Maggie and I go up to the attic on Friday afternoon to put away the Thanksgiving things, like we always do. I like to help her bring down a few of the Christmas decorations. They’ll be going up next week.
“Out with the garlands of autumn leaves and in with the evergreens and holly!” she says, like she always does. And then we get busy. I’m stacking up the bins that hold Thanksgiving stuff and putting them in the corner of the shelf, and she’s pulling down the boxes with the Santa Claus figurines, the Styrofoam balls decorated with sequins and toothpicks that she likes to hang from the beams in the living room ceiling. There’s a life-size sleigh and reindeer set that Hendrix will put on the roof.
New Hampshire Christmas coming right up.
For a moment, we’re working side by side. “You want these bowls up here? Look at these wreaths! And the snowmen collection. I always love when the snowmen come out.”
Then she says, “It’s nice having you and Judd here together. Being engaged really agrees with you, I think. You look . . . different.”
“Like different how?”
“I don’t know.” She straightens up and studies me, tilting her head. “I think you’re in love.”
I go quiet, look away. Then when I can speak again, I say, “Am I? Yeah, I guess I am.” I get busy with a bag of ribbons. Maggie has saved every ribbon that has ever entered the house.
I kissed a guy in Charleston. What about that? Is that what she’s seeing?
“Funny how things can change between two people after so many years, isn’t it?” Then she’s quiet. “Listen to me, like I’m any kind of expert. You know what? It’s just so good to have something nice to think about. You know, after everything with your father.” She gets busy dusting off one of the boxes with her sleeve. Then she laughs. “You want to know something kind of crazy? I’ve never told you this, but I sometimes have this little fantasy that I’m your real mother. That I was supposed to be. You know?”
I set down the bag of ribbons. “You mean like maybe there was a mix-up in the paperwork?”
“Exactly! I mean, had the world gone the way it was supposed to, with Robert and me staying together and getting married, I should have really technically been your mother,” she says and laughs. “Can you imagine how different things would have been?” She straightens up, pushes back a lock of her faded brown hair that’s escaped from her bun, and gives me a sheepish look. “Well. It’s just something I think about from time to time. Maybe I should have been a little more irresponsible, you know? If I’d gotten pregnant before he took that little trip to Woodstock . . . well, he wouldn’t have gone.”
“Sure,” I say, swallowing.
“I overheard Hendrix saying one time that there was a Maggie Team and a Tenaj Team.” She leans back, stretching out her spine. “And there wouldn’t have been any need for that sort of thing. You would have both had to be on the Maggie Team, because I would have been the only team in town.”
I am so ashamed then.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “We must have been so hard on you.”
She shrugs. “Being a stepmother is never what you think it’s going to be. You have it in your mind that you’re the rescuer, and that even though fairy tales are full of wicked stepmothers, that everyone will see that you are different, because you mean well. And then one day you hear yourself screaming, and everyone’s looking at you with hatred and fear in their eyes, and you realize that you never can afford to get even one thing wrong. You’re not the real mom, and nobody gives you the benefit of the doubt.”
“Oh, Mags, you tried so hard. And we were terrible. I was terrible.”
“Yeah,” she says with a short, harsh laugh. “You were. Though I wasn’t all that wonderful at it. But, hey, look at us now. Together. We made it through. And the funny thing is—I’ve gotten over all that feeling of being mad about how I had to do all the hard parts of raising you guys, and she got to float around through space, being perfect because she wasn’t there. So . . . there’s progress. I was the one who got to watch you grow up, front-row seat. She missed out on that.”
“Totally,” I say faintly.
I look over and really see Maggie, true and plain right there in front of me. Her face is actually lined with pain, and her eyes look sad. She’s wearing baggy blue jeans that are just a little too short for her and beat-up sneakers and a gray cardigan. She looks so very tired. In fact, everything in this attic suddenly seems so wavy and sad, like it could all disappear—and I feel a kind of gentleness settle over me.
