Decisions

The kitchen door is open to admit a cool evening breeze, and a cardinal in a nearby tree is whistling so loudly it’s as though it’s asking to come in. Iris and Maddy are sitting at the kitchen table tasting the lemon ricotta cookies Iris has baked for her class tomorrow: A Lotta Ricotta, it’s called, and it features these cookies; ricotta mousse with balsamic-pepper cherries; ricotta doughnuts; ricotta ice cream; and—best of all, as Iris sees it—a recipe for making your own ricotta. Teach a man to fish. “Delicious!” Maddy says, wiping a crumb from the corner of her mouth.

“I don’t know,” Iris says. “I feel like they need to be tarter.”

“Put in more lemon juice?”

“Then the dough will be too wet.”

“Add more flour, too?”

“Then they’ll be too dry.”

The women sit quietly, thinking, and then Iris says, “Oh, for Pete’s sake. I know this one. Citric acid! I’ll add it to the recipe.”

“Oh, yeah!” Maddy says. “Lucille used that in her lemon meringue pie. She always said, ‘If lemon meringue pie doesn’t make you pucker so hard your eyes cross, feed it to your garbage disposal.’ ”

The screen door bangs open and Nola comes into the kitchen with the puppy, Lassie, followed closely by Link. “What smells so good?” she asks, unleashing the dog. The puppy gets a long drink of water, then collapses on the fluffy rug Iris keeps under the table for her.

“Lemon ricotta cookies,” Maddy says. “Want some?”

“Later,” Nola says. “We have to do an experiment now, and Abby is waiting.”

“What experiment?” Iris asks.

Link comes over to the table and sits down, and Iris resists an impulse to push his red hair out of his eyes. He’s got the best-looking freckles, the bluest eyes. And she thinks he’s one of the kindest, most sensitive children she’s ever met. “Well,” he says, eyeing the cookies, “it’s not exactly an experiment. But my mom has a question, and I found this thing you can do to get the answer.”

Iris looks over at Maddy. Only last night, Iris told Maddy that Abby believed in being really honest with children; she’d told Iris that not long after they first met. And now Iris wonders if the question Abby has is about whether the new treatments will work or not. Thus far, the women have seen no change in Abby, except for fatigue. It’s hard to think, though, that such important and fearsome questions would be handled in this way: a whimsical experiment, conducted by children, to speak to such a serious concern?

On the other hand, why not be direct about these things, even with, or perhaps especially with, your children? If you’re not afraid, if you face things straight on, mightn’t it help them? When Maddy went to the book signing for Lucky Ducky, she had seen a book called My Mom Has Cancer. Abby saw her looking at it and came over and told her that, more than anything, it was a beautiful testimony to living life fully; it was a very comforting book. Last night Maddy wanted to know if Iris agreed it would be comforting to children to know their mom had cancer and Iris said yes, she did think so. Privately, though, Iris was thinking, What do I know? I never had children. I only wanted them.

“Do you have some twine we could borrow?” Link asks now.

Iris pulls out the kitchen table drawer where she keeps her red-and-white bakery twine and scissors, and cuts him a long length. They should never have stopped putting drawers in kitchen tables; they are so handy!

“Thanks,” he says. And then, “Okay, so…”

Iris touches his hand. “Link, I just want to say that I know some hard things are going on in your house right now. I want to tell you that if I can help in any way, anytime, I’d be glad to.”

He shrugs. “It’s not so bad. And it will be over soon. And then things will be different but mostly back to normal. I don’t need so much of my mom’s attention anymore.”

“Oh!” Iris says. “Right.”

He rises up out of his chair. “Coming, Nola?” The girl races out the door behind him.

“Whoa,” Maddy says.

Iris looks at her, eyes wide. “I know. I’m…I don’t know what I am! Are you okay with Nola being in the middle of all this?”

“I think so. I’ve always gone by how Nola behaves and what she says to gauge how she feels. I try not to second-guess her. And she seems perfectly happy, doesn’t she?”

“Absolutely.”

“So I guess I’ll just leave things alone. I think Abby will let us know when there’s something we need to worry about. Oh, I forgot to tell you! Can you pick Nola up at school tomorrow afternoon? I’m driving to a gallery in St. Louis in the morning. I didn’t want to say anything until I was sure, but they want to talk about giving me a show in the fall.”

“That’s wonderful!” Iris says. “Congratulations!”

“Thanks.” But in Maddy’s voice, as well as in Iris’s, is a kind of sadness. Across the way, the light goes on in Abby’s bedroom and the women turn to it as though it is a beacon.