“Sorry,” she said, both hands back on the wheel. “Oh honey, you’re certain about this?”
I nodded, though I wasn’t certain of anything. I wanted her to reassure me, to tell me that I was doing the right thing, and that all that mattered was that I would be happy. But she didn’t say any of these things. She looked down at the control panel. The check engine light had come on.
“What does that mean?”
She sighed, turning a corner. “Guess I’ll find out when I take it in.” After that, she was quiet again.
She pulled carefully into my father’s driveway. If she wondered if he was home, she didn’t ask. She told me she would pick me up at half past ten the next morning. Elise’s flight got in at eleven. She knew an Indian place that stayed open on Christmas Eve. She would take us both out to lunch.
“I don’t like Indian food,” I said. A lie. I didn’t want her to spend the money taking us out to a restaurant. She might have felt like she had to. “Why don’t I make something?” I asked. “Lasagna? I’ll borrow Dad’s car and go to the store tonight.” I said this as if it were a given that he would let me borrow his car. “I’ll make something good. We can just eat it at your place, like a picnic.”
She shook her head. “Other places are open,” she said. “We don’t have to have Indian.”
I feigned hurt. “Are you saying I’m a bad cook? Are you saying you don’t think I can do it?”
A car pulled into the adjacent driveway, a man and a woman in a sleek little car. They rolled into their garage without looking at us. The garage door closed, swallowing them whole.
My mother gave me a look. “Veronica. This is not about your lasagna. Let’s just say that Elise and I are in very different places right now.” She frowned. “Surely you understand.”
I shook my head. It was the “right now” that confused me. Elise and my mother had never really been in the same place, even when they lived in the same house.
My mother sighed. “Your sister doesn’t need to see the apartment. I’m not going to live there long.” She smiled and unlocked the van’s doors. “We’ll have fun tomorrow. We’ll go out.”
Before she picked me up in the morning, she cleaned the van. She didn’t just get all the boxes and blankets and small appliances out of the back. She took it to a car wash and dropped in quarters to use a vacuum. I imagine she was the only person there, snow flying in on the upholstery, all the doors opened to the cold. But the van looked good. There was no more dried kibble rolling around on the floor mats. The plastic straw wrappers, dog hair, and used hand wipes had been sucked away from every crevice and nook. A circle-shaped deodorizer that smelled like lilacs dangled from the rearview mirror.
She did not bring Bowzer. She’d thought about it, she said, but decided not to. We couldn’t bring him into the restaurant, and the van would get cold. He was better off at home. He hadn’t even noticed when she left.
Just before we got to the airport, she took the deodorizer down and put it under her seat. She caught me looking at her.
“It looked a little trashy,” she said.
Elise got off the plane wearing jeans, a billowy shirt, and flip-flops. Her light brown hair was streaked with gold and pulled back in a ponytail. She carried no bag, just several folders full of paper. She started to yawn, but as soon as she saw us, she smiled. My mother and I got to her at the same time. When I went to hug her, she tucked the folders under her arm and tickled my ribs. She kept doing it until I laughed and screamed.
“Girls,” my mother said. “Girls!” But she was laughing a little, too. She stopped when she looked at Elise’s bare toes.
“Honey,” she said. “It’s snowing!”
“Don’t worry. I brought boots.” Even in flip-flops, Elise was taller than both of us. “And a coat. Do you remember my luggage? It’s silver? Can you watch the carousel for it? I have to pee. I’m dying.” She handed me the folders full of legal-sized paper. “Here,” she said. “Hold these.”
My mother and I watched her walk away, flip-flops slapping on the floor.