And I used all my favorite things, everything I’d collected for so many years. The white cotton sheets with the hand-crocheted edging. The chunky blue spatterware mugs, and the cream dishes. The sterling napkin rings with the A engraved on them, and the dented coin-silver spoons that were so perfectly contoured for grapefruit.
I arranged my favorite kilim and hooked rugs so that my feet could glide from one to the next, never touching wood, as I wound my customary path through the house. When I ate, I used the etched crystal wineglasses—Gary’s grandmother’s, though he seemed to have forgotten about them—and lit every one of the golden beeswax candles in the hand-forged iron chandelier.
I washed the red cross-stitched bedspread by hand, and suspended it from the branches of the lilac tree to dry. Then I ironed it stiff, along with the linen napkins and hand towels. I polished the silver candlesticks and the copper pots, and buffed the pine floors on my hands and knees. I used Gary’s abandoned toothbrush to clean the grout between the old subway tiles in the bathroom.
For every meal, I leafed through my bulging recipe file, indulging myself by cooking all of my favorites, not minding somehow doing all that work just for myself. I made Grandma Giovane’s spaghetti sauce from scratch, simmering it on top of the stove until the house was drenched in the sugary scent of tomatoes. I baked myself a chocolate cake and an onion tart; I constructed a Cobb salad and even fried myself the homemade precursor to chicken nuggets, the treat that, as a girl, I’d always requested for my birthday dinner.
The place I spent most of my time, though, was my garden. This had always been my favorite time of year here, with everything popping from the ground so fast it seemed you could stand there and watch it grow. I cleared out all the old leaves and dead stalks from last year, and rooted out the yellow columbine that would take over if I didn’t get it now. I pruned the roses and laid brick for a new path and planted white geraniums in all the window boxes.
I couldn’t afford to let my time at the house drag on without making a decision about renting it again, or at least beginning to investigate its sale. But before I did that, I wanted one uninterrupted weekend there alone. Besides, I rationalized, this was my chance to tackle the larger organizational tasks that I’d always put off in the past, and now would have to do if the house were sold.
I went through all the bookshelves, carting boxes full of books to the library for donation, to the university club for sale.
I sorted through all the unworn clothes in the attic, getting rid finally of all the ordinary gear from Diana’s childhood, all of my own clothes bigger than size 10, and every single item that had belonged to Gary.
I threw out Gary’s notes from dental school, my notes from Russian lit, and Diana’s seventh-grade social studies project. I finally gathered Diana’s childhood drawings into pretty portfolios, and went through boxes of papers from my mother’s house, ditching old gas bills but framing an award my mother had won for penmanship in 1933.
And then, at the dusty bottom of one of the attic’s dustiest boxes, I found it: the manuscript of the novel I’d started writing when Diana was a toddler, the chapters I’d labored over for months, only to lose heart. I thought I’d thrown this away long ago, but now I sat down right on the splintery boards of the attic floor and started reading. And kept reading.
I imagined coming across this manuscript at Gentility Press. I’d be excited, I thought. The story felt familiar yet not stale, a domestic comedy about the suburban mother of a young child, feeling that she wants more out of life but not knowing how to get it. It was the not-knowing-how-to-get-it part of the story that tripped me up, I saw now. I didn’t know how to keep writing the novel because I didn’t know how to get more out of my life. Couldn’t imagine how, for my heroine or myself. I thought I’d run out of ideas and energy writing the book. But what I’d really been clueless about was how to go forward with my own life.
Now, though, it seemed so obvious what the woman in the story should do, how she should fail, what she should try next. If I had had a pen, I would have started writing right there on the attic floor, but instead I moved downstairs to the chair near the fireplace, my laptop balanced on my knees, forgetting that I was covered with dust, stopping only when I realized it had gotten too dark to see.
Then I roused myself to build a fire, make some tea and smear some peanut butter on a hunk of Italian bread, and rush back to my chair to start writing again.
I was still sitting there when I heard a car door slam outside and then, alarmingly, footsteps on the porch stairs and a key in the lock.
I stood up, heart hammering, scribbling pages falling from my lap, just in time to see my daughter Diana burst through the front door.
“Hi, Mommy,” she said. “I’m home.”
Chapter 17
No matter how much I wanted to stay home and be with Diana—and after her long absence, that’s all I wanted to do—I couldn’t call in sick. Teri was finally coming back to work. But I also couldn’t let Diana see me duded up in my usual young-assistant working gear. The night before, when I’d been wearing old sweat clothes and covered in dust, when her eyes had been bleary from her long trip, I’d just looked like the same old mom to her. We’d curled up together on the couch just as we had when she was tiny, her head on my shoulder while she talked softly and I smoothed her hair and scratched her back. Although it tore me apart to leave the house without at least a glimpse of my sleeping daughter, I got dressed on tiptoes and saved my elaborate makeup application for the bus, where the only redemption for having to leave Diana was using the long trip to work on my novel.
By the time I made it to the office, I was exhausted—from the late night, the excitement of Diana’s arrival, my tense leave-taking. And then there was the buzzer sounding from my phone the moment I stepped off the elevator.
