“When he came by last weekend with Rosie?” Ruth is saying. “The way he looks at her—it took my breath away. Same way I felt when I saw him hold her after she was born. Do you remember?”
“Of course.” But Lily doesn’t know if she remembers. They have photographs, which serve as memory. Her mother’s sappiness is grating and worrisome—since when does Ruth use phrases like took my breath away? Since when does she reminisce in plaintive tones? Lily is certain now that her mother is dying. “You do realize that’s setting the bar pretty low,” she says. “No one has ever looked at a woman holding her baby in a loving way and said, What a good mother! You never said to me, The way you look at your daughters just takes my breath away.”
Ruth, who has tilted again, gives Lily a long look. “I’m sorry.”
“I’m not asking you to be sorry.”
“Okay.”
“Okay.”
They are silent for a moment, Lily holding tears in her mouth.
“I wouldn’t mind some more tea, lovie.”
“Of course.”
“And can you take this? On your way? Hang it up for me?”
Lily didn’t realize her mother was still holding the towel she’d used to dry her hands, but she sees that Ruth’s arm is shaking now, as if the towel she’s proffering were a dumbbell. She sees that Ruth inches her bottom to the very edge of the seat before pushing herself to stand, and that she climbs onto her bed with difficulty. “Oh Lily, I’m tired. I had a little burst there, but I’m zonked.”
Lily watches out the corner of her eye, making sure her mother is settled before going to hang the towel in the bathroom. Her Post-its are still attached to the wall, warning of the step down from the riser on which the toilet sits. Step down! Be careful! We love you! The ones she put up when her mother first came home Ruth removed immediately, but these—stuck up nearly a week ago—her mother has not touched.
“I regret it,” her mother says when Lily comes out of the bathroom.
Lily, not sure what she’s talking about, picks up her mother’s mug. Ruth is working to get underneath her blankets. “With those tennis balls,” she says. “I should never have done that. It was cruel of me. He was right to be angry.”
“But you said he didn’t try to stop you.”
“That wasn’t how a man like your father got angry.”
“How did he get angry?”
“He slept with other women.”
Lily waits for more. But Ruth is quiet.
“You’re saying you blame the tennis balls for his affairs?”
Ruth pulls her blanket up to her chin. She looks small. “That does sound dumb,” she says. “Doesn’t it.”
“Not dumb—wrong. Are you cold?”
Ruth nods.
“I’ll go make more tea.”
“Lily?”
“Yes.”
“You should know that your father didn’t leave. I kicked him out.”
“Okay,” Lily says automatically.
“Okay,” says her mother.
Lily thinks of Adam and Vira, and the fact that they fought not only about whatever they fought about but also about whether she left or he kicked her out. Does it matter? The result is the same. Lily’s father is gone. Vira is gone. She wonders if her mother is trying to assure her in some way, or to warn her. Or maybe it’s not about Lily at all. Maybe she just wants her to know. This was something I did.
Lily speaks softly; Ruth’s eyes are fluttering. “So why has the story always been that he left?”
“It was the only acceptable thing to tell my parents.”
Lily watches her mother for another minute, then opens the door to go make more tea. But June is standing on the other side, looking tired and happy. “I’m done,” she says, heaving herself up onto Ruth’s bed and sliding under the blankets next to her grandmother. She lays an arm across Ruth and looks up at Lily. “I stay here. You get Rosie and come back.”
“She’s not out for another hour,” Lily says. “We’ll go together.”
“I stay here.”
“Enjoy this time. Then grandma has to rest.”
“She can stay,” says Ruth. She pats the bed on the other side of her. “Come on, Lily-pie. Lie down with us.”
“I was going to make your tea.”
“The tea can wait. I’m not cold anymore.”
Lily sets down the mug and stretches out next to her mother.
“Come under the covers.”
“I’m fine.”
“I know. Come under the covers.”
It is warm under her mother’s blankets. Lily’s toes have been cold for hours, she realizes, maybe all winter. On her back, close enough to feel Ruth’s heat, she looks at the stamped-tin ceiling, at two paintings her mother bought from artist friends, at her mother’s bookshelves. On a high shelf is a collection of Ruth’s favorite ashtrays, which she asked Lily to put away after her diagnosis. It strikes Lily that apart from the ashtrays and the loveseat and Ruth’s books, there is almost nothing in this apartment that was also in the old house, and that in the old house, there was almost nothing that was Ruth’s alone. She lived there for years by herself, of course, but you could always feel Lily’s father there, in the rugs and furniture. Her father had traveled, and many of the objects in the house had been chosen by him, and carried long distances by him, and seemed to represent—to Lily, at least—his worldliness. There was an antique Japanese teapot with a built-in strainer, an abstract sculpture, a custom-built turntable and speakers that cost more than his car. Lily’s mother had little: a Childe Hassam etching of the harbor, which she hung above the fireplace, and mementos from her childhood, which she stored in several hatboxes in her closet. Even her books she kept in her bedroom, so that Lily, when she was very young, wondered if books were something private, and maybe a little shameful, like underwear. The ashtrays
