Chapter 12
“STILL NOT FUNNY”
The next morning, Paul left after breakfast to run an errand for Lisette, who had nearly run out of milk at the coffee shop where she worked—a fireable offense—and I readied myself for work.
Just as I opened my laptop, my cell phone rang.
It was Kedar, who hadn’t bothered this time with a video call.
“So, Abby,” he began. I knew what was coming wasn’t good, because he wasn’t calling me a ‘rock star.’ “Bad news. It’s official. For everybody. We all have to come into the office one day a week.”
“One day a week.” There was an irony to the minimal ask having such a maximum impact. “Starting when?”
“Monday. They’re going to scale up from there to three days a week.”
“Can I have a couple of weeks here to finish out my rental?”
“I tried to get you another week or two, but they know if they bend for someone, they have to bend for everyone. Look, hopefully they try it for a while and realize it’s stupid, but there’s a new VP and he wants to make some kind of a point.
I hate it, too. I was only coming in two days a week. Now they want me in all five.”
“This is so stupid.”
“I know. I know,” he agreed. “But they want to get back to normal, and this is their version of normal.”
“So Monday. One week from today.”
“They’re firm on it. Sorry, Abby.”
I didn’t know what to do first. I started by texting Charlotte, to give her an update on my schedule so she’d know she could rent out her apartment again.
As soon as I’d sent it, I stared at my cell phone, wondering what to tell Paul.
When to tell Paul. The right answer was right away, and I couldn’t make myself do it.
There was a knock on the door. My heart leapt in my throat. I didn’t know if I could face Paul right then. I wasn’t ready for good-bye.
It wasn’t Paul, though. It was Mrs. Mahoney from downstairs.
“I found some recipes,” she said, holding out a set of small, hand-written notecards. “Since you asked about Newfoundland specialties.”
“Oh,” I said, trying to pull myself together. “Do you want to come in and have tea and tell me about them?”
“No, no,” she said. “I have to get back downstairs. I’m baking.”
“Oh, okay. Thank you. These look amazing.” I looked down at the carefully copied ingredient lists on the lined white notecards, touched.
I noticed she was watching me as I looked at the pile. “If you come downstairs, I could talk you through them.”
I had done it. I had broken through. It made me happy and sad at once. I smiled. “Sure.”
Mrs. Mahoney’s apartment immediately revealed that she had downsized to her apartment from somewhere larger. It felt like an overstuffed exhibit from a museum about Newfoundland culture. Every corner was filled with teapots, sewing tables, white enamel basins filled with pottery and bric-a-brac.
“You have beautiful things.”
“I don’t know about beautiful,” she said. “But they’ve been in my family a long time.” I watched her make tea and then check on some bread in the oven.
“I like to make my own bread,” she said. “The stuff you buy at the market is garbage.”
I nodded, deciding it was not the right moment to tell her that this was exactly why I went to the French boulangerie in New York.
“So where did you come from before St. John’s?” I asked her. “Some of this stuff looks like you didn’t grow up in the city.”
“I hate cities,” she agreed. “But it wasn’t practical to stay in the country anymore. We used to have a farmhouse.”
“Whereabouts?”
She eyed me suspiciously, like I might be a census worker here to ferret out back taxes and then fussed around with dishes as she began to tell her story.
“I spent my whole life in Newfoundland,” she said. “Except when I got married and went on my honeymoon to Bermuda for a week.”
“Bermuda!”
“It was too hot,” she said. “They served us warm soda.”
“Nightmarish.” I smiled, and for the first time, so did she.
Her husband was a fisherman, and they had one daughter together, who stayed in Newfoundland just long enough to come out as gay and then immediately moved down to Ottawa.
“I wasn’t supportive of that lifestyle,” Mrs. Mahoney said. “I didn’t understand it. And my church, you know, I go to the Catholic Church. You didn’t do that kind of thing.”
“I understand,” I said, quietly. There was regret in her voice, but the quiet kind, and I didn’t push at it. I knew there had been a break in the family that she was only beginning to dissect.
“My husband was…he didn’t want to talk to Penny at all. I kept in touch, but it was distant.”
I nodded.
“And then Al died. And a few years ago, my daughter Penny got married to another woman who worked in the government, and they had a daughter. Sperm donor, something like that. I guess that’s how it’s done these days.”
“One would hope so. The alternatives are alarming.”
She snorted a little laugh. “And then, well, I couldn’t take care of the farm by myself, and I was having trouble getting to my doctor’s appointments.