“And then that day came when she let you down. When you went to Woodstock. It was her for once, and not me. I feel like that was the day you became mine.” She lets out a little laugh.
I’m quiet, but the blood is beating in my ears.
“You don’t still hear from her, do you? After what she did?”
I don’t say anything right away. Then I say, “Well . . .”
I feel her shift next to me. Then I see that my silence has told her the answer, and it has shocked her.
“Oh,” she says and moves farther away from me, gets busy with another box. She’s embarrassed. “Well. I wouldn’t have thought, after everything that happened, that you—”
“You know how she is,” I say. “She just pops up from time to time, unexpectedly. Calls me sometimes. Still flaky!” I laugh a little bit to show how very little it means to me, but she is not fooled.
“Ah, well. It doesn’t matter anyway. Water under the dam,” she says briskly. And then, in her crisp Maggie voice, she says: “You know what? My therapist would say it’s good you have some kind of relationship with her. I’m really glad for you, Phronsie, that it wasn’t a total loss for you. This is probably healthy.”
“Wait. You have a therapist? You never told me.”
She sits down on one of the cardboard boxes. “I didn’t want to talk about it, but yeah. For about a year now. I wasn’t into it at first, but now I see that it’s helping me. Sort things out. You know.”
“There’s a lot here to sort,” I say carefully. I’m holding the turkey platter, but I sit down on another box and stay quiet, hoping she’ll say more. The air between us, filled with dust motes, feels so fragile and tentative.
“There’s something else,” she says and looks down at her shoes. “I’m going to talk to your father about going to a therapist, too. It’s time he got some help.”
“Wow. That’s huge. It’s kinda hard to imagine him pouring out his soul to a stranger. I picture him sitting there with his arms folded over his chest and his mouth clamped shut while the therapist says, ‘And how did that make you feel?’”
She laughs a little. “Well, he’s gonna have to try,” she says, “because I think, if he won’t get help, I’m at the point of realizing that I might have to leave him.”
“It’s that bad?” My stomach drops.
She looks at me. “I can’t live like this. Not for the rest of my life, I can’t. If he’s not going to do some work, then I can’t pull him along any longer.”
I put the turkey platter down and go over to her and hug her. She’s stiff at first, but then she loosens up a little bit. I realize she’s crying. And I hold on to her so tightly.
“Oh, Mags. I wish I could turn back time and be nicer.”
“Oh, no need for that,” she says. She takes a tissue out of her apron pocket and blows her nose. “I’m just telling you this so you’ll understand why I might seem a little over the top about this wedding of yours. It’s like a lifeline, planning this. It might be the last hurrah. I promise you I won’t leave him before the wedding, no matter what.”
“It’s all going to be okay,” I say, although I don’t know what I’m talking about. “He doesn’t want to lose you, Maggie.”
“Well,” she says and turns away from me. “We’ll see, won’t we? I don’t want to talk about it anymore, so let’s get the Christmas stuff out.”
I look around the attic, like I’m seeing it for the last time. And then, having
disposed of Thanksgiving, we very carefully carry Christmas downstairs.
That night, Bunny falls out of bed.
I wake up hearing a slight thump, and I scramble to turn on the light. There she is, lying on the carpet next to the bed, buffered by the pillows I’d placed there.
She doesn’t get really hurt. Not only was her fall broken by the pillows, she landed just the right way. Nothing hurts her, nothing seems broken, her eyes look fine.
But, petrified, I stay awake the whole rest of the night and watch her sleep.
No way I’m leaving on Sunday, I say to Maggie and my father. I tell Judd that I won’t be going back with him on the train, as usual; I’m going to stay at least through the first part of next week to make sure she’s okay, and then I’ll take her back to Hallowell myself, get her settled in.
“Okay,” he says. “If you think that’s what you have to do.”
“I do,” I tell him. “She’s my grandmother. I have to take care of her, don’t I?”
