They gave themselves up wholly to their sorrow, seeking increase of wretchedness in every reflection that could afford it, and resolved against ever admitting consolation in future.
—Sense and Sensibility
I once read that when you leave a place you love you should say goodbye to it. After our belongings had been packed and shipped into storage and the foreclosure sign had been hammered into the lawn, I walked through my house room to room to have a final look inside my past. I lingered in every doorframe, opened each closet, their emptiness a mirror of my own. Like my belongings, my feelings had been stuffed into boxes, their contents to be revealed one day in an as yet undisclosed location. At the end of my tour I came to my bedroom. The Smoked Trout walls were bare and scuffed from the movers. Without the cream sheers the window resembled a giant gaping mouth and the hardwood floors were peppered with dust bunnies. My room looked lonely and abandoned. I’m not sure how long I sat there, but eventually Ann arrived to coax me out of my cover as a pointer does a pheasant before the hunter opens fire.
“I know you’re sad,” she observed unnecessarily. “Mom is sad, too. We all are.”
My eyes remained fixed on the open window and the trees outside, their leafless branches twisting and bending in the bitter November wind, the same wind that now lashed my tears dry.
“I don’t know how I’m ever going to forgive Iris,” I said after what seemed an eternity. I turned and met my sister’s gaze. I could see the pain in her eyes, sympathy for me, for Iris, her own grief mashed up in between. “How are you able to be so nice to her? Knowing what she did?”
Ann was always the sweet sister; she was softer in every sense, even physically her features were rounder.
“We still have each other. Houses can be replaced,” she answered. “We all make mistakes and bad decisions. She gave into a weakness. I can’t carry anger around.”
“Unlike me, you mean?” I asked.
“It’s time to go now,” she said softly.
Ann retreated downstairs. Alone once more, I leaned my head against the wall, closed my eyes, and wept. But as I cried yet again, it occurred to me that I hadn’t not wept for weeks. I was sick of it.
A strong gust of wind blew in through the open window, but the cold was muted by a sudden streak of sunlight that stretched across the room, blinding me for a split second, its heat a welcome surge of energy. I looked directly into the light and as I did, something somewhere inside me snapped. I dried my eyes and took in a gulp of air. Better.
I’m done crying.
I repeated the words over and over and in a final farewell gesture slapped my hand on the wall and walked away.
We drove toward Ann’s Park Slope apartment, just the two of us. It was all arranged. Iris had the spare room. I had the sofa. My laptop would live on Ann’s teak coffee table that would now double as my desk. Privacy would occur only in the bathroom.
“Mom is seeing a trustee tomorrow,” Ann went on, her eyes focused on the highway.
“What she needs is therapy,” I said, watching the leafy neighborhood I called home for my entire life flit by with no fanfare. “She has an addiction.”
“You’re right about that,” she agreed. “But first we have to help her get the debts under control. The house may not sell.”
“One can hope,” I said. I wondered what Ann would think of my turning the marrying well article into reality. She was always so practical.
“I have an idea,” she said, preempting me. “Why don’t you become my partner in the sauce thing? Fifty-fifty. You’re living with me anyway and you have more free time now. We can double production because you can keep cooking when I’m at work.”
“I don’t know what to say,” I said. I did know that I wasn’t going anywhere near the kitchen. Ann’s sauce business had been floating around for years and hadn’t even touched success. Compared to sauce, my eligible bachelor idea was solid gold. Still, I didn’t want to hurt her feelings. “Thanks, that’s very generous,” I began. “Can I think about it?”
“Sure,” she said, sounding clearly disappointed. “We could have a blast at the National Food Fair in Chicago.”
The idea of having a blast anywhere seemed impossible. But I kept quiet as we left Scarsdale behind.
Dinner that night was pizza and soggy Caesar salad with a side of silent resentment. I avoided looking at my mother, choosing to let Ann carry the conversation. But after chasing a final crouton around my plate as they prattled on about their favorite television commercials, I could no longer take the small talk.
“I have to write an article for Haute,” I announced and got up from the table and walked to my “office” on the sofa three feet away. As if on cue, my mother and Ann dispersed into their respective bedrooms, the double click of shutting doors my signal that I was alone at last. But the solitude didn’t help. The screen was still blank and I hadn’t a clue what the first line of the story should be. Instead, I sat there and began to Google gambling addiction centers for my mother. Not a cheap therapy as it turned out; ironically, it would take thousands in winnings to afford to go to one. Then there were her debts. My grandmother would have wanted Ann and I to do everything in our power to take care of Iris. My plan had to work. It was late but what I had to say couldn’t wait. I knocked on Ann’s door and sat down on her bed and explained what I was going to do. She listened, bleary-eyed, and said nothing until I was finished.
“It sounds like a fun article,” she said carefully. “But the world doesn’t work like that.”
“Like what?” I asked defensively. This from a woman who thought her fortune was in a mixture of ketchup and spices?
“I know you love those books. So did Nana,” she went on. “But marriage isn’t going to solve our problems.”
“But you’re missing my point. It will if I choose a good husband. I don’t need a Mrs. Bennet to do it for me.”
“By good you mean rich?” Ann asked derisively. “Oh, Kate. Have some sense. Write the article, take the money, and let’s find a real way to put this whole bad episode behind us.”
She crawled back under the covers and switched off her light, leaving me to make my way to the sofa in the dark. She was wrong. I knew she was. My plan would succeed and when it did, none of us would be poor, my mother would get the help she needed, and we’d have our home back. All I had to do was make it happen.