BONUS PART 4 — The Day She Let Me Leave
When I asked my mother why she’d paid two hundred dollars toward my first apartment, she said, “Because I heard what your father offered you the night before.”
I sat down at the kitchen table.
Dad had told me about the money order, the note she’d left with the receipt, and the shower curtain she’d packed in a box marked bathroom. I’d called expecting to hear that she’d wanted to do something nice for me.
“What did Dad offer me?”
“Six months at home. He said you could save up and look for something closer.”
I remembered that conversation. Dad had stood in the hallway, halfway into his coat, holding the garage keys. He’d made it sound like an idea that had just occurred to him.
I’d gone upstairs afterward and taken the moving boxes out of the hallway. I didn’t unpack them. I just carried them into my room and closed the door.
“You heard that?”
“I was in the kitchen.”
“Why didn’t you say anything?”
“I almost told him he was right.”
My hand tightened around the phone.
Mom took a breath.
“I wanted you to stay, too,” she said. “I’d gotten used to hearing you come home at night. I knew which stair you skipped when you were carrying groceries. Sometimes I’d turn the television down so I could hear you come in.”
The stair was the third one from the top. It had a loose piece of trim that caught the heel of my work shoes.
I’d forgotten about it until she said that.
“I thought you were excited for me,” I said.
“I was. I also stood in the supermarket the week you left and picked up your cereal before I remembered you wouldn’t be there to eat it.”
I looked around my kitchen. I’d bought the table secondhand for that first apartment and carried it through two moves. There was a mark on the top from the morning I’d used an iron on a towel without realizing how thin the towel was.
My mother had never seen that mark. I usually put a placemat over it when anybody came over.
“Tell me about the rental office,” I said.
She did.
She’d called the property manager from the parking lot on her lunch break. The woman told her the deposit had been entered incorrectly on the sheet I’d been given. It was nine hundred. I’d already told Mom I had seven hundred set aside and just enough left over for gas and groceries until my first paycheck.
Mom went to buy a money order.
“She asked me if I wanted a receipt in your name or mine,” she said. “I told her mine. Then I asked if she could give you something that just said the deposit had been paid in full.”
“I still have that.”
“I thought you might.”
I could picture it in the folder I’d kept with the instructions for the thermostat and the number to call if I locked myself out. I’d been proud of that folder. Whenever anything broke, I knew where to look.
“Did Dad know before I got the keys?”
“I told him that night. He asked if I could spare the money.”
“Could you?”
“Barely.”
I waited. I knew my mother well enough to hear when she was giving me the first half of an answer.
“I’d been saving for a pair of shoes,” she said. “Good ones for work. I wore the old ones until the sole came away on the left foot. Your father glued it back on.”
I remembered those shoes. One of them squeaked on the kitchen floor after Dad fixed it. Mom used to pretend it was the floor and scold that particular tile when she stepped on it.
“Why didn’t you ever tell me?”
“I wanted you to have a good first weekend.”
“You could’ve told me later.”
“I could’ve.”
She went quiet. I heard a small click on her end. I thought she might be turning off a lamp.
“Once you started helping us,” she said, “there were times I thought about bringing it up.”
I pressed my bare foot flat against the kitchen floor.
“When?”
“The first time you told me you couldn’t send anything until Friday. I remember thinking I’d found the money when you needed it. I sat there with the phone in my hand, figuring out how to say that so you’d send something sooner.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“I remembered what I’d written on the note.”
Neither of us said anything for a while.
Please don’t tell her about the money. Let her have the apartment.
I’d been thinking of those words all afternoon as something tender she’d written about me. Now I imagined her remembering them on a Thursday, short on money and angry at how long a day could feel when somebody else had told you to wait until Friday.
“Do you wish you’d kept the two hundred?” I asked.
“No.”
Her answer came quickly enough to surprise me.
“I wish I’d bought the shoes eventually,” she added. “Those were awful shoes by the end.”
I laughed. Mom did, too.
It was the sort of joke we could have used to end a difficult conversation. We’d done that plenty of times. One of us would find something funny, and the other would be so grateful for the way out that we’d forget we’d been talking about anything else.