“Are you okay?” he says. He takes my hand, like a proper fiancé might do.
“Of course I am,” I say. “It’s just . . . everything, I guess.” I let myself lean against him.
“Are you writing? Maybe you need to be writing. Doesn’t that always make you feel saner?”
“Judd, are you trying to get on my good side or something? You never, ever ask me about my writing.”
He leans over and kisses me on the cheek. “I know, and I’m cleaning up my act. And also, I just wanted to say that I had a good time with your family. And it was fun telling everyone about us. And I feel really good about everything, do you? Our plan? I think more than ever that it’s the best thing we’ve ever thought of.”
“Getting married?”
“Yes, getting married, you crazy. What did you think I was talking about?” He gives me a fist bump. “Remember when we used to do fist bumps all the time? And hip checks? You’d bang your hip into mine. Maybe we should bring those things back. I want to have little signs and signals with you. You know? I think that makes for a good married-people kind of thing.”
I can’t help it. I laugh. “Just go get on the train, will you? I’ll see you back in the city.”
He kisses me lightly exactly four times, gives me a fist bump, a hip check, and then he’s gone.
As soon as he’s completely out of sight, I call Darla.
“I can’t come back until Thursday,” I say. “There’s been an accident at my house, involving my grandmother. She’ll be okay, but I need to stay here with her for the time being. Get her resettled with her doctors and in her memory care unit. I’m sorry. Wanted you also to know that I spoke with Gabora, and she’s fine. In fact, she isn’t angry at all, and she even asked if I’d invite her to my wedding! So I think we don’t have to worry anymore that there are going to be repercussions from what happened.”
“Well,” she says. “We’ll see.”
I swallow. “But also . . . well, I think I would like—well, actually, I’m thinking that I don’t want to work with Adam anymore. It’s not a good idea. No details that I want to share, but I’d like it if you could transfer him to another part of the company. Another imprint perhaps. Maybe before I get back. If you would do that. Thank you.”
“I’ve been thinking the same thing,” says Darla. “I was right about him, wasn’t I? He’s just not . . . fully adult somehow.”
My hands are clammy and my stomach hurts by the time I hang up the phone.
Bunny and I sing in the car on the way back to Hallowell. I’ve heard that patients with memory loss still remember the music they once loved, and so I put on big band songs from Bunny’s era, and sure enough, she sings along and smiles.
I stay and have dinner with her in the dining room that night. At first, I’m tense because it seems like full-blown chaos in there with the wheelchairs crashing into tables, and people trying to get served by the staff, all talking and calling out at once. But then I see that there’s something really quite lovely about all of this. A woman wearing her napkin on her head is blowing bubbles with a little plastic wand, and a man keeps singing again and again a song he claims to have written for Frank Sinatra. A tiny, gray-haired couple tries to hold hands while they eat, and food keeps falling into their laps, which makes them both laugh. The staff members, whom I thought a moment ago must be harried and overburdened, I now see aren’t feeling that way at all. They are smiling and indulgent and kind to their charges, and all of them—staff members and the old people at the end of their long, uncertain lives—are fully living just this moment before going on to the next.
My eyes blur with tears. I’m a mess. I’ve been so hard on everyone, so judgmental, so grasping. I’ve let so many moments go by without paying attention. I’ve kissed a man I shouldn’t have kissed, and I’ve been thoughtless and hedonistic. I have to change. I decide right then: I’m going to make up for all the love I’ve squandered.
Bunny turns and smiles at me, happy like a small child is happy, for no reason. She leans over and whispers to me, “I am going to tell you a question,” she says. “How did you get so nice?”
“Bunny,” I say, even though I know she has no idea what I’m talking about, “I am going to try to be as nice as you think I am. I’m going to stop being selfish, and I’m going to marry Judd, and if he wants to, I might even move back home and help Maggie and my father, and I’m going to stop being a dumb, idiotic kid who thinks love is like some miracle that’s supposed to come and save me. I am going to be the one who gives love. To everybody.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
By the time I get back to work the following Thursday, Adam’s office is cleared out. I walk by it on the way to my own, and when I look in, I see that there’s nothing there that would remind me of him. It’s not until I go into my own office and open my desk drawer an hour later that I see that Gnomeo is lying facedown in my pile of pens.