“Alice,” came Teri’s voice as I breathlessly lifted the receiver. “Come into my office immediately.”
Her door was shut, and when I let myself in, she was sitting grim-faced at her desk, several sheets of paper arrayed before her.
“Someone’s been using this office,” she said, the second I stepped through the door.
I’d worked sprawled out on the floor, careful to replace the stapler and paper clip holders in the exact position I found them, not even using her phone for fear of leaving a telltale fingerprint behind.
But now, I had no choice but to ’fess up. As the guardian of the office, my only other option—claiming ignorance—would have been worse than the truth.
“I did some work in here, when I needed quiet,” I told her. “But I really didn’t think I wrecked anything—”
“That’s not the point,” Teri cut in. “The point is that it doesn’t belong to you.”
“Right,” I said, feeling my cheeks begin to burn. “Of course.”
“Or did you forget that?” Teri said. The flu had left her face looking even sharper and more pinched than it had before. “Maybe you started to think that as long as you were stealing my ideas, you could grab my office and even my job.”
For the first time in my life, I understood what people meant when they said they couldn’t believe their ears. I’d been bracing myself for Teri’s return, anticipating that she would confront me about claiming what I saw as my rightful credit for the ideas for the classics project. But for her to say that I’d taken the ideas from her…
“You know that I didn’t steal any ideas from you,” I said, keeping my voice even.
“I know nothing of the kind,” Teri said. “Not only did you take my ideas, but you perverted them in a way I don’t even recognize, much less condone.”
All I could do was shake my head, words choking in my throat. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I finally managed to say.
“This is a travesty,” said Teri, thumping the top page of what I recognized as my most recent memo. “Abominable. It’s beyond me how you could take it upon yourself to suggest that we use…trash!…to market the
greatest books ever written by women.”
“What?” I gasped. “I assure you, Teri, no. I thought that you were as excited about this concept as I was.”
“My idea was to improve sales of the classics line,” Teri said, “not to get Jane Austen onto the shelves next to the feminine hygiene products. That’s what’s so offensive about this, Alice. It’s…morally reprehensible to tart up Jane Austen or Charlotte Brontë like some stupid girls’ book.”
“But don’t you think that whatever makes people read Jane Austen and Charlotte Brontë is good?” I asked, feeling more conscious than ever of the blond dye in my hair, of the pink color on my lips. “Isn’t anything that makes the novels look younger and more exciting for the better? They’re still the same great books.”
Teri shook her head and set her mouth in a hard line. “I’d fire you right now, except somehow you’ve fooled Mrs. Whitney into believing this is a good idea. I don’t know what kind of a stunt you’re trying to pull, but I intend to get to the bottom of it.”
“What do you mean?” I asked weakly, but Teri was done talking. She simply pointed to the door with a finger bonier than the Grim Reaper’s, and when the silence became unbearable, I slunk away.
Later that morning, I tried to talk with Lindsay about what had happened, but the door to her office was closed, and her assistant claimed she was in a meeting. It seemed that as far as I was concerned, Lindsay intended to remain in a meeting for the rest of her life.
At about three, Diana called me, wondering when I was coming home. I explained to her that I’d try to leave at five and should be home by six or six-thirty.
That was the one bright spot so far in my day: telling my daughter when I’d be home, and knowing she was there waiting for me.
Teri stayed closeted in her office the entire day, not emerging even to yell at me, and so a few minutes before five I began gathering my things. I could hardly wait for the clock to strike the hour so I could dash out of there; if I timed it just right, I’d meet Mrs. Whitney on her way to her train home—she always took the 5:14—and then even if I encountered Teri, she wouldn’t be able to give me a hard time.
I was one breath away from making my break when my phone rang. When I heard Josh’s voice on the other end of the line, all the air went out of me. All weekend I’d been looking forward to tonight, when Josh and I were finally supposed to get together again. But then, in the thrill of Diana’s homecoming, our plan had completely flown out of my mind.
“I was just wondering where we were going to meet,” he said, determinedly perky.
“Oh,” I said. “Josh. I’m sorry. I can’t do it tonight.”
There was a long silence, and then he said, “You promised.”
“I know,” I said. “I’m so sorry. Something completely unexpected came up.”
That was when he exploded. “What’s going on, Alice? I haven’t seen you for a week now, I don’t have that much time left, and you’ve completely vanished.”
“I know, I know, I just feel so stuck.”
“Stuck,” he said. “Is there something you’re not telling me?”
Now it was my turn to hesitate. I hated to lie to him. It felt like an insult to all the closeness we’d felt, all the revelations we’d shared. I owed it to him—to Diana, to myself—to tell him the truth.
And I would. Just not right this minute.
“I promise,” I said. “In the next few days, we’ll get together. But tonight I have to go home.”
“Home?”
“To Maggie’s,” I said, smarting at telling a big fat lie.
And then, even as I was telling him good-bye, I started worrying about how I was going to pull off seeing him, and when, and what I was going to tell him when I did. The truth? Or something that, in the moment, seemed even sweeter?
