The Mothers A Novel - By Jennifer Gilmore Page 0,57

as to where you might do this?”

“I don’t know.” She hesitated in a manner indicating that she did know.

“Are you coming alone, Lucy?” I asked.

“No.”

“But I mean are you, like, with someone?”

“Yes.”

“Greif? Are you happy?”

“Yes. And I don’t know. Are you happy?”

I thought of the last time I’d been happy. Hiking alone with Harriet made me happy. Happy. Lying on my stomach at the beach with Ramon, turning the pages of a Victorian novel, the sound of the sea at our feet. Research. Eating makes me happy. And being right. “I have a lot of happy moments,” I said. “Fleeting though.”

“I know what you mean,” Lucy said. “Just moments. I’ve been traveling for so long. I think I’ve been searching for happiness and really, I’ve been only having happy moments. Perhaps that’s just it, you know? I mean, perhaps that’s all we can hope for.”

My student passed by on the breezeway. “I’m sorry!” I whispered to him. I pointed at the phone. “Long distance!” I said, as if we were living in pioneer times.

I did know. But our parents had raised us to achieve and be committed. That was happiness: success. And Lucy had bucked that, so shouldn’t that have made her happy? “Well, I’ve been staying put here and doing kind of the same thing.”

“Happiness.” Lucy laughed. “I don’t even know if that’s what I’ve been going for. Like is happiness even a goal? Maybe it’s just not one of my larger goals.”

“I want a child.” It just slipped out. I had lost any semblance of control over what I said and how I behaved. “But anyway, I don’t know if I associate it with happiness. I suppose that’s strange.”

“I know,” Lucy said. “I know that you do.”

“Hey!” I said. “Come to New York. We’ve got a semi-comfortable uncomfortable couch.”

She laughed again. “Maybe. We’d kill each other if I lived with you.”

“I didn’t say live!” I said. But briefly I imagined us with mugs of coffee, the blanket she’d cover herself with to sleep thrown over our legs as we talked into the afternoon. There we are, Lucy and me in my attic room. We are the ages I remember us as most often: I’m fourteen and she’s eleven. I’ve just learned to put on eyeliner and mascara, and I’m leaning in, toward the full-length mirror. I’ve also learned to curl my hair, which I try to do so that it feathers out. Lucy leans on her elbow, watching intently from my bed. I’m getting ready for adventure, a night out with new friends. I put down my eyeliner and I look at Lucy, on my bed, leaning her head against my fading poster of James Dean.

Everything is stopped. When I turn back to the mirror, my face, now with makeup, framed by this strange hairstyle, looks foreign to me, and I both like that and fear that distance from myself. Everything is about to happen.

Lucy has been gone on this trip over five years.

When she told me that day in the woods that she was going away, I had not even thought to ask her where to, or when, why, even, and I see now I hadn’t believed her. It was my mother who left. Lucy and I, we stayed. We were the stayers. I lived in New York and she lived in California. We saw each other only at moments of unusual intensity: our grandmother’s funeral, where I tried to give a eulogy but could not, and where my sister had guided me, shaking, away from the bimah. At our cousin’s wedding, where we sat at our designated table drinking champagne and watching everyone else dance. Look at that one, we said, laughing. We never danced at family weddings.

We had not lived together and fought for the bathroom or more mashed potatoes or space in the backseat of the car since she was fifteen.

“Well, offer’s open,” I said. It would be different this time. Now we were the same.

“Thanks, Jesse,” Lucy said. “That’s nice to know.”

“Come home.” I looked out at the students filing out of the courtyard for class.

And then my sister and I said good-bye.

Meanwhile, the photos. We were told we needed to take the main photo by foliage, preferably of the “seasonless” variety so that our profile would not be tethered to a time of year. We were to face front, our teeth exposed. This is what you need to know: if you do not smile with your teeth showing, you are not really