance. But I suppose that’s what this journey is about for all of us: finding out.


ABOUT TEN MINUTES outside of Winona, there’s a sign for homemade pie. It’s tacked onto a rural mailbox in shaky handwriting. “Ohhhhh, look, look, look, look!” Joni says. “Let’s go!”

I pull into the driveway and Renie says, “No, no, don’t stop. We have to get there.”

I look at my watch. “We practically are there. And it’s only ten-forty.”

“Too close,” Renie says. “These roads aren’t nearly as fast as the freeway. And what if we run into a train crossing? Plus I have to buy a rose. And I have to comb my hair and put on some … I don’t know, ChapStick. I have to get centered, take a walk by myself, I’ll take a walk before I go in. I have to calm down. I really have to calm down and think about what I want to say to her, I have to get ready, you guys, come on!” She sighs. “Sorry.” She closes her eyes, rubs her forehead. “I’m obviously … Sorry.”

“It’s homemade pie,” Joni says. “Let’s at least see if she makes her own crust. I’ll bet she does. I’ll bet she puts vinegar in it, too.”

“Okay, listen,” Renie says. “Why don’t you drop me off and then come back? And then you can spend as much time as you like with Betty Crocker. You can come and get me anytime after one o’clock. I’ll just wait for you.”

Joni looks up at the house. “Let me just see what kinds she has. Would that be okay?”

“Can we just go?” Renie says.

“All right, but remember where this place is,” Joni says. “We’re coming back.”

“Isn’t there a way to bookmark it or something on your GPS?” Lise asks.

“I’ll remember where it is,” I say. “Although I guess I could figure out how to do it. It might be this button. Or no, wait, I think it’s—”

“Go!” Renie says, and I do.

We ride mostly in silence to the café, and I pull over to the curb about half a block away from it. Renie gets out of the car, straightens her blouse, tucks the yellow rose she swiped from someone’s garden beneath her blazer. It was a crime mitigated by the fact that she left a five-dollar bill in the mailbox.

Not one of us says “Good luck,” or anything else for that matter; but I can feel the hope we all have for this to go well. Renie walks quickly away from us, turns back and waves, smiles, and goes on.

“Oh, this is awful,” Lise says. “It’s like your first kid’s first day at school. I’m so anxious. I think I need a beta-blocker.”

“Have mercy on her, Haley,” Joni says. “Give her a chance.”

“Amen,” I say.


BETTY CROCKER IS a man. After we knock on the door, it’s opened by a tall, hefty guy, maybe early eighties, wearing a T-shirt, baggy pants, suspenders, and brown leather slippers that have seen their better days. He has what looks like a few days’ growth of white stubble on his face. He stares at the three of us standing there and finally says, “What do youse want?” His upper torso jerks when he speaks, as though someone’s pulled the string to make him talk.

Joni says, “Pies?”

He leans in closer, cups a hand around one ear. “What’s that?”

“Pies!” Joni says, louder.

“What about ’em?”

“You have a sign on your mailbox saying HOMEMADE PIES,” I say.

“So what?”

Lise begins to laugh, but stops herself. She says loudly, “So we thought you sold homemade pies.”

He straightens. “Youse going to buy some? I ain’t got time otherwise.”

“Well, we’d like to see them, first,” Joni says.

“Ain’t nothing to see, they’re pie, only littler. Little pies. You want ’em or not?”

“I guess not,” I say, and start to leave, but Joni takes my arm.

She steps closer to the man. “What kind you got?”

“What kind you want?”

“What kind you got?”

Lise and I look at each other. “I think we should go,” she says, low.

“Oh, I got what you want,” the man says. “Don’t you worry about it.”

“Okay, that’s it,” I say, and take off toward the car, Lise behind me.

But Joni stays. “How about apple?” we hear her say, and we turn around, waiting.

“Stay right there,” the man says, and he comes back with a small pie that he hands Joni.

She smells it. “How much is it?”

“How much you want to pay?” the man asks.

“Three dollars,” Joni says.

“Three dollars it is.”

Joni opens her purse and Lise puts her hands over her mouth and says, “Oh no, don’t open your purse, don’t open your purse.”