I let the laugh finish.
“I’m glad you helped me get the apartment,” I said. “I’m still hurt about Christmas.”
“I know.”
“I might need to say that more than once.”
Mom was quiet for a moment.
“You can,” she said.
My glass of water was on the counter, out of reach. I got up to get it and looked through the window while I drank. Across the parking lot, somebody was carrying a lamp into the building with the cord dragging behind him. A woman held the door open with her hip and called to him to watch the plug.
“Do you really remember where I stood?” I asked.
“In the rental office?”
“Yes.”
“By the window. You took the keys off the little ring right away because you wanted to put them on the ring you’d bought. You dropped one and it went under the chair.”
I remembered buying that key ring. It was red plastic, the kind with a clear space for a photograph. I’d never put a photograph in it.
“I thought you were looking at the paperwork,” I said.
“I was looking at you.”
I put the glass down carefully.
On the other end of the phone, my mother waited.
We made pie dough on the second Saturday in January.
Mom came to my apartment with a rolling pin wrapped in a dish towel and a bag of flour tucked under her arm.
I had flour. I told her that while she was taking her coat off.
“Good,” she said. “Then if we ruin this, there’s more.”
She put her things on the counter and looked around. She’d been to the apartment before, but usually to pick something up or drop off a form she wanted me to read. Once, she’d come inside while I transferred money to her and spent the entire visit standing near the door with her purse on her shoulder.
Now she took her shoes off.
I moved the placemat so we’d have room to work.
Mom touched the pale mark on the table.
“Did you iron on this?”
“Yes.”
“Did you put a towel down?”
“Yes.”
“How thick was it?”
I held my thumb and forefinger about a quarter of an inch apart.
She looked at my fingers and laughed. “That explains the mark on my dresser.”
“You did it, too?”
“Your father still thinks I left a hot cup there. I let him think it because he’s the one who leaves cups everywhere.”
We measured the flour. She showed me how she cut the butter with a knife before tipping it into the bowl. I’d been cutting it into neat little cubes, which took long enough that the butter softened by the time I used it.
Mom cut hers crooked and put the bowl in the refrigerator while we drank coffee.
“How’s the bookkeeping?” I asked.
“Better. I sent an invoice back last week.”
“What was wrong with it?”
“The hours didn’t match what we’d agreed on. I spent twenty minutes writing an email explaining why I was allowed to ask.”
“Did you send it?”
“I sent a shorter one. She wrote back that she’d copied the number from the wrong week.”
Mom took a sip of coffee.
“I’d already washed half the kitchen floor while I was waiting to see if she was angry.”
I looked at her over my mug. I’d scrubbed my own stove after sending a two-sentence email to a manager who had asked me to work a weekend. By the time she wrote back saying Monday was fine, I’d pulled the burners off and put them in the sink.
“Did you finish the floor?” I asked.
“No. Your father came in and walked over the wet half. I gave him the mop.”
I was still laughing when she took the bowl out of the refrigerator.
We added water a spoonful at a time. On the fourth spoonful, I lifted a handful and let the crumbs fall through my fingers.
“It’s too dry,” I said.
“Pinch it first.”
I pinched some between two fingers. It held.
“Oh.”
Mom smiled. She’d flour on her cheek, and I reached for a dish towel to give her. Before I could hand it over, she rubbed the flour away with the back of her wrist.
We wrapped the dough and put it in the refrigerator. I’d made soup the night before, and I asked if she wanted a bowl while we waited.
“Yes,” she said. “I’m hungry.”
We sat across from each other at my table. The winter light came through the window and fell across her hands.
I remembered the extra fork she’d set beside my cup at the bakery. How carefully I’d left it where it was.
“There’s something I wish I’d said when you told me about Dad’s letter,” I said.
Mom set her spoon down.
“What is it?”
“I wanted to know somebody had noticed.”
She looked at me.
“The car,” I said. “I was scared to drive it some mornings. I kept trying to figure out whether I could put off fixing it until the next month. When you told me Dad had heard the noise, I wanted to read what he’d written. I wanted to know when he heard it and what he thought when he did.”
