I'd Give Anything(30)

“We’ve seen each other eight times in the past twenty years, never for more than two or three hours at a time, and we’ve never had a real conversation. If it weren’t for Iris, he probably wouldn’t see me at all,” I said.

“And Avery,” said Kirsten. “If it weren’t for Avery.”

“It’s true. They text sometimes, nothing serious, just goofiness and teasing, but it’s something.”

“Ask him to come,” said Kirsten. “I bet it will be different without Adela around.”

“I won’t ask him to come. I don’t want to put him on the spot. If he wants to be here, he will.”

Kirsten said, “Oh, Ginny, just ask him.”

“No.”



I asked him.

I didn’t just ask him.

I said, “Trev, I know it’s been so long since we were close, and it’s probably mostly my fault, but I miss you. I wish you would come.”

Idiot. Idiot, idiot, idiot.

To be fair to my idiotic self, I didn’t lead with that plaintive and pathetic plea. I called and he answered the phone, and I recounted, calmly, clearly, like a news anchor, the events of the day.

Trevor laughed a barbed and bitter laugh and said, cheerfully, “In control till the end, the old despot.”

“Yup,” I said.

“Let me guess. She planned her own funeral down to the seventeen nauseating, praise-singing eulogies and the exact number of petals on the white lilies.”

And there it was: you can hate your mother and leave her and not speak to her for the last twenty years of her life, but you will still, in spite of yourself, remember her favorite flower. What a terrible bind we are in, kids with difficult parents.

I didn’t say any of this to Trevor. I said, “I think they always have six petals.”

“Yeah, well, if Adela Beale wanted five, someone would probably figure out how to grow them that way.”

“Mutant lilies! Now!”

“Exactly.”

“I assumed that, too: the big, fancy funeral. Flags at half-staff all over town. But no. She didn’t want people to get together and discuss her without her there to edit what they said. No funeral, and she’s getting cremated. But she wrote her own obituary.”

“I don’t want my name in it.”

“Who’s trying to control the narrative now?”

I meant it to come out teasingly, but Trevor snapped, “Still on her side, I see. Team Adela forever.”

After so long, to be still talking about sides. Don’t stoop to defend yourself, Ginny. Don’t take the damn bait. Move on like he didn’t say it.

“No,” I said. “I can see how you might think it, but that’s never been true. Ever.”

Silence, during which I silently called myself an idiot and decided—decided decisively—to say goodbye and get the hell off the phone immediately.

“Do you think you’ll come?” I said.

I said it, then banged myself in the forehead with my fist.

“And what? Sit around eating casseroles and reminiscing about how much she hated me?”

“Oh God, do you think the neighbors will bring casseroles? Because that would make Adela insane,” I said.

“White trash food,” said Trevor, in a precise imitation of our mother’s voice.

“Tuna noodle with cream of mushroom soup! Please, God, let someone bring that.”

“With crumbled saltines on top!”

And then my brother, Trevor, laughed. Not the acidic, sneering laugh from the beginning of our conversation, but a true, short-blast Trev laugh that jarred something loose inside of me, a shiny, sharp-edged thing. Love, I guess it was.

“Trev, I know it’s been so long since we were close, and it’s probably mostly my fault, but I miss you. I wish you would come.”

“Gin,” said Trevor.

It wasn’t “Zin,” but it was close enough. I felt like someone had handed me a diamond.

Then, nothing. Then, “Listen, I have to go. Thanks for giving me the news.”



“Tell me about your mom,” I said to Daniel.

It was the kind of winter morning when every leaf is furred with frost. The grass of the dog park crunched underfoot, and the sun floated, a fuzzy white puffball, in the slate sky. The morning felt like a black-and-white photograph colorized here and there: my red gloves; my dogs’ jackets, one orange, one yellow; a woman’s bright blue knit hat in the distance. In the muffled light, Daniel’s eyebrows were two black slashes in a pale face; his eyes shone moonstone gray.

“You want to talk about my mom?” said Daniel.

“All I’ve done lately is talk about my mom to people. I mean, most of the time, it’s because they ask. In the grocery store, in my neighborhood, at her lawyer’s office, at Avery’s school. But you and Mag have had to hear all the stuff I didn’t say to those people, all those thrilling mother-daughter dysfunction stories. No wonder Mag didn’t come today.”

“Oh yeah,” said Daniel. “As soon as you walk away, Mag and I are like ‘Can you believe her? Still talking about her mom after four whole days?’”

“So you decided to take shifts,” I said, nodding. “Good thinking.”