The Mystery of Hollow Places(36)

The most recent addition to this house, besides my stepmother, is Dad’s chair. He and I dragged it home from a yard sale five blocks over a few years ago. Dad had gone on new meds and was a little jumpy, so he wasn’t supposed to drive just yet. But that couldn’t stop us. We hauled it back on foot, knees knocking against the steep sides of the chair, fingers slipping, sweat spackling our faces.

“This is why you’re my strongest girl yet,” he told me.

I pause in the doorway and Lindy takes her time looking up from the book, though from the way she drops it shut without bothering to mark her page, I suspect she’s been 49 percent reading a biography of Cleopatra, 51 percent waiting for me to walk in.

“Gosh, Immy, is that you? The boss has been making you work double shifts again, I take it? How’s your 401k coming?”

“Okay, okay, I get it, I’ve been scarce.”

“You’ve been absent,” she says, and sighs. “But I get it too.”

I scratch an itch on my ankle with one sneaker. I don’t want to talk, to pretend I’m as lost as Lindy. But the situation calls for more than “Hi, how’ve you been, can you lend me a hundred bucks for mysterious purposes, maybe see you Tuesday!” Instead I land on, “It’s fine. I’m fine.”

She crosses to the couch and spreads her palm out on the cushion beside her.

“Right now?”

“Please.”

I perch on the arm at the far side of the couch, examining my reflection in the darkened windows.

“How’s Jessa?” Lindy asks.

“She’s . . . Jessa. She texts. She talks a lot.”

“What did you two do last night?”

I swallow the unpleasant memory. “Just hung around. Played Ping-Pong.”

Lindy nods; I see it in the window, and Dad’s old, pilled bathrobe wrapped around her instead of the usual cape or kimono robe. “She’s a good friend to you.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“Did the Prices feed you already?” she asks, maybe a smidge jealously.

“I wanted to eat with you,” I say, which pleases her.

I follow Lindy into the kitchen to help with dinner, though there isn’t much for me to do. My stepmother is as efficient a cook as she is a counselor. Before she starts on the ginger pork stir-fry and mashed veggie-of-the-week, she lines all her knives on the counter by size, her starches and oils by order of use, her vegetables by quantity (three-fourths cup carrots before one-half cup snow peas before one-quarter cup chopped onion and so on). I learned my craft from the Joshua Scott School of Cooking, which is so utilitarian we never used to close the chip bags; in fact, we’d lean them on their sides in the cupboards with their crinkly plastic mouths wide-open and pointed frontward so all we had to do was open a cabinet door and reach a hand in.

Now, I do what Lindy tells me to. Pour this, wash this, move over so I can do this. I try not to think of it as giving her what she wants so I can get something (gas money, a few more days of freedom to search). I try to think of it the way Lindy does: as a bonding exercise.

“It’s awesome,” I assure her when we’re sitting at the table with our full plates, ignoring the empty seat beside us, which only makes it emptier.

“The pork came out very tender, but I think I went overboard on the ginger.”

This is kind of classic Lindy. It was a big part of therapy when we were briefly with her—celebrating victories and identifying opportunities. “You say you went to the grocery store today, Josh! That’s wonderful. A great victory over your depression. Congratulate yourself! And maybe tomorrow you can do two things, like go to the grocery store and put the food in the fridge so Imogene doesn’t come home to eight-hours-warm milk and iceless ice cream.” I’m paraphrasing, of course. Mostly.

I’ve often wondered about the moment when Dad decided, That’s the one for me forever. I’ve been told the story of how they started dating. We’d only been to three or four sessions with Lindy before Dad ran into her at the Thinking Cup in Boston and invited her to share his high-top table. (“I won’t be billed for this, will I?” he’d joked lamely.) While their coffees cooled, they talked, and a week later, Dad requested a different family therapist. He must’ve wooed her hard, because it wasn’t long after that she switched practices altogether, and Dad sat me down at a low-top table at Cheesy Pete’s and gave me the Lindy Talk.

But what was it about Lindy, exactly? What convinced him to marry her when apparently (and mysteriously) he’d never even married my mother? I’m not saying Lindy isn’t wicked smart, ambitious, and nice enough, with hair that shines like polished wood. I don’t object to Lindy in any specific way. But Dad’s kept The Miraculous Draught of Fishes as his desktop background for as long as I can remember, and I can remember three laptops back. How do you love someone that much, then propose to your family therapist?

And for maybe the first time ever, I wonder when Lindy looked at Dad and thought, That’s the man for me. What convinced her to risk so much for him? What convinced her to stay?

I watch as it takes my stepmother two delicate bites to snip a quarter-size piece of watercress off her fork tines with her front teeth. What would she think if she knew that Dad and Mom were never married? Would she be pleased with her shiny new first-wife status? Suspicious of whatever truth is lurking beneath the lie, like me?