Mom kept her hand beside the bowl.
“I wish I’d saved the letter,” she said.
I stirred my soup once. A carrot rose to the surface and went under again.
“When you opened it, did you read the whole thing?”
“Yes.”
“Even the part about the car?”
“Yes.”
I looked down.
She could have let the question sit there. I could feel myself preparing to get through the rest of lunch politely and decide later whether I was glad I’d asked.
Then she said, “I’d heard the noise, too.”
I looked up.
“I heard you start it after you brought groceries over one evening. You sat in the driveway for a while before you backed out. I remember thinking you might come back in and ask your father to look at it.”
“I called the garage from the car,” I said. “They were closed. I was listening to the recording to find out what time they opened.”
Mom’s eyes filled.
“Did you call again?”
“The next day. I made an appointment. Then you called about the groceries for the weekend, and I moved it.”
She nodded slowly. I could see her remembering the weekend, trying to find the conversation among all the others.
“I used to think if you needed something badly enough, you’d say so,” she said.
“I used to think you’d ask if you wanted to know.”
The refrigerator clicked off. Somewhere upstairs, a chair scraped across the floor.
Mom took her spoon up again. Then she put it down.
“Is there anything you need right now?”
My mind went straight to the practical answers. I had enough groceries. The car was fine. The boiler in the building made an unpleasant sound, but that was the landlord’s problem.
I looked at the half-finished bowls on the table and the rolling pin waiting on the counter.
“I’d like you to stay and eat the first slice,” I said. “You always say you’ll have one when you get home.”
She glanced at the clock.
“I told your father I’d be back by three.”
I felt myself prepare to tell her she should go.
Mom reached for her phone.
“I can tell him I’ll be back at four,” she said.
She sent the message. Then she finished her soup.
The pie came out with a gap between the filling and the top crust big enough to slip a finger into. When we cut it, the first slice fell over and half the apples slid across the plate.
Mom ate one of the loose apples with her fork.
“Needs a little salt in the crust,” she said.
“You measured the salt.”
“I know. I was hoping you’d forget.”
We each had another bite.
I sent Brenna a picture.
She wrote back, Looks structurally unsound. Do you need help disposing of it?
I saved her a piece.
By February, Brenna had paid enough toward the loan that the remaining balance fit on one line of the little notebook I used for groceries.
She still sent eighty dollars when she could. One month she sent a hundred and told me she’d picked up an extra shift. I entered the amount and thanked her. Then we spent fifteen minutes discussing whether she should cut the brown tip off Gary’s leaf or let him keep what little dignity he had.
One Wednesday she called and asked if she could come over to talk.
She arrived with her backpack, a bruised apple, and the expression she used to wear when she wanted to borrow my car before telling me where she planned to take it.
“What happened?” I asked.
“Nothing yet.”
She sat down and took the apple out of her bag.
“I got an email about a placement for next semester,” she said. “The supervisor asked if I’d apply. It’s at the office where I did that class project.”
“The one where the copier only worked when you held the tray closed with your knee?”
“They got a new copier. That was in the email, actually.”
I smiled.
“What kind of placement?”
“Three mornings a week. Paid. I’d get to sit in on some of the client meetings after the first month.”
She turned the apple so the bruise faced down.
“Where is it?”
“About two hours away.”
I remembered her telling me that, too. She’d borrowed her roommate’s car for the project and stopped halfway home because she thought one of the tires was going flat. It turned out the road had been newly paved and the steering felt different.
“Would you move?”
“I’d have to. The first shift starts at seven thirty.”
I had three questions ready. Whether she could afford the move. Whether she’d priced rooms. Whether she knew what she’d do if the placement didn’t turn into a job.
Brenna pulled a folded sheet of paper from the front pocket of her bag.
“I made a budget,” she said. “Would you look at it with me? I’ve got the deposit, and I can cover the first month. I want another set of eyes on what happens after that.”
I unfolded the paper.
There were two columns. One for staying where she was and one for moving. She’d included laundry, which I’d forgotten when I made my first budget. She’d included the loan payment in both columns.
“Where’d you get the rent number?” I asked.
