How to Change a Life

by Stacey Ballis

  I laugh. “I probably should, kiddo, but I’m afraid all of my pink was in the laundry.”

  She nods solemnly at me. This is something she understands, because whatever Geneva really desperately wants to wear at any given moment is likely to be in the laundry, much to her consternation. Shelby has often said that she is going to start just buying two of everything for her so that she doesn’t have to endure the exasperated lectures from her four-year-old on her substandard laundry habits.

  “Geneva,” Shelby says, coming into the kitchen. “Leave poor Eloise alone, she needs to finish.”

  “To go to her paaarrrtttyyy!”

  Shelby looks at me with a wink. “Yes, honey, to go to her party. Why don’t you pop back downstairs and practice your letters.” The hours between when the kids get home from school or their various activities and when dinner is served are generally relegated to homework or reading. Shelby says once they get dinner in them, it is hard for them to focus, so as soon as everyone is home from school they are banished down to the basement rec room, which has one wall set up with a long table that serves as four side-by-side workstations. The older kids help the younger ones, sort of, and Shelby checks in if things get noisy. Geneva doesn’t exactly have homework from pre-kindergarten, but Shelby wants her in the habit as much as possible, so she has some worksheets and books down there and G is supposed to keep herself occupied like the rest. She is not so good at that, and most days will eventually find her up in the kitchen yapping at me for at least some part of “homework time.” I can’t say it disappoints me.

  “Okay. ’Bye, Eloise! Have fun at your party!” She skips out of the room, and Shelby takes up residence in the abandoned chair.

  “You know you didn’t have to be here today,” she says, her meaning clear.

  When I told her Monday that I would need to leave a little early she tried to get me to just not come in, but I need to be working and keep my mind off of things as much as possible. I’m still feeling enormously sad and guilty and ashamed, and I’m not so good at dealing with deeper feelings. I’ve spent the last few days working on recipes at home, testing things late into the night, thinking up new challenges for Ian’s training, and relying on a nightly small glass of warmed bourbon with a trickle of honey to help ease me into sleep.

  Lawrence wasn’t home when I went to drop off his weekly rations yesterday, so instead of the two hours of chat I usually get with him, I had eerie and unsettling quiet. It kind of paralyzed me for a moment. I didn’t really want to go home and I didn’t have any logical errands to do, so I just organized everything in his fridge and freezer, threw out anything that was old enough to be questionable, and made a list of basic pantry items that he was running low on. Once I ran out of busywork at his house, I went home and took Simca on as long a walk as her tiny little stumpy legs would allow, then had a long wallowy afternoon at home. I binge-watched the original British House of Cards and ate my way through my fridge, well stocked with the detritus of my recipe testing. Not coming to work today was not an option.

  “Oh, no, I definitely did. This is exactly where I needed to be today.”

  I don’t say more and Shelby doesn’t push. “Okay, well, then, what do I need to know about dinner? Something smells amazing.”

  “You’ve got braised short ribs in the big oven, and that potato, leek, and prune gratin that Brad loves in the warming drawer underneath. There is asparagus prepped in the steamer—Ian can just turn it on and set it for eight minutes.” When I helped redesign their kitchen, the Gaggenau rep convinced me to put in two warming drawers, since I’m usually leaving them food that is fully prepared but won’t be consumed immediately, and an in-counter steamer, which has been a total game changer when it comes to getting a simple green vegetable on their plates every night, not to mention making the weekly pasta night a cinch.

  “The perfect thing for a chilly fall night like tonight.”

  “That is what I figured. And there is a chocolate ginger sticky toffee pudding on the counter for dessert. The coffee caramel sauce is in the other warming drawer.”

  “That sounds interesting, a new one?”

  One of the recipes I’ve been working on this week, sort of an update of the English classic. I’m loving how the dark chocolate and sweet heat of the ginger take the cake out of the cloying realm, and the bitterness of the coffee in the caramel sauce sets it all off beautifully. “Something I’ve been playing with.”

