“Um,” I said, so embarrassed. I hated needing things, and I hated it even more when I needed things from my mom. “The kids are hungry.”
“That makes three of us,” she replied, still looking at the magazine, which was about houses on the beach or some such nonsense.
“I’ve got money,” I said. “Could you order all of us a pizza?”
She looked up at the ceiling, thinking about it. “I’m not really in the mood for pizza,” she said.
“Anything,” I replied. “McDonald’s? Subway?”
She sighed, stood up from the table, and started going through the cabinets, snatching them open and then slamming them closed.
“I’ve got macaroni and cheese,” she said. Then she looked in the fridge. “And hot dogs.”
“That’s great,” I said. I reached for a pot and filled it with water. She threw the hot dogs on the counter next to the stove and went back to the table. While I waited for the water to boil, I stared at her. When I was a kid, there had been so many nights like this, usually my mother and one of her boyfriends watching TV on this little model they kept in the kitchen, while I made butter noodles or a wilted, soggy salad with Thousand Island dressing, cutting up cucumbers and green peppers like we were the healthiest people in the world because of me.
I walked over to the stairs, called out to see if the kids were okay, and they shouted that they were. When I stepped back into the kitchen, my mom said, “I knew you were coming.”
“Is that right?” I said, feeling my skin getting itchy, my heartbeat picking up.
“A man called a while ago. Cal or Carl or . . . something like that. Asked if I’d heard from you.”
“What did you tell him?” I asked her.
“I said I hadn’t seen you all summer, that I hadn’t even talked to you,” she said.
“Okay,” I said, because I knew there was more.
“He said that I should call him if you turned up with two kids,” she continued, now finally looking at me. “Said he’d pay me for my trouble.”
“So did you call him back?” I asked.
She shook her head. “He was so stiff, so formal. I didn’t like his tone. So, no, I didn’t call him back.”
The water was finally boiling, and I poured in the macaroni.
“You’re welcome,” she said.
“Madison’s husband,” I said, “he’s—”
“I don’t want to know,” she told me.
“Well, the kids, Bessie and Roland. Something you need to know—”
“No, I don’t need to know,” she said. “I won’t keep you from what you want to do, Lillian. I’ve never kept you from what you want—”
I huffed, my turn to interrupt her.
“You do what you want, but just let me have my peace,” she said after a few seconds.
When I looked over at her, she seemed so old, even though she was only forty-seven, and I knew that sometimes she adopted the mannerisms and posture of someone much older to avoid having to do things that she didn’t want to do. If I’d been a man, if I’d been handsome, she would not have been reading a magazine about coastal living and yawning. I think, maybe, if I’d been anyone other than her daughter, she would have acted differently, but I made her feel old, because I was hers.
I stirred the pasta, started putting hot dogs in a pan.
“I never pictured you with kids,” she said. “You didn’t seem the type for it.”
“That makes two of us,” I replied.
“We’re so hungry!” Roland shouted from the attic.
“Let ’em come on down,” my mom said, indicating the table. She stood up and filled four plastic cups with water.
“Come down!” I shouted up at them, the rickety house letting sound shoot through the walls and floors, and then they were thumping down the stairs.
“Hi!” Roland said, again waving to my mom, who took her magazine and pulled her chair over near the window.
I heated up the hot dogs, nearly burning them because I was also straining the macaroni, and then I mixed everything together in a pot. I got some plates and served them.
“Don’t you want some?” Roland asked my mom.
“I guess so,” she replied, and she pulled her chair over to the table. She took a bite and nodded. “It’s good,” she told me. She always liked it when I cooked for her, whatever it was.
“You’re quiet,” my mom said, pointing her spoon at Bessie.
“I’m a little tired,” Bessie replied.
“She’s cute,” my mom said to me, her spoon still fixed on Bessie, who brightened a little.
“We’re on a trip,” Roland announced, wanting my mother’s attention.
“For how long?” she asked. I wondered how long it had been since she’d talked to a child. To anyone.
“We don’t know,” Roland said. “It’s hard to tell.”
“Just for a little while,” I told the table, not hungry, pushing my food around my plate.
“We don’t stay anywhere for very long,” Bessie admitted.
“Well,” my mom said, “it’s better than just staying in one place for your entire life.”
“I don’t think so,” Bessie said, looking at me now, like she wanted me to say something, but my mind was somewhere else, not in this house. This happened a lot, where my body was right here, in the house where I’d grown up, but my mind was hovering just outside it, waiting to see what it was that I was going to do.
After the kids fell asleep, I was still too keyed up to do anything. Being back in this house, in the attic, felt like sliding down the biggest slide in the world, just an utterly cosmic joke. I tried to imagine my life before this summer, all the times I moved out and then moved right back. I had been so smart, and then when things didn’t work out exactly how I’d hoped, it was like I pushed that curiosity way down inside myself. I’d wasted so much time.
I’d check out books by Ursula Le Guin, Grace Paley, and Carson McCullers. And then I’d hide the books from view when anyone walked by because I was afraid someone would ask me about them, like they might think I was showing off or trying to be someone that I wasn’t. There were times when I felt feral, like I hadn’t gotten the proper training right when it mattered, and now I was lost.
And here I was, and now there were these two children, their arms wrapped so tightly around me that I could barely breathe. And maybe, now that I had them all to myself, now that we didn’t have the safety of that house on the estate, I worried that these kids had missed that opportunity, too, that they were lost. And I wondered if it was cruel to pretend that there was anything I could do for them. I knew there would come a time when I had to give them back. And, god, they would hate me. For their entire lives. More than their mother. More than Jasper, even. They’d hate me because I’d made them think that I could do it.
I pulled their arms off me, and they muttered, their bodies so sweaty in this humid attic. I rearranged the fans so they were closer to the kids, and then I walked downstairs, the steps creaking and squeaking loudly, until I saw my mom on the sofa in the living room. She wasn’t watching TV or reading or doing anything. She didn’t even have a drink. She was just staring into space.