Eva
I love my daughters equally. I’ll go one further: when they were little, I sometimes didn’t think of them as two. I considered them one entity, a unit, as if my lyrical naming had fused them together.
If someone had interviewed them in high school instead of now, stuck a microphone in their faces the way I watched those shameless news people try to, they would have told the truth instead of lying. They would have said they once thought of themselves the same way. Two halves of the same whole, damaged apart, perfect together. They would admit as much now, wouldn’t they?
Do they think I didn’t know they split up their homework, cheated for each other? If I hadn’t been racked with grief over Joe’s death, the debts, the deceits, I suppose I would have confronted them about it. I would have told them that despite their father’s issues, it was okay to be flawed, to be bad at something. That no one would love them less.
But that would have been a lie. Because although I love my own children equally, I can’t say the same for my grandchildren.
Did I know what no one else knew?
Is that why my jaw clenched when I saw one of the children first and only relaxed when the other ran into the room?
Maybe it was fortuitous that I hadn’t bought the carriage house next to Hillary after all. (Although I still, even now, have trouble bringing myself to call it Hannah’s house.) Oh, I’d had my eye on it for years, had gone back and forth with an agent and the owners but had never said anything to my girls about the possibility because, well, didn’t a mother want to be invited, so she didn’t feel like she was intruding? And didn’t it take approximately forever for an adult child to recognize her mother is getting older and might need assistance nearby? Wasn’t that why neither of them thought of me first? Oh, I hope it was. I do hope.
Margot, my real estate agent, had been furious over the whole thing. She’d spoken to the couple a year beforehand, and they’d promised to let her know if they ever considered selling, even directly. They’d bandied ridiculous numbers about, but Margot didn’t blink an eye or try to tell them they were dreaming (which was what she told me). She told them she had the ideal buyer, highly motivated, no contingency, that would more than make up for her reduced fees and that I was family. Family! I was one of those stories you put in someone’s mailbox with pictures of your children that persuade you! Margot was a few years behind Hannah in school, a beautiful girl, but she could be aggressive. I’d wanted someone aggressive. Was that my mistake? Was it her mistake?
I may never know.
I had to laugh the way it all went down. Outbid by my own child? How on earth did that happen, when Hannah was not exactly flush? Margot was decidedly less amused, was furious, threatening. Her face on the signs swinging from so many homes I’d admired did not show this side of her! She said she had a few other ideas, not to panic. She told me to sit tight. I told her not to ever say anything to anyone, ever, lest my daughters be angry with me.
Or believe that I had caused all the events in some minor, odd way.
That was the last thing a mother needed. More blame.
I tried not to let this disappointment keep me from being happy for my daughters and from swinging by that first evening Hannah and Miles moved in. I was curious what color she’d painted the rooms. How she’d arrange her furniture. If she’d hang curtains or blinds. I’d always thought it was a curtain-y house, a cottage, soft. But my dreams for it wouldn’t be her dreams, I knew.
Hannah was in the back bedrooms, unpacking, and didn’t hear my knock at the door, so I went inside, walking between cartons, and called her name. The walls were a pale color between green and gray, which looked nice with the black casement windows, which, I happened to know from Margot, were all new, replaced last year.
“Be right out,” she yelled.
I handed her a small plate of frosted brownies, one of Miles’s favorites, and she brushed her dusty hands off before taking it from me.
“Shall I wipe down some cupboards, unpack china, lay a fire, make myself useful?” I asked.
“No,” she said, “I’m almost ready to stop. Long day.”
She asked me if I wanted tea, and I said no.
“Where’s Miles?”
“He ran down to look at the creek,” she said. “I couldn’t keep him cooped up any longer after all this rain.”
“Had to go skip some stones?”
“Probably.”
Every surface, chair, and sofa had a box on it, and although it wasn’t even eight o’clock, my daughter seemed tired, so I didn’t linger. I told her I’d come by in a couple of days and to call if she needed me. She hugged me goodbye, thanked me for the brownies, but didn’t walk me to my car. She went back into her bedroom, and I went out alone.
And that’s why she didn’t see what I saw as I sat in my car and buckled my seat belt.
A tiny girl carrying a fishing net much taller than she was, waving goodbye to Miles as he crossed the street. Here one day, and already he had a little friend.