  Shelby gets a look in her eyes, and I know she is just gearing up to say something. “Look, I know you don’t like to talk about your personal life too much, and I completely respect that, but I know that this must be a difficult time, and if you need a break, or someone to talk to, or . . .” She trails off, probably because she can see the look of embarrassment on my face.

  “Thanks, Shelby, really, I’m fine.” I’m not, and she knows I’m not. But we both silently agree to pretend that I am, because to do anything else would cross a line neither of us wants to cross.

  That is one of the things about my job, the danger zone. Because when you feed a person day in and day out for an extended period of time, you get to know them sometimes more intimately than friends or family. You know their deepest wants and desires, the things they crave, what heals them when they are sick, and what soothes them when they are sad, and what makes a celebration a celebration for them. But while you might feel like a weird combination of friend and family, you are neither. Not really. You are, at the core of things, the help.

  “Personal chef” has the word “personal” right in there, and it is the personal part that can make things awkward. Shelby might think I need therapy—clearly does think it if she is bringing it up—and probably not only wants to find the therapist but also to pay for it. But this is not a discussion we can appropriately have, and while she is devil-may-care enough about conventions to attempt to open the door, she is smart enough to shut down those impulses when I close it. Which is the hardest thing to do. Because there is a huge part of me that wants to bust out crying, and collapse in her arms the way I’ve seen her kids do, and let her comfort me. To let her be the sister I never had growing up. But for all of our sakes, one of us has to be strong about keeping some boundaries, and lucky for all of us, I’m really, really good at boundaries. Which, while I know in my heart is good for my work, is starting to feel like it might just be the way I am in my life in general, and I’m not really sure that is a good thing for my life, however much it might suit my livelihood.

  I think we are both grateful for the sudden eruption of loud chaos from downstairs, some yelling and a crash, and Geneva’s air-siren wail. The kids might be pretty great, but they are still kids and siblings, and when World War Three launches, as it does with all the frequency one might expect of a large family, it is passionate and loud. Shelby shrugs in a resigned fashion, gives my hand a quick squeeze, and winks at me, then heads downstairs to wipe tears, soothe bruised feelings, make people apologize, and supervise the cleanup and reconciliation processes. I take a relieved breath and wipe down the counter so that I can leave before I have to feel one more damn thing today of all days.

  • • •

  I check my face in the visor mirror, reapply lipstick, tuck a wayward piece of hair back into place, and take a deep breath. I’ve been parked in the parking lot for fifteen minutes, waiting to see my mom’s car pull in, but then my phone pings with a text from her saying that her meeting is going to run really late, and that she will probably just plan on going to the second visitation tomorrow. Crap. Now I’m on my own.

  I get out of the car, straighten my skirt, and brace myself as I head into the funeral home. The reception room is packed, and there is a small side room where I presume the viewing is, for those who want to have a quiet final moment. I can see a small throng near the viewing room where Glenn is standing, surrounded by a bunch of men who all look like him. If they aren’t his brothers, then t
here is a South Side Irish convention happening. I take a deep breath and cross the room to him. When he spots me, not difficult in a room where I tower over all the women and almost all of the men, his face lights up and he holds his arms open. I fall into them and he hugs me tightly.

  “Thank you for being here,” he says into my hair.

  “Oh, Glenn, I’m so sorry, I didn’t know . . . and I should have . . . and I . . .”

  “Hush, lass. No one knew—she swore us all to secrecy. She had ‘too much to do to be ready to go, and didn’t want to deal with any nonsense.’” He does a great imitation of her, and hearing a perfect replica of her voice come out of his rugged face makes me giggle. “There you are. Don’t you feel bad for one tiny moment. You’ll dishonor her memory. She knew you loved her, and she knows it still and that is everything. The rest is just noise.”

  He reaches up and wipes the tears off my cheeks.

  I can’t believe he is the one making me feel better at a time like this. “Thank you for that. Is there anything you need? Anything I can do?” He seems so strong, but I know his anguish must be nearly unbearable. It feels lame to ask, but I don’t know what else to say.

