For our grand tour of Omaha, Olivia rode shotgun and I sat in the backseat like a banished toddler. The sky was a lazy blue with intermittent clouds that lay low on the horizon. As she drove, Kathleen pointed out items of interest—the historic buildings, the parks with walking trails, a new yarn store that offered weeknight knitting lessons, a café with seventeen blends of espresso, a Whole Foods.
“Mmm-hmm,” Olivia said, stifling a yawn. She glanced into the side-view mirror, which was angled so she had a perfect shot of me. I gave her a sloppy grin, and she returned it uncertainly.
Look around, Olivia, I willed her. See how happy you could be here.
We were nearing the Old Market district of Omaha, an artsy area with galleries and museums and cobblestone streets. Kathleen rambled on, with the hyper-enthusiastic voice of an HGTV host, “And this building used to be an old grain mill of some sort, but now it’s being converted into condos. I have a client who just bought in to the building, so I got a peek inside. It’s the most amazing space—a little cavernous, maybe....”
I had seen pictures of Kathleen’s store on the website, which I’d browsed every so often, marveling at what she’d accomplished. She’d borrowed some money from her brother up front to be a co-owner in the business, a buyer and creative partner who sometimes worked on special pieces for commission. The store exhibited the old-meets-new style that represented her journey as a designer. When we’d first moved to California, the ink on her art history degree still drying, Kathleen had started as a clerk in an antiques store and worked her way up to being a sought-after buyer for a number of dealers around the Sacramento area. It had always amazed me, when I’d accompanied her on a Saturday driving from one estate sale to another, how Kathleen could home in on one particular vase on a cluttered folding table and know something about it—the country of origin, the year, the maker, the materials, the sort of glaze, the technique. “This is an example of Japanese cloisonné, early nineteenth century,” she would murmur. Barely able to restrain herself, she would pull me to the side, out of earshot from the seller, “Those are Windsor chairs, James Chapman Tuttle, late 1700s....” Although I could never distinguish between the finer details she noticed, I found something incredibly sexy about her brain—the sheer amount of data she had accumulated, her mind a glossary of names and dates and pictures.
When we bought our downtown house, it had become the canvas for her mind and the spark that unleashed more genius within. Motivated at least at first by our meager budget, she switched her focus to “reclamation—” finding hidden beauty even in pieces that had been left curbside. An old chicken cage became a coffee table with compartments for the kids’ books; a massive headboard was split into four hinged sections and used as a divider between our kitchen and dining room. She’d sold a similar piece to an admiring friend, and then began to take special projects on commission, refurbishing a buffet for a downtown coffee shop, furnishing an upscale boutique near the convention center.
“I can’t wait for you to see this,” she said now, pulling her Volvo into a space behind the row of buildings. “We could enter through the back, but I really want you to see it from the front, to get the full effect.”
I followed as we made our way down the alley onto a side street, a strange trio. Kathleen was wearing cargo pants, short boots and a black cardigan, her hair upswept in a clip. Sunlight caught a few of her silver strands. Olivia, wearing her standard head-to-toe black, stumbled in her combat boots as she tried to keep up with Kathleen. In my least dirty pair of jeans, I trailed so far behind that outsiders wouldn’t have recognized me as part of the group. It’s just a mother-daughter outing, I thought. This is what they’ll do without me; this is what they’ll look like when I’m not around.
The words SEEDS & SUPPLIES were stenciled across the second floor of the brick building, the sort of retro throwback that Kathleen loved. A smaller sign hung over the double entrance doors: Absolutely Interior. Kathleen opened the door, ushering us in with a grand sweep.
“Mom—wow,” Olivia said. “I mean, wow.”
“It’s fabulous, Kathleen,” I agreed.
She beamed. “You like it?”
“It’s fantastic.” I touched her on the shoulder, tentative, more of a “well done” pat than anything else, but the familiarity of that shoulder sent a sad thrill through me. What were we, other than skin and sinew and bone?
“Wow,” Olivia said again. “Seriously, wow. It’s a good sign, isn’t it, that I’m speaking only in palindromes?”
It was a former industrial space, reclaimed itself, reinvented. The ceiling was at least thirty feet high with light fixtures dangling like stars from black cords. Although the space was vast, burgeoning with merchandise, the store didn’t feel crowded. Furniture was grouped in cozy arrangements, with startling displays of color and ingenuity—shining dark wood mixed with painted wood, creams and teals and chartreuses, burgundies and silvers and golds.
“We’ve actually been contacted about renting out the space for events, cocktail parties, that kind of thing.” Kathleen’s face was flushed with pride. “Not that it’s exactly easy to move everything out of the way for a large group. And the fear of a spilled glass of wine has kept us from fully entertaining the idea.”
Olivia’s eyes were slowly roving from piece to piece, trying to notice everything. “The whole world should be this beautiful,” she said.
It was the sort of occasion where a person should be able to quote a significant line of poetry—but I had nothing to give. “It’s just fabulous,” I repeated. “Well done.”
