I Was Told It Would Get Easier(76)

“Well,” I said, waiting for the elevator doors to close. “Onward and upward, baby.”

She looked at me and smiled. “I was thinking about Grandma, in the shower. That’s funny.”

“Do you remember her very well?” Emily had been still quite young when my mom had passed away, maybe twelve or so.

Emily nodded. “Of course. She was the best. She had a lathe.”

I laughed out loud, having completely forgotten that. “That’s right.” I frowned suddenly. “She didn’t let you use it, did she?”

Emily stepped through the opening doors into the lobby. “Grandma? Let me play on a deadly high-velocity tool? With blades?” She snorted. “Of course not.” But then she grinned at me over her shoulder. “How do you think I made you that Mother’s Day mug rack?”

I stopped. “You made that?”

Emily shrugged and headed to the street.



* * *



? ? ?

Amanda and Robert lived, as I have said, in a brownstone they bought at the end of the nineties. I don’t know what they paid for it, but let’s say they got lucky. Mind you, back then 148th Street between Broadway and Riverside was not a fancy neighborhood. Now it was a stone-cold hipster paradise, and Amanda and Robert would sit on their stoop and tut over how much the neighborhood had gentrified, despite the fact that they were among the first to start the process.

“No, we were here long before it was cool,” they would say, and maybe they were right. Anyway, now the house was looking pretty lived in, which is what happens after three kids make their way through both the place and the parents’ decorating budget. Chloe was their youngest, but she was still a few years older than Emily. We’d visited every couple of years, usually before or after seeing my parents, and Emily and Chloe had always gotten along. Chloe, being the baby of her family, enjoyed the novel sensation of being an older sister, and Emily enjoyed everything about Chloe. Which explained her squeal of delight when it was, in fact, Chloe who opened the door and welcomed us in.

“Em!”

“Chloe!”

Repeat that a few times in a pitch only dogs and dolphins can hear, and you’ll have a perfect re-creation.

Amanda was in the kitchen, as usual, a pen tucked behind her ear, her hair sticking up at the back like always. She looked up as I came in but kept stirring her cooking.

“Hey,” she said.

“Hey,” I said, sitting down at the counter and dropping my bag on the floor. As always, it was as if we’d seen each other yesterday. We’d lived together the last two years of college, and that kind of intimacy doesn’t wear away. Amanda’s dog, Harvey, wandered over and blundered into the chair. He was some kind of middle-sized poodle mix, with hair that stuck up like Amanda’s. When he was freshly washed he was like a camel-colored dandelion clock, but the rest of the time he was more . . . clumpy.

“Hey, Harvey,” I said, scratching his head. His milky eyes gazed up at me, and his tail waved gently back and forth. Everything about Harvey was mellow.

“He can’t see a thing anymore,” Amanda said, clunking her wooden spoon on the side of the pot, then licking it and sticking it back in. She reached for the salt. “We try not to move the furniture, but sometimes he still walks into it.”

“Oh no, poor baby,” I said, scratching his head some more.

“I don’t think he cares,” said Amanda. “He pauses, possibly mumbles an apology, and moves on.”

“How old is he now?”

“Fifteen.”

“Jeez.”

“Right? In dog years he’s, like, eighty-three. I found a chart online.”

Harvey walked over to his dog bed and spun around three times before lying down and huffing his head onto his paws.

Amanda looked at him. “Every morning I steel myself to find his dead body, and every morning he’s standing by the refrigerator door, waiting patiently for it to open.” Amanda pretends to be tough, but she isn’t fooling anyone. “I thought he was waiting for Chloe to leave for college, but she’ll graduate next year and he’s still around.”

“Maybe he’s waiting for you to die first, out of politeness,” I suggested, getting up from my stool. “Can I make myself some coffee?”

“Of course, we have one of those pod thingies now, the kids got it for me last Mother’s Day.”

I dug around in the cupboard and made myself some coffee. “Do you want some?”

Amanda shook her head. “I’m getting too old for coffee in the evenings, it’s pathetic.” She frowned at me. “Emily’s here, right? She doesn’t say hello anymore?”

I made a face. “She and Chloe disappeared upstairs immediately. They’re probably high as kites already.”

Amanda smiled. “As long as they smoke their own stuff, I’m good.”

I raised my eyebrows. “You still smoke pot?”

She nodded. “You don’t?”

“I’m a lawyer, remember?”

“Isn’t it legal in California? I would have thought you would be mildly stoned 24-7.”

I shook my head. “Clients like counsel to be fully present and on top of their game. Waving a sheaf of papers at the judge and saying, Dude, whatever works for you works for me, would not cut it.”