The Loose Ends List(53)

“Thanks, bro,” Jeb says. I stifle a laugh.

“Let’s do a selfie.” Mom has wrestled her bee out of her bag, and plops herself down on Dad’s lap.

“Mom, you have wicked BO,” Jeb says.

“I’m sorry, it’s hot.” She clicks the bee and gets the top of our heads.

“Well, there’s a memory,” Jeb says.

Mom takes out a lipstick and applies it to her lips and mine. Jeb grabs the bee and takes a bunch of pictures.

“We’ll title this one Italians make fun of loser Americans taking endless selfies,” I say.

“Onward and upward.” Dad gets up and dabs at the giant gelato stain on his golf shirt.

Mom and I have had it with the ancient rubble piles and creepy cats. We send the nerd archaeologist and his sidekick on their way, and sniff out the unmistakable scent of soft Italian leather.

We try on gorgeous Italian shoes in a little shop. I am confident nobody at college will own these shoes, and I will stand out as Maddie Levine, shoe goddess. Mom walks over with a low-heeled black pump.

“Is this not Gram’s dream shoe?”

“She’ll love it. You have to get them for her.”

Mom’s face drops. She staggers slightly, then grabs the edge of a display case and pulls it to the ground as her knees buckle. It happens in slow motion. By the time I realize what’s going on, she’s sitting in a pile of stilettos in her khaki skirt and kitten heels. And she just sits there, staring at the shoe.

“Mom, are you okay?”

The portly little saleswoman rushes over. She talks a mile a minute in Italian, then runs back to her post when Mom still doesn’t move.

“Mom, try to breathe. Do you want to get some air?” It’s like she’s in a trance. She doesn’t take her eyes off the shoe.

The saleswoman comes back over with a bottle of water. I wish I knew how to tell her that my mom is okay, just grieving in the way people do when they’re about to lose the most important member of their family.

And soon, Gram won’t need shoes.

I clear a path in the shoe pile and kneel on the floor next to Mom. We sit together in silence for a long time. I rub her back the way Dad always does.

“I’m so sorry, Maddie. I just, I…” She shakes her head.

“It’s okay.” I lean over and kiss Mom’s flushed cheek. I don’t know what to say. My mind is playing tricks on me, saying, Don’t think about it. It’s not happening yet. Don’t think about it until you have to.

We stand up and dust ourselves off. The saleswoman treats us as if nothing happened. She won’t even let us help clean up the mess. We thank her by buying an excessive amount of footwear, including Gram’s low-heeled pumps.



I sleep well our first night in Rome, despite the heat and lack of air-conditioning. Gram meets me in the lobby at ten AM sharp for our date.

“Shall we sit awhile?” She’s wearing her giant beetle sunglasses. People are sipping cappuccinos on the Spanish Steps. I miss my Starbucks chai.

“So, Mads, Janie and I had a good long talk. Your cousin is a complex, sensitive, bright young lady.”

“She is?”

“Yes, she is, wiseass. You, on the other hand? Pure bimbo.”

“It takes one to know one.” Gram acts like she didn’t hear me and puckers her lips. It’s her thinking pose.

“I’m trying to get a mental picture of the future Maddie. Formal wedding or elopement? I suspect formal for you.”

“Of course. I want to design my own wedding dress.”

“You can still elope if you design your own dress. My friend Ruth eloped in a custom French gown at a Vegas chapel in 1969. Second marriage, though.” Gram lifts her sunglasses to check out a very hot guy fifty years her junior. “Anyway, we need to figure out your something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue. It’s my very favorite wedding tradition.”

“What did you do for your wedding?”

“My grandmother’s blue handkerchief for old and blue. I don’t know where that thing went. Rose’s drop diamond earrings for borrowed. And new, of course, was my grand gown.” She pinches my stomach. “Your waist would never be small enough to fit into that dress.”

“Hey, that’s mean. Are you calling me porky?”

“No. Our waists were freakishly tiny back then. Women—such odd creatures we are. Anyway, it would give me great joy to plan your wedding somethings.”

I want to say, Let’s worry about that some other time. But she wants to do this now, because now is all we have left.

“I would love that, Gram. What are you thinking?”

“Let’s stroll awhile. It’ll come to us.”

We stop at the Trevi Fountain, where people are supposed to throw a coin to guarantee a return to Rome. Gram hands me a coin like she did for the gumball machines when I was little.

“If I recall,” she says, “you throw with your right hand over your left shoulder.”

“Am I supposed to make a wish?”

“It can’t hurt, can it?”

I should wish for a miracle. I should wish for Gram and the other Wishwell patients to get better. I should wish for peace or gay equality or an end to fossil fuels. But the coin slips out of my hand and flies over my left shoulder before I can change my impulse wish.