Chương 12
“Also Patrice says if you ever attend another event, you have to use the front door.”
“I dislike Patrice.”
“She likes you.”
“Then she has poor judgment.”
Richard waited beside the car.
Margaret could see him watching her.
Not checking whether she was safe.
Not managing.
Just waiting.
She finished the call.
When she reached him, he opened the passenger door.
“I can do that.”
“I know.”
She got in anyway.
In December, Margaret finally answered Celeste’s letter.
She used a blue ballpoint pen because the expensive fountain pen Richard had bought her leaked.
She wrote only one page.
She did not say she forgave Celeste.
She did not say she never would.
She wrote that truth did not obligate reconciliation, and remorse did not erase consequence. Then she crossed out the sentence because it sounded like a book.
She started again.
Celeste,
I believe you are sorry.
I am still angry.
Both can be true.
Do not contact me for a while. If that changes, I will tell you.
Margaret
She stared at it.
Then added:
Also, you owe Nora Bennett a serving tray.
She mailed the letter before she could improve it into something worse.
Christmas was awkward.
Richard invited Margaret to his apartment.
She almost refused because it seemed too soon.
Then he told her there would be six people, not sixty.
Elaine came.
Denise came.
Nora came after work.
Richard’s longtime driver brought his husband.
Nobody wore formal clothes.
Margaret brought a pie that cracked down the center.
Richard ordered dinner from a restaurant and pretended he had not.
Nora exposed him because the containers were still in the kitchen.
At nine, somebody played music too loudly.
At nine fifteen, Margaret turned it down.
At nine twenty, Richard turned it back up.
They argued.
Nora sat on the couch eating pie and watching them.
“What?” Margaret demanded.
“Nothing.”
“You’re smiling.”
“I like this better than the ballroom.”
Richard looked at Margaret.
“So do I.”
Margaret felt the words land.
She glanced toward the window because looking at him seemed dangerous.
Outside, Christmas lights blinked from another building.
Someone across the street was vacuuming with the curtains open.
Ordinary life continued everywhere.
Margaret had once believed reunion would feel like recovering the years.
It did not.
The years stayed gone.
Richard did not become fifty-five again.
She did not become seventy-six.
Celeste did not become innocent because she finally told the truth.
Margaret did not become innocent because she had suffered more.
What returned was smaller.
Tuesday sandwiches.
Arguments about being late.
Calls that ended without anyone hanging up in anger.
A son who sometimes remembered to ask before solving things.
A mother learning that advice could remain inside her mouth and not kill her.
In January, Richard came to Margaret’s apartment carrying a small box.
She stared.
“I told you no gifts.”
“It isn’t a gift.”
“That is what criminals say.”
He put the box on the table.
Margaret opened it.
Inside lay a round silver serving tray.
A shallow dent marked the center.
She looked up.
“Is that—”
“The hotel was replacing damaged service pieces. Nora’s company kept the original after the review.”
“And?”
“I bought it.”
“You bought a damaged tray?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
Richard looked suddenly uncertain.
Margaret enjoyed that.
“I thought Nora might want it.”
“She probably doesn’t.”
“I know.”
“So why is it here?”
He sat.
“I didn’t know what else to do with it.”
Margaret ran her fingers over the dent Celeste’s heel had made.
The mark was smaller than she remembered.
Violence often looked unimpressive afterward.
“You could ask her.”
Richard frowned.
“That’s obvious.”
“Growth.”
He ignored that.
Nora came by the following Saturday.
Richard held out the tray.
She stared at it.
“You bought my tray?”
“It wasn’t technically yours.”
“That makes it weirder.”
Margaret laughed.
Richard looked offended.
Nora took the tray eventually.
Not to keep.
She turned it over in her hands, traced the dent, then set it back on Margaret’s table.
“You keep it.”
Margaret shook her head.
“No.”
“Why not?”
“I have enough symbolic objects.”
Nora looked at Richard.
He raised both hands.
“Don’t involve me.”
The three of them stood around the ridiculous piece of metal.
Finally Nora said, “Donate it.”
“To whom?” Richard asked.
“A restaurant school?”
Margaret frowned.
“With a dent?”
“It still works.”
Richard looked at the tray.
“So do we.”
Margaret closed her eyes.
Nora groaned.
“No.”
Richard smiled.
“What?”
“That was terrible,” Margaret said.
“I thought it was good.”
“It was a greeting card written by a committee.”
Nora started laughing.
Richard tried to defend himself.
Margaret laughed too.
For a moment, the apartment filled with a kind of sound that had nothing to do with forgiveness or justice or missing years.
It was only three people making fun of a bad sentence.
The tray eventually went to a community culinary program Nora knew in Queens. Nobody told the students its history.
Margaret insisted on that.
“It is a tray,” she said.
By spring, the scar on her neck had faded.
The locket remained with Richard.
He kept it in the top drawer of his desk, not in a safe.
Margaret discovered this accidentally when he called asking whether the tiny hinge had always stuck.
“You open it?”
“Sometimes.”
“How often?”
Silence.
“Richard?”
“Sometimes.”
Margaret smiled into the phone.
“Use a little mineral oil.”
“On gold?”
“On the hinge.”
“I’ll have someone—”
“No.”
He stopped.
“I can do it myself.”
“Look at that.”
“What?”
“You’re becoming useful.”
He laughed.
Margaret hung up before he could become sentimental.
Then she sat by her apartment window.
A train passed.
The laundromat below had changed its sign.
Someone had left a grocery cart on the sidewalk.
Her coffee had gone cold.
She picked it up anyway.
On the refrigerator was a photograph Richard had given her at Christmas.
Not the childhood picture.
A new one.
Richard stood beside Margaret in his apartment kitchen, both of them looking annoyed because Nora had taken the photograph while they were arguing about pie.
Margaret had almost thrown it away.
Instead she had attached it to the refrigerator with a magnet advertising a plumber.
She looked at it now.
There were no graves in the picture.
No ballroom.
No Celeste.
No locket.
No proof.
Just two older people caught in the middle of disagreeing about dessert.
Margaret took a sip of cold coffee.
Her phone buzzed.
A message from Richard.
Tuesday. Noon. Don’t complain if I’m five minutes late.
Margaret typed back.
Five minutes is a character flaw.
Three dots appeared.
Then:
You raised me.
Margaret stared at the screen.
She laughed once, quietly, and set the phone down beside her coffee.
Outside, another train approached, metal grinding against metal as it rounded the curve.
May you like
Margaret did not move to close the window.
She listened until it passed.
