Two weeks later, Ivy knelt on the stair runner with a bottle of upholstery cleaner. She scrubbed while Mrs. Grizzby watched from below.

“You missed a spot! Over there, to the right.”

Ivy scrubbed harder at what might’ve been a patch of ancient cat vomit.

“Not too hard! You’ll rub the color out.”

Ivy kept scrubbing at the same rate as before. Mrs. Grizzby wasn’t as aggravated as she sounded most of the time. She was just—nervous. She had a prickly, strange-looking outside and a sweet, tender center, like some exotic fruit from the bodega. A dragon fruit, maybe, or an African horned cucumber.

Ivy had learned that a few days after she started. She had taken a framed photo of a man down from the mantel to clean, and asked who it was. Mrs. Grizzby clapped her hands together; her eyes sparkled and her face glowed. Ivy gaped at her, she was so surprised by the change.

“Why, that’s my husband. That’s Charlie.” Mrs. Grizzby took the photo and wiped the glass off with her sweater sleeve. “We met in college. He was in my economics class. He was very good-looking.”

She winked at Ivy and Ivy couldn’t help but grin in return. She had taken the photo of the ordinary-looking man out of Mrs. Grizzby’s hands and cleared all the junk surrounding it, and filed away this new information about her employer: she wasn’t just an odd, difficult old lady who wore too much makeup. She was a person. She was real.

It was hard to remember all the time, like when Mrs. Grizzby hovered over her insisting Ivy be careful with a box of old pickle jars that were never going to be used for anything.

“There’s another spot, right under your hand,” Mrs. Grizzby cried now, like the spot was on fire. Ivy moved her hand and bore down on it.

• • •

“It really looks nice.” Mrs. Grizzby tapped the armrest of her wheelchair in a contented way late that afternoon. They were at the kitchen table with tiny quilted canning jars of soda in front of them. Mrs. Grizzby had insisted she had to keep the glasses because they’d come full of jelly in a fruit basket from Caroline at Christmas twelve years before. She said the flavors were strawberry, raspberry, and blackberry, and they had been good, except a little seedy. Also the oranges had been a little dry and the apples not so crisp, but the basket itself had been nice; she still had it somewhere—

Ivy had quit arguing and put the jars back in the cupboard instead of hauling them to the recycling bins out on the curb. The bins had never had anything in them before; Ivy’d had to run out to the street and flag the city truck down to get them emptied.

“It hasn’t looked so nice in years. Caroline’s going to like it so much. I’ll bet she ends up staying a whole week.” Mrs. Grizzby hugged herself. “Oh, we’ll have such a good time.”

“Mmm.” Ivy stirred her ice cubes with her finger so she’d have somewhere to look. The phone had never rung while she was there. No letters or postcards had dropped into the iron box by the door, and in all the stacks of old mail and newspapers that were piled on the table beside Mrs. Grizzby’s chair, there had been only three things from Caroline: a Christmas card, an Easter card, and a Mother’s Day greeting. All of them had just her name signed under the preprinted messages.

“Don’t you think so?” Worry flowed back over Mrs. Grizzby’s face.

“Oh! Yes! Of course. I’ll bet she will. Maybe she’ll even want to stay two weeks.”

“You really think so?”

Ivy nodded and lifted her jelly-jar glass in a toast and downed her four ounces of soda.