guiding Shelley’s fingers to the lump. Shelley had pushed, prodding gently, and said, “See if Dr. Mellors can see you today.” After that, there’d been a mammogram, a needle biopsy, a diagnosis, and a plan for surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy.
She’d told Bethie her news, and when Bethie had asked what she could do, Jo replied, “Can you come for Thanksgiving? I’m going to tell the girls then,” and Bethie had promised that she and Harold would be there.
Jo merged onto the Merritt Parkway and let herself consider her successes, the daughters she hadn’t screwed up. Kim had soared through law school and was doing well at the U.S. attorney’s office. She’d gotten married when she was only twenty-five, which struck Jo (who’d married at twenty-two) as unreasonably young, but Kim said she was sure about Matt. Kim had met him at the University of Pennsylvania. He had boyish good looks and a close-knit family, which, Jo thought, her daughter found alluring, given what had happened to her own parents. She and Matt, who seemed to be making obscene sums of money on Wall Street, had left New York City and moved to a suburb in New Jersey. Three months previously, she’d had her second baby, a little girl named Leonie.
Melissa had gone from NYU to the Radcliffe publishing course to an internship with a literary agent, which turned into a paying job (“not a well-paying job, but at least she’s supporting herself,” Jo told her sister). Five years ago, she’d left the agency and gone to work for Lester Shaub, one of the most famous editors in America. Lester ran his own imprint at one of the big publishing houses, and every year at least one of his books won some major award. Two of the American authors most frequently mentioned as potential Nobel Prize winners had been Lester’s discoveries, and he counted Booker Prize, National Book Award honorees, and the occasional bestseller among his authors. Lester was in his seventies, still healthy and spry, with a handsome mane of curly white hair and a brownstone on the Upper East Side, where he hosted a summer solstice party every year. The most famous authors, editors, and agents in America came to sip cocktails, nibble hors d’oeuvres, and gawk at Joan Didion or Salman Rushie or the other bold-faced names. As Lester’s right-hand woman, Missy sat in on meetings with Lester’s authors. She met with their agents, if they were alive and writing, or their literary executors if not. She took Lester’s notes and typed up his memos and made sure advances and royalty payments were sent promptly. She read every manuscript that Lester edited, offering her own suggestions. Each year, she acquired and edited a few projects of her own—a poetry collection, a debut novel—but the understanding was that she would work with Lester for seven or eight years, then go on to become an editor in her own right.
Missy was still single. She dated a lot, but she’d never settled down, and Jo worried that Missy thought that all men were faithless, duplicitous sneaks, like her father. Better to be single than to settle, and try not to worry about whether that was what Kim had done.
Jo believed that the girls were happy. Kim said that she loved being a mother, and Jo would smile, remembering how besotted she’d been with her own babies. Melissa would tell her about whatever project she was working on, or whatever problematic author she was wrangling, and Jo would glow with pride, remembering her own happiness at being completely engrossed in a book or a lesson plan or a class, or even one of the feature stories she’d written for the Avondale Almanac. As for her third daughter, Jo told herself that Lila was still in her twenties. Maybe it wasn’t so strange for the youngest sibling of two such accomplished older sisters to be a bit of a late bloomer, to have a hard time finding her way. She’ll get there, Jo told herself, as Shelley plucked the MapQuest printout from her purse and peered at it, first lowering and then lifting her chin. Shelley had worn bifocals for the past few years, but she still hadn’t gotten the hang of them. “Turn here,” Shelley said, and Jo turned, cruising slowly down the street and parking the car at the curb.
Kim and Matt’s new house was enormous. “Stupid big,” had been Lila’s assessment, the first time she’d seen the place, and Jo