When I finally turned the lock in the door at home, again writing for the duration of my bus ride home, I nearly didn’t recognize my little house. It looked as if the place had been ransacked, with dirty clothes strewn all over the front hallway, laundry baskets of clean but unfolded clothes upended on the furniture, magazines and books scattered on every surface. Rap music was blasting from the kitchen, along with the smell of something burning.
“Hi, Mom,” Diana said.
She was perched on a kitchen stool, eating ice cream direct from a carton. She had apparently been shopping: chips spilled out of a bag onto a counter, next to an open tub of guacamole. The other grocery bags stood, still full, in front of the pantry.
“I went shopping for you,” Diana said proudly.
“Oh, thank you.”
I moved to hug my daughter, to drink her in in a way I hadn’t been able to in the shock of her arrival last night. She looked both older and thinner to me, her skin brown, her arms muscled, her sandy hair streaked with blond.
“I’ve been starving ever since I landed,” Diana said, reaching back to her ice cream.
“Why don’t you let me cook you dinner?” I said, brushing her hair back from her face. “I could make vegetable lasagna.”
Always her favorite.
“Thanks, Mom,” Diana said. “That would be great.”
She went back then to eating the ice cream, reading the magazine, and moving her head in time to the music, largely ignoring me. At first I was hurt that, after all these months of not seeing me, Diana hadn’t said a word about how much weight I’d lost, or my new blond hair and groovy haircut.
But then I thought, Phew. I can relax now, and just be Mom again. In fact, the more I thought about it, the better I felt about the fact that Diana had been able to slide so instantly back into her old way of being here with me. It had been so cataclysmic when Gary announced his departure, and then Diana had taken off for Africa before our tears were even dry, making it feel as if we’d never again enjoy a normal evening like this.
I hummed as I set about constructing the lasagna, then moved through the house, stacking papers, folding laundry, sorting the contents of Diana’s spilled suitcases, putting everything back in order. I found myself thinking about my novel, getting an idea for something my character might do, wondering whether I’d get a chance to write tonight, but then chiding myself: It’s Diana’s first night home. You want to be with her. And then tomorrow night, of course, I had to go to Josh’s. Imagining what kind of excuse I was going to have to make to Diana about that sent me hurtling back toward panic, so I forced myself to concentrate on setting the table, lighting the candles, sliding the bubbling lasagna out of the oven and cutting it into nine tidy squares.
When Diana came to the table, I already had the spatula poised under her favorite piece.
“Center square?” I asked, smiling.
Diana sat there contemplating the lasagna, and suddenly pushed her chair away from the table.
“I can’t eat that,” she said.
I was shaken. “Why not?”
“It’s disgusting, Mother, all that dairy. You could feed my whole village on that.”
“I wish I could feed your village,” I said evenly, thinking that she must have spoiled her appetite with that ice cream. “I know this is an awful lot just for the two of us. We can freeze whatever we don’t eat.”
“It’s just…,” Diana said, looking around the house, her lip curling, “all this excess. I’m serious. I wish we could sell all this junk and donate the money to people who really need it.”
“Well,” I sighed, reluctant to bring up anything too precipitous when Diana was still in this weakened state, “we may end up having to sell this place. But I’m afraid the person who really needs the money is going to be me.”
“Ach,” Diana said, standing up. “That’s ridiculous. I’m sorry, Mom. Maybe I’ll have some cereal later.”
I ate the lasagna at the dining room table alone, blinking back tears as I gazed out at the daffodils on the lawns and the green fuzz on all the trees. I was so excited about Diana being here, had been delighted to devote my entire evening—would have loved to
have spent the whole day—trying to make things special for her. And not only did she take it for granted, she seemed to assume I had no feelings of my own.
It was my own fault, I thought. I’d always been so selfless, so willing to serve, asking for nothing in return. I’d raised her to treat me like a doormat.
Don’t be so hard on yourself, I thought, or on Diana. She’d be better as soon as she got some serious rest and readjusted to being back in America. Even coming home after my summer in London, I’d remembered feeling seriously disoriented. Until then, I’d have to be patient.
Late that night, as I sat in bed writing, I heard Diana rummaging around in the kitchen. I thought about getting up to see if she wanted anything, but then I told myself no, better let her take care of herself. It was time for things between us to start shifting, for her sake and for my own. In the morning I found the lasagna pan in the refrigerator, uncovered, empty except for one tiny dried-out square in the corner. Not wanting to wake her, I crept back upstairs and looked in on Diana in her old room, snoring in her little girl’s white bed.
For years, when I looked at her as she slept, I could see the baby Diana in her more grown-up face. But now there was no trace of the infant or toddler or even the child she had once been. Instead, I realized with a shock as I watched her, what I saw there was myself—the young self I’d been trying to resemble, the young self I’d once been.
Chapter 18
“Where are you going?” Diana asked.
I leaped into the air and let out a little scream. I’d been tiptoeing through our darkening backyard, a garbage bag in my hand. Trying to think fast, I raised the bag and waved it around.
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