Chapter 27
GRAHAM
The Sunday before her birthday, I asked her at the kitchen island.
It was a little after eight. She was doing the crossword on her phone with her reading glasses pushed up on her head, squinting around for her reading glasses. I reached over, took them out of her hair, and put them on her nose.
"Oh," she said. "Thank you."
I kept a second pair in the drawer by the stove now. Some mornings she'd find them there and look at them like they'd grown on their own.
I set the blue mug down in front of her. I'd let it sit a minute before I put the milk in. Some mornings this year she wanted it right away, and some mornings she didn't. I'd quit guessing. I watched her take the first sip, and that told me. That morning, it was right.
"Can I ask you about next Sunday?" I said.
She looked at me over the glasses.
"The old dinner. Something new. Going out. Or nothing at all, just us on the couch." I held up my hands. "Any of those is fine. I'm not fishing. I'm asking."
She put the phone down. She always thought about it now before she answered. The first few months, she'd say whatever you want, then catch herself, go red, start over. She hardly ever did that anymore.
"The soup," she said. "Your soup. The onion one."
"Okay."
"But not the rest. Not the short ribs." She turned the mug in her hands. "Not this year. Maybe some year. I don't know yet."
I didn't push. "Okay."
"I want the chile verde. The one we made in December."
"Okay."
"And I want to make the lemon cake. With you. Not for me, with me." She pointed at me. "I'll do the curd. You do the layers."
"Why do I do the layers?"
"Because yours still lean a little, and I like it."
I laughed. I couldn't help it.
"Wine?" I said.
"Surprise me."
"Absolutely not."
She smiled all the way up to her eyes. "Cabernet. The 2016. We never opened it."
"Who do you want there?"
"Tess and Ben. Lila." She hesitated. "Mom. But only for cake. Tell her eight o'clock. Not six-thirty."
"You tell her."
"Fine," Naomi said. "I'll tell her."
I didn't write any of it down.
There were some things I knew now without asking.
I knew she slept badly in the fall, once the light started going early, so in October I made rooibos at ten and brought it up to her without saying anything.
I knew she'd started a second meadow strip along the side fence in June, because I'd dug the holes with her while she told me the names of everything.
I didn't memorize them. I just listened, and by July I could tell mountain mint from bee balm because I'd watched her kneel next to both.
I knew she hated the new truffle-parmesan fries at the place on Germantown Avenue.
When they brought us an order by mistake, I leaned over to say, "Gas station," and she kicked me under the table.
What I didn't know was whether she still wanted thyme in the onion soup. Last winter she'd started putting thyme in everything.
"Thyme in the soup?" I asked.
"A little," she said. "Not a lot."
On her birthday, I didn't tape the kitchen door.
We started at two. I sliced six pounds of onions at one end of the island while she zested lemons at the other end with her reading glasses on.
The kitchen smelled so sharp and bright it made both of us tear up.
The radio was on low. It was fifty degrees out with the back door propped open, and leaves from the oak kept blowing in across the mudroom tile.
The onions took three hours, like always. There's no rushing them. Somewhere around hour two she came over to stir while I washed the cake pans, standing at the stove in her socks and one of my old flannel shirts, pushing the wooden spoon around the pot. The onions had gone the color of strong tea.
My phone was in the drawer by the back door. I'd put it in there at noon, which was where it spent most weekends now. Mark knew. My office knew. If something was on fire, they could call the house.
Nothing was on fire.
Lila had called me exactly once that year, in September. It had been so long since her name came up on my screen that I let it ring three times just looking at it.
"Hey," she'd said. "Quick question. What should I get Naomi for her birthday?"
"Ask her," I said.
There was a pause.
"Yeah," Lila said. "Okay. That's fair." Then, right before she hung up: "You used to be more fun, Graham." She didn't sound like she was kidding.
She'd called Naomi, though. Twenty minutes later I heard Naomi out in the garden on the phone, laughing, saying, "A new hori-hori. The Japanese kind. My old one snapped."
Lila's divorce had been final in August. Back in March she'd signed a lease on a first-floor one-bedroom in Fishtown with a yard about the size of a parking space.
Her own name on the lease, no guarantor; her income qualified.
The two hundred dollars came into our joint account on the first of most months.
In July it didn't. Lila called Naomi, not me, on the third, crying about a transmission, and Naomi told her August was fine.
I found out a week later at dinner, when Naomi mentioned it.
At 6:30 the chile verde went in the oven to warm up. The cake was cooling on the rack, Naomi's curd set bright yellow between my layers, which leaned about a quarter inch to the left.
"Perfect," Naomi said, looking at it.