But the man stands there and does nothing until Joni hands him three dollars. Then he gives her back one. She turns to look at the two of us, poised for flight, and makes a face I can’t decipher. No one says anything. Joni turns back to the man and says, “About your crust.”

“What about it?”

“What do you put in it?”

“I put in it what needs to be in it.”

“Flour, sugar …” Joni says.

“Yeah, course.”

“Vinegar?”

“Course.”

“Butter?”

“Nah. Don’t need no butter.”

Joni nods. “Lard, then. Do you put lard in? I’ll bet you put lard in.”

“What are you, a reporter?”

“I’m a chef.”

The man stands there. Blinks. “Then what the hell are you doing buying a pie from me? Whyn’t you make your own?”

“We’re on a road trip,” Joni says. She points to Lise and me. “All of us.”

“Where youse going?”

“To see people from our past,” Joni says.

“That so.”

“That’s so.”

“Well, I might could give youse some more pies, then. Keep in the car, might get hungry.”

“Do you have any blueberry?”

“No. But I got some pecan ’bout lay you out flat.”

“We’ll take a few.”

The man smiles. “All right. Come on in.”

And Joni goes in. So what can we do? We follow her.


WE GET BACK TO the café at one after one. Renie is standing outside, holding the blazer. Her face is determinedly neutral. Joni, who is driving, pulls into a parking place across the street, beeps the horn, and Renie comes running over. She gets into the back and snaps her seat belt on. “Next stop,” she says.

Silence, and then I turn around and say, “So …?”

Nothing.

Lise, sitting with arm around Riley’s neck, gives me a look that says, Don’t push.

Then Renie says, “You know what, it wasn’t a good idea. But hey, I got something out of it. If someone writes to me now about whether or not to see the kid they gave up at birth, I’ll know what to do. I’ll say, ‘Either that or shove toothpicks under your nails. One by one. Slowly.’ ”

“What happened?” Lise asks.

“On to Cleveland!” Renie says.

“Des Moines,” Lise says, quietly.

“What?”

“It’s Des Moines,” Lise says. “That’s the next stop.”

“Oh. Right. Okay, then, on to Des Moines!”

“Okay,” Joni says. “But can I just run in that café and pee?”

“Sure,” Renie says. “They have great sandwiches. Also a great bathroom. I visited it a few times. That’s mostly what I did. I sat at the table with really good posture and I went back and forth to the bathroom.”

“Did she come?” I ask.

“Oh, yes,” Renie says. “She was there the whole time, watching me. Then at about five of one, she dropped a note on my table and walked out. Yup. Dropped a note, gave me a look you might call withering, and walked out. She’s quite pretty. Really pretty girl, big brown eyes, heart-shaped face. Tall.”

“Read us the note,” Joni says.

“Can’t. I threw it away. It was mostly just her talking about what nerve I had, coming here and acting like we’d just pick up like old friends. Oh, and how stupid the rose was.”

“Oh, Renie,” I say.

“It doesn’t matter,” she says. “It was just a goof, really, I just wanted …”

But then her face falls and Lise moves closer to her, puts her arm around her. Joni pulls out of the parking place and starts to drive off, and a young woman comes running up behind us, yelling “Wait! Wait! Hey! WAIT!”

Joni stops the car and Renie undoes her seat belt.

“That’s your daughter, all right,” Lise says.

“I’ll be right back,” Renie says. “Go and get some lunch, I’ll be right back.”

Joni pulls back into the parking place and tells Renie, “Take as long as you want.”

The girl is pretty. And I’m so glad she came back. I watch Renie walk up to her and say something, and the girl nods. Then they walk off together. Renie’s head is down, her hands in her pockets; she’s listening.

“I’m getting the sandwich that takes the most time to make,” I say.

“I’m going to tell them to make the bread first,” Joni says.

None of us is hungry. We all ate pie for lunch, courtesy of Mr. Brooks Daniels, who turned out to be swell. He invited us in, put Chet Baker on his turntable, cleared a stack of books, magazines, and a coffee-stained Farmer’s Almanac off his kitchen table, and sat us down to sample his wares. He made good pie, every single kind was really good. Eating it, I had one of those punches delivered to the solar plexus: Penny would have adored this place.

