Chapter 49
DEB
WHEN I CALL LEO TO invite him to my birthday celebration, he says he doesn’t want to intrude. But I won’t hear a fig about that, so I tell him to choose a taco topping to bring.
He chuckles. “You aren’t very good at this whole divorce thing—you keep inviting me to everything.”
In response, I defend not myself but my daughter. “April was adamant that we don’t have to lose you just because she is. She’s the one who told me to invite you.” Whether that’s the right thing to say, I don’t know. I only know that Leo is bringing shredded lettuce and queso fresco.
I also know that Josie is about to leave town, and there’s more on my agenda than just my birthday. I need all the kids to be here for this.
When Cameron and Rachel arrive, they have extra freckles from their Florida honeymoon. Rachel kisses my cheek and says, “Fifty-eight years young.”
I feel my age, and gratefully so. I relish my non-static body as proof of life lived.
As proud as I was to sprout breasts and armpit hair when I was thirteen, I feel that same pride now.
Back when I started going gray, Josie offered to touch me up, but I drew close to the mirror, singled out a gray hair and said, “Are you kidding? Diamonds for my crown.”
Rachel hands me some salsa and guacamole, and Leo arrives right behind them.
I’ve made a chocolate coconut cake, which is on a stand in the kitchen.
I sneak in there to set down the salsas, and I look around at our counter full of serving bowls: beef, cilantro, lime, veggies.
Behind me, the sounds of my whole family.
My heart pinches, and I take a deep breath.
As everyone shuffles into the kitchen, Billy taps a fork on a glass and says, “Feel free to grab plates and serve yourselves, buffet style.” He points out drinks in the cooler as Sadie sneaks a bite of cheese.
Then Cameron raises his glass. “To Mom—all twenty-eight years!” He winks at me.
I smile, though there’s a gleam in my eye that says, Try to take my years from me, I dare you.
Billy wraps his arm around me. By my next birthday, he might not be able to do any of this.
And that’s why today is the last time we will celebrate a birthday here.
I look up at him, wondering if now is the right moment to tell everyone, but I know immediately from his expression that he has forgotten about our announcement.
He kisses my temple as everyone starts to load their plates with food, leaving me unsure what to do.
Should I remind him before I tell everyone?
He might feel blindsided, even though just a few hours ago we were in this together.
Otto is weaving through our legs like a little bird, so I get a plate of my own and scoop some beef onto it. Cameron mixes margaritas, and everyone scatters with their small talk: strongest brands of paper plates, best grasses for Texas heat, Otto’s potty-training progress, cilantro or no cilantro.
The grandchildren squeeze onto their grandfather’s lap, knowing good and well who to go to for extra cheese. Leo and Josie are stealing each other’s chips. And April and Cameron are across the room, hunched over a phone comparing cars to replace hers.
I decide it’s now or never, so I tap my glass.
“There’s something we wanted to tell y’all today.” I say we even though Billy is listening with just as much curiosity as everyone else. “We’ve decided to put the house on the market, and we’re going to move into a wonderful assisted-living community.”
I see the mixed reactions I expected. Cameron’s approval. April’s concern.
Billy isn’t upset. He’s just sitting there as though we’re talking about someone else.
Throughout the remainder of the meal, I field questions. Eventually, I find a moment to pull April aside and apologize, because I wish we could have left the house to her. We need the money for Greenwood.
“Gosh, of course,” she says. “I need to find a rental in Argyle anyway, so the kids can stay in their same community.” She frowns. “But I hope you know that if you don’t want to move, I could absolutely stay and help you with Dad. Leo would understand, and we could figure it out with the kids.”
I smile down toward my margarita. “I do know.” I meet her eyes again. “But this is best. Dad and I will both have more independence this way. It will let me be his wife, not just his caretaker.”
April nods and looks around solemnly, tearing up, which is something I haven’t seen her do for her own home or marriage. This house is her easiest grief.
When we sit back down at the table, Josie is oversharing about her dating app misadventures.
She looks at me and acknowledges, “Oops, TMI.” But then she keeps right on talking.
I scoop guacamole, shaking my head. Soon enough, she also taps her glass.
“Okay, time to say something we love about Mom.” A Russo birthday tradition.
Sadie immediately yells, “Cookies!” She grins, a spot of salsa in her dimple.
Others mention my food, humor, verve, and the way I organize board games by color. When they prompt Otto, he smiles under the attention and simply points to me, proclaiming, “Gramma Deb!”
Josie knuckles his little head and says, “Ah yes, Gramma Deb is a great thing about Gramma Deb.”
After everyone else has taken turns, April prompts Billy. “What about you, Dad?”
“What about me?”
“Something you love about Mom?”
“Oh, lots of things. I’d have to say her piano skills or the way she always quits smoking on New Year’s just to start again on January second.” He chuckles fondly.
Everyone looks around at each other. Those are things about his mom, who is several decades gone.
Cameron asks gently, “Um, something you love about Deb?”
Billy blinks. “Which one is Deb?”
I catch his eye from across the room. “Hi there.”
Dabbing the corner of my mouth with a napkin, I stand. Walk over to my husband. If a memory won’t make its way through when it’s demanded of him, then I will give him a new one. “Would you like to dance?”
He rises and takes my hand.
Though I did not tell Billy about how he forgot me at the hospital, we made the decision about Greenwood after that. This, however, is the first time the rest of our family has witnessed him forget me.
I look over my shoulder at no one in particular. “Music?”
