When I finally returned from Willow Island, I cleaned the flat for Ben’s homecoming, put fresh sheets on the bed, dusted, vacuumed, and opened the windows “to let the air in,” as Rose would say, although I knew inside that what I was really doing was trying to get the odor of my own transgressions out.
I stocked up on Ben’s favorite foods, put a six-pack of beer in the fridge to chill, threw some blue irises in a vase because someone had once told me they were “manly” flowers, and then, in another frenzy of delayed guilt, I picked up the phone and called Simone and Stella.
I’d neglected them, I knew, had pushed them aside once more for Annabelle and Josh, but when Stella picked up the phone she just said, “Lulu, how lovely to hear from you—I was only just saying to William the other day”—Stella had started calling Billy “William” just after his short-lived stand-up comic career, in an attempt to give him back some of his dignity—“that we haven’t seen you in a while; the kids have missed you.”
Simone, however, was more direct.
“Oh,” she said when she heard my voice, “back from the Bermuda Love Triangle, are we?”
We met the following day at Gottardo’s, ordered toasted sandwiches and fat chips with our coffees, and settled into an initially easy conversation about Simone’s new producer, who she hated, Riley’s new teacher, who Stella loved, and Thomas’s tap recital, which I had missed.
Thomas was Stella’s first boy, my godson, and I had been—unless I was sick or looking after Rose—to every concert he’d been in, and either Rose or I usually made his costumes as well.
“I’m sorry, Stella,” I said, “when was it?”
“Last Friday,” she answered. “I did leave you some messages, but don’t worry about it—Simone came instead.”
Simone went?
I looked at her, smiling at me across the table. “Auntie Simone,” she corrected Stella, “the one who doesn’t drop her friends like a schoolbag the moment Josh and Annabelle blow back into town.”
“I didn’t drop you, Simone,” I protested. “I just wanted to spend some time with them, I haven’t seen them for years. . . .”
“No, not since Annabelle ‘stole your life’—I think that was what you used to wail at me.”
“Don’t fight.” Stella put one hand on each of our shoulders. “I hate it when you two fight.”
“Stella,” Simone said, “you’ve been as pissed off as I am at Lulu, and don’t pretend you haven’t. You should tell her how upset Thomas was that she didn’t show up, instead of pretending you didn’t mind.” Simone looked directly at me. “It was really shitty of you, Lulu, and you know something? I really thought you’d got past all that, but you’re behaving like we’re back in high school.”
“Well, so are you,” I shot back at her, unsettled and angry at the sudden lurch in our conversation. “You’ve always been jealous of Annabelle.”
“That’s not what this is about and you know it,” Simone said. “This is about you putting yourself at their disposal—you’re making a fool of yourself, Lulu, only this time it’s much worse because we’re not in high school any longer, and none of us bounces back like we used to.”
“Like my breasts,” she wailed to no one in particular.
When Ben came home, he looked around the flat, took a beer out of the fridge, and said: “So you missed me?”
“I did,” I answered. “I’m sorry about that night with Josh and Annabelle. I was rude to you, I think.”
Ben nodded. “Don’t worry about it, Lulu.”
We watched the football game together, Ben’s arm around my shoulders, his feet up on the coffee table, a beer in his hand.
“This is nice,” he said.
“What?”
“This,” he answered. “You and me.”
Later, when we went to bed, I tried to apologize for my behavior again, but he said, “It’s okay, Lulu. Look, I’m completely exhausted, and it’s been a really good night, so let’s just not go there, all right?”
I nodded my head against his chest, not telling him I had already been.
On a roll of atonement, I left Ben at home to rest from his trip for a few days and went to visit Harry and Rose.
I hadn’t been home for a month, and although Harry had told me how well my mother was doing, I wanted to see for myself.
I parked the car outside the house, walked past Harry’s sign, and headed up the path to the front door.
“Rose?” I called out, “Rose?”
“Lulu,” Rose said, rustling across the lino in Madeleine’s red and green checks and putting both hands out to me. “It’s so lovely to see you. Your father has just gone down to the office for a bit, and then he’ll pick up some dinner on the way home.”
“Yes.”
“From a takeaway?”
“Yes, people do it, you know, Lulu.”
That was true, lots of people did it—I did it a couple of nights a week—but Rose, endless purveyor of the cooked meal? “What are we having?”
“Thai, I love it.”
“You love Thai?”
“Yes, Lulu, I love Thai, why do you keep repeating everything I say?”
Because my mother was wearing Madeleine, because my mother was ordering Thai food, and there was no flour on her hands. Because my mother looked happy.
The twins were away at a uni soccer camp and the house was quiet without them, smaller somehow without their long, rangy bodies filling every corner of it, sprawled out on couches or swinging their legs at the breakfast bar.
Sometimes, when Rose was depressed, the house needed their noisiness to fill it, the way couples who are no longer talking use their children to color in the lines between them.
But this time it was Rose’s voice that carried down the hallway and into the garden where she watered the strawberry plants, humming to herself and reminding me of a story Harry had once told me about when they were courting.
They had gone swimming at an out-of-the-way swimming hole, and Harry, shy about Rose seeing him in his swimmers, had been astounded when she had slid out of her dress in one easy movement, laughing up at him: “Come on, Harry, get your gear off, or are you afraid the eels will get your gilhoolies?”
Now, hearing her singing in the garden, I could easily imagine that Rose, the one who just dived right in.
Later that night, Harry and I sat swinging in the dark.
“She’s doing so well, Lulu,” he said. “Best she’s been in a long time.”
“That’s great, Harry.”
“It is. Dr. Reynolds, that’s the new bloke we’re seeing, she likes him, seems to trust him; she hated Dr. Shaw, she called him Dr. Not-So-Shaw.”
“I know,” I said, laughing.
“Anyway, we’ve been to the pictures a couple of times, and yesterday she nipped down to the news agency.”
“On her own? Did she take the car?” I asked, thinking of Rose’s station wagon, sitting on its haunches in the garage for what felt like forever.
“No, she walked down—one step at a time, Lulu.”
“I know, I’m just glad she’s getting out.” I put my head on his bony shoulder. “I’m sorry I haven’t been down much, Harry. I’ve just been so busy at the station sorting out all of Duncan’s stuff.”
“He’s on his way out, isn’t he, Lulu?”
“Yeah, he is. Cancer, throat cancer—it’s terminal.”
“Better for you to be there with him then, love. We’re all right, Rose and me. I think she’s really coming along well, she’s been giving me a hard time about all sorts of jobs around the house, and that’s always a good sign.”
“I’m so pleased, Harry.”
“Me too, love—do you want to turn in?”
“I do, I’m pretty tired.”
“Want me to carry you?”
I smiled, remembering long-ago nights of flannel-pajama-clad arms wrapped around his neck, fingers clasped at the back, legs hooked to his waist, and Rose saying, “For goodness’ sake, Harry, bring her inside, she’ll get a chill.”
“I’m twenty-five now, Harry, not twelve,” I reminded him.
“I know you would, you lunatic; come on, let’s go in.”
We walked through the garden to the back door, and I looked up to see Rose watching over us from her bedroom window, hands deep in Madeleine’s pockets.