“Kathleen! Kathleen’s family!” A woman was striding toward us from the back of the store. I recognized Stella instantly from one of those long-ago Omaha summers—a little heavier, a little more brassily blonde, still Kathleen’s physical opposite. She wore a purple dress, knee-high boots and oversize gold jewelry that clanked when she moved.
“This is Stella,” Kathleen said. “Stella, this is my daughter, Olivia. And I know you met Curtis—”
“Years ago, more than twenty, but who’s counting?” Stella breezed in, extending her hand to Olivia, then me. “Kathleen is a genius, isn’t she?”
Kathleen laughed. “Don’t let Stella fool you. She has every bit as much creative genius, but she’s the more valuable partner because she can sell anything.”
Stella linked arms with Kathleen in a chummy way. “Speaking of which...I know you’re officially taking a few days off, but there is something I wanted you to look at, if you can spare a minute.”
“You don’t mind, do you?” Kathleen asked. “Why don’t you look around? Maybe you could pick out something for your birthday, Liv.”
“My birthday isn’t until September,” Olivia objected, but Stella was already leading Kathleen away.
“Let’s wander,” I said. We did so carefully, Olivia’s fingers tracing picture frames, a gold-and-black world globe, the print on a tufted floor cushion. There were probably twenty customers in the store and a few employees in simple black dresses and flats. At the stainless steel counter in the middle of the store, someone was choosing fabric swatches; another employee was wrapping a large box in brown butcher paper. I’d glimpsed this world on the website, but the effect in person was more impressive. It was almost mind-boggling what Kathleen had achieved in three years. I’d filled my days with teaching, with Olivia, with the nagging back-burner thoughts of Robert Saenz, and in that time Kathleen had been creating this entire world out of nothing.
Although I wasn’t sure we were supposed to occupy the merchandise, Olivia and I settled onto a bright yellow sofa. I wondered if Kathleen had worked on this piece, or been involved in its selection. This was a color she loved, the yellow lemony and rich; I could imagine her hand-picking the paisley buttons between the tufts of fabric. Years ago she had taken apart a secondhand sofa on the back patio, just to see how the upholstery worked. Olivia had been seven or eight then, old enough to be bribed with a few dollars to help with the task, to collect and sort the disassembled parts.
Without thinking, I said to Olivia, “Maybe you could get a job here, some kind of summer sales associate, that kind of thing.”
“What am I going to do, telecommute?” she asked sharply.
“It’s just an idea,” I said, backpedaling. “I think you would be really good—”
“Is that what this is all about?”
“This isn’t all about anything.”
We stared at each other, Olivia’s eyes narrowed into icy slits. “You’re lying to me.”
My throat felt tight, as if its walls were closing in. “How am I lying to you?”
“It’s a lie of omission, then.”
I didn’t say anything. My list of omissions was massive and growing longer every second.
“This is about me moving here permanently, isn’t it? That’s why you brought Daniel’s remains with you, because we’re not going home again.”
“You went through my suitcase?” My mind reeled, thinking of the gun. But no—it had been with me the whole time. “I really don’t think you had any right to—”
“Really? After everything you’ve put me through, I’m getting a lecture?”
I took a deep breath, calming myself. Of course she was right. I leaned in closer, but she shifted away to the very end of the sofa. “Olivia...”
“You know what’s going to happen,” she accused. “You’ve been holding all the cards. This is some stupid plan you’ve had all along.”
I didn’t stop her. I couldn’t say There’s no plan. I looked around, willing Kathleen to appear, needing her brightness, her optimism, her eternal belief that somehow things could be better.
Olivia wiped at her eyes angrily. “I can’t believe that you’re doing this to me.”
I tried to say “All I wanted...” but she drowned me out, saying what she’d never said before, even though it was the line teenagers all over the world had said to their parents. Daniel had said it to me, and I’d said it to my father. I’d heard my students throw it around when they couldn’t go out on the weekend, when they didn’t get the phone they wanted, when things were in some vague and indefinable way “unfair.” But not Olivia, no matter how much I’d deserved it, no matter how the circumstances had called for it.
“I hate you,” she said, her breath ragged, her words coming out in gasps. “I hate you for this. I hate you for everything.”
Maybe I’d been waiting for it, all this time. Maybe, in a way, it was a blessing. She could let me go. I reached for her again, and she didn’t pull away. She let her gaze drift down to my hand on her leg, as if it were an alien thing, the hand of a stranger, a pervert. I pulled back just as Kathleen approached, her smile fading instantly. She looked at me, indicting without the facts—although if she’d had them, it would have been an indictment all the same.
“What is it?” she asked, the words dangling like a lifeline neither of us could catch.
The store hummed around us. Olivia wiped her eyes carefully on her sleeves, but a smudge of black mascara left a dark shadow on one cheek.
“You know what I want, Mom? You know what I think would be really great?” she asked, her voice rising dangerously.
Kathleen’s eyes darted between us nervously, as if she were afraid to ask.
Olivia was undeterred. She had a brilliant, bogus smile on her face, and I felt my heart clench as if it were caught in a vise. Whatever she said, it would be something I deserved. But I didn’t expect what she said next, when she turned that horrible smile on me, her eyes bright with tears.
“I think the only thing missing from this happy reunion is a trip to the zoo.”