Tess and Ben came at seven with a bottle of mezcal, along with a card Mateo had signed with just an M. Tess hugged Naomi and shook my hand. She'd been shaking my hand since January, firmly, like somebody at a closing who still planned to have the property inspected.
Lila pulled up at 7:10 in the gray Subaru and came up the walk carrying a long, thin package wrapped in brown paper. She was in jeans and a green sweater. She didn't smell like fig anymore. Just soap.
"Happy birthday, Nay," she said on the step.
"Hi, Li."
They hugged for a while. When they let go, Lila turned to me.
"Hi, Graham."
"Hi, Lila. Come in, it's cold."
She went right past me to the kitchen to find Naomi without looking back, and I was glad.
We ate in the kitchen, not the dining room, because that's how Naomi wanted it. The five of us crowded around the island on stools, two of them dragged in from the garage. No wedding china, no flowers in low glass bowls, just a candle stuck in a wine bottle.
I brought the soup to the island in the big Dutch oven and ladled it into bowls. Each one got a slice of toasted bread heaped with Gruyère, and I slid them under the broiler two at a time until the cheese bubbled brown.
The last bowl was Lila's, no cheese. Naomi had told me on Thursday, Leave the Gruyère off Li's, she can't. I hadn't asked Lila anything.
I set Naomi's bowl in front of her. Then I just stood there by the stove holding the ladle, watching her.
She picked up her spoon to break through the cheese, and steam came up. She blew on it and took a bite, then closed her eyes.
I waited.
When she opened them, she looked up at me across the island.
"A little too much thyme," she said.
"Noted."
"It's perfect," she said. "It's perfect, and there's too much thyme. Both."
"Less next year."
"Ask me next year," Naomi said.
Across the island, Lila's phone buzzed against the counter. When she looked at the screen, her mouth tightened a little. Then she pressed the side button, turned it face down, and picked up her spoon. She didn't look at me. She looked at Naomi.
"Work," she said. "It can wait."
"Good," Naomi said.
We ate the chile verde with warm tortillas and too much green hot sauce.
Ben told a story about a student who'd written an entire essay on The Great Gatsby without, as far as Ben could tell, ever reading The Great Gatsby.
Tess laughed so hard she had to put her head down on the counter.
Lila laughed too. Naomi laughed with her mouth full.
Joanne rang the doorbell at 8:05 and came in carrying nothing at all.
"I asked what I should bring," she announced, taking off her coat. "Naomi said just yourself. So here I am. Just myself."
She kissed Naomi on the cheek and looked around the kitchen at the pot on the stove, the stools from the garage, the candle in the wine bottle.
"Oh," she said. "No dining room? Your sister always loved the dining room for birthdays."
Nobody said anything.
Joanne heard it about a second after the rest of us did, and her hand went to her collar.
"I only mean," she said. "This is lovely. This is very cozy."
"Sit down, Mom," Naomi said. Not unkindly. Just tired.
Joanne pulled a chair in from the dining room and sat.
I brought out the cake with the candle stuck in the middle, tall and thin, leaning a little like the layers.
They sang, Joanne loudest, then Lila, Tess and Ben badly on purpose. Naomi sat in the middle of it with her face lit gold from below.
Before she blew it out, she reached behind her into the freezer drawer and took out a small glass dish I hadn't seen her put in there. Raspberry sorbet, no dairy, no lemon. She set it in front of Lila with a spoon next to it and didn't say a word.
Lila looked at it, and her eyes filled up. She pressed her lips together.
"Thanks, Nay," she said, very quietly.
"Blow it out, sweetheart," Joanne said. "Make a wish."
Naomi blew it out.
Much later, everyone had gone home. Tess had taken the leftover chile verde in three containers.
Lila had texted Naomi home, door locked, and Naomi had shown me the screen without my asking.
Joanne had stood in the front hall in her coat for a long minute like she was working up to something, and what she finally said was that the cake was very moist. Naomi said thank you.
Then we did the dishes, me washing and her drying.
The back door was still propped open a few inches.
The kitchen was cold and smelled like onions, lemon, candle smoke.
The new hori-hori was on the counter, still half in its brown paper.
Every so often she picked it up to turn it in her hand, testing the weight.
She'd gone quiet the way she did out in the garden.
I handed her a bowl, and she took it. I handed her the next one.
Then I stopped handing her things and just stood at the sink with my hands in the water, looking at her.
The reading glasses pushed back up into her hair again.
The thin line of flour on her cheek from the cake.
The way she was holding the dish towel. Her face, whatever it was doing right then, which I didn't know yet and wanted to.
She caught me.
"What?" she said.
"Nothing," I said. "Just looking."
THE END
Thank you for reading The Hospital Wing He Named for His Ex.