“You have to wonder,” Emily said.
“I know.”
“Well, I’m ready for something to eat. How about you?”
Later they agreed the A chef must not have been on duty. The hash was salty, to Emily’s taste, the pancakes dry. Next time she’d try the waffles.
As they crossed the parking lot to her Subaru, Emily eyed a scruffy ring of black men—not teenagers either—by the doors of the Giant Eagle. They weren’t panhandlers, they didn’t carry your bags to your car for a dollar, yet they were there every day, rain or shine, smoking and talking on their cell phones, and the police didn’t seem to bother them.
After she dropped off Arlene, as she was waiting for the light at Braddock, she locked her doors. She always did, no matter where she was, though she couldn’t deny she was extra vigilant as she made her way through East Liberty.
At home Rufus didn’t come downstairs to greet her. She found him in her bedroom. He barely lifted his head, regarding her blearily, his eyes bloody, as if he’d risen from the depths.
“What if I were a burglar? Would you just let me waltz in and take whatever I wanted?”
He let his head drop and puffed out a sigh.
“Don’t let me disturb your beauty sleep.”
She didn’t blame Arlene for her hysteria. What was more vulnerable than an old lady living alone? The city had always been a dangerous place. The world was. At least part of the fault, Emily thought, lay with the Post-Gazette , giving these horror stories so much coverage. What she resented was how easily she’d been infected, how quickly these groundless fears turned her cowardly. She spent the rest of the day in the garden, planting her summer bulbs, glad to be getting it done, and yet she kept looking up from her work, spade in hand, and glancing around, as if someone might be sneaking up on her.
LOVE, EMILY
She didn’t want anything for Mother’s Day, other than her children’s happiness. The arrangement Kenneth sent was nice—Emily set it on the coffee table, where Rufus sniffed the pink asters as if they might be edible—but meant less to her than his call.
She didn’t have to wait for it. Like every Sunday, she’d come back from coffee hour and was plowing through the Times when the phone rang. His reliability was a gift in itself, and if this eagerness to please could make him timid, and distant when he felt he’d failed, he was also like his father in that he would never purposely hurt anyone, a trait Emily, not blessed with an even temperament, respected and envied.
“Happy Mother’s Day, Mom.”
“Now it is.” She thanked him for the flowers.
“Not my doing.”
“Still, they’re very nice. So, what’s new in New England?”
Not a lot. Everyone was doing okay. After much discussion, Sam was registering for summer semester.
“That’s wonderful,” Emily said.
“We’ll see.”
“You don’t sound convinced.”
“I don’t know how to say this. He and school just don’t mix.”
“I gather, but what’s the alternative?”
“Exactly.”
“All you can do is keep encouraging him. I’d love for Margaret to talk to him.”
“It’s an idea,” he said, one of Henry’s favorite evasions.
“In any case, please tell him I’m rooting for him.”
“I will.”
“Ah! Important question: will it interfere with him coming to Chautauqua?”
“I knew you’d ask that. His finals are the third week of July.”
“Perfect.”
From there they branched off to more general topics, giving her a chance to share how tired she was of the election, and the desperate state of the world. He’d have to ask Arlene about the Pirates, she was done with their shenanigans. The weather was wet, but her garden was coming along. Rufus was still hanging in there. The Millers’ was still for sale. As always, she felt she had no news to report, as if her life had reached a kind of stasis.
“All righty,” he said, and “I love you, Mom,” and “Happy Mother’s Day” again before saying goodbye. She’d turned down the stereo to talk, and when she set the phone back in its charger, the house went quiet around her.
Margaret would call when she called. Emily had learned long ago there was no profit in trying to anticipate her, and dialed up the volume again and went back to the arts section, continuing with a review of the Emerson Quartet she’d been enjoying, but instead of imagining herself in the balcony at Lincoln Center, she found herself fretting about Sam, and then about Sarah, who’d lost her job in Chicago. The worst thing in the world for Sarah would be to move back in with Margaret—for both of them—and Emily wondered if she should offer to help, or whether, like so many of her overtures, it would be taken the wrong way.
