THE NEXT DAY, PATSY CAME HOME FROM HER RUN AND announced that she was having dinner that evening with the guy from the train. Jacob, she was calling him now.
Pru was lying on the couch, headachy and blue. Patsy stood over her, grinning and panting from her run. Right there was the difference between being thirty-six and thirty-two, Pru thought. Patsy seemed to be in about one mai tai better shape than herself.
“You don’t mind, do you?” Patsy said.
Pru didn’t answer. Well, of course she minded. They hadn’t made it to the de Kooning exhibit that morning, and now it wasn’t looking good for the Uptown. And what was Patsy doing, dating in her town? She followed Patsy into the bedroom.
“What do you even know about this guy, Pats? I have to say, I’m surprised. He seems so not your type.”
Patsy was rooting through the “dressy” side of Pru’s closet. Pru hadn’t opened that side of the closet in a long time. Watching Patsy flip through her clothes made her jealous and possessive. Not that one, she kept thinking. Keep flipping, missy.
“He’s a doctor, at GW Emergency, he said. See? I bothered to find that out.” She held up Pru’s best dress, a light-brown silk with a cornflower-blue print. It was her only designer dress, a Marc Jacobs that she’d gotten on eBay. “This here?” she said. It was sweet and feminine and, Pru had to admit, perfect for Patsy. It would provide interesting contrast to the nose ring and the dreads.
“What am I supposed to do while you’re out?” she said, but Patsy had already disappeared into the bathroom and closed the door behind her.
Pru poured herself a glass of wine, feeling rather petulant about this turn of events. She could hear Patsy singing in the shower, The wheels on the bus go round and round, round and round, the gays on the bus go swish, swish, swish. Pru drank her wine and watched the rain falling outside. The days were getting shorter, she realized. Well, thank goodness. Fewer daylight hours to get through.
She felt shy when Patsy’s date came to the door, and she withdrew to watch them from the other side of the living room, in the bay window seat, with the new pile of blue and lavender silk pillows that she’d bought to match the walls. Jacob didn’t hide his admiration of Patsy, who beamed with pleasure.
Everything was right there, in their full, open smiles.
They were like children at the circus, so openly happy and excited. It was a very different and strange way of doing things, from Pru’s point of view. She was used to a style of dating that was more like buying a used car. Any outward show of eagerness only put you at a disadvantage, when it came time for negotiations. Pru felt jealous, and annoyed at herself for feeling jealous. For heaven’s sake, Patsy’s last date in Akron had taken her to the Olive Garden, where he’d eaten three baskets of “never-ending breadsticks” before his pasta entree, according to Patsy.
Pru suddenly wanted to go to them, to shake Jacob’s hand and kiss Patsy. She wanted to say “Have a good time!” and see them to the elevator. She wanted them to insist that she come along, too. But Jacob was helping Patsy on with Pru’s good raincoat, and they were already insulated in the cocoon of their date. Pru stayed where she was and waved to them from the living room, as if from the other side of an airport security gate.
SHORTLY AFTER PATSY LEFT, THEIR MOTHER, NADINE, called.
Just hearing Nadine’s voice brought to mind her soft, freckled hands, her broad shoulders, her devotion to the kinds of outmoded products you could get only through the Vermont Country Store catalogue: pastilles and peanut chews, Silver Fox shampoo and Lotil hand cream, Lanz of Salzburg nightgowns and loose face powder and Tangee lipstick, the “secret of beautiful women for over seventy years . . . the orange lipstick that goes on clear and transforms into the perfect shade for you!”
“Is Patsy there? Annali really wants to say good night to her mommy.”
Pru thought perhaps she shouldn’t say that Patsy was out with someone she’d picked up on the train, so she hedged.
“She just ran out for food,” she said, trying to lie as little as possible. “How long will Annali be up?”
“Not long,” said her mother. “Are you girls having fun? What are you doing?”
“Nothing much. We’re being low-key tonight.”
“Make sure Patsy has a good time,” Nadine said. “She really deserves a little fun.”
“Yeah, it’s hard making sure Patsy has a good time,” said Pru, dryly.
Her mother chuckled, and said, “Well . . .”
Her response to almost anything these days seemed to be a low chuckle, followed by a long, “Well . . .” that never went anywhere. There was a vagueness about her, since Leonard’s death. As though she couldn’t quite remember what she was doing at any given moment. Except when she played Scrabble, which she did every night with an online group. She won consistently, skunking her opponents with twice as many points. Pru figured that her mother must be in good mental shape, if she could keep winning like that. Nadine and Leonard had been older than her friends’ parents, almost grandparently by the time Pru entered high school. Still, her father’s death, at seventy-eight, had taken them all by surprise, and Pru couldn’t help feeling anxious over her mother’s odd new behaviors.
“How are you, Mom?” said Pru, pointedly.
“Me? Just fine. I had a four-hundred-point game the other day. Cleaned Maudie’s clock. One of my best.”
“Have you called any of those people about the basement?”
“Just a minute,” Nadine said. Pru heard her cover up the phone and say to Annali, “Find your hat, pumpkin. Then it’s bedtime.” Then, back to Pru: “What people, hon?”
“To come and clean out the basement. I left you
