Chapter 5
ERIC
My kitchen table was covered in photographs laid out in two long lines like a hand of solitaire, and the costume bin was sitting on my chair.
I put the hardware bag on the counter and kept hold of the coffee, because I wanted something in my hands.
"Sit down," she said. "I want to show you something."
I moved the bin to the floor and sat.
"Top row." Jenna pointed with two fingers. "That's every costume Lucy and I made, oldest to newest. Bottom row is the party at your mother's, same year."
The first pair was easy enough to take. Lucy at three with the dragon tail, then Lucy at three in a Cinderella dress at Mom's kitchen table with frosting on her chin. Both cute, both my kid.
Second pair, jellyfish and bumblebee. Third pair, the astronaut helmet — I remembered that helmet, I sanded the bucket myself out in the garage, that part was actually mine — then Lucy at Mom's in a full Elsa getup with a light-up hem.
Fourth. Fifth.
I got about six in before my ears went hot.
I'm not a slow person. I run a crew, I read a schematic fine. But there's a difference between knowing a set of facts one at a time across eight years and having somebody lay all eight in front of you with the dates in order.
"Every one," I said.
"Every one."
"There's not one where she — "
"No."
I'd sat in my own front room on Saturday night trying to do this exact thing out of my head, and I'd come up with three years and a bad stomach.
"Where's the robot?"
"There isn't one."
"There's a year missing."
"Nobody had a party that year." She didn't look up. "She made the robot and wore it up and down our street for a week. The picture's in the shoebox if you want it. It doesn't prove anything, so I took it out."
That sat on me longer than she probably meant it to. She'd gone through eight years, found the one October that broke her own pattern, pulled it off the table, and then told me exactly where to find it.
I slid one photo out of the row to see it better. Lucy at six, up on her knees on a chair with both hands flat on a sheet of cardboard. Then I couldn't remember where it had come from, so I put it back in the wrong place and left it.
What got me wasn't the bottom row. It was going back to the beginning and looking at the top row on its own.
In every one of those pictures there's this kid with her tongue between her teeth doing something with her hands, a coffee cup at the edge of the frame, and behind her a kitchen that's been destroyed.
Six weeks. Every year. Six weeks of somebody's actual life.
There was one more thing about that row I couldn't get past, and it took me a minute to work out what it was.
They're all in the same place. Eight years, and the background never changes — same table, same window over the sink with the blind that doesn't retract right, same chair with the split in the vinyl I've been meaning to fix since Obama.
The kid gets bigger, her hair changes, the projects get harder. The room stays exactly the same.
The bottom row was different every year. Different dress, different theme, different store. Nothing runs through the bottom row but a receipt.
"Okay," I said.
"Okay what?"
"That's — yeah. Okay. I see it."
Jenna sat down across from me with her hands flat on the table either side of the pictures, very calm, which with her is not a good sign. She yells about parking tickets. When something's real she goes quiet and articulate, like she's reading off something she wrote out first.
"So I want to understand the rule."
"There's no rule."
"There's a rule. There's an eight-year rule and it gives the same result every time, so I'd like to hear you say it."
I drank some coffee I didn't want.
"Mom already spent the money."
The second it was out I heard how thin it sounded. It was also true, and it was also the thing I've actually thought every single year, so I let it stand.
"Three hundred dollars. It's not returnable, it's not — she doesn't have it to throw around, Jen, she's on a fixed — "
"Eric."
"What."
"What had I spent?"
I looked at her.
"You spent time."
"Six weeks."
"I know."
"Two nights a week, plus most weekend afternoons, plus the four nights I was up past midnight, which you know about because you came down and told me to come to bed.
" No heat in it. She was almost gentle. "Roughly ninety hours.
Call it eighty to be safe. Plus about two hundred dollars in materials, which came out of the same account your mother's money comes out of, so that's a wash. "
"Jen — "
"Eighty hours. At any number you want to pick, that's more than three hundred dollars."
"It's not the same thing."
"Say why."
I had an answer. It came right up, fully formed, because I'd been carrying it around long enough to wear a groove.
"Because when Mom's costume doesn't get used, the money's gone. It's just gone, there's no getting it back. When yours doesn't get used you've still — you had the time with Lucy. You did the thing. The six weeks happened. Nobody can take the six weeks."
