CHAPTER 25

“Imiss you.”

“Me too,” Rick said. “I hate it when we’re not together. Everything feels—wrong.”

“I hate it, too. It’s a good thing we both feel the same way. I’m sure there are lots of couples who actually enjoy time apart.”

“Ugh,” Rick said. “Call me old-fashioned, but I’d rather be with my wife than without her, even when she’s in one of her cantankerous moods.”

“Me? Cantankerous?” Gincy laughed. “Never. By the way, have you been watering the tree? You know how quickly it will get dry.”

“I’ve been watering the tree.”

“Good.” And that important fact ascertained, she listened while her husband recounted the events of his day.

“We got snow,” he told her. “Not much, a few inches, but enough to make the Gardens and the Commons look beautiful. Well, more beautiful.”

“And work is all right?” she asked. “And your health? You haven’t caught a cold or anything? You haven’t fallen on the ice?”

“I’m happy to report that work is fine and so am I. Same as I was yesterday at this time. Don’t worry about me, Gincy. Okay, your turn.”

“I went through Mom’s finances. Well, I snooped. That’s her word. And everything is in order. The forgotten electric bill seems to have been a lone incident.”

“Good,” Rick said. “So we can put that concern aside for the moment.”

“Not so fast. I still haven’t asked about what financial help Mom might be giving Tommy.” Gincy sighed. “I don’t know, Rick. Maybe that’s something you could handle, if you feel comfortable about it. I mean, maybe you could talk to Tommy about his financial situation. I don’t want to embarrass him any more than I probably already did when I asked him the other night if he needed money. He said no, by the way. And if I ask Mom what she’s been doing for Tommy, I’m pretty sure she’ll stalemate.”

“I’ll do what I can to help, of course,” Rick said. “We do need to know.”

“Thank you, Rick,” Gincy said. “I mean it. And there’s something else I need to talk about.”

“I’m listening.”

“Earlier, when I was going through Mom’s checkbook, it kind of startled me to see my father’s name on the checks. Well, of course his name is there. Mom doesn’t write that many checks and it’ll be a while before she goes through the supply she has. But it’s disturbing when you come across the vestiges of a life that’s over, isn’t it?”

“It is,” Rick agreed. “I’ve told you about that first year after Annie passed. Memories assault you from so many places at once, it feels like a miracle that you’re still standing. It was a good thing I had Justin to focus on. That helped me get through more than anything else could.”

Gincy sighed. “Oh, Rick, you know all about grieving. The voice on the answering machine. The mail that keeps coming, addressed to someone no longer there to receive it. I found a flyer from Home Depot addressed to my father this morning and threw it out before Mom could see it. Anyway, it’s disturbing, and yet you don’t want those vestiges to be wiped away. It’s like, as long as my father’s name is on the checks, as long as his shirts are hanging in the bedroom closet and not given to the charity shop—by the way, I talked to Mom about passing them on, but she’s having none of it—anyway, as long as Dad’s worktable is set up in the basement and his old copies of Popular Mechanics are still there, he isn’t entirely gone. It doesn’t make sense, but that’s the way it is.”

“I’m sorry it’s so difficult,” Rick said gently. “Being there in that house. But I’m afraid there’s no way it couldn’t be difficult. And this experience, of being the survivor, comes to each one of us at some point in time. Well, to most of us.”

“I know. I just keep thinking of what my mother must be feeling, every single moment of every single day. A terrible longing. Emptiness. How does she pass the hours knowing that her husband is never coming home, that they’ll never share the same bed, that he’ll never accompany her to church on Sundays, that he’ll never even walk down the aisle of the grocery store with her? Do you think that’s one reason Mom has been avoiding shopping for food? Because it reminds her too much of the comfortable daily life she shared with Dad?”

“I think it’s possible, Gincy, yes. Memories are everywhere, even in the bread aisle.”

“How is she even managing to put one foot in front of the other,” Gincy went on, “day after lonely day? It’s not like she has a child to care for, like you did with Justin, someone on whom she can focus her love and attention. Even Tommy’s got a life of his own. Sometimes she doesn’t see him for days on end.”

Rick sighed. “The human spirit is strong. The will to live is primal. People go on. I don’t know exactly how it works, Gincy. I wish I did.”

“Me too. Rick, don’t die, okay?”

