was not supposed to call the residents in her dorm “kids.” She’d been at summer training with me, and she, too, had been strongly encouraged by Student Housing to refer to the college students in her building only as men and women. She probably did call them men and women when she was working. She was every bit as conscientious about the job as Gordon Goodman had thought she would be when he’d advised her to apply for it. But now her guard was down, and the truth came out: in her mind, they were just kids.
“At least it’s smaller than my building,” I said. I still had on my hat and my coat. It was colder in the entry than it was outside. Apparently, they’d shut off the heat for break. “This one is only half as big, right?”
She nodded, fingering a rope of gold garland that lined the outer edge of the front desk. An easel sat next to the elevator, and the large sheet of paper clipped to it read “HAVE A HAPPY AND SAFE HOLIDAY!” in my mother’s neat and even handwriting.
“Just four hundred in this one.” She smiled, putting the keys in the pocket of her robe. “And I’d say only seven of them regularly cause me trouble.” She turned her attention to Charlie, putting her arm through his. “Hello, handsome,” she said.
“Hello, Natalie.” He looked down at her and smiled. At Thanksgiving, he’d called her “Mother Von Holten,” and she’d told him never to do it again.
She looked at Miles and clicked her tongue. “Let’s get the baby into my apartment. It’s a lot warmer in there.”
It was. She had a space heater in her living room, and steam covered the bottom half of the big window. The air smelled spicy and good. A covered dish sat on a hot plate in the middle of the table, which was set for four with matching plates and napkins. Charlie walked over and lifted the lid of the dish to peek inside.
“Lasagna!” He used one of Miles’s little hands to give a thumbs-up. I couldn’t tell if my brother-in-law was really excited about the lasagna. Just three hours earlier, we’d had brunch with my father and Susan O’Dell. It was possible Charlie was hungry again. I wasn’t. But my mother said she wanted to cook for us, so I’d come determined to eat.
“How’d you cook it?” He looked around. “You don’t have an oven.”
“There’s a kitchen on the second floor.” She nodded down at the wine Elise was still carrying. “I have a mini-fridge, however. So I’ll take that.” Elise gave her the bottle, and my mother looked at the label and smiled. “Ah,” she said. “Very nice.”
She’d gone to a lot of trouble; that was clear. In addition to traveling up and down a flight of stairs who knew how many times to cook the lasagna, she’d done some decorating. Her apartment always looked cozy, though it was really just two dorm rooms linked by a door in the wall between them. The only real difference between her apartment and any other room in the building, besides the extra space, was that she had her own small bathroom. But in November, she’d gotten herself a nice twill couch that looked like something an adult would have, and she’d put up pretty curtains. I knew the table on which the lasagna sat was just a folding card table she’d found on sale at a drugstore, but today she’d covered it with red fabric that was maybe not meant to be a tablecloth, but looked good anyway. White Christmas lights blinked around her potted ficus, and she’d hung mistletoe by the window. When Charlie accidentally walked under it, she jogged across the room and kissed his cheek, and then ducked to kiss Miles as well.
“Hey.” I tapped on the edge of the big salad bowl, which was oddly curved, and painted a beautiful shade of green. “Is this what Gordon’s daughter gave you?”
“Yes! Can you believe it?” She was squeezing Miles’s dangling feet, making sure they were warm. “I only met her that one time she came to visit. I told her I liked what she did, what I’d seen in Gordon’s office. And then she mailed that to me as soon as she got home. Wasn’t that nice?”
Elise and I exchanged glances. When my mother wasn’t looking, Charlie bobbed his eyebrows and grinned. I had told them both how often I’d seen my mother and Gordon