“Who all youse going to see?” Brooks asked, and Joni told him.

“It’s not always a good idea, digging around in the past,” he said. “I done that once. I went to see the girl who got away. And I remembered real soon why I let her get away.”

“Well, then you knew,” I said. “Then you could put it to rest.”

He grabbed a toothpick from a ceramic cowboy-boot holder at the center of his table. It was on a lazy Susan, along with salt and pepper, soy sauce, honey, and many kinds of hot sauce, including one called Ass Whoopin’ Red Neck.

“I wouldn’t say I put it to rest,” he said. “Nope. Oh, I knew we’s never gon’ get together after all. But how she used to be in them days still comes along and snatches me up, now and then. And ever’ once in a while, I dream of her real strong. Suzanne.”

He’d been staring out the window, saying all this; his voice had lost some vitality. But then he looked at Joni and spoke so loudly I jumped. “I’ll tell you something. My wife was a better person by far. But I never did let my wife have all the real estate in my heart. And then after my wife died and I seen Suzanne, well, I learnt what a mistake I made, holding out from Estelle that way. She was a good and gentle soul, she deserved a far sight better’n I give her.”

I scraped the last of the pecan pie from my plate and said, “You can’t help loving who you love.”

He looked over at me, and in that instant I saw the man he used to be, saw that he must have been quite handsome in his day. “Well, that was my question, you see. I believe I done my wife wrong, being stingy that way, and maybe there was something I could have done about it, but ain’t nothing I can do about it now. Is the problem.”

He pushed himself away from the table and went into the living room. He came back with a photograph he dusted with his sleeve before he showed us. “This is her,” he said. “Long time ago.”

“Your wife?” I asked.

“No. Suzanne.” He took off the back of the frame and pulled out another photo. “This one here’s my wife. I alternate.”

“Ah,” I said, and held back a smile. His wife had a kindness in her face, but Suzanne was a bombshell.

“On account of what’s the difference now?” he asked. “I alternate, and that way I feel like I have some company coming in and out of here.”

Joni looked at her watch and gasped. “Uh-oh, we’ve got to go and get our friend.” She started to gather the plates, and Brooks took them from her hand. “Never mind that. But wait one second. You might want to order some pies from me sometime. I’d box ’em up good and drive ’em on up to you.” From a kitchen drawer, he pulled out a paper napkin, wrote down his information. Same shaky writing as the sign outside. A worthy souvenir, if nothing else, I thought. “My card,” he told Joni, handing her the napkin.

Now, in the café, the three of us seated at a table by the high windows, Lise says, “This trip is great already. I’m really very happily surprised. It’s kind of like the Christmas I was ten years old and I got the thing I wanted that I never thought I’d get.”

“Which was?” I ask.

“A BB gun.”

“What did you do with it?” Joni asks.

“I shot stuff. Shot boys.”

“Really?” I asked.

“I missed, every time. But yeah, I tried to shoot these boys who were always shooting birds.”

“I’m sorry you missed,” I say.

Beneath the table, I spy a wadded-up piece of paper. I hold it up to show the others. “What are the chances?”

“That might not be it,” Lise says.

I uncrinkle the paper. “It is it.” I start to read it aloud. But then the waitress comes and I put the note in my lap and order the first thing I see on the menu. Which is the ham hoagie. Which Riley will be very happy about. Speaking of the trip being like Christmas.

The waitress finishes taking our order and I turn again to reading the note:

Miss Browne,

I’m sitting across the room from you. I recognized you when you first came in, you didn’t have to put a rose on the table and especially shove it to the edge, no one could miss it. Kind of a stupid idea, really. I was going to talk to you, but now I don’t really want to. My mom thought it might be fine, but she also has always told me to go with my gut and my gut is sort of screaming at me to get out of here. It’s embarrassing to think about even introducing myself to you and anyway, why should I put myself out for you at all? I’ve babysat for a lot of infants, and every time I do, I look into their eyes and I see such trust. I don’t know how you could have done what you did. Okay, you didn’t want me or you couldn’t take care of me or whatever but you just gave me away and that was that. And now you’re guilty or curious or something and you call and I’m supposed to come running. Which kind of pisses me off that that’s exactly what I did. I don’t think there’s anything you can say to me that will make up for all those times I wondered what was wrong with me that you couldn’t even be bothered to send a birthday card. Although you probably forgot when my birthday is. Anyway, I’m just going to go and would ask that you don’t try to contact me again. You have your life and I have mine.