“A woman from the program has a room. We talked yesterday. I’m going to see it Saturday.”
“Have you met her?”
“Twice. She was in the class with the cardigan professor.”
“Right.”
I pointed to the line for travel.
“You’ve only got enough here to come home once a month.”
“I figured once a month.”
There was no apology in it. She just thought once a month sounded about right.
I kept looking at the paper.
Brenna picked up the apple, turned it around, and took a bite out of the good side.
“Do you think I can do it?” she asked.
I thought about what she meant. She’d asked me to look at the budget. I could tell her what I saw there. The other question was bigger, and there’d been a time when both of us would have been happy to let me answer it for her.
“I think you left out the cost of getting your stuff there,” I said.
Her face fell.
Then she looked back at the sheet.
“Oh. I did.”
“How much stuff do you actually want to take?”
“My bed. The dresser. Some boxes.” She chewed for a moment. “Gary.”
“The table?”
“My roommate and I agreed the table belongs to the apartment now. We couldn’t get it back out without making that man come over in his slippers again.”
I took the pen from beside the grocery notebook and put it on the table between us.
Brenna picked it up. She wrote moving van in the margin, then made a little box beside it so she could fill in a number later.
“What do you want to do?” I asked.
“I want to go.”
She said it before she had time to make a joke about it.
Then she looked at me as if she’d surprised herself.
“I really want to go,” she said.
I could hear it that time. I thought about standing in the rental office with my red key ring, kneeling to fish a key out from under a chair. I’d been so eager to get into the apartment that I tried to put the front door key in the lock upside down.
“Then I think you should apply,” I said.
She took another bite of the apple.
“Will you miss me?”
“Who’s going to call and ask whether the oven light cooks a potato?”
“I could still call.”
“I hope you do.”
Brenna looked back down at the page. She circled the words moving van and wrote get quotes tomorrow underneath.
Before she left, I gave her the piece of pie I’d saved.
She opened the container and looked at it.
“Did you eat the other half of my crust?”
“It fell off when I cut it.”
“And then?”
“I ate it.”
She closed the lid. “I appreciate your honesty.”
I was laughing before she got her coat on.
Brenna got the placement.
She told Mom and Dad on a Sunday afternoon. I knew because she called me from the parking lot afterward and said, “I’m going to ask you a question, and I need you to let me get to the end before you answer.”
I was in the grocery store holding a bag of apples.
“Okay.”
“Mom asked what happens if the placement ends and I don’t have a job. Dad said I could wait for something closer. I got mad at both of them. Then Dad asked if I wanted him to help me figure out the van, and I got mad at him for asking that, too.”
I put the apples in my cart.
Brenna exhaled.
“Am I being awful?”
“You said I had to let you get to the end.”
“That was the end.”
“Oh.”
A cart went by with a bad wheel. I moved mine closer to the produce stand to let it through.
“What did you say to Dad when he asked about the van?”
“I said I’d already figured it out.”
“Have you?”
“Yes. I rented one.”
“Then he has his answer.”
Brenna was quiet.
“I think Mom wanted me to tell her I’d come back if it didn’t work out.”
“Would you?”
“I might. I don’t know where I’ll want to live in six months.”
I picked up an orange and rolled it between my palms. It had a soft spot near the stem.
“You can tell her that,” I said.
“I did. She started wiping the counter.”
I knew the rhythm of that. The fast pass over the crumbs and the slow pass afterward when there wasn’t anything left to wipe.
“What happened next?” I asked.
“She asked what time I wanted breakfast on moving day.”
I put the orange back and picked another one.
“What did you tell her?”
“Eight. I want pancakes.”
“You could ask for chocolate chips.”
“I did. She said she’d see what she could do.”
I smiled in the middle of the produce aisle.
Brenna cleared her throat.
“Can I ask you something else?”
“Go ahead.”
“Would you come with me that day? Just for the drive and the first trip upstairs. I’ve got two people from the program who offered to help when we get there. I’d like you there, too.”
I had a dentist appointment that morning. I’d booked it six months ahead, and I liked the hygienist because she remembered I hated the mint paste. My mind started moving the appointment before I’d even decided how much time I wanted to spend helping.
