“Meaning well and doing well are two different things, aren’t they?” said my mother.
I smiled at her. Her gray eyes were bright, and she seemed to me nearly as sharp as she’d always been. And the way she’d always been was . . . a bit forgetful. When we were young, it wasn’t a surprise if she didn’t show up for a field trip she’d agreed to chaperone or put two sandwiches in my lunch box and two apples in Hadley’s (and that was when she remembered to actually pack them at all). She was loving but absent, even when she was right in front of me, and over the years, I’d learned to find what she didn’t offer from other people. And when the one person who’d given me most of what I needed left my life, I’d adopted Belle, then married Josh.
The apartment was long and narrow, with the living room, kitchen, and dining room on the first floor, and three small bedrooms on the garden level. I wandered through the dining room into the kitchen. There was a moldy baguette on the counter beside a toaster that barely functioned but which my mother refused to replace. The floor, too, was in desperate need of mopping. Nothing that an hour of elbow grease wouldn’t fix—yet it was clutter, not grime, that had always been my mother’s Achilles’ heel. “Mom,” I called, “don’t you still have Iwona in to clean?”
“She stopped coming,” my mother called back.
A shriveled orange sat in the middle of a matte white bowl on the counter. Except for a canister of coffee, the fridge was nearly empty, too—Hadley had tossed all the out-of-date food, but no one had replaced it. No wonder my mother was as frail as a baby bird. She was running on caffeine and fumes.
“Mom,” I said, walking back to the living room, “your cupboards are completely bare. I can order you groceries if you don’t want to go out.”
She quickly hoisted herself up into a fully seated position. “I’ll have you know that I have plenty to eat.”
I eyed her skeptically. “Oh yeah? Medium roast is enough to sustain you?”
“Laine, love, I like to go out for meals. I always have. Or at least I have since Hank’s been gone.”
It was strange to me that she’d called my father by his first name—he was always your father when she spoke of him—but before I could mention it, she continued.
“I go to Georgie’s for bagels and Zaytoon’s for shawarma and Bar Tabac when I want a good steak and a nice glass of wine. There’s simply no sense in stocking up when it’s just me.”
“No, I guess there’s not,” I allowed. “So, what happened with Iwona?” My mother’s housekeeper had come in weekly for as long as I could remember.
She looked strangely surprised. “What’s that?”
“Iwona,” I repeated. “Why doesn’t she come in to clean for you anymore?”
“Oh!” she said, standing from the sofa suddenly. “Iwona. Iwona. Yes, Iwona. Well, the thing is . . .”
Her eyes darted around, almost like she felt guilty. After a moment, she said, “It’s just that apparently my checks to her bounced.”
I startled. “Are you out of money?”
“I should hope not,” she said with a frown.
That made two of us. But at least it was just her checking account. Both my parents had been raised by parents who’d survived the Great Depression and had passed on their aversion to debt; my father, in particular, had been a careful saver. Odds were, my mother wasn’t transferring cash over regularly like she was supposed to. Fortunately, that was a fixable problem, and those were the best kind. I glanced at my watch. “I hate to change the subject, but we really need to get going if we’re going to make it to Piper’s on time.”
“Piper’s?”
So Piper had forgotten to invite her. Typical. “She wants us to come over for dinner tonight. Hadley and company will be there, too.”
“Well, that sounds lovely!” she said, starting for the door.
“Mom, you’d better get changed.”
She glanced down at her robe. “Oh, right. Yes. I’ll go put on a dress.” Then she looked at me. “All of my girls in one place. What a treat.”
I pushed my lips into a smile, trying to mirror her enthusiasm. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to see my sisters. It was just that Hadley would try to probe my psyche under the guise of conversation, offering me one unwanted nugget of marital advice after another, while Piper would probably sic her dreadful little dog on me and make thoughtless remarks about Belle and then get upset if I so much as hinted that I was hurt. Then my mother would ask me to smooth things over with everyone . . . which is exactly what I would end up doing.
Because as much as I wanted to claim that I’d changed, Ben was still right.
When push came to shove, the only member of my family I was willing to disappoint was myself.
SEVEN
LAINE
“Oh dear, Laine, there’s no hurry,” said my mother as I directed her around a pile of dog poop that had been left in the middle of the sidewalk. Stupid human—it would have taken mere seconds to clean up that mess.
“Sorry, Mom,” I said, slowing my stride. You can take the woman out of New York, but you never take New York out of her pace. Or judging from my mother’s moseying, at least not until she’s in her seventies. “I didn’t mean to rush you. It’s just that we’re already half an hour late.” And I hated being late. It reminded me of the worst parts of my childhood. Missing the bus to summer camp. Showing up for birthday parties after the candles had long been blown out. Overhearing my friend Selena’s mom tell her that she’d asked my mother to arrive an hour earlier than she actually expected her. These, and so many other instances, were why I set all clocks four minutes early.
“Since when has Piper once worried about being tardy?” scoffed my mother. Her arm was linked in mine, and she pulled me closer. “She won’t care. But if you do, love, skip the bouquet next time.” As much as I despised being late, I also hated arriving at someone’s house empty-handed. After parking, we’d stopped at a corner grocer a few minutes earlier to grab some flowers.
“It doesn’t matter—we’re here now,” I told her. Piper’s apartment building was a big glass-and-steel number that extended far into the sky, casting a shadow on the street below it. The doorman ushered us in and dialed Piper.
“So fancy,” said my mother in a stage whisper as the doorman directed us into the elevator, then hit the button for the seventh floor.
“You know Piper,” I said as we began to rise. “She’s always liked nice things.”
“Maybe she should have married Silas,” chirped my mother, referring to Kaia and Jae’s father. “He’s rich and very nice. And then all of my girls would be happily married, just like your father and me,” she added.
I nodded in response, even though I didn’t agree. Even four years after my father’s death, she was still trying to sell the story of their perfect marriage? I supposed it was her right, but I’d married Josh in part because he wasn’t like my father, who was forever muttering about how things—including but not limited to his apartment, his wife, and even sometimes me and my sisters—weren’t the way he wanted them to be. Josh may have been absentminded, and sometimes absent, but he was content with his life.