As a mother, she couldn’t say she’d done her best with Margaret, but she’d tried beyond the point where others might have reasonably given up. Henry had, worn down by the cycle of promises that turned out to be lies, the brief clean periods between treatment and relapse, the lost jobs and credit card debt. Though she understood it perfectly, his withdrawal from their daughter was perhaps the greatest sorrow in Emily’s life. Through everything, she’d always included Margaret in their plans, knowing, often, in those terrible years, that her invitations would be ignored or flatly rejected, and when accepted, the results would be disastrous. For Emily, Margaret’s absence was a sadness; for the rest of the family, a relief. Kenneth, like Henry, was embarrassed by her, as were Sarah and Justin, who seemed to have taken her cautionary example to heart, feeding themselves and getting good grades so they could escape to a more orderly life—but that was the past, Margaret would insist. She’d been sober nearly four years now. She liked to talk about a blank slate, and in some ways their relationship had changed, but in others it felt like the same struggle they’d waged since Margaret turned thirteen. While she was more open and affectionate—showily at times, as if in her gratitude she could no longer control her emotions—Emily suspected it wasn’t entirely genuine. Likewise her constant references to making amends and surrendering to a higher power, when more than anything Emily wanted her to take responsibility for her life, past and present. The money troubles, the parade of boyfriends, the inability to follow through on all but the most immediate plans—these were the same problems that had plagued her forever.
Dismayed at the arc of her thoughts—today of all days—she folded the paper and took her cup and saucer into the kitchen for a refill. Gazing out the back door at the dripping trees as she waited for the kettle to warm, she wondered at the whole chain of continuity running back through her mother to her Grandmother Benton before her and down through Margaret to Sarah. Had her mother been as unhappy with her? Because they battled just as often and hard. In her later years she complained that Emily never visited, that they always had to visit Pittsburgh to see the grandchildren, an accusation Emily disputed bitterly, since it seemed she was always driving to Kersey. Always, never—their positions were absolute. The old house was a bungalow, and when she and Henry visited, they stayed in Emily’s room, the rose-patterned wallpaper untouched since the Depression, the ceilings water-stained, and by the second day she was ready to leave. How many times did she have to win her freedom, and wasn’t it unnatural to feel this way? Because she did love her mother. It was grueling, this confusion. She wished she could express this to Margaret—as if, just by being mothers and daughters, they were all caught in something larger, something ultimately not their fault.
She returned to Henry’s chair, arranged the afghan over her lap and pulled the lamp closer so she could work on the puzzle, the bulb warming her, but within minutes pushed it aside, threw off the afghan and stood, waking Rufus. He watched her as she passed, headed upstairs, but didn’t follow, and she was grateful. For what she was about to do, she needed privacy.
She climbed toward the second floor deliberately, head bowed, her eyes on the risers, certain she was making a mist
ake. Whether she was doing penance or indulging herself, she regularly performed this rite, pawing through her horde of treasure like a curator, knowing it would change nothing. Like Margaret with chocolate, she couldn’t resist.
In her room she ceremoniously faced her dresser. It had been her mother’s, salvaged from the old house and expensively refinished. The top drawer was shallow, a repository for baggage tags and travel alarms, shoehorns and passports. Her mother had kept everything, and opening it after her death, Emily had been staggered. Much of the clutter dated from Emily’s girlhood. It was here that she found her birth certificate, and her silver rattle, and her father’s wallet. Among these keepsakes, tied like a gift with a yellow ribbon, was a bundle of hand-drawn cards Emily had forgotten making. Browned at the edges, her penciled hearts and flowers and cakes and houses celebrated the unalloyed joy of the only child. Here, in all seasons, were the smiling stick figures under a smiling sun. The first time she’d leafed through them she’d been abashed at not just her clumsy lettering but her earnestness. Love, Emily, they closed, over and over, abundant proof of her goodness and innocence, and yet when she revisited them, as she did now, she felt a strange regret, as if they’d been written by someone else. Her mother hadn’t saved any of her other letters, only the program from her college graduation and her wedding announcement.