I take a deep breath. Gnomeo.
There’s no note.
I look through my desk again, just to be sure. Check under the blotter, under the telephone, and the computer monitor. I wonder if Adam was furious when he found out I’d had him transferred. Or was he sad? I hope he wasn’t sad. Darla said she transferred him to an imprint in another building—the one called McCutcheon, which concentrates on fantasy novels. Perfect for him, she said. He’s so . . . young. Everybody who works there is about thirteen, she told me. Rolling her eyes.
I sit there in my rolling chair, staring out of the window. I handled the whole thing so badly. Like, the worst kind of badly. Maybe I should just call him on the office extension and say—say what?
Thank you for the gnome.
Thank you for being the first person to hear about my novel.
I’m sorry I was so weird about kissing you, because I really did like it.
Maybe too much, but you probably already know that.
Anyway, good-bye.
I’m sorry for what I let Darla think, so good-bye, I’m sorry, good-bye.
I’m sorry.
Yeah, right. No. You can see why I can’t call him. No. That would not be a cool thing to do. So here’s my new plan: I am going to have a cup of coffee and then before the staff meeting, I am going to peek at wedding dresses online so that I can remind myself what my life is really about right now. And I’ll text Talia and see if she wants to go help me try on dresses after work one day soon. And by the time I’ve done these two things, I’m not going to be thinking about him anymore.
Five more minutes, and then I’m officially over this.
It’s good to have goals.
Anyway, it’s likely that getting transferred didn’t matter to him, one way or the other. A guy like that. This wasn’t his career. He’s just a guy bumbling around New York City for a while. Even if he was disappointed, even if he ends up leaving the company, maybe that’s best for him. He didn’t have any particular affinity for public relations after all; he’d said as much, hadn’t he? He got the job almost b
y accident.
That kiss.
You know what it was? It was a longing for drama now that I’d committed to Judd.
Stupid.
At the staff meeting about new projects and whatnot, I notice that all his authors have been assigned to Mary Beth, who coolly reports on the progress she’s making. No one looks in my direction; no one says, Phronsie? So what happened?
Maybe they think they already know. In which case, I would like to tell them that they are so wrong. Nothing happened.
It occurs to me that I have a friend, Leila, who works at McCutcheon. Anytime I want, I can call her and find out how he’s doing. I won’t do it today, of course, but sometime.
I put Gnomeo in my purse and take him home. He can’t stay in the office anymore. Only when I get him home—well, what to do with him? It seems like he should stay with me as kind of a companion. He can’t sit out on the table, where Judd would ask since when have I taken up with gnomes. Nope. He’s a reminder of Adam that’s just for me. I don’t even know why, but I give him his own purse compartment—clear out all the tissues, pen caps, and old lipsticks in that one pocket. I think he’ll be comfortable there.
That’s what I’m doing when Judd calls me and suggests we meet at the diner as soon as he gets done with his eight o’clock client. He’s got a hankering for some eggplant fries and hummus. I am so relieved. And so we go sit in our usual booth, and Alphonse swoons around us like we are rock stars, and we drink beer and eat our fries, and life is all back to normal. It’s so normal that I smile and talk about Tandy’s like it was the high point of my existence so far. Because Tandy’s is Judd’s favorite subject.
He goes on about different people’s reactions to our news, and how everybody else is sick of their spouses, but how we’re going to be different. How some people were actually envious when he explained our plan not to be in love.
Then he looks at me and licks his lips. Like he’s maybe a little nervous all of a sudden. “Listen, I think we should go back to your apartment and go to bed.” He arches his eyebrows meaningfully.
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