Haley

I look up.

“She’s mean,” Joni says.

Lise says, “She’s hurt.”

“She’s both.” I look at the note again. “I think I should keep this in case Renie ever wants it.”

“Maybe,” Joni says. “But don’t give it to her now. Wow. I wonder what they’re talking about.”

Silence, while we all ponder that.

We take turns going to the bathroom, and then our food arrives. We all sit staring at it. And the next time the waitress comes, we ask her to wrap it to go. Across the street, I see Riley pull his head back in from the partially open window. Wait till he sees this.

We are on the way out to the car to wait for Renie when we see her coming down the block. She waves, smiling, and when she gets in the car, she says, “I’m going to come back and visit in a few weeks. I saw the outside of where she lives. It’s nice. She has a window box. And she’s like me, a little. I really think I can see myself in her. And … I guess that’s all I want to say right now.”

Renie drives, Lise is up front with her, and Riley, Joni, and I are in back. We fall quiet, listening to the radio and to the smooth-voiced woman on GPS saying things like “In half of a mile, right turn.” Then Joni takes her seat belt off and lies down, resting her head on Riley’s rump.

“Put your seat belt on,” Lise tells her, and Joni, her eyes still closed, says, “They’re dangerous.”

“What?” I say.

“They’re dangerous. That’s what my Aunt Peg always said. She was a pistol. She lived to be one hundred and two and she never did wear a seat belt and she got in a wreck once and she didn’t get hurt at all.”

I cross my arms, look out the window at the scenery passing by: the budding trees, a string of identical brick houses with white wooden front porches, a strip mall with a coffee shop called Down with Ground. We pass an empty playground, swings moving in the wind as though ghost children are in them. I take my seat belt off, too.

“All right, both of you put those seat belts on,” Lise says, not even turning around, and then, “If Renie has to stop this car …”

I put my belt on. Then, after a minute, Joni does, too, but she stays lying down, her head still on Riley’s rump. As for Riley, his head is in my lap. I rest my head against the window and close my eyes. I think of Michael, and what I think of as the miracle that happened yesterday.

“So tomorrow’s the day, huh?” Michael had said, after I’d come in and settled myself in the chair next to his bed.

“Yup. We’re leaving at six A.M. Or so we say, anyway.”

Outside the room, I saw a flash of someone rushing by.

“What’s the first stop?”

“Depends,” I said. It happened again, that flash. A woman. I thought it was Phoebe. I stood up, headed for the door.

“Let her in,” Michael said.

I turned toward him. “What?”

“Let her in. But if I … All right, look. Let her in, but you stay. If I want you to go, I’ll raise my right arm to scratch my head. If I want you to get rid of her, I’ll raise my left arm.”

“Okay,” I said. “You’re sure?”

He nodded. I flew out the door. I realized I’d been wanting so much for him to let her in. In the last couple of days, he’d told me more and more about her, how they had just gotten engaged when he was diagnosed with leukemia. How they had frozen sperm before he started treatment. How at first the treatment had seemed as though it was going to work, but then it didn’t. How he then wanted to cut ties with Phoebe so that she could find someone else and not suffer any longer on his account. “But are you maybe changing your mind?” I’d asked him.

“No.”

“Because if you are—”

“I said no!”

“Fine,” I’d said, a little miffed.

I went into the hall and saw no one, so I started for the lobby. Knowing that I was leaving the next day, I wanted him to have someone he could really talk to. When the other volunteer, Karen Night, came to stay with him, he never talked. He slept. Probably because I wore him out, but also I thought he talked to me because he liked me. As I did him. I tried not to think about the fact that he might not be there when I got back from my trip, but it was a possibility.