Then I thought about Brenna’s new room. I did want to see it.
“My appointment’s at nine,” I said. “I can leave after that. You’ll get there before me.”
“That’s fine. I’ll send you the address.”
We got off the phone. I finished my shopping.
At home, I found I’d bought one orange. I usually bought two because they came in handy if somebody stopped over.
I peeled it and ate the whole thing before I put the groceries away.
On moving day, Brenna sent me a photograph of a pancake with so many chocolate chips in it that one side had collapsed.
Mom said I could pick how many. She regretted it immediately.
I saw the picture after my dentist appointment and laughed in the parking lot. Then I drove to Brenna’s new place with a small box on the passenger seat.
Inside were a tape measure, a roll of garbage bags, and a red key ring. I’d found one at the hardware store with the same little space for a photograph.
I’d thought about adding cash.
I’d even taken two twenties out of my wallet and laid them beside the box. Then I remembered Brenna’s budget on my kitchen table and the way she’d said she wanted to go. I put the money back in my wallet and added a packet of the tea she always bought when we got coffee.
When I arrived, the van was parked in front of a brick house with a sloping front yard. Dad was standing at the bottom of the steps with a dresser drawer in each hand.
“I thought you’d be back home by now,” I said.
“I offered to drive behind the van. She asked if I’d help get the dresser in.”
“How’s it going?”
He looked down at the drawers.
“I asked her if she’d taken them out.”
“Had she?”
“She was taking them out when I asked.”
He waited until I’d finished laughing before he started up the steps.
Inside, Brenna was holding one end of her mattress. A woman I recognized from a picture on her phone held the other end. They’d reached the landing, where the stairs turned sharply.
My father put the drawers down and started to say something.
Then he stopped.
Brenna lifted her chin and looked past the mattress.
“Dad, can you hold that door all the way open?”
He did.
They got the mattress around the corner with about an inch to spare.
Upstairs, the room had a low ceiling on one side and a window that looked over a parking lot. Someone had painted it a yellow that probably looked white on a sample card.
Brenna put Gary on the sill.
“He’ll like it there,” I said.
“He has until April to show improvement.”
I handed her the box.
She pulled out the key ring first.
“Didn’t you have one like this?”
“I did.”
“What did you put in the picture part?”
“Nothing. I kept meaning to.”
She turned it over and held it up to the light.
“I might put Gary in there,” she said.
“See how he does until April.”
We moved her dresser into place. Dad asked if she wanted it closer to the window. She said she’d try it where it was. He brought the drawers in and went downstairs to see if anybody needed help unloading the last two boxes.
Brenna sat on the edge of her mattress.
“I keep thinking I’m supposed to feel something big,” she said.
“What do you feel?”
“Thirsty.”
I handed her the water bottle from the top of her backpack.
She drank half of it.
“Do you remember the first night in your apartment?” she asked.
“Yes. I made toast and ate it on the floor.”
“Were you sad?”
“By about nine.”
She looked at me.
“I’d been excited all day,” I told her. “Then the sun went down and the refrigerator made a sound I’d never heard before. I had to get up and turn a light on. I wanted somebody to tell me the refrigerator sounded normal.”
“Did you call Mom?”
“I almost did. Then I decided I’d call in the morning if it was still making the noise.”
“Was it?”
“Yes. It made that noise the whole time I lived there.”
Brenna laughed. She set the bottle on the windowsill beside Gary.
“Can I call you tonight if everything sounds weird?”
“Yes.”
We sat for another minute with our feet on the bare floor.
Then she asked if I wanted a sandwich. One of the people helping her move had brought a bag of them and left it in the kitchen.
We went down together.
Mom was in the kitchen.
I’d assumed she was back home washing up after the pancakes. She was standing by the counter in her coat, holding an old blue-flower mug.
The handle had a chip in it.
“I thought you weren’t coming,” Brenna said.
“I wasn’t going to. Then you called and asked if I could bring the mug.”
“I forgot I called you.”
“You were on the highway. You said the next exit had a gas station and asked if I could get here before you finished buying a coffee.”
