Things You Save in a Fire - Katherine Center Page 0,20
it was too late. He’d died when I was in college.
“It’ll be yours one day,” my mom added then.
“I don’t want it,” I said, too quickly. She couldn’t just make me move here and then give me a house.
She blinked. “Oh, well, that’s okay. But I’ll leave it to you anyway. In my will. You can sell it, of course, if you want.”
“You don’t have to leave it to me.”
“Who else would I possibly leave it to?”
“Let’s not talk about it.”
“No. I agree. Hardly our first order of business.”
I looked around the room.
“I’m so grateful to you for coming,” she said after a minute. “I know you gave up a lot to be here.”
There it was again. That magic she had for draining my anger: her gratitude, her sympathy. She didn’t make things easy. With my dad, things were always simple. He was dedicated, true-blue, kindhearted, and tough. You knew exactly where you stood with him, always. No layers of conflicting feelings to sort through. He was just a good guy, plain and easy.
But there was no feeling I had about my mom that wasn’t mixed with other feelings—often opposite ones. Everything was always tinged with something else.
Plus, I couldn’t get over the eye patch. It gave her a strange, incongruous vibe—as if Laura Ingalls Wilder had turned pirate.
Assessing her gave me a flutter of fear through my chest, and in response to fear, I always got all-business. “Let me take a look at that eye,” I said, stepping toward her and reaching toward the patch, relieved for something to do.
She lifted a hand to block me. “Not sure that’s a great idea.”
“You do know what I do for a living, right? I see this stuff all the time. You can’t shock me.”
“I know,” she said. “This is different.”
“I might be able to help you,” I said.
“I don’t think so,” she said.
“Just let me take a look.”
She wasn’t going for it. “I’ve got a whole team of doctors. Don’t concern yourself with it.”
“Isn’t that the reason I’m here?” I asked. “To concern myself with it?”
She shook her head. “You’re just here to help me up and down the stairs. And do the driving. And buy the groceries.”
“That’s really all you want?” I asked. Seemed like just about anybody could do that.
“That’s what I need,” she said. Then she took my hand and squeezed it. “What I actually want, after all these years, is to spend a little time with my long-lost daughter.”
Seven
DINNER WAS HOMEMADE lobster bisque and a salad with greens from her garden—and I felt both grateful for and annoyed by how delicious it was. I’d been thinking I’d just take a sandwich up to my room, but she’d cooked everything already and set the table. With her own charming dishes.
Plan B: Eat quickly and say good night.
Having dinner together was worse than I would have expected. Apparently, we’d forgotten how to talk to each other. Attempts at chatting just flared and died. “This town is too cute to be real,” I’d say. And she’d say, “I agree.” And then we’d listen to the wind creak the house until somebody came up with another idea.
All of it made worse, in my opinion, by the fact that it never used to be like this back when she was my mother.
We’d been close, before. We’d watched every movie Jimmy Stewart ever made, side by side on the sofa. She hadn’t been like the other moms, all rules and criticism. She’d been more like a friend than a parent. No minivan, for example: She drove an emerald-green, highly impractical vintage Volvo that she’d named Barbara. It was in the shop half the time, so we had to take the bus, and when I begged her to get a better car, she responded that she’d had Barbara longer than she’d had me. Case closed.
“Do you still have Barbara?” I asked her then.
“Yes,” she said, “but she’s in the shop.”
“As usual,” I said, and it was nice to share the memory.
My mom had married my dad, she’d once told me, because he’d told her she was fascinating.
“Who doesn’t want to be fascinating?” she’d said.
But they weren’t much alike. She was a dreamer who had trouble keeping straight what day of the week it was, and he was a high school math teacher with a buzz cut—all practicality—who coached basketball. Still, he was kind, and fair, and loyal.
I had not seen it coming when she left. Neither had he. We had thought we were happy.