As if in imitation, the other packet Emily removed was fastened with a pink ribbon—Margaret’s cards to her, in crayon but graced by the same wobbly hand and free sentiments. Side by side, they seemed evidence of a mysterious bond, as if she and her mother were destined to share the same fate. I LOVE YOU, Margaret had scrawled. Emily lingered over the words, wondering if the feeling behind them still held true after all these years, or was it just a fossil, the promise, like the child who’d written it, gone forever?
This was precisely the danger of having too much time to herself. She retied the packet and returned it to its niche, closed the drawer and descended again. She sat with her half-done puzzle, listening to Bach and the rain, fending off unprofitable thoughts, waiting, though she knew better, for the phone to ring, and then, when it finally did, felt relief.
“Happy Mother’s Day,” Margaret said.
“Why, thank you, dear. Happy Mother’s Day to you too.”
“I’m not your mother.”
“And for that,” Emily said, “you should be eternally grateful.”
THE START OF THE SEASON
For Emily, the real start of summer was marked not by Memorial Day and its poppies and parades, but the opening of her day lilies. They sprang up with the heat, their long stalks tilting over the driveway, their pumpkin-colored blooms facing the sun, a jubilant crowd welcoming her home. Her garden was in full riot, her alliums looming like pale blue moons above her phlox and sedums and gladioli. One border of Dalmatian bellflowers hadn’t quite filled in, but on the whole she was pleased. She spent hours hunched on her stool, communing with the elements, pruning and pinching in the hope of even more glorious results. The sun rejuvenated her, her skin soaking in the vitamin D, and when the phone trilled in the kitchen, she let it ring.
Lately she’d been plagued by the Special Olympics. She’d made the mistake of giving them money once, and now they called almost daily. She resolved not to let it ruin these perfect hours. She put the machine on and lowered the volume to zero, closed the back door.
Outside, time, once so agonizingly slow, lifted from her. She and the bees and the worms—even the spiders—all had their jobs to do. Left to her work, she forgot everything but the task at hand, falling into reverie. Rather than break the spell, she skipped lunch, and at the end of the day felt an enervated, quenching sense of accomplishment. Her hands ached from gripping her spade and her shears, and when she’d washed, she rubbed a generous menthol blob of Aspercreme into their bony backs. After dinner she sat on the porch, admiring the fireflies and savoring a well-earned glass of Chablis until the bugs drove her inside, then went to bed early, righteously tired, and the next morning knotted the ties of her coolie hat under her chin, flipped down her clip-on sunglasses and set to it again.
These were the days she’d waited for, the days that made the rest of her life worthwhile. Because she knew they were fleeting, she reveled in them. She guarded them like a miser, and not just from the intrusions of telephone solicitors and Marcia’s random visits. Now that the semester was over, Jim Cole was home.
He spent most of his time outside, reading on their back deck or tinkering in the garage, where he kept his bicycle. Midafternoon, in the heat of the day, costumed in fingerless gloves and scandalously tight racing shorts, he strapped on a turtle-shaped helmet and went for a ride by himself, stopping to chat through the fence with Emily on his way out and then again on his return. He said nothing of import, merely pleasantries about the weather and glosses on current events like the Bore to the Shore, and Emily wanted to tell him that while she understood he felt obligated and probably thought he was doing her a great kindness, she would be just as happy not to talk to him right now, thank you. Instead she kept working, figuring he might recognize her continued industry as a lack of interest, but he was a man and an academic, and more than once she had to excuse herself and duck into the kitchen to escape him.
