what she meant. Elise was naturally tall and thin, but when she was under stress, she could lose so much weight that her head looked too big for her body, her face gaunt, all the color gone. These bouts never lasted long, but my mother had worried about them for fifteen years. Given the way my sister had described her life in California, I think both my mother and I had expected her to be too thin. But she looked fine. She looked healthy, even curvy, her backside swinging as she disappeared into the restroom.
“What’d you get her?”
“For Christmas?” I turned around on my tiptoes, searching for the bag carousel. “A candle holder.” That was another lie. I had already gift wrapped my “Math Is Hard” Barbie for Elise. When I’d told her about it a year ago, she wanted one for herself, but she couldn’t find another on eBay. I didn’t want to talk about it with my mother, to have to analyze the doll again; why Elise might want it, why I no longer did. It just seemed like the perfect gift, not least of all because it was free and I didn’t have any money.
“What did you get her?” I asked.
“Earrings.” She frowned. “I don’t know if they’re right. I never know what she’ll like.”
By the time we left the airport, Elise was wearing a gray wool coat over a turtleneck and black pants that were somehow not wrinkled. She opened the side door of the van to put her bags in. “Why does it smell like bad perfume in here?” She waved a gloved hand in front of her face. “Oh my God. Lilacs? More like chemicals. Yuck!”
We rode with the windows down, snow coming in, Elise in the passenger seat. She told us about her irritating seatmate on the plane, a man who had not brought anything to occupy him during the flight. Apparently, he assumed it was Elise’s responsibility to converse with him, and he kept attempting to talk to her about the pitfalls of his job as an auto-parts salesman, even though it was clear she was trying to read.
“He wasn’t hitting on me,” Elise said. “He mentioned his wife twice. He just seemed to think I should be there for him. I should have brought crayons for him, I guess, or maybe stickers. After a while, I handed him the in-flight magazine. I thought that was pretty pointed, but he just kept gabbing, asking questions. I said, ‘Sorry I can’t talk. I’ve got to have these briefs read by Tuesday.’ So then he starts to ask me for legal advice! Some kind of property dispute with his cousin. He starts telling me about it. I’m serious. The whole time, I’ve got my glasses on, my head down. I’m clearly trying to read.” She smacked both hands against her forehead, just the way our father would have done it. “Finally, I go, ‘Excuse me, sir. I have work to do. I’m sorry you’re bored. But it’s not my problem. Don’t talk to me anymore.’ I hurt his feelings, I think. He sulked for the rest of the flight.”
In the backseat, I listened and wondered what I would have done if I had been on the airplane, held captive by the chatty man. I would have been annoyed, but I might have felt sorry for him. So I would have talked to him, and gotten even more annoyed, mostly with myself. There was much to admire in Elise: her straightforwardness, her courage. I’d been admiring her for these traits and more my whole life. It was comforting to think that she would have been a bad RA, to think that she would have lost her temper with Marley long before I did. But I wasn’t sure that was true. It had not been Elise’s job to entertain the man on the plane. That was the point she had made. If it had been her job, she would have excelled at it. She would have done it better than anyone else ever could.
“That always happens to me,” my mother said. “In waiting rooms, especially, I get next to a talker when I want to read a book. I’m never brave enough to be so firm.”
She pulled into the parking lot of a pizza parlor, explaining that not much was open on Christmas Eve and that I had said no to Indian. When we got out of the van, she exited on one side; Elise and