Brenna looked at the mug.
“I meant the other one,” she said.
Mom’s fingers tightened around the handle.
“Oh.”
Brenna picked the mug up and ran her thumb over the chip.
“Actually, this one’s good. I used to put my thumb right there.”
Mom watched her do it.
“I know,” she said. “That’s why I brought that one.”
Brenna looked up. Then she filled it with water and took a drink.
Dad came into the kitchen and said the van was empty. Mom asked him if he wanted half a sandwich. He said he wanted a whole one if there were enough. Brenna opened the bag and counted. There were plenty.
We ate standing up because Brenna’s new housemate had gone out for chairs and hadn’t come back yet. Mom asked where the grocery store was. Brenna told her she’d passed one on the way in.
“Do you have enough to get through the weekend?” Mom asked.
“Yes. I’ve got eggs and bread upstairs. I brought the little pan.”
Mom nodded. She took another bite of her sandwich.
I thought that would be the end of it.
Then Brenna said, “I only want you to call me once tomorrow.”
Mom looked up.
“If you call in the morning and I don’t answer, I might be asleep,” Brenna said. “I might be at the store. I’ll call you back.”
My mother put the rest of her sandwich on the napkin.
“What time do you think you’ll get up?”
Brenna looked at her.
Mom let out a breath. “I heard it,” she said.
Brenna’s face changed. She was trying to keep a straight face, and so was I.
Dad looked between us, missed whatever had just happened, and went back to his sandwich.
“I’ll call in the afternoon,” Mom said. “Once.”
Brenna picked up the chipped mug.
“That sounds good.”
Mom and I went out to our cars together. She stopped beside mine and looked back at the house.
There was a sliver of yellow wall visible through Brenna’s window. After a moment, Brenna crossed in front of it carrying a pillow.
“I thought I’d feel better once the bed was in,” Mom said.
“Do you?”
“A little. I can see she’s got a place to sleep.” She drew her coat around herself. “I also want to go upstairs and ask if she’s got a lamp.”
I’d seen one sticking out of a box in Brenna’s room. I could’ve told Mom and watched her relax.
Instead, I asked, “Do you remember what you did when you got home after helping me move?”
She thought about it.
“I made your father go out for dinner. I couldn’t stand the idea of looking in the refrigerator and seeing the leftovers I’d been saving for you.”
“Where’d you go?”
“That place near the library that used to have the good rolls. Your father ordered soup and spilled it in his lap.”
“Was he okay?”
“He was fine. He made me trade seats with him because he’d already waved at somebody from work and didn’t want to walk past them with his trousers wet.”
I could picture the two of them changing seats in a booth, Dad trying to look casual, Mom unable to look directly at him because she’d laugh.
She smiled at the memory.
Then she looked back at the window.
Brenna had moved away from it. A second later the lamp came on.
My mother saw it.
She stood beside me until the light steadied, then put her hand in her coat pocket and found her keys.
“Do you want to get something to eat on the way home?” she asked.
“I just had a sandwich.”
“So did I.”
Neither of us moved.
“There’s a place near the highway that sells pie by the slice,” I said.
Mom looked at me.
“Do you think they have lemon?”
“We can ask.”
She followed me there in her car.
Brenna called at nine twenty that evening.
I was on the couch with my feet tucked under a blanket. I’d bought the lemon pie at the diner and eaten the whole slice. Mom bought cherry, took one bite, and asked if I wanted to trade a forkful.
I had.
“Everything sounds weird,” Brenna said when I answered.
“What kind of weird?”
“The pipes make a little knocking sound every time my housemate turns on the hot water. Also, I think there’s a bird outside the window.”
“What kind?”
“I don’t know. A judgmental one.”
I heard her shift the phone. Then there was a faint tapping sound.
“That might be a branch,” I said.
“I hope so. I don’t want to have a disagreement with a bird on the first night.”
She told me where she’d put the dresser. She’d moved it closer to the window after all, because there was a plug behind it she needed to get to. She said she’d made eggs and eaten them with toast. The pan had cleaned up with a paper towel.
After a while, she said, “Can I tell you something I didn’t tell you when we went over the budget?”