Our kids whip their phones out like pistols, but it doesn’t matter who’s quickest on the draw because they all know which song to play.
We’re dancing before the music even begins, and I quietly tell Billy that it’s my birthday. “Oh,” he says. “Happy birthday!”
And then Mama Cass sings instructions on how to dream.
The grandchildren dance too.
So with my children and grandchildren circled around me, with my husband in my arms remembering quite well how to dance, I do a rock step and the years tingle through me.
In a flash I’ll be gone, my own children recalling their favorite things about me in some new house at some new table with some new iteration of family.
So I dance now as if time is the music.
This, I know, is how you dream. This is how you live forever.
Billy swings me out and back in, and I smile up at him.
A kick. A triple step. A little shift of weight.
In a month or two, when moving day arrives, everyone will come to help.
A few final boxes will be scattered throughout, closets swept clean, and greasy fast-food bags slouching on the kitchen counter.
Sadie will practice her cartwheel in the empty space, and Otto’s bare feet will be black from the dirty floors.
He first came to Lexington Avenue when he was five days old and couldn’t even lift his own head.
He still had a dot on his heel from the neonatal heel prick.
He will retain no memories of this home or the sunlit corner where his mother and grandmother rocked him for many a nap.
Josie and Cameron will handle moving day just fine, and I’ll be miffed that they aren’t more upset.
Josie is such a nomad that this will be one change among many.
She’ll munch salty fries and laugh as she reveals her house-related secrets: best hiding spots, sneaking out of bed for late-night snacks or MTV, walls colored on, and forts made.
She’ll point out the coat closet where she had her first kiss, incorrectly believing that this is news to me.
Cameron has never been given to nostalgia.
He’ll participate in the reliving with one eye on the now: his bride, his phone, his plans for later.
He and Rachel have started taking a swing dance class because Cameron read that learning new skills helps memory.
He’ll ask me if we told the new family about the sticking pocket door.
We did not. He’ll calculate whether he has the time and tools to fix it. He will not.
John and Brenda Miller will stop by with well wishes, and we’ll tell them what we know about their new neighbors. The following week, Brenda will come to Greenwood and help me set up my kitchen.
April will be my only child to sufficiently mourn our home, touching counters and bannisters with tears in her eyes.
And Billy will be an amalgam of our kids: making last-minute repairs, recounting patchwork stories, whispering private memories whenever they grace him.
Another adjustment in his medication will help us recall our short-lived gerbil together.
The false cancer scare. The recession. The night he streaked naked from our bedroom to the kitchen and back again, crossing his fingers that no kid would get out of bed and be scandalized.
We will laugh, even as we did back then.
And I will flood with relief that Billy knows the place he’s leaving. I need us to leave together, to go off and forget our home side by side, he with his dementia and me with my garden-variety hippocampus.
The whole family will end up in the kitchen where the trestle table stood.
The movers will have gone ahead with our furniture to its various destinations: April’s new apartment in Argyle, Cameron and Rachel’s gabled starter home, and Greenwood Hills.
Cameron will take Billy’s bicycle, and then we’ll have a stationary bike delivered once we’re settled.
Aware that it’s time to go, we will get quiet in the kitchen.
Cameron will set a roll of packing tape on the counter, and it will echo.
Otto will toddle around with a cold french fry.
April will hold a hair clip in her teeth as she tames Sadie’s wild mane.
None of us will quite know how to walk out.
So Josie, bless her, will throw her arms out wide and say dramatically, “Fare thee well, Lexington Avenue!”
Sadie will parrot her aunt while demonstrating her backbend like she’s a lowercase n.
The family moving in will have three young children. Boys, all. Billy will leave dental packets for them in the bathroom and a bottle of wine in the kitchen with a note that reads, From us to you.
He will clear his throat and say, “I’d like a moment alone with your mother.”
So our kids will gather their belongings and shuffle toward the front door.
I’ll hear Josie say—just like when they were small and shrimpy and lisping through missing teeth—that the last one out is a rotten egg.
April will playfully shove her sister, and the door will close behind them.
Then the two who started this will be left to finish it.
Billy will lead me to the back deck, seeming young.
He’ll pull me in, my head landing gently against his heart as memories begin to play like music, with their swings and repeats and accidentals.
Grilling and nightcaps and bocce ball. Snowmen and sunsets and Texas thunderstorms. Flash floods and summer droughts.
Training wheels and roller skates. Frisbees and chalk.
Bird’s nests and anthills. Neighbors and children.
After a few minutes, Billy will extend an open hand and say, “Onward?”
My chest will radiate with emotion as I look up at the man who came here with me and our youth and our young, the man who is responsible for my little life’s greatest joys.
I will place my hand in his, a vow renewal without airs.
A choice I’ve made every day since the shotgun shot of our wedding, and even still.
“Yes.” I’ll nod and whisper, “Onward.”
We’ll go back through our house to the front yard, where our family will stand waiting.
We will walk slowly down a sidewalk that remembers the thump of the morning paper, beneath trees that remember toilet paper thrown by stealthy and not-so-stealthy teens, and beside the perennials I planted with my own two hands.
I’ll look up at the wisteria vine, no longer in bloom.
But the season will come again. Soon, a young family will unpack their new couches and rambunctious children and career aspirations.
And when the time is right, they’ll come outside to discover a burst of dazzling, fragrant purples.
Like clusters of amethyst dangling from the vine.
They will gasp. Pause. Smile at each other.
And the scent will saturate the neighborhood with the tenacity of new life.