At Her Sister’s Birthday, One Small Cruelty Changed the Price of Everything

Eighteen months amounted to more than twenty thousand dollars before utilities.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I thought she had.”

“You thought she told me about a raise while still taking my money?”

Helen looked at her hands.

“No,” she said. “I suppose I didn’t.”

Maya opened the passenger door.

“Where are you going?”

“Home.”

“I’ll drive you.”

“I need to walk.”

“It’s four miles.”

“I know.”

“Maya.”

She stepped onto the pavement. The concrete was cool beneath her bare feet.

Helen leaned across the center console. “At least take your shoes.”

Maya held them up.

“The gift,” Helen said.

Maya looked at the small package still resting near the gearshift.

“What is it?”

“Your mother’s bracelet.”

“For Victoria?”

“Yes.”

Maya almost said, Of course.

She shut the door instead.

Helen lowered the window. “Call me when you get home.”

Maya started walking.

The first block hurt because of the pebbles. The second hurt because her phone began vibrating.

Victoria.

Maya let it ring.

The call ended, then began again.

At the corner she turned off vibration and placed the phone inside her tote. She carried the scrapbook under one arm and her shoes in the opposite hand. Drivers passed with headlights on. A delivery van idled outside a row of apartments. Somewhere nearby, someone was practicing the same three notes on a trumpet.

By the time Maya reached the small commercial strip halfway to her apartment, the soles of her feet were gray and tender. She stopped outside a laundromat and put her shoes back on.

Inside, dryers turned beneath fluorescent lights. A man slept in a plastic chair with a basket of children’s clothes at his feet. A woman folded towels while speaking Spanish into her phone.

Maya bought a bottle of water from the vending machine. The machine rejected her first dollar and accepted the same bill when she smoothed it against her thigh.

Her phone showed eleven missed calls from Victoria, two from Helen, and one message from Becca.

I’m sorry. I didn’t know.

Maya sat on a metal bench outside the laundromat.

She did not respond.

A second message appeared.

She told us you were struggling and she let you use her guest room sometimes. I feel sick.

Maya looked at the moving traffic.

She had slept in Victoria’s guest room once, after staying late to assemble a bookshelf. Victoria had opened champagne to celebrate the finished shelves and then decided Maya should not drive home.

The guest room was where Victoria stored seasonal clothes. Maya had slept beneath three garment bags and woken at six to move her car before the homeowners association began towing from guest spaces.

A third message came.

You don’t owe me an explanation. I just wanted to say I’m sorry I laughed.

Maya typed, Thank you.

She deleted it.

She typed, It’s okay.

She deleted that too.

Finally she locked the phone and placed it face down beside her.

The trumpet player somewhere in the neighborhood tried the three notes again. This time the third one held.

Maya reached her apartment a little after ten.

Her building had beige siding, an entry light that attracted moths, and a front door that swelled during humid weather. She had to lean her shoulder against it to force it open.

Inside, the air conditioner clicked on with a low rattle.

She placed the scrapbook on her dining table. The apartment smelled faintly of vanilla because she had baked the cake layers there the night before. Two mixing bowls remained in the sink. A strip of wax paper clung to the counter near the toaster.

She removed her dress carefully and hung it over the back of a chair. There was a streak of frosting near the waist where she must have brushed the island.

In the bathroom she washed her feet. A blister had opened on her right heel. She found a bandage in the medicine cabinet, then stood in front of the mirror wearing an old T-shirt and underwear, the bandage wrapper still in her hand.

Her face looked ordinary.

That bothered her more than tears would have.

The phone rang again from the kitchen.

Maya walked past it.

She filled a glass with tap water and drank half. The phone stopped, then chimed with a voicemail.

She opened the refrigerator. On the top shelf sat the leftover cake filling in a glass container. Lemon curd, Victoria’s favorite. Maya had made extra because Victoria used to eat it with a spoon when they were children.

She threw it away.

Then she took it back out of the trash, removed the container, and scraped the curd into the garbage before washing the glass.

The distinction felt important for about ten seconds.

At eleven thirty, Helen knocked.

Maya opened the door without asking who it was.

Helen had removed her pearl earrings. Without them she looked older and less certain. She held a paper bag from a twenty-four-hour diner.

“I brought soup,” she said.

“I’m not hungry.”

“I brought pie too.”

Maya stepped aside.

Helen entered and set the bag on the counter. Her eyes moved to the mixing bowls in the sink, the cake pans drying on a towel, and the blue scrapbook on the table.

“She called me,” Helen said.