  “Can you make my blockhead brothers and their fussing wives go back to their houses and stop occupying mine?” he asks with a wink. “The boys are decimating my liquor cabinet, my sisters-in-law are uniformly terrible cooks, and their hellion children are destroying all the breakables and leaving sticky handprints everywhere.”

  “She would have hated that.”

  “She hates it now, trust me. She always said you all were her kids, the perfect kids, ones that lived in other people’s houses and didn’t require college funds. I was just always happy to have our own little bubble, the two of us.”

  “I can’t make your brothers sober or their children well behaved, but I could stop by next week with something edible.”

  He smiles. “That would be good for my soul, sweet girl. You are welcome anytime.” He squeezes my hand and we hear something crash and then a deep voice scolding someone in not-so-hushed tones, and Glenn rolls his eyes and leaves my side to see which niece or nephew has done what sort of damage. I make a promise to myself: What Helene did for me, for my mom, I will do for him. I will honor her memory by being there for Glenn, by feeding him and being good company. I’ll find out all the important dates, their birthdays and anniversary, and put reminders in my calendar to reach out, and I’ll ask about his favorite foods and cook them for him. My heart feels lighter, and the tightness in my throat releases for the first time since I found out she was gone. I turn to go, but then I see them.

  Lynne and Teresa.

  The two of them are standing near the door, signing the guest book. Lynne looks amazing—the years haven’t touched her. Her shorter hair is a new, slightly more golden shade that flatters her caramel skin and hazel eyes, and she is dressed in an impeccable navy suit that shows off her trim physique. Teresa is rounder than she was, wearing a drapey black dress with an equally drapey gray sweater over her curves. Her beautiful face has lost its childlike look and is now unmistakably the face of a woman, and her black curls are accentuated with the beginnings of a white streak over her left eye, right where her mom had one. When Lynne finishes signing the book she looks up, spots me, and raises a perfectly groomed eyebrow and shakes her head. She elbows Teresa, who looks up to see me too, and her mouth turns down and her brow furrows and her chin begins to tremble as I cross the room to them. By the time I reach them, all three of us are crying and we fall into each other’s arms, holding tight, and something deep inside me breaks open and I don’t know if I am the happiest girl in the world or the saddest, or maybe both, but I know that I feel safe.

  • • •

  Another round, please,” Lynne says to the young woman who stops by our table to check on us. After our emotional meeting at the visitation, Teresa, Lynne, and I headed back north, to the lobby of the Drake Hotel for drinks. In high school we would go once a year for high tea the week of our birthdays. It seemed an easy choice, right off Lake Shore Drive and still a relatively quick trip home for all of us. Teresa now lives in Oak Park and Lynne moved back from California a few months ago and has a condo in the Gold Coast.

  “So, our little ghost, where have you been?” Lynne asks me pointedly. We’ve already caught up on the basics. Teresa is the proud mom of three enormous Italian man-children, sixteen, fourteen, and twelve, each taller and broader than the next, and has been a stay-at-home mom since her first was born, nearly nine months to the day after her wedding night. Lynne is still a PR guru, divorced from a guy she refers to only as Mr. So-Very-Wrong, and was wooed back to Chicago from L.A. late last spring to take over as head of PR for a major Chicago marketing firm.

  “Seriously, El, you just completely fell off the face of the earth,” Teresa says. I’m feeling slightly defensive. To hear them tell it, they have been friends “on Facebook” and have gotten together just once, for lunch, since Lynne came back. It isn’t like they have been hanging out all this time since we were last together.

  “I was in France, until my dad got sick in ’09, and then I came home and just stayed with him and Mom till the end. Thought about going back, but didn’t want my mom to be here alone, and realized I didn’t have much to go back to . . .” When I left for Chicago, Bernard made it clear. If I couldn’t give him a specific time frame, he could not promise that my job or his bed would be left open for me. “So I got a job, and have just been lying sort of low, working, living quiet.”

  “But why no word? It makes me feel so bad that your dad was sick and I didn’t know, and I didn’t know you were back. Why didn’t you call or something?” Teresa looks deeply wounded.