Jenna nodded, slow.
"Okay. So her receipt is a commitment, and my six weeks is a hobby."
"That's not what I said."
"It's exactly what you said. Her loss is real because it's on a card statement. Mine isn't real because I enjoyed myself while I was incurring it."
I opened my mouth and nothing came out.
"Your mother drops a thing into the plan at the last minute and nobody asked her to," she said. "By the time she's through the door it's already decided, because otherwise she'll be hurt, and nobody in this family can stand that. She doesn't even have to argue for it."
"She's not doing it on purpose."
"I know she isn't."
"She's not manipulating anybody. She sees something, she loves Lucy, she buys it."
"I know."
"You keep saying you know, and then you keep — "
"Because both things are true at once, Eric." She put her palm flat on the table. "She's not scheming, and it works on you anyway. Those aren't in conflict."
"That's — "
"Name one time it hasn't worked."
I went looking, which was a mistake. There was the recliner she bought us about ten years ago that didn't fit through the front room door and didn't go with a single thing we own.
It sat in our basement two years, until she asked about it at Thanksgiving.
Then I carried it up the stairs by myself and put it in the corner where it still is.
The car seat that was the wrong stage. The winter coat a size too small that Lucy wore anyway for one December with the sleeves up at her forearms.
"That's how she is," I said, weaker. "That's how she's been since I was a kid. She used to buy me stuff we couldn't afford and then be so happy watching me open it that I'd feel bad if I — "
I stopped.
Jenna didn't say a word. She let it sit there in the middle of all those photographs, and I heard it the same way she had.
I'd feel bad if I didn't use it.
"Huh," I said.
"Yeah."
I got up and poured the coffee out, because it had gone cold in my hand. Then I stood at the counter with my back to her, which is a coward's move, but I needed a second.
"You've never said anything."
"That's not true. I've said things."
"You've said it's fine. Every year. It's fine, Grandma's is beautiful, the kid should wear what makes her happy — "
"I said that to Lucy."
I turned around.
"I said that to an eight-year-old with two costumes and a grandmother in the room.
What was I supposed to say?" She wasn't calm anymore — not loud, just not calm.
"I said it's fine because I wasn't going to let her feel like there was a fight over her body on Halloween.
And then you heard me say it, and you filed it, and you decided it was fine. "
"That's — "
I was going to say that's not fair. I heard it coming. There's a version of me that says it, and we have a completely different night.
"Yeah," I said instead. "That's what I did."
Her shoulders came down about an inch.
"So what do you want."
"I don't know yet."
"You want me to tell Mom to take it back? It's non-returnable, Jen, that's not — "
"I know it's non-returnable. She said so before she took it out of the bag.
" Jenna started gathering the photographs into a stack, squaring the edges, and how careful she was about it got me worse than anything she'd said.
"That's not an accident either. Nobody says the price out loud unless the price is doing work. "
"She says the price out loud about everything. She told me what her mattress cost four times."
"Fine. That's fair." A breath that was almost a laugh. "That one's fair."
She got the stack even, set it on the corner of the table, and put the fox ears on top of it for reasons I still don't understand. We sat there a while with the light going orange in the window.
"Can I say the last thing."
"Yeah."
"I'm not asking you to think the moth is better. It isn't better. That dress is a nicer object than anything I've ever made in my life, and I know it, and I'm not confused about it."
"Jen — "
"I'm not finished. I don't need her to lose. I need there to be one day a year that can't get bought out from under us three days ahead of time." She pushed the photographs an inch away from herself. "That's the whole ask. It's one day."
"That's not a big ask."
"No," she said. "It never was."
"Three days."
"Three days."
"Let me think."
"Take your three days. One more thing first, and then I'll leave you alone about it.
" She said it evenly, without looking up.
"Don't come back to me with a compromise.
I know you. You'll spend two days building something clever where everybody gets a piece, and there's no clever version of this.
There's a party at six o'clock and one kid. "
She picked the bin up off the floor and got it under her arm.
"She'll ask me tomorrow which one she's wearing," she said. "She asked me in the car yesterday. She's going to keep asking, because she's eleven and she can feel it and she wants somebody to just tell her. Don't make her be the one who decides this."
Then she took it downstairs.