He studies me with those inky black eyes. “Yes,” he says, but though that word reveals so much, it still feels like he’s holding even more inside. Like I’d have to pry him open to find out all his secrets. I’m a little afraid of what I’d find if I did.
“Do you think it would have been different?” I ask, a little wistful. “That kiss in the art gallery. Do you think we would have really dated if my father hadn’t written you into the will?”
He stares at me, his eyes stormy, no sense of stillness now. “Dated? You think I would have dated you and then… what? We would have had an argument about working long hours or being jealous or whatever the fuck normal people fight about?”
“I don’t know,” I whisper, a strange sense of longing tightening my throat.
It would have been nice to find out.
“We wouldn’t have dated,” he informs me, his voice rim. “I would have claimed you. And what’s more you would have claimed me. There wouldn’t have been an end. You want to know if it would be different? Day and night, that’s how different it would be.”
This way is night, dark and a little scary. He doesn’t have to spell that part out for me to recognize that truth. “Why did we let Daddy mess it up?”
“We were young. And I was stupid.”
“You aren’t young anymore.” And he’s a long way from stupid.
He gives me a private smile, as if he knows a secret. “No, not anymore.”
It sounds like a promise, those words. As if he’s going to fix what’s been broken for so long, but some things are damaged right down to their core. Some things can’t ever be put back together. The library looks up at us, its windows shattered and boarded, its walls caving in.
I burn my hand pulling a tray out of the oven. Metal heated to four hundred degrees burned right through the cute dish towel I found at a boutique that says, My safeword is takeout.
“Shit!” I suck on my thumb with a plaintive sound.
Avery gives me a completely unsympathetic snort. “I’ll do it.”
She uses an oven mitt—a plain, utilitarian blue oven mitt that seems to protect her just fine, because she manages to put the tray on the stove without almost dropping it.
“I bow to your greatness, Martha Stewart,” I say, handing her a serving spoon.
We spent the afternoon carving pumpkins. Avery made a traditional jack-o-lantern face. I applied my Smith College art school education to sculpting a penis out of a large orange fruit. And then we cleaned off the seeds, added plenty of butter and salt, and roasted them to perfection. My mouth is watering just looking at them, all browned and glistening.
When we’ve got the pumpkin seeds in a bowl, we join my mother on the sofa, where she’s got the TV queued up to the title screen of An Affair to Remember. “Ready, girls?”
“I’ve never seen this one,” Avery says.
“That’s blasphemy,” my mother says. “This is the most romantic movie.”
I go for a cluster of pumpkin seeds and pop it into my mouth. It burns my tongue. Then the salt and flavor hit me all at once. Orgasmic. “I’ve seen this a million times. And sometimes she’ll replay the scene at the end, the one where he sees her in the theater.”
Mom’s eyes get all dreamy. “And then he goes to her apartment.”
“‘I was looking up,’” I say in my best Deborah Kerr impression. Avery gives me a bemused smile. “You’ll understand in about two hours. And you’ll never look at the Empire State Building the same way. In fact it’s almost like the movie is a statement on the dangers of corporate excess.”
“Oh hush,” Mom says, pressing play. “It’s pure romance.”
The three of us gorge ourselves on butter-coated pumpkin seeds, licking our fingers to get all the salt. Cary Grant and Deborah fall in love on their cruise, even though they’re engaged to other people. Pure romance, my mother said. And it’s true. This is one of the most romantic movies ever made, except for the woman Cary Grant’s character didn’t marry. The man Deborah’s character didn’t marry. Strange, how love makes everything understandable. Even if it breaks someone else’s heart.
We reach the middle of the movie when I realize my mother’s fallen asleep, her head tilted to the side, the blueish veins visible in her eyelids. A knot in my throat, I pull up a blanket around her waist.
“Should I stop the movie?” Avery whispers.
I shake my head, but it’s not really an answer. Part of me wants to shake her, to demand she stay awake long enough to watch her favorite few minutes of her favorite movie. She’s been sleeping more and more, sleeping in late, taking naps.
The nurse told me it would happen.
Frieda also told me to consider a hospice facility, because this is one of many signs that my mother is dying. Her lack of appetite. The bruises that appear on her body even when she didn’t fall down. The way she sometimes wakes up without knowing where she is.
A hospice isn’t going to make that better. No, I should be the one who reminds her gently where she is. I should be the one who coaxes my mother to eat, who sits in vigil beside her while she sleeps.
I take her hand in mine, feeling how terribly cold it is. Unnaturally cold. That’s another sign from the nurse. Fevers and drops in temperature that come and go. How long? I asked her, but the nurse, so full of information, hadn’t wanted to answer that. It could be anywhere from a week to six months. Then you don’t really know. That’s what I wanted to scream at her. Instead I just thanked her with tears in my eyes, stupid, useless tears.
Avery hits the pause button on the remote and comes to kneel in front of us. “I’m sorry,” she whispers. “Is there anything I can do?”
“She’ll probably sleep for a couple hours,” I say, shaking my head.
A small smile. “I mean for you.”
That makes me laugh, a watery, strangled sound. “I don’t know.”
Avery takes my other hand, holding it as gently as I’m holding my mother’s hand. We remain linked like that, a chain of solidarity against an enemy that none of us can fight. And maybe that is what I need. Someone to sit here, quiet and still, not asking for anything.
Dark falls around the house, taking away the purple glow. “You should get home,” I murmur, my voice rusty as if I’ve been crying, but I haven’t been, not tonight. It’s like my body feels it the same way, even the times when I can hold in the tears.
“I can stay in a guest room,” Avery says, her hazel eyes troubled.
“Is Gabriel home?” I’m asking about more than his travel arrangements. I’m asking about whether he still feels distant to her. If she needs a place to stay as much as I need her to be here.
She bites her lip. “He had to extend his China trip.”
“Oh. Then by all means, stay in the guest room. We can watch the grand finale tomorrow morning over French toast, which is maybe the only thing that tastes better than roasted pumpkin seeds.”
“Do you think…”
I squeeze her hand gently. “Do I think what?”
“Do you think he would do that?” A glance toward the black TV screen. “You know, find someone else while he’s traveling. Fall in love with her while I’m so far away.”