Chapter 33 #3
I knew that once he went down for his nap, it would be just the two of us in a quiet house. She knew it, too. When I came out of his room, I found her sitting on the carpet by Marcus’s toys, looking nervous again.
“I want you to know…” she started.
“Don’t,” I said. “We covered all that.” I didn’t want another apology. It was like she kept handing me umbrellas. Now that I’d accepted one, I had no need for another.
“Okay.” She looked down at her feet. “I keep wanting to apologize because it’s all I can do.
I didn’t tell you this. Or Leonard. Because it came to nothing.
No new information. But last year, I hired a private investigator in New Jersey.
I know the records are sealed, but I was hoping he could tell me something, something that would help. ”
I didn’t know what to say to this. Thank you didn’t seem right.
But I wondered how much she’d spent on the investigator.
It was my impression, and Leonard’s, too, that his mother didn’t have a lot of money.
For the last few years, she’d been working as a receptionist for an undertaker in Queens.
She’d written that she loved the work, which, according to her, was mostly about staying organized while also being kind to people stumbling through the first, raw days of grief.
She shared an apartment with twin sisters, one widowed, one divorced.
I never picked up that she had any regrets over leaving Leonard’s father, but it seemed her country club days were behind her.
She raised her head. “Leonard said that was the hardest part. Worrying about her.”
I told her that was right. But I also told her I didn’t want her to hire another investigator.
“She’s probably okay,” I said. I was surprised, hearing these words in my own voice.
These were Leonard’s words. Mae’s words.
Janet’s. The words of good friends who knew about her, including Carol.
Even Shirley, at eight, had said as much.
But I’d never let myself say them. I always felt like I was lying to myself to feel better.
Saying them now, believing them, I felt as if a window opened inside me, one I hadn’t even known was there.
“It’s hard hoping, though,” she said. “I know it’s hard.”
I knew that she knew.
“She’s probably with people who love her,” I said. “And people she loves.” I spoke quickly, not wanting her to interrupt. “I could live my whole life convinced that she’s unhappy or hurting or dead. And be wrong.”
“That’s right,” she said. “That’s exactly right.”
“It won’t change anything for her. It won’t save her, my being unhappy.”
“No,” she said. “And I bet you’re right. I bet she’s happy. And Nora, I’ll tell you something else. If she’s anything like you, anything at all, I wish, so much, that I could know her.”
She stopped to sniff and wipe her cheek, and I admit a tiny part of me thought, well, she’s still an actress.
But in the end, I believed she meant it. I just did.
—
Our new house had a little backyard, the perimeter lined with crepe myrtle trees the previous owner must have planted when I was still a girl in Missouri.
After Leonard came home, the four of us ate pizza out on the deck, and Geneva pointed out the beauty of the crepe myrtles, which were bright with fuchsia blooms. By then, Marcus felt comfortable enough with her to sit in her lap, though halfway through his first pizza slice, he slid down and toddled over to Leonard.
At first, despite their correspondence, Leonard and his mother were awkward with one another, speaking politely, as if they were strangers.
Leonard asked about her flight, and about her job with the undertaker, and she asked him for all kinds of details about his work in the emergency room.
Even as they talked to each other, they mostly looked at me or Marcus.
But when I stood and said it was time for me to give him a bath and put him to bed, only Marcus himself had a different opinion.
I let him kiss his admirers good night, and then carried him off, knowing we were leaving Leonard and his mother to each other.
I took my time. Marcus usually got two bedtime stories, but that night, I read him three.
He had a little music box that played Brahms’s “Lullaby,” and I wound it up and played it for him.
Even after he fell asleep, I stayed where I was, rocking him.
By the time I came back out, a waxing moon, almost full, hovered just above the crepe myrtles.
Leonard had cleared the plates and brought out the fat candle in a hurricane holder that Carol had sent for my birthday.
He and his mother both looked more relaxed, though I could tell they were glad to see me.
I took the empty chair between them. I got the sense that neither of them wanted to go inside, but I felt no need to make conversation.
Apparently, they didn’t either. The crickets were singing, pulsing in unison, unseen up in the trees. For a long while, the three of us sat together, listening.