And Penny told me I could come live near her in Ottawa, but I didn’t want her to feel obligated.
So one of my friends Marie had moved here to St. John’s, and I moved here, too. ”
“Sure.”
“Penny wants me to come visit, but…” She shook her head. “I don’t know. Ottawa.” She said it like somebody had proposed that she hop on a spaceship to Mars.
“It would be nice to see your granddaughter,” I offered.
“She’ll be four soon. I don’t know. I don’t know about moving down there, you know? I like my church,” she said. “The young people at the church help with grocery shopping, but I don’t like…” Mrs. Mahoney waved her hands. “I don’t like to be needy, you know?”
I nodded. I did know. “It’s easier to be the one doing the giving than the one taking,” I agreed.
“But now my best friend Marie is dying, and we have been friends for fifty-eight years.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I know what you mean, though. About trying to decide where to go. I’m doing that right now.”
I told Mrs. Mahoney about my sister, and how she’d moved to Georgia, and I was trying to decide whether to go or not. “I don’t even like Georgia.”
Mrs.Mahoney considered it for a long moment.
“What’s he do? The ex-husband?”
“He’s a guitarist. Rock musician.”
She nodded. “I would say that’s probably not going to work out, but then again, I said my daughter and her wife were probably not going to work out.”
“I like being close to my sister. But.”
“They’re family.” Mrs. Mahoney nodded. “Maybe I’ll move to Ottawa. I don’t know. I don’t know if Penny has really forgiven me for how I let Al speak to her. I wish I’d done that differently.”
We both sat with that for a long moment.
“I like your teacups,” I said, looking at the one in my hand. It was classic and delicate, and tipped with gold.
“Every time I have tea, I have it in a nice cup,” she said.
“My mother used to do that. Once a day. Fancy tea in a fancy cup. Whatever else was happening, you had your tea in a nice cup. But a few of them broke when I moved, so I only have four good ones, now. You can come back for tea sometime,” she added.
“I’d like that,” I said.
“I’m sorry I didn’t talk to you earlier. Not in a very good mood these days. I’m worried I’m turning into an old bitch.”
I laughed. It surprised me. “I’m a bit of an old bitch myself.”
On the way out, she reminded me about the buzzer on the washing machine and how loud it was.
I told her I could turn it off, and she shook her head, skeptical.
I guess it was a pattern she was comfortable with, that warning about the loud washing machine.
A conversation starter and a conversation ender, all at once.
I went back to my apartment and sat alone. I knew I had to call Paul. I had to tell him I was leaving.
I called his number quickly and waited for him to pick up. It took a few rings.
“Abby, hi,” he finally said, sounding distracted.
“Hey,” I said. “Can we—”
“Listen, I uh—I have someone over. I’m dealing with something right now.”
“Your mother?”
“No, my—wife. Ex-wife. I’ll call you later, I promise.”
“Okay.”
I hung up. The words, ‘my wife…ex-wife’ played over and over again in my head.
If he was going to get back together with her, at least I didn’t have to stick around for that humiliation.
The part that left me unsettled was the doubt.
Did he still love me? Was he trying to find a way to work things out?
I waited until midnight, and he didn’t call.
The next morning, I called my sister first thing.
“Hey, are you at work?” I asked.
“No,” she said, “that job didn’t start yet, which is good because Nick may be taking a gig out of town.”
“What? Wasn’t the whole thing with him that he was going to stay in one place for you?”
“It’s a really good gig, apparently.” Laura’s voice was dry. “I mean it’s good money, I’ll give him that. But.”
“But,” I agreed. There was a long moment.
“How are you?” she finally asked.
“I’m okay,” I lied. “I just found out that my work is getting rid of its work-from-home policy.”
“What? Starting when?”
“Next week,” I said. “I have to be in on Monday. Every Monday. One day a week, which feels even more insulting somehow. Like it’s so obviously just for show.”
“Oh, Abby, I’m sorry,” Laura said. “I knew you were hoping to stay up there for a while longer.”
“It was always a bit of a fantasy in the first place,” I said. “Thinking this could work out.”
“It sounded like you were having fun, though,” she said.
“Anyway,” I said, “I’ll be back in New York, whether I want to be or not, so…I’ll be in a better place if you need me to fly down there or whatever, to see Hannah. I miss her. You too, of course.”
“Well,” Laura said. There was a long moment. “I decided to move back to New York too.”
My heart dropped. “What? I thought things were going okay. Why didn’t you tell me right away?”
“I knew you would say I told you so.”
“Laurie…”