  I wish I had some good reason to give her, but the truth is all I have, and it sounds so stupid and small when I hear it come out of my mouth.

  “I think I felt mostly embarrassed. I mean, I was living so far away, and it wasn’t like e-mail and all that was a part of our lives when I left.”

  “And you always hated all technology,” Lynne says pointedly. “I thought those word processor typewriters in school were going to be the end of you.”

  “Yes, I confess. I actually went to college with my mom’s old Selectric and managed to avoid all things computerized until the last possible moment. I had a flip phone until about two years ago when it died and my boss made me get a new iPhone on his family plan. I’m old-school.”

  “You’re a dinosaur,” Lynne says, as the waitress brings our second round of French 75s.

  “Hey, I didn’t exactly see the two of you frantically searching for me either . . . My mom is in the same house with the same phone number I had when we all talked every night. If you had really wanted to contact me, it wouldn’t have been hard.” Deflection seems the best way to go here.

  “She’s got us there,” Teresa says.

  Lynne puts her hand up. “Okay, look, we are grown-ass women. We are all going to name it and claim it. We were lazy bitches and got swept up in our lives and work and time went by and then it seemed too much effort to try and get back in touch. It was never for lack of love, just lack of initiative. Agreed?”

  “Agreed,” I say, relieved.

  “Agreed,” Teresa says, grinning.

  “But now we are all back together, can we please not let a damn decade and a half disappear on us? Because, as we have been reminded tonight, life is short and fucking precious,” Lynne says.

  “Girls’ night? My house? Next week?” I ask.

  Lynne pulls out her enormous iPhone. A few clicks on the screen with her impeccably polished nails, and she nods. “I’m good any night except Wednesday.”

  Teresa checks her own phone. “I can do Tuesday or Thursday.”

  “Thursday it is,” I say. I’ll have time during the day to prepare a bit before Ian’s coaching session, and after it I’ll get home in plenty of time to pull
dinner together. “Let’s say seven.” I give them my address, ask about any dietary restrictions, and we toast the plan with the tart, fizzy cocktails.

  “The Three Witches, together again,” Lynne says, using the nickname we gave ourselves when Mrs. O’Connor cast us as the three witches in Macbeth at the end of our first semester with her.

  “Never to be parted,” Teresa says.

  “Watch out, world, the coven is complete,” I say, and we toast and laugh and sink back into the deep chairs, and suddenly we are eighteen again, being fancy at a downtown hotel, full of the confidence that comes when you are part of a group, and you love them and trust them and know they have your back and keep your secrets and that as long as you are together, nothing bad can happen.

  • • •

  I get home just before ten and let Simca out in the backyard for her evening toilette. I don’t have the energy for a real walk tonight—all these hours in tall heels after a full day of work have my poor feet, used to abuse, screaming in pain. I shimmy out of my skirt, hopelessly creased into a million wrinkles around the top, and then wrestle my ample hips out of the Spanx that were the only reason it even zipped up. I pull on a pair of jersey pajama bottoms and one of my dad’s old concert T-shirts that he saved from his years as a rock aficionado, this one from Beatlefest in 1980, signed on the back by Harry Nilsson, who was there to promote an end to handgun violence and signed the shirt for a ten-dollar donation. My dad took the shirt to a local tailor and had the signature embroidered over so that it could be washed but not lost. It’s one of my favorites, and I only wear it on special occasions. Tonight, full as it was of emotion and memories and happy and sad, feels like an appropriate night to have Dad and Harry with me.

  Simca follows me up the narrow staircase to the big attic. Bungalows like mine were designed with sort of easily removable roofs, and stairs to the attics instead of ladders. The attics, which are usually well insulated, have underlayment flooring instead of bare joists, so that as families grew, the roofs could be raised up or dormered to create a second floor of living space. Someday I would love to make a great master suite up here for myself, but in the meantime, it is terrific storage. I walk past all my luggage, the tubs of summer clothes, boxes of notes and books and things from college and culinary school, and there in the corner is a small Rubbermaid tub labeled LPHS. I grab it and head back downstairs.