“Uh, okay. I mean, I’m not planning on it any time soon.”

“Good. I’ll try not to die, either. I mean, before I’m really old.”

“Well, now that we have that settled,” Rick said, “tell me, is your mother any worse than when you got there?”

“Well, she still won’t say anything directly about missing Dad, but she’s definitely better than she was a few days ago.” Gincy laughed. “Now that she has me to kick around.”

“I’m going to float an idea here, Gincy, and I want you to consider it. I think your mother needs you. I think she’s glad you’re back home. And I think the only way she can express herself with you, for whatever wacky reasons, is by criticizing and being a curmudgeon, kind of like what she did with your father.”

“That’s insane!” Gincy cried. “Need me?” she said in a lower voice. “She’s never needed me.”

“Are you so sure about that?”

“Yes,” Gincy said. “It’s crazy. You need someone so you drive her away by your negativity? That’s pretty much what she did with me, right from the start.”

Well, Gincy thought, not right from the start. No, she could remember—when she allowed herself to remember—feeling genuinely close to her mother when she was a little girl. Memories of those early years had become painful to recall as time went by and she and her mother grew further apart, but she knew that if she gathered her courage she could face the memories and appreciate the warm relationship she and her mother had once shared. The picnics together in Appleville Park, just the two of them, sitting on the old plaid blanket, eating bologna sandwiches and drinking lemonade. Going to the movies together on a Saturday afternoon and treating themselves to a box of Raisinets. Her mother holding on to the seat of Gincy’s first two-wheeled bike as she taught her daughter how to ride. Baking cupcakes for the school bake sales. It had all been so fun. So simple. So comforting.

But everything had started to change when Gincy had gone to high school. Why? Why had her mother become so critical and dismissive of her? And why had she, Gincy, allowed herself to become the same toward her mother?

“Gincy? Are you there?”

“Sorry,” she said. “I was just thinking about the past. And about the notion of my mother needing me. It’s just so hard to believe.”

“Look, you’re back there now, aren’t you? You chose to go back, and she hasn’t asked you to leave. She’s even relying on you, isn’t she, to make the meals. She’s letting you clean her house. She made a fuss I’m sure, but she did actually let you see her finances. I’m no psychiatrist, but isn’t it at least possible that she’s happy you’re there with her? Since when do human beings make sense?”

“Since never,” Gincy admitted. And at dinner Ellen had said that she was glad Gincy and Tamsin were visiting, although that might have been a lie for Tamsin’s sake.

But Gincy had never known her mother to be a liar, in spite of the few recent incidents, and obviously her mother had felt she had good reasons for keeping certain bits of information from her daughter. If anything, the Ellen Gannon Gincy knew could be brutal in telling the truth as she saw it.

Rick yawned. “Sorry,” he said. “It’s not the company.”

“You’re tired. I’ll let you go.”

“You should get to bed, too,” he said. “You’re working very hard there, I know.”

Gincy smiled. “You know me, Ms. Get-’er-done. Good night, Pinky.”

“Good night, Brain.”

Gincy continued to sit at the kitchen table for a few moments after ending the call with Rick. She needed to think more about the notion of her mother actually needing her; she needed to think more about the notion of her mother actually being glad that her daughter, the prickly, discontented Gincy Gannon, who had rejected a perfectly good life in Appleville for the temptations of the Big City, was there to take care of her, at least for the moment.

And she realized as she sat there that she felt kind of good about it, not of course about her mother being in a state of distress, but about her mother wanting her there at Number Nineteen. If indeed Rick was right. After all, everyone needed to be needed, even by a mother who had never shown her daughter much affection or understanding, certainly not once she was past the age of twelve and no longer entirely dependent on her mother for her every thought and opinion. Maybe, Gincy thought now, just maybe Ellen’s becoming generally dismissive of her daughter had been the only way she could handle Gincy’s growing independence, her obvious desire to leave Appleville, her determination to live a life vastly different from the one her mother had chosen.

It was possible, wasn’t it? It was possible that Ellen Gannon had felt rejected by her daughter and had protected herself from hurt in the only way she knew how—by withdrawing, by criticizing. But would Gincy ever really know for sure?

With a sigh, Gincy got up from the table, turned off the kitchen lights, and made her way upstairs to her old bedroom. She had a powerful urge to give her own daughter a great big hug. Tamsin always welcomed hugs.