Chương 8
Then she spent forty minutes deciding what sheets to put on Laura’s bed.
The night before Mark and Rachel moved, Eleanor knocked on their bedroom door.
Rachel was packing bathroom drawers.
Mark was trying to disassemble a bookshelf without instructions.
“Come in,” Rachel said.
Eleanor entered carrying an envelope.
She handed it to Rachel.
Rachel looked at it.
“What’s this?”
“Open it.”
Inside was a check.
Rachel’s eyebrows rose.
“No.”
“You haven’t looked at the amount.”
“I don’t care.”
“It’s your share of the security deposit.”
“No.”
“You paid half the original deposit on this place.”
“That was six years ago.”
“I know how calendars work.”
Rachel looked at Mark.
He raised both hands.
“I’m not involved.”
Eleanor said, “Good.”
Rachel put the check back into the envelope.
“I’m not taking your money.”
“It isn’t charity.”
“I didn’t say it was.”
“You thought it.”
“I did.”
Eleanor sat on the edge of the bed.
“I have spent six years making you feel like you were living in something I gave you.”
Rachel said nothing.
“I’m trying not to do that again.”
Rachel looked at the envelope.
“Then why give us money?”
“Because this time I’m giving it without keeping a key.”
Rachel’s face changed.
Eleanor continued.
“You can cash it or tear it up. I won’t ask.”
Rachel sat beside her.
Neither woman looked at the other.
After a moment Rachel said, “I removed the label because I thought you hated me.”
Eleanor frowned.
“What label?”
“The bathroom shelf.”
“Oh.”
“You peeled it off the first week.”
“I hated the label.”
“I know that now.”
“It was blue.”
Rachel stared at her.
“What was wrong with blue?”
“It was the color they use in hospitals.”
Rachel blinked.
Then she laughed.
Eleanor looked offended for approximately two seconds.
Then she laughed too.
Mark sat on the floor holding one half of the bookshelf.
“I have apparently missed an entire diplomatic summit.”
Both women looked at him.
“Stay out of it,” Rachel said.
“Yes,” Eleanor said.
He returned to the bookshelf.
Rachel cashed the check.
Two months later Eleanor sold the apartment.
The decision surprised everyone except Eleanor.
“I don’t need three bedrooms,” she said.
Laura, who had returned to Oregon after a nine-day visit, argued that selling immediately was impulsive.
Eleanor reminded her that she had been considering it for nearly a year.
That surprised Mark.
“When were you going to tell us?”
“When I decided.”
“You were already thinking about moving?”
“Yes.”
“Where?”
“A smaller condo.”
Mark stared at her.
“You knew living together wasn’t working.”
“Of course I knew.”
“Then why didn’t you say something?”
Eleanor looked genuinely puzzled.
“Why didn’t you?”
He laughed.
There was no answer worth giving.
She bought a one-bedroom condominium four miles away.
It had an elevator, a walk-in shower, wide doorways, and a balcony overlooking a public garden.
It did not have assisted-living services.
It also did not require them.
Laura arranged for a geriatric care assessment during her visit. Eleanor resented every minute of it but agreed because, as she told Mark, “Your sister flew across the country and has become unbearable.”
The assessment found what Eleanor already knew and what Mark had avoided defining.
She was frail.
She was not incompetent.
She needed help with heavy cleaning, transportation on bad days, and some tasks that required balance. She did not need someone making decisions for her.
Eleanor hired a housekeeper twice a week.
She signed up for a community shuttle.
She bought groceries online, complained about substitutions, and learned to send the shopper messages in all capital letters until Mark explained that it looked like shouting.
“I am shouting about the bananas.”
“Please stop.”
She did not.
Mark and Rachel settled into their smaller apartment.
The electric stove was terrible.
Rachel said so almost daily for the first month.
Mark’s commute added twenty-three minutes each way.
He resented it.
He did not pretend otherwise.
Some evenings he came home angry about traffic and found himself thinking about the old apartment’s parking garage, the wide kitchen, the office he no longer had.
Once, after Rachel complained that his work papers had spread across the dining table, he said, “We wouldn’t have this problem if we’d stayed.”
The silence afterward was immediate.
Rachel looked at him.
Mark wanted to pull the sentence back.
He couldn’t.
“Stayed where?” she asked.
“You know what I mean.”
“With Eleanor?”
“In the apartment.”
“The apartment where your mother lived.”
“Yes.”
“The apartment you were willing to remove her from so we could keep living there?”
“That isn’t what I said.”
“It’s what happened.”
Mark stood.
“I’m allowed to miss the place.”
“I didn’t say you weren’t.”
“You’re acting like I’m blaming you.”
“Are you?”
He opened his mouth.
Closed it.
Rachel waited.
“A little,” he said.
Her face tightened.
He continued before fear could make him retreat.
“And I blame Mom. And myself. And sometimes I blame you for not being able to ignore things I wish you could ignore.”
Rachel stared.
“That’s ugly.”
“I know.”
She looked away.
Then she said, “I blame you for making me feel guilty every time I wanted privacy.”
Mark sat down.
“I probably did.”
“I blame Eleanor for making me feel like a bad person for wanting my own home.”
He nodded.
“And sometimes,” Rachel said, “I blame myself for marrying a man whose mother lived fifteen minutes away.”
He laughed.
Rachel tried not to.
Failed.
The argument did not disappear.
It changed.
That was different.
They fought for another twenty minutes.
Nobody left.
Nobody packed a bag.
Three months after the parking garage, Eleanor invited them to dinner.
She made pot roast.
Rachel brought salad.
Eleanor looked at the tomatoes.
Rachel saw her.
“Don’t.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“Your face did.”
“My face is seventy-nine years old. It has limited supervision.”
Mark laughed into his water.
Dinner was awkward.
Then ordinary.
Then awkward again.
Eleanor complained about the condominium association.
May you like
Rachel complained about a client.
Mark complained about traffic.