I looked for Phoebe in the lobby; no sign. I wondered if he’d let me call her. Or if he would call her. I was deep in thought when I bumped into someone. Phoebe.

“Oh!” I said. “You’re here!”

“I’m going,” she said, color rising in her face. “Okay?”

“No. No, I was coming to get you. He wants to see you.”

She stood still, eyes wide.

“Come with me, he wants to see you.”

We moved to the wall, out of the way of a medication cart coming through. Phoebe said, “Who are you?”

“My name is Cece Ross, and I’m a volunteer. I’ve just been sitting with Michael every day, just to talk, and—”

“And to watch for me,” she said, though it was without rancor.

“Well, yes. But he wants to see you now.”

“He does?”

“Yes.”

“Are you sure?”

“He just now asked for you to come.”

She nodded.

Together, we walked down the hall and into Michael’s room. I went to the chair in the corner and sat. Phoebe moved slowly to the bedside, clutching her purse to her middle. “Michael,” she said, and her voice cracked. She began to cry, hard, dropped her purse and put her hands over her face. Michael raised his right arm to scratch his head. And I could not for the life of me remember if I was supposed to stay or leave when he did that. I stood, pointed to myself, then to the door, with my eyebrows raised. Go? He nodded solemnly.

I walked out quietly, closing the door behind me.

I went to Annie’s office and found her on the phone. She held up a finger and I stood before her. “May I call you right back?” Annie said and hung up. Then, to me, “What happened?”

“Phoebe’s with Michael.”

Annie jumped up out of her chair, and I said, “No, he wants her to be.”

“Oh!” She sat back down. “Oh, I’m so glad.”

“Me, too.”

“And on your last day!”

“Yes.”

“You will come back after your trip, won’t you?”

“Of course. I’ll go through the whole training then.”

She smiled. “Good. We’ll be glad to have you.” She looked toward the front door, where a dark-haired woman was being wheeled in, a number of people in attendance, a few of them weeping. “I have to go and admit someone,” she said. “Have a wonderful time on your trip. It’s going to be so much fun!”

I thought of that famous Savannah cemetery statue, the one of the woman holding a plate in each hand, balancing them perfectly. That’s who Annie reminded me of. I thought of how much I admire people who are able to not let one side of life cancel out the other, who can face up to opposing sides of it fully, often at the same time.

I walked home, thinking about Michael, wondering what he and Phoebe were talking about. My third day there, I’d read him some haiku, and we’d talked about how much we both liked it, the simplicity of the form. I’d made one up on the spot, a silly one about robins and their blue eggs. And then he’d made one up:

On a windy day

Her hair lifts and my heart breaks

And that was before

After a moment, I’d said, “That’s lovely.” And then, “Phoebe?”

He’d shrugged.

I’d known enough not to say any more.

I hope she’s with him now, as close to him as she can be.

I listen to the hypnotic sound of the tires on the road, and feel myself falling asleep.

When I awaken, Lise and Joni are talking about people they were mean to in high school. “Patricia Gunderson,” I say, my eyes still closed. “Everybody was mean to her, she was the it girl for meandom. She wore black cat-eye glasses with rhinestones. She wore sweater guards and white ankle socks, and she had a voice like a foghorn. She carried a bucket purse with two rabbits’ feet, pink ones. She had really frizzy hair and she wore velvet bow barrettes on either side of her head every day. She drank coffee at lunch and her only friends were teachers. She’s probably some famous artist who lives in Portland now and does interviews about her dopey classmates who had no idea how ahead of her time she was.”

“Do you wish you could apologize to her?” Joni asks.

I open my eyes and look down at her. “Yes. Maybe. Yeah, I would. I would like to say, ‘Patricia, I just want to say I’m sorry for being so mean to you in high school. Although I wasn’t the meanest, I think you’ll agree, I think you’ll agree that Annie Whitmore was the meanest.’ ”

“And what do you think Patricia would say?” Lise asks.

I shrug. “I don’t know. Probably, ‘Who are you?’ ”

Lise turns up the radio for “Long Cool Woman in a Black Dress.”