My hand stopped moving across the edge of the blanket.
“Okay.”
“I almost left the loan payment off the page. I thought if I did, you’d see that I needed a little more money and offer to let me skip it. Then I could say you’d brought it up.”
She said it quickly. I could hear how long she’d been carrying the sentence before she let it out.
“What made you put it back?” I asked.
“I wanted you to be able to tell me whether the budget worked.”
I let that sit for a moment.
“Does it still work?” I asked.
“Yeah. The van was cheaper than I thought. I wrote down what I spent today.”
“Good.”
“And I want to ask you something now,” she said. “Would you tell me when the loan’s paid off? I know I can look at the numbers. I want to hear you say it.”
I pulled the blanket up over my feet.
“Yes,” I said. “I’ll tell you.”
She was quiet for a moment.
“Did Mom seem okay when she left?”
“She had cherry pie.”
“Did she finish it?”
“Yes.”
“Good.”
We stayed on the phone while Brenna found a place to hang her coat. I heard her open the closet and knock a hanger to the floor. She swore quietly, then said she’d found a hook on the back of the door.
A few minutes later she told me she was going to get ready for bed.
“Call me next week?” I asked.
“I will.”
After we hung up, I went to the kitchen for a glass of water.
Mom had sent me a picture while we were talking. It was of my first apartment, taken from across the parking lot. I could see the old green curtains through the window. I’d bought them at a thrift store and spent an afternoon taking the hems up by hand.
Found this one in the box, she’d written. Your father took it on moving day. I didn’t know he kept it.
I enlarged the photo.
My mother was standing by her car with both hands tucked into the pockets of her coat. I could see myself in the apartment window, reaching up to push one of the curtain rings over a joint in the rod.
I remembered thinking my parents had left already.
I studied the woman by the car. She was looking up at the window. There was no way to tell from the picture whether she was happy or trying to talk herself into getting behind the wheel.
I took a sip of water.
What were you waiting for? I wrote.
Her reply came a minute later.
For you to get both curtains up. The one on the left kept catching.
I looked again. The left curtain was bunched in my hand.
It took forever, I wrote.
I know. Your father asked if we should go up and help.
I waited for the next message.
You got it while he was asking.
I leaned against the counter and smiled.
Then a second photograph came through.
It was another picture of that same apartment, this time from inside. The table was near the window, before the iron left its mark. My red key ring was on top of a folded grocery bag. There were two paper cups and a saucer beside it.
I could see the sleeve of somebody’s coat at the edge of the picture.
Is that you? I asked.
No. Look at the sleeve.
I enlarged it. Brown wool, with a dark line at the cuff.
Patricia?
Yes, Mom wrote. Ask her about the first Saturday you lived there. I think she’s been waiting for a chance to tell you.
I remembered Patricia visiting that first weekend. She’d brought a bag of groceries and two coffees. She told me she’d been passing through town, which I’d accepted because I was twenty-something and still thought adults passed through towns without ever explaining where they were going.
I looked at the clock. Patricia usually stayed up to watch the late news. I called.
She answered with the sound of the television in the background.
“Do you remember bringing me groceries when I moved into my first apartment?” I asked.
The television went quiet.
“Yes,” she said.
“Mom sent me the picture Dad took. She said I should ask you about that Saturday.”
For a moment, all I could hear was Patricia moving around. Then came the familiar sound of a chair scraping back.
“You thought I was passing through town,” she said.
“You told me you were.”
“I did.”
I waited.
Patricia took a breath.
“I drove three hours to get there,” she said. “By the time I knocked on your door, I’d talked myself out of telling you why.”
I looked down at the two paper cups in the photograph.
“Why did you come?”
“Your mother called me the night before,” Patricia said. “She’d packed you a box you never got. She asked me to bring it up. I made it as far as your parking lot with that box before I decided to leave it in the trunk and buy you breakfast instead.”
My fingers tightened around the phone.
“What was in the box?”
Patricia went quiet long enough that I checked the screen to see if we’d lost the call.
Then she said, “I think I ought to tell you who brought it back to your mother first.”
END OF BONUS PART 4
