“Hi, Mrs. Griffin. Remember me?”
“Remember us, Mrs. G?”
As a career faculty wife at a boarding school, Mary Griffin knew that she could open her front door at any time of day and see someone standing there saying some variation of those words. Former students of Henry’s were always showing up; it was a losing campaign to stay up to date on all of them.
“Hi, Mrs. Griffin!”
“Look how big Chip is getting!”
Mary handled each of them, as gracefully as she could. And now, since her husband had gotten sick, a few more were coming around personally; she would resist whatever gifts they brought, be unsuccessful at it, and thank them from inside the doorway. The only visitors he’s getting, she thought, have already been invited.
“I’m Laura Piccolo,” this one said. “Laura Appleby? I really should have called …”
Mary stood there with her hand on the doorknob, letting the draft from outside curl off the porch and swoop into the house like a spirit. This wasn’t your typical former student with her children in tow.
“I should have called,” Laura repeated. “I know it was rude to just—”
“It’s all right—believe me. I’ve actually expected you.”
“You did?”
Mary nodded, opened the door all the way now and stepped back. “You haven’t changed at all, really. I can see it now—you’re even more beautiful.”
“That’s very generous, and massively untrue, and thank you very much.” Laura grinned.
“Same shy smile,” Mary added.
It was raining so hard that day. I’ll never forget the rain.
“Where’s Dad?” Andy wanted to know. He turned around and looked at the street, scanning for his father’s car.
“This is Andy,” Laura explained. “And Molly’s our daughter.”
Mary looked down at Andy, who still wanted his question answered. “Your dad called from the hotel,” she told him, and Laura remembered what was great about this woman: when Mary talked to a kid, even when the kid’s parent was there, she made sure she talked to the kid. Directly. “He had just gotten off the phone with a doctor he’d been trying to reach, from Los Angeles.”
“L.A.? Sweet,” Andy said.
Someone else must have been the one who ushered them in, Mary thought. Someone else must have stooped down to that quiet little girl’s eye level to say hello to her. Someone else must have told her brother where the TV was, and watched as he took his sister—was she stuttering?—down the hall by the hand. Someone else must have praised them, and brought their mother out of the hallway into a room where they could sit … if you showed her a movie with the part where Laura Appleby Piccolo came to her door, Mary would only shake her head, and tell you that she didn’t remember a single thing about it.
Because you can only have so much room in your mind at any given time, she’d say. And right now, crammed to capacity, Mary’s mind held only one thought.
And any minute now, he’d be home.