French Braid(66)

“How’s she doing?” Claude asked.

“She says she’s moving. She’s going to Asheville to help with her grandbaby; she wants me to come to lunch so she can show me the stuff she’s leaving behind in case I can use any of it.”

“When, today?” Claude asked.

“Yup.”

“Well, see if she’s got any lamps she wants to get rid of.”

Claude was always complaining that they didn’t have any good reading lamps.

“I’ll keep an eye out,” Eddie said, “but I bet you anything she’ll be back here inside of a year, wondering where they’ve gotten to.”

Claude snorted. He didn’t point out that he had no grounds for betting on Aunt Lily’s behavior one way or another, never having met her.

Claude was much more forthcoming than Eddie. He had introduced Eddie to his parents years ago, and Eddie and Claude had had a standing date with them ever since for Sunday supper. But Eddie’s own family had never laid eyes on Claude. In fact they didn’t even know he existed.

Fortunately, though, Claude was also one of those rare people who could accept a loved one’s failings with a philosophical shrug and say no more. When Eddie told him, now, “Sorry to duck out on brunch,” Claude just said, “That’s okay,” and turned a page of his paper. And after a brief hesitation, Eddie went back to pruning the nandina.



* * *



—

“You think I’m being hasty,” were Lily’s first words when he arrived. He wasn’t even properly through the front door yet. “You think I’m going to regret giving up my house. But I’m not, Eddie; believe me. I know what I’m doing.”

He had brought a bottle of wine, and he had dressed for a social occasion—at least to the extent that he ever did dress. Although he still resembled his father physically, he had long ago exchanged Kevin’s dapper clothing style for one more suited to his workplace: T-shirts and baggy khakis. Today, though, his shirt had a collar and it buttoned down the front, and his khakis were fresh from the dryer. Lily, on the other hand, looked prepared for serious labor. She wore faded jeans and a tank top that exposed her withered arms, and her gray-blond ponytail was doubled back through its elastic to keep it out of the way. “Wine!” she said. “How nice of you. But don’t let me overindulge, because we’ve got some heavy lifting to do.” Then, continuing with her original train of thought as she led him through the living room, “Do you have the remotest notion what it’s like to be Serena’s mother? She’s always been so darn competent. More like your mother. Sorry. And at first I thought the baby hadn’t changed that. I went down there for the birth and she was all radiant and Madonna-like and, well, serene. But that was when Peter was brand-new and still sleeping all the time. A couple weeks later, after I have gone back home and he has gotten his little personality together, is when she calls me.”

Lily’s living room looked the same as ever, the furniture where it had always been and the rug lying flat on the floor. But when they passed through the dining room, Eddie saw that the entire table was covered with stemware and china and decorative objects. Lunch had been set out on the kitchen table instead: grilled cheese sandwiches on two plates, with paper napkins alongside. “Could you fetch wineglasses from the dining room?” Lily asked him, and then, raising her voice as he left the kitchen, “So when she stops crying long enough for me to make out what she’s saying, she tells me that all that day as she was taking care of the baby she’d had this nagging feeling there was something she’d needed to do. ‘What was it?’ she kept saying to herself. ‘I know it was something,’ and then along about five p.m. she said, ‘Oh, now I remember. I meant to comb my hair.’?”

Eddie clucked sympathetically and set the wineglasses on the kitchen table.

“I told her, I said, ‘Oh, honey. It’s not always going to be this way. You just don’t have things organized yet,’ I told her. ‘You’ve always been so good at organizing.’?”

“Where is…Jeff? Where is her husband in all this?” Eddie asked.

“She says he’s useless. Worse than useless. She says he’s scared of babies. Well, that’s what she gets for marrying a weird scientist type.”

Eddie clucked again and pulled out his chair to sit down.

“So I am thinking now is my chance,” Lily said, settling across from him. “When am I ever, ever again going to get to step in and take charge? Hee hee!”

Throughout his life Eddie had heard his mother talk about how wild and scatty her sister was, but this was his first in-person experience of it. (Had Morris been a calming influence, maybe?) Lily’s face was stretched tight with excitement; her eyes seemed to give off light. “Lily to the rescue!” she crowed. “Well, face it: I’ll never have this chance with my other grandchildren. That wife of Robby’s is Madame Know-It-All, and besides which, they’re off there on the Eastern Shore with her own family close by. Oh, it’s true what people say about daughters-in-law.”

Eddie had no idea what people said about daughters-in-law. (His own mother had only sons-in-law, Robby the Girl’s husband and Candle’s, both in other parts of the country.) He said, “Yeah, I can see why you’d want to help out. And I know Serena’d be glad to have you. But still: are you sure you should be selling your house yet? Don’t you want to change your mind about listing it?”