After the song finishes, she says, “That’s one of those songs that, if it comes on when you’re driving around, you just feel hot.”

Renie, her mouth full of red licorice, points out the window. “Rook! A chatu parror!” She turns into the strip mall, where there’s a tattoo parlor.

“You’re getting a tattoo?” I ask.

“I am!”

Frankly, I’m surprised she doesn’t have one already. She parks in front of Branded! and turns off the engine.

Lise says, “I don’t know, Renie. It doesn’t look all that clean.”

But Renie’s out of the car and on her way in.

Lise turns around to look at me and Joni. “It doesn’t look clean.”

“Well, let’s just go in,” I say. “Maybe it’s better on the inside.”

“Yeah, and maybe it’s worse,” Lise says.

“I might get one,” Joni says, shyly. “Just on my ankle. A little bitty one. Maybe just my initials or a butterfly.”

“Oh, please,” Lise says. She looks at me. “Are you going to get one, too?”

“Not on your life.”

“Fine, you can sit with me and read magazines. They probably have Modern Mercenary.”

We go inside. The place is dim, but not really dirty. There’s a black tile floor, fluorescent lighting, and the walls are painted red. New age music is playing, which really surprises me. I suppose the guy doing the artwork wants to keep calm.

There are three chairs with armrests, big comfortable things that look like what you sit in to give blood, and a couple of straight-back chairs along the wall. Renie is standing by one of the big chairs where an overweight, heavily tattooed man with multiple face studs is sitting on a stool and holding a tattoo gun, apparently getting ready to work on his client, a hypermuscular young man who looks to be in his twenties. The client is draped, and his arm, which already has tattoos, shines with some sort of preparation the big guy has just sprayed on him. The big guy is wearing a black plastic apron over a black shirt and black jeans. And now he snaps on black vinyl gloves.

“Hey,” he says. “Y’all want tattoos, too? Getting busy!”

“No, we’re just waiting for her,” I say, gesturing toward Renie.

“I might want one,” Joni says. “Just a little one.”

“Well, we got those,” the guy says. “Got a lot of real pretty little ones. Flowers and birds and such. I’m Eddie, by the way. Y’all have a look at the sample books we got, we got pictures of everything we do. Y’all like sunsets? They’re my favorite to do. Course they take a long time, a few hours.”

“I think I just want a little butterfly,” Joni says.

“That don’t take no time at all,” Eddie says. “I can have you on your way in ’bout half an hour.”

He turns his attention to Renie. “Okay, so you ready?” He tells us, “Your friend wanted to see one done ’fore she decides for sure. Gon’ watch Michelangelo at work here!”

He turns on his tattoo gun, and a horrible sound fills the air. It’s like a dentist’s drill, only worse. He starts drawing on the client’s arm.

“How long does it take to heal?” Renie asks. Shouts.

“ ’Bout two weeks,” Eddie says. “And you can’t be touching it with a towel or nothing like that.”

“Does it hurt?” Renie asks the guy who’s getting the tattoo.

He shrugs. “It’s just like a hot scratch. No biggie.”

The tattoo gun whines and whines.

“Okay, I’m just going to wait outside,” I say.

“I think we’ll go and get some ice cream,” Lise says.

“I’m coming,” Joni says.

“Don’t you want your little butterfly?” the guy asks, and Joni says, “No, thank you.”

“Hold up,” Renie says, and the guy says, “Aw, come on, you’re leaving, too?”

“I’d love to do it, but I didn’t realize how much time it took. We’re on a trip and … I gotta go.”

She walks quickly over to join us and we go outside.

“What were you going to get?” Joni asks Renie.

“I kind of liked the little fairy kneeling coyly in the flowers,” Renie said. “But then there was also the viper with his mouth wide open. My favorite, though, was the woman dressed in a black leather bra and panties and black nylons, straddling a giant tongue. I had one all picked out for each of the rest of you, too. Lise was going to get a caduceus on her deltoid; Joni was going to get a pineapple on her ankle; and for you, Cece? A pithy aphorism, just above your sacrum, in Angelina Jolie script.”

“Seriously, do you really want a tattoo?” I ask.

