47

Everyone is out of the house by five o’clock. Even Paul and his family have gone home. Those who have come back to Adele’s house after the service have drifted away, final condolences distributed to Adele, who sits in her living room, taking those sentiments with a royal dignity. I think she looks like she rehearsed for this role. Queen Adele. Or maybe duchess. Maybe only duchess. At any rate, I am left with the cleaning up. I sent Mitch to his hotel. No sense in him hanging around this group of complete strangers. I am meeting him for a drink as soon as I can get away. He’s brought his laptop, and I am beyond anxious to get started looking for Mack.

As I’m drying the last platter, adding it to the collection of dishes on the counter that will have to be returned to mystery owners, Adele comes into the kitchen. She stands there watching me, and I can feel her need to comment on how I’m doing the dishes, or where I’m stacking the orphans, or even that I’m making too much noise. She doesn’t. She sits in her usual kitchen chair, the one nearest the stove. She’s still dressed in her Lord & Taylor outfit, but she has on slippers instead of the good sensible shoes she’s worn all day. The slippers are threadbare, the pink terry-cloth faded to something like a washed-out bloodstain, the cloth separating from the foam sole at the edge. She sits and watches and stays silent until I am done with the dishes. I take a last swipe at the wet sink surround, squeeze out the Handi Wipe, and hang it over the faucet.

“Don’t leave it there.”

Ah. I’d forgotten that faucets weren’t for drying; the little towel rack in the pantry cupboard is for drying. Not handy, but the rule. I open the cupboard door and do as I’m told.

“I have to talk to you about your father’s will.”

I have assumed all along that he would leave everything to Adele. With probably a prize for Paul for being the son he never had. And then I think of how he grabbed Ronnie’s shirtfront, and I wonder if maybe he left me a little something, too. A memento.

“He left you the house next door. He insisted. It was your mother’s and he wanted you to have it.”

I stare at Adele; I’m certain that my mouth is open. “What?”

“I’ll tell you the truth; I didn’t want him to do that. You don’t deserve it; you cut yourself off from us. But he said that’s what he wanted.”

When I was a little kid, I fell off my bike and knocked the wind out of myself. There was that supreme moment when I felt the air go out, and I thought that I would never inhale again. This is exactly how I feel right now. I can’t get a breath. The tips of my fingers are tingling with flight or fight.

A memento. A house. Of my own.

“How do you think you can manage it from Seattle?”

The house. My inheritance. “I don’t know. I guess I’ll figure that out.” My father provided for me.

“There’s always so much to be done. You have no idea. Painting and repairing the damage done by tenants. Keeping tenants happy. Shoveling sidewalks and mowing lawns.” Adele is getting worked up.

“Who takes care of it for you now? You don’t mow and you sure don’t shovel.”

“We have a man.”

“Then I’ll have that man, too.”

“Justine, I’m not sure I can live on your father’s pension and Social Security alone. I never worked. Outside, I mean. I took care of you and Paul.”

“You took care of Paul. You tolerated me. Mostly.”

“I took care of you. Who do you think washed your clothes and cleaned up your messes? Who made sure you had new shoes at the start of the school year? Who fed you? I did, that’s who.”

“I won’t argue that you clothed and fed me, but you never cared for me.”

Adele fixes a glare on me that would ice over Medusa. “You were a sniveling little girl who refused to let me hold her. I wanted to mother you, but you kicked me. You hit me. You told me I would never be your mother. Do you remember that? Remember?” Adele’s icy eyes lock onto mine.

I don’t remember any of that. I only remember the disbelief and betrayal of my father in taking up with Mrs. Rose before the flowers on my mother’s grave were frostbitten. He grabbed Ronnie’s shirtfront. He defied Adele for me.

Adele clasps her hands together in an operatic pose. “He needed me to take care of you, but I needed him to love me.”

I think I’m going to be sick. “And did he?”

