French Braid(36)

“But I could help you,” Lily said. “I could bring the main dish, say, and the salad. All you would have to do is fix one of your special desserts.”

“It’s not only that,” Mercy said. “The food is the very least of it. There’s all the cleaning and the fixing up, arranging the flowers, ironing the tablecloth…I have to admit I’m not keeping up with the housework nowadays.”

It was bizarre, Lily’s husband always said, how something so obvious was never, ever talked about: her mother had left home. Sometimes Lily would say something extremely pointed, like “Mom, I think you should know that Dad has this racking cough and I can’t talk him into seeing a doctor or even taking off work a few days. I think it might be pneumonia.” Then her mother would say, “Isn’t he exasperating?” as if she had known about his cough all along, although it could easily have been a couple of weeks since anyone in the family had laid eyes on her. “Well,” she’d say, “I’m going to give him a talking-to; how’s that.” And sure enough, Robin would phone Lily that evening and say, “Your mom is making me go see Dr. Fish tomorrow, so you’ll have to open for me. Hate to ask, but you know how she fusses.” His shyly boastful tone filled Lily with pity. He was so proud to have a wife who cared about his well-being.

“Has anyone asked her?” Morris said once. “Have they asked, ‘Are you and Dad separated? Divorced? Or what, exactly?’?”

“I don’t see you asking,” Lily pointed out.

“Me! I don’t have the right.”

“And I do?”

“Well, you’re her daughter.”

Yes, but.

In fact, she didn’t feel like Mercy’s daughter. Or more accurately, she didn’t feel that Mercy was any kind of mother. She felt Mercy was like those cats who fail to recognize their own kittens after they’ve grown up.

Now she said, “Okay, Mom, how about everyone comes to our place instead. All you have to do is show up for it, okay?”

“Or maybe Alice’s place,” Mercy suggested.

“Alice’s! Why not mine?”

“Well, you’re a working woman, sweetie. Alice has more free time. Let’s ask Alice to do it.”

“You’re only saying that because you don’t trust me,” Lily said.

“Not trust you!”

“You’re never going to change your view of me, are you? I’m the problem child. I’m the college dropout; I’m the faithless wife and the home-wrecker and the unwed mother. You just can’t admit that a person is capable of change. But I’m thirty-eight years old now! I manage a whole store! I have a very happy marriage and a son who’s on the honor roll!”

“Well, of course you do, honey,” Mercy said in a soothing voice. “I know that.”

There was no denying, right then, that the two of them did sound like mother and daughter.



* * *



—

Morris referred to it as “going to approve the intended.” “Get your shoes on, buddy,” he told their son on Easter morning. “We’re going to approve the intended.”

“What?”

“Going to meet your uncle David’s new girlfriend.”

“Now, we don’t know she’s his girlfriend,” Lily said. “He didn’t say straight out that she is.”

“Of course she is, or why would he care if we met her?” Morris asked.

He was tying his tie in front of the foyer mirror. Lily was putting on her parka. (The day had turned out cold, sad to say.) She was not half as dressed up as Morris; she wore pants and a turtleneck. And Robby, who’d been watching cartoons in his pajamas until just a few minutes ago, had put on his usual outfit of jeans and a sweatshirt and was only now trying to step into his sneakers without losing hold of the marshmallow egg he was unwrapping. Lily tut-tutted and knelt to fit one of his feet into a sneaker. “You remember your uncle David, right?” she said.

“Sure.”

“And he’s bringing his friend Greta.”

“Is she pretty?”

“We don’t know yet.”

She tied his sneaker and reached for the other one before she thought to add, “Not that it matters.”

“It matters to me,” he said.

He had just turned eleven, but he seemed much younger—a round-faced, chubby, bespectacled child who took after his father. Lily was surprised he gave even a thought to whether girls were pretty or not.

In the car, she told Morris, “Watch Alice say I put something redundant in my salad.”

“Redundant!”

“Watch her say I shouldn’t have put tomatoes in when she’s serving tomato aspic or something. But I did ask. I said, ‘Just tell me what your menu is so I can make sure not to repeat it.’ And she said, ‘I have no idea yet.’ Said, ‘I’ve never fixed an Easter dinner in my life; how would I know what to serve?’?”

“Ham, maybe?” Morris suggested, flicking his turn signal on. “I believe that’s customary for Easter.”

“I hate tomatoes,” Robby piped up from the backseat.

“I know you do, honey,” Lily said. “Just eat your way around them.” She glanced down at the bowl she was holding, although it was covered with foil and she couldn’t see the contents. “At least my salad doesn’t have ham in it,” she said.