5

After the dog park, Ferris and I stop by Phyllis’s house to make her eggs. Eggs, in a midlife plot twist, are my love language.

Phyllis feels like a not-quite grandmother and not-quite roommate. Our houses are called the Sisters because they were built for a pair of spinster sisters in 1919. Their parents lived in a giant stone house on the water where the summer people built, and when it became clear neither of their daughters was getting married, they ousted them into what is now a family neighborhood closer to town. Our houses were the first on the street—one sister wanted a brick Tudor (mine) and the other wanted one that looked like it was designed by Hans Christian Andersen (Phyllis’s). Phyllis’s house was actually my favorite house in Beechwood when I was a kid, because it looks like a fairy tale. My mom and I lived in an apartment above the dry cleaners in town, and, while we were happy there, it always smelled a tiny bit like kerosene. I always imagined Phyllis’s house smelled like cookies. It’s made of stucco with a tall pointy roof covered in hand-laid wood shingles. You can picture Hansel and Gretel wandering right through the rounded wood door. It’s cozy and welcoming, with beamed ceilings and all of the original woodwork and hardware. Our houses were built uncomfortably close together so that the sisters could care for one another as they aged. I can see right into Phyllis’s kitchen from mine, which is how I knew when she stopped cooking for herself.

Our houses would look like they were on the same lot except for the poorly maintained fence someone put up decades ago. It runs the length of our yards all the way down to the creek and is truly an eyesore. Six years ago, Phyllis had her handyman add a gate to the fence so that Greer and Iris could come over and enjoy her old swing set. Phyllis is old enough not to care about lawsuits and tetanus.

I’ve been checking in on Phyllis since we bought the house ten years ago, but I’ve started spending more time there since my mother died. It’s not like she’s a replacement mother, but I’ll admit it’s not super clear who’s taking care of whom. The main difference between the two of them, besides the fact that Phyllis is not my mother, is that Phyllis hangs back and lets me come to her. When Pete left, she didn’t panic or step in to fix it. She took my hands in hers, told me I was better off, and gave me her copy of The Awakening. She believes in the value of planting perennials rather than annuals, so that she’ll have nurtured something that will outlast her. Her parenting and gardening mottos are the same: “Pull the weeds and let God do the rest.” She has a confidence in the order of things and in the ability of all creatures to grow into their best selves that could feel naïve. But if you talked with her for five minutes you would know that she is, like her garden, thriving beautifully.

When she’s up to it, we spend afternoons wandering around her yard, and I’ve learned the basics of caring for perennial plants. I now have bushes of forsythia and hot-pink hydrangea that line the grassy path down to the creek, and also black-eyed Susans, gerbera daisies, and butterfly milkweed along the edge of my brick patio. Nothing needs to match in nature, and I find it totally counterintuitive the way my yard adjusts to death and welcomes whatever comes next. “Spring is always coming,” Phyllis says. “It never doesn’t come.”

More often than not, when she’s in the mood for fresh air, we sit out back and admire the giant weeping willow that sits at the edge of her part of the creek. She greets the tree with, “What are you crying about?” and then laughs at her own joke. Phyllis loves eggs, she loves my dog, and I think she loves me.

“Alice!” she shouts when I’ve let myself in. Like my mom, she insists that Ali is a narrow place behind a building that smells like garbage. “Where is Wuthering Heights?”

She is a reader, and her bookshelves overflow into piles that I worry may be a safety hazard. It would take me all day to find that single book, and I have a client in an hour. “I have a copy,” I tell her. “Let me make your eggs, and I’ll go get it.”

She lowers her reading glasses when I’ve entered her sitting room. “Well,” she says.

“Well, what?” Ferris takes his spot by her slippered feet.

“You look a bit like a farmer, and I still can’t see a bit of your darling figure, but at least you’re not in your pajamas. Much better.” She’s smiling at me, as if she’s just paid me the highest compliment.

“Thank you,” I say. “And I took my wedding ring off too.” I hold up my hand to show her while grabbing last night’s dinner plate and her water glass to take to the kitchen.

“Good!” she calls from her sitting room. “Good riddance!”

“Ferris seemed to notice,” I call back. “He found the only single guy in the park and peed on him.”

“You’re surrounded by helpers,” she says.

I scramble two eggs and season them with the smallest amount of salt I can get away with. I sit in the armchair across from hers while she eats.

“What is it?” she asks.

“What is what?”

“There’s a buzziness about you. A shift.”

“I told you Pete wants a divorce; I guess that was the first domino to fall. Then I took off my ring and sort of got dressed. And maybe that guy at the dog park was flirting with me? I don’t know. It’s got me feeling all teenage-y, like someone might ask me to the prom.”

Phyllis nods at her eggs. “It’s about time. You’re young. You’re a beautiful girl.”

“Thank you,” I say. “For humoring me.”

When she’s eaten and I’ve cleaned her kitchen while listening for the successful completion of her shower, I run home to find my copy of Wuthering Heights and leave it next to her TV remote. Phyllis will read all day until three o’clock, when she hate-watches Dr. Phil. She doesn’t miss an episode or an opportunity to say, “He’s not a very nice man.”

From there I head to Jeannie Lang’s. It only takes one intensely satisfying hour of work to revamp her front hall closet with uniform wood hangers and decorative hooks for baseball hats. I convince her to throw away a single black cashmere glove, as its match has been missing for over three years. I sometimes feel like a priest walking through people’s homes. I come in and absolve them of guilt and restore their peace of mind. Yes, it’s okay to let go of the hope that you’ll ever learn to play that ukulele. Let’s release it to its next owner. I post a photo with the caption Coat rack goals, and am the first to roll my eyes over it.

As I drive to the rec center to get my kids, the sky is a rich early-July blue and the leaves on the elm trees along Main Street flutter almost imperceptibly. My senses are on high alert, and I feel good. “Ethan,” I say out loud. I like the way the word vibrates around the inside of my car. “Mom, I think he was flirting with me. Did you see it?” I wait for a response but just get a bubbly feeling in my chest. “Ethan,” I say again.