Adele stands up, stretching as tall as she can. “Yes, he did.”

My silent father doing as Adele commands—that’s what I remember of their relationship. If that’s love, then I guess he did love her.

“I wanted to love you, Justine. But you wouldn’t let me.” This is revisionist history spilling out of her mouth. Adele’s version of my life as a foundling.

“I was a bereaved child.”

“You were hostile and intractable.”

“I believe that I still am. I didn’t need you to love me, Adele. I needed my father’s love. You deprived me of that.”

“How?”

“By making sure every wrong I did and every mistake I made was pointed out. And everything that Paul did got a gold star and was hung on the refrigerator.”

“You sound like a child. A jealous child, which you always were.”

“Of course I was. I was jealous in the same way that Cinderella was jealous of her stepsisters; they had the unconditional love of their mother’s husband and his own flesh and blood served them.”

“You never served—”

“Adele, you’re being literal. I’m saying that I felt, and feel, like a second-class citizen in this house and you made my father treat me like one. Now he’s gone, and I’m done. You’ll never have to think about me again. Oh, wait, you probably don’t think about me anyway. It won’t be a loss.”

Adele doesn’t say anything to that. She backs down, steps away from me, walks around the small kitchen, pushing canisters back into alignment, testing the countertop for crumbs. “Justine. What are you going to do about the house? I can’t live without the rents.”

I finally get it. Now, after all these years, Adele needs me. Not for myself—she’s already proved that she needs my service, if not my affection—but for the one thing my father, in the end, refused her; the income from the house next door.

Adele leaves me alone in the kitchen, snapping off the overhead light on her way out, as if I’m not standing there, as if I’m going to leave it on and cost her more in an electric bill. Old people get freaky about expenses. The fixed income that they welcome at retirement must feel like bait and switch. Inflation and recession screw up the best of plans. Surely this house is mortgage-free. I have no idea what the rents are from next door, but my guess is that they’re substantial enough that Adele and my father have been living comfortably on them since his retirement. Then I think of the yellowed vinyl siding and the neglected yard.

The only window in the kitchen looks out at the big three-decker. I can picture Adele standing in the window, looking over at the house on the day my father came home from the hospital with only his little girl and not his wife. Did her scheming start then, or was she honestly generous, like Diane Santos, with casseroles and kindness? There is nothing more endearing than a man alone with a child. Who could resist? And if the man came with a good job, plus a triple-decker, what woman wouldn’t set her cap for him? It made sense, this moving into Adele’s house, cramming me into a closet. One more rental unit made available.

Adele is in the living room, sitting on the couch that has been my bedroom for the past week. She isn’t doing anything, and I get the impression that she’s waiting for me. I come in and sit in the chair opposite her. Her white hair has lost the just-coiffed look and there is a tiny pull in her stocking. In the big cushy couch, she looks like a gnome. I feel the slow cooling of my stoked temper. She looks like what she is, a fragile old lady.

“The reason he wanted that house to go to you was that he thought you needed the stability.”

I would gladly give up the “stability” of owning the house next door for one moment when my father opened his arms and held me.

I’m exhausted with the day and this conversation. If I had hoped to slouch out of New Bedford with empty promises to keep in touch, I know now that’s impossible. I am forever tied to this woman. “For right now, we’ll split the rents.”

Adele’s expression is more one of victory than of relief and gratitude.

*   *   *

There’s no way I’m staying in that house tonight. I call Paul and tell him that his mother is going to be alone unless he or one of his hulking teenagers comes to granny-sit. I rip off my funeral clothes and stuff them into my duffel. My jeans and a plain white T-shirt feel like home to me. I toss on a navy blue fleece vest and run a brush through my hair. I’m out of here. Except that I have no car. I don’t think I’m up to stealing Adele’s car, even if only for the night. I call a cab and sit on the steps to wait for it. While I wait, I call Mitch. We can indulge in New Bedford’s haute cuisine down on the historic waterfront.