We Are Not Ourselves(200)

“This year he will be,” the father said.

She saw that the boy was uncomfortable with the attention, and she put the trophy down. She remembered they were Catholic. “Did you go to St. Joan of Arc?” she asked.

“I did,” the boy said. “From third grade on.”

“So did my son.” She guessed the boy was attending the same high school as Connell, which was a powerhouse in debate, but she didn’t want to embarrass him by asking, in case he hadn’t gotten in. “You have a sister, I remember. Is she here?”

“She’s at Yale,” Mr. Thomas said proudly. “We don’t see her often. Only holidays—and every other weekend, when she needs to do the laundry.” He chuckled at the absurdity of her coming all that way to wash her clothes, but Eileen also heard delight in the fact that his daughter, while being a high achiever on her way to a rewarding professional life, was still, in the end, his daughter.

Just as a heavy feeling was about to settle into Eileen at how long it had been since her son had washed his clothes in her machine at home, which she now ran only about once a week, Mrs. Thomas emerged from the kitchen and let out a surprised cry at seeing a stranger there. She must have been so absorbed in her cooking that she hadn’t heard the knock at the door. Eileen knew that feeling well—the exigencies of household duties, the making of a meal for a pair of mouths that showed their appreciation by the way they wolfed it down. It had always moved her to watch her husband and son eat.

“Hello,” the woman said, turning to her husband for an explanation.

“Anabel, this is Mrs. Leary.”

“Mrs. Leary?”

Of course it was the husband, and not the wife, who recognized her, because her perpetual industry allowed him a clear head, and she barely had a brain left at the end of a day of housework. Eileen felt herself straighten up in respectful solidarity.

“Mrs. Leary, from whom we bought the house,” he added.

Her hand went to her mouth to stifle the sound of her shock. “Oh! Welcome! What brings you here?”

“I was in the neighborhood.”

“Forgive me, I’m a mess.” She gestured to the apron tied around her waist, a prominent, fresh stain on its front. “Vijay, please take Mrs. Leary’s jacket.” So that was the boy’s name. It had taken the wife’s entrance for this crucial detail to emerge. Thomas Thomas could have been Ed standing there in a somehow still-charming dereliction of protocol. The boy came over and helped the jacket off Eileen’s shoulders one at a time. “May I show you around?” the woman asked. “I’m sure you’re curious to see the house.”

Eileen was curious. She was so refreshed to behold how accurate the woman—Anabel—had been in her perception, how sensitive to nuance, that she almost didn’t answer right away.

“I would love to see it,” she said. “My name is Eileen.”

Their shake was firm, appreciative—collegial. Anabel led her to the kitchen, which smelled like cardamom and curry. They had turned it into a galley kitchen. There was much more counter space now. They had granite slabs, not unlike the ones in her house. There was even a space to eat, with bar stools pushed under it, but she could tell they ate their meals in the dining room. The renovations were tastefully done, the sort she would have approved of had she and Ed committed the money to making them—had she not known in the back of her mind that she was thinking of some other house every time she looked at her own. Anabel gave her a quick tour. They had redone the bathroom: new tiles, a new clawfoot tub, a beautiful pedestal sink. They had converted one of the closets in the master bedroom into a little bathroom. She’d always wished for an extra bathroom on that floor, so she wouldn’t have to walk down to the basement when someone else was using it. New baseboard molding lined the house. Everywhere were elements obviously Indian—silk tapestries, carved wood figurines, an enameled brass vase—but there were also crosses on the walls, and a picture of the pope in the master bedroom. It took her a moment to register that this had once been her bedroom with Ed. Nothing in it looked the same. The bed seemed to radiate the life and energy of years of a couple sleeping side by side in it.

“How are your husband and son?”

She didn’t have it in her at that moment to deflect the question in an obfuscating ramble. “My husband died last March,” she said.

“Oh! I’m so sorry! Mrs. Leary!”

“Thank you,” she said. “And please call me Eileen.”

“It must be strange to be back here.”

“It’s nice, actually.”

“Please stay for dinner. We’re just about to eat.”

She knew what to say when politeness was extended in the due course of decency: I have to get going or I really can’t stay, whatever made it easier for everyone to save face and return to their regular lives. But she didn’t want to say any of that right now. She was so very tired. She wanted to stay there with these people in the attractive home they’d made of what she’d left behind. Something about these environs struck her as oppressively and irreducibly different, and yet she could imagine never leaving them. She didn’t look forward to returning to her empty house, with the wind screaming, the branches shushing against the siding, and the fear of someone creeping in through the window troubling her sleep. So much life filled this home that there was no way to feel dread in it, but then she’d seen that there was no way to feel dread in anyone’s home but one’s own. Something was sacred in being a guest.