She thought it odd that Marcia didn’t accompany him on his jaunts, and that he never ran with her in the mornings, and wondered if their solitary pursuits combined with her moonlit vision of Marcia presaged the unraveling of their marriage. They were a strange pair—Betty agreed, if Arlene didn’t—and now instead of ignoring them, as was her wont, Emily began to watch for signs of rupture. Whenever either of them appeared—watering their window boxes or setting out a saucer for Buster—she read their expressions as if they were characters in a portentous French film. Despite all of Marcia’s huffing and puffing, she was still plump. It was Jim who seemed thinner, his face drawn, his neck stringy. While Emily ate her dinner, she peered at them sitting on their deck, Marcia tipping a wineglass, Jim with a nonalcoholic beer, and wondered if they were discussing, in a resigned, civilized way, their insurmountable differences.
More than the Coles or the Special Olympics, her own compulsiveness distracted her, charging her with errands she’d actively put off. The Subaru was past overdue for an oil change. It definitely had to have one before Chautauqua. She needed to buy dog treats, and a lemon, and milk, which she’d forgotten to put on the list. She meant to call the city again and find out what was going on with the sidewalk. She should have a plumber come and take a look at the faucet in her bathroom. And she still hadn’t been to see Henry or her parents.
Arlene, meanwhile, was making noise about the Arts Festival, opening that weekend. They both enjoyed the event, despite its sprawl and the inconvenience of parking downtown. It was the one time a year they made it to the Point, which never failed to impress, jutting like a prow into the choppy confluence. Neither of them cared for the carnival food or loud music designed to draw the younger crowd. Their pleasure was wandering along the midway, visiting the tents and looking over the artists’ wares, some of which were remarkably well done and some so ludicrous they defied explanation. It was a game on the way home to choose their favorite abomination, teasing each other that they’d go back tomorrow and buy it to give as a Christmas present.
“Imagine her face!”
“What would she do with it?”
Emily couldn’t put her off forever. The best she could do was check the Weather Channel and pick a day when the forecast was iffy. Thursday they were calling for scattered thunderstorms.
“Friday’s supposed to be nicer,” Arlene said.
“They’re only saying thirty percent. I think we’ll be fine.”
She resented being put in this position. She felt calculating and stingy, when all she wanted was to close her eyes and lift her face to the sun. It reminded her of the afternoons her mother banished her to her room, where she was supposed to contemplate her sins like a prisoner but instead spent the time s
harpening her arguments—pointless, since her father wasn’t interested in them when he got home, only in a proper apology. She’d had to learn to be a dutiful daughter, and thought not much had changed. She still sulked like a child when she didn’t get her way.
She’d chosen wisely, it seemed. Thursday when she picked up Arlene the sky was undecided. By the time they found parking, the banners along Stanwix Street were belling like sails. The wind came straight up the Ohio, blowing spray from the fountain across the plaza, darkening the concrete.
“I don’t like the looks of that,” Arlene said, pointing to the scrim of clouds sliding behind Mount Washington.
“They said scattered,” Emily said. “This could all blow over by lunchtime.”
They’d paid an outrageous sum for parking, so there was no question of retreat. Despite the wind it was warm out, and the midway was teeming. They strolled along the stalls, browsing the cluttered tables. Washedout watercolors and coat-hanger sculptures, twig baskets and wreaths and tray after tray of clumsily done jewelry. It was like a flea market without bargains. Surrounded by so many glaring examples, they joined in a running discussion of what was art, what was craft, and what was simply bad. The pies looked nice though, made from organic apples and whole wheat flour, and a deal compared with the Amish at Chautauqua. In front of the Hilton a jazz trio played tastefully, a welcome improvement on the usual tuneless folk music, and they stopped for crêpes and a glass of wine, watching a tug with its load of coal push upriver, a sight that always reassured her of Pittsburgh’s and therefore her place in the world. After lunch, as she’d so blithely predicted, the sun came out, and while part of her still wished she were at home, she and Arlene found some very nice sandstone coasters and some truly priceless Iron City beer can lamps they somehow resisted. All in all, she had to admit, she had a good time, and for her immortal soul’s sake, she was glad it hadn’t rained.
The next day, of course, it poured.
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