“Not anymore,” Renie says. She climbs into the back of the car and slams the door. “Somebody else drive.”

“I think it looked a little like hell in there,” Joni says. “Did anybody else think it looked like hell in there? Those red walls, and all that black.”

“They had a devil tattoo,” Renie says. “Also a Jesus and a Buddha one. Never let it be said that they aren’t open-minded in hell.”

“Has anyone ever been to Des Moines?” Lise asks, buckling herself into the driver’s seat. She’s told the others about her plans to go there and see her ex-husband.

It’s quiet in the car, so I guess not.

“If I would have predicted what I’d be doing at forty-two years old, I would never have said I’d be on a road trip to see my ex-husband. In Des Moines, of all places.”

“What do you mean, of all places?” Joni says.

“I don’t know,” Lise says. “Des Moines just sounds like a city that you would use in a joke or something, like New Jersey.”

“You’re a snob,” Joni says.

“The original name for Des Moines was Fort Raccoon,” I say, helpfully.

“How do you know?” Renie asks.

“Fourth grade, Mrs. Menafee. We had to learn interesting things about cities and I got Des Moines. It also has the largest gold dome in North America, on the state capitol.”

“See?” Lise says. “That’s not interesting. If that’s all you can—”

“Every place is interesting if you open your eyes,” I say.

“That’s so bumper sticker,” Lise says.

“It’s true!”

“She tried to find me a few times,” Renie says, and it appears we’re on to another subject.

“Haley?” Lise says.

“Yeah.”

“Why didn’t she find you? Everybody’s findable these days. Santa Claus has two websites.”

“I don’t know. That’s just what she said. That she tried.”

“What’s she like?” I ask.

“Well, the reason I said she’s like me is that she’s guarded, like I can be. Even after she came back, she was pretty defensive, but then I expected that. Mostly we just kept sneaking looks at each other, and a lot of the content of what we said was lost to that. You know: Oh my God, it’s my mother, oh my God, it’s my daughter. I did, you know, apologize, after a fashion. And she accepted it, after a fashion. It went like this: I said there was a lot I’d like to explain to her about the circumstances of her birth. And she said she’d like to hear about that sometime. So.”

“So did you really feel like you were her mother?” Joni asks.

“I don’t know. I felt something. What does it feel like to be a mother?”

Quiet, and then Joni says, “You know those doors where you go in and you can’t come out?”

“What doors can you go in and not come out?” Renie asks.

“They’re in mousetraps.”

“Being a mother feels like being in a mousetrap?” Renie asks, laughing.

“A humane one,” Joni says. “You’re trapped because you’re always on call. Even when they get older, they still need you.”

Lise’s cellphone rings. Sandy, she mouths, and starts talking to her daughter about how to use the washer. Now that Lise isn’t there, Sandy has deigned to pay a visit.

“They especially need you when you’re not there,” Joni says.

“Thanks a lot,” Renie says.

“I didn’t mean … I just meant that … Look how Sandy has called Lise twice on this trip, and you know she never calls her.”

“Yes she does,” Renie says. And then, after a moment, “Yeah. You’re right, she never does.”

“We’re not too far from Des Moines,” Lise says, into the phone. “And we’re having a great time.”

We. It’s good to have friends, that fleshy stockade.

Lise sighs. “Nothing! I’d just like to see him again. It’s been a long time. Cece is seeing someone she hasn’t seen for—”

She listens, then says, “Okay, you know what, Sandy? You’re getting way ahead of—”

She listens again. “No. No I’m not. Will you just … All right, look. I’ll talk to you later.”

She hangs up.

Silence, and then Renie asks to have the radio turned up.

Lise adjusts herself in a way that looks like she’s either casting something off or readjusting it so that it will hang better on her.

“Good store, good store!” Joni yells, pointing to a cooking store called Pannifed, and we all pitch forward when the brakes are put on.

When we come out, Lise is bitching that all the new pots Joni bought won’t fit in the kitchen and Joni is bitching that Lise bought a coffee press that is the wrong kind. Renie bought polka-dot coffee mugs, a variety of fancy salts, and almond-scented dish detergent.

I. Bought. Nothing.