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Doe pantomimed apology and softly stepped into the large, minimal office. Clean lines and muted colors, with small towers of books stacked along white shag, floating racks of imperfectly hung clothes. Reaching the table of thick glass, she eyed the ceramic bowl of jelly beans, then passed it, instead sitting on the edge of Tilda’s desk. She picked up and put down the doorstop masquerading as
Vogue
’s September issue
,
then opened her auntie’s purse, looking for a floating twenty or whatever.

Tilda’s eyes went wide.
“Hey you.”
A flurry of motions, as if Doe were a bee that needed knocking away.

“Just joking.”

Sounds forced Auntie’s attention back to her conversation. “Right,” Tilda said. “Listen, I have another appointment, I gotta go….Yeah….I know….I gotta—Sorry, we’ll talk tomorrow.” She pressed a button, waved the device away from her body. “Motherfuckers.”

Motioning for the purse, she took the heavy bag from Doe, dug around, handed Doe money. “I told you we’re putting the
Schlep
name on an app, calling it the Schlapp. Ridiculous, right? But cute. Thing is, it’s not just for seniors. I mean, it is, but these are
Jewish seniors.
The Schlapp has to do
everything
for them
. Buy their plane tickets, confirm and check them in, dress those bubbies on the morning of their flight, deliver them to their gates, fasten their seatbelts, even gather their luggage onto the cart afterward. Our programmers don’t seem to get it.”

Doe casually reached for the jelly beans. “Oy.”

Auntie’s face delighted, then went contemplative, and Doe was sure she’d reminded Tilda of the past—something she always tried not to do.

“Well, you definitely got your mom’s eye.” It took a sec to understand Auntie was talking about her outfit. “Very respectful. Still you.”

An electronic chime. Before Tilda could decipher Corporate Slave Janice’s loudspeaker garblings, the door was open. Doe’s father. His hair was receding from the temples in twin incursions, so a small widow’s peak of tight curls had settled atop his forehead, and gray was encroaching around the sides. He wore his perpetual expression, at once rigid and haggard. Still, her father cut a pronounced figure, a strong profile, especially wearing this three-quarter-length topcoat and dark suit. One of his common refrains was that he kept himself in shape because someone needed to be around to take care of things. He also told Doe this was why he’d traded in his T-shirts for collars and button-downs. Why he religiously shaved each morning. He wanted her to see that he was together and alert and correct. He wanted to be a model for her.

Today his body language was oddly unwound, absent the aggression he often had when running late, or when any other human being had somehow affected his idea of how something should be. Instead he seemed patient. Doe already had a sense of what that meant.

No small talk between her father and Tilda. They just waited for the Icon Herself.

Nothing new here: her mother, slow and measured enough in movements that her presence entered before her; slim enough to cause any female (Doe included) to go nutsy with insecurities about herself, as well as concern about what this poor woman had been through. And yes, it went without saying, her mom always dressed to within an inch of perfection. Better than perfect, marked by some odd little switch or flourish, something inevitably unexpected and tantalizing. Today her mom was dwarfed by black straw whose oversize brim ensured her face would not get any sun. A creamy blouse flowed as if from a hanger, was plumed at the waist, and cinched with a black velvet bow. Midthigh the layering ended and her blouse gave way to a black chiffon skirt whose hem grazed the floor. Mom always rocked the best boots, and these patent leather bangers were no exception. She looked elegant, hip to the point of ridiculousness, a cross between a nun and a flower girl and maybe some sort of undead wraith. Small wonder that, in the insular world of fashion, she was considered a muse. Hell, one glance and anyone on the sidewalk would be tempted to sacrifice a goat for her.

Her mom was always late; Doe had gotten her chronic tardiness from her. Even that had its twist, naturally. Mom had that bona fide trump card of her history, and if that made
you
late for something, or impatient with her, then
you
were the asshole. Doe, by contrast, was always getting hassled and busted and reprimanded and taken aside for talks
.
Just how shit went down. Mom was sick. Mom was bedridden. Recovering from some surgery or battling, limited in activities, able to play dolls on the floor for a bit but then needing help up onto the couch, where she watched. Before playdates or first visits, Doe prepped her middle and grade school friends, summarizing the ordeal that she herself did not quite understand—
My mom had cancer and still has a lot of fallout;
going over rules about hand washing and surface areas, emphasizing that they shouldn’t be weirded out at how frail her mom could be. She and Cyrus—founder of the basement fashion company, her worshipful and polite and (at Doe’s behest) rigidly platonic best friend—had bonded during those marathon weeks when an unquantifiable bug had come to life inside Doe’s mom’s stomach, and all the doctors had been worried, everyone terrified they were going to lose her. And what about that horrid stretch—as awful a four-day stretch as Doe could imagine—when low white counts hinted at a relapse, and Cyrus had started dating class starlet Mindy Wilsey, so Doe’s besties had been forced to hold her up through both rounds of tests? This was how life had been. Doe had never known otherwise. And while she knew that Mom’s limitations had nothing to do with love, sometimes her dad still had to remind her, taking her aside in the study of their brownstone, or embarking upon one of their long walks where they really, you know,
cut the shit.
Take on more responsibilities, he asked her. Be
more
patient, be that much better a person.
Rise to the challenge.
This is what her father wanted from Doe, and it was no exaggeration to report that Doe
tried:
indeed, she helped with whatever shots or IVs or medicines her mom needed, did whatever chores were required. Doe felt a depthless love for her mother, she wholly appreciated how unique and funny and honestly amazing her mother could be.

But she’d sort of tired of her mom’s limitations, if you wanted to know the truth. Was pretty much over rising.

“I’m still not sure why I’m going to this.”

Her dad muttered something like
You and me both.

Then he said, “You’re going because your mother wants you with us.”

Then he corrected himself once more. “Both of us want you to go.”

“I said I’m going. I’m just not sure why.”

“We’re going to honor someone.” Her mother’s voice was its usual soft monotone. “A long time ago he was…” She trailed off, still as a statue. Overly large sunglasses gave her an intractable veneer. No way her mom would have arranged for her to get out of classes early if this didn’t matter. Doe felt a moment of guilt, but still defiant. “Maybe the best answer’s just for you to come and have the experience,” her mom said.

Slave Janice knew to bring in bottled waters, and her mom thanked Janice and smiled. She asked for a moment to collect herself. The car downstairs was waiting, but it wouldn’t matter if they were a little late. Tilda sat next to Doe’s mom on the couch and kissed her cheek. Doe’s mom thanked her for letting them congregate here, and for maybe the billionth time Doe was reminded how much older, how much more ravaged, her mom looked than her aunt, her mother’s former roomie and best friend, and this made Doe uncomfortable, so she looked away from them, to her dad—who seemed lost in his own internal mechanisms.

Having turned toward the window, he was looking toward the High Line, in the direction of a boutique hotel, the twenty-four-hour concierge out in front. He didn’t like coming down here, Doe knew that. Whenever he wasn’t able to turn down the fee, and his consulting company got hired to retrofit one of the old slaughterhouses, he spent months grumbling, more testy than his usual grouchy state. After a few drinks, with his face red and blotchy, he sometimes opened up, but the stories were unfocused, vague. Doe knew he’d been bought out of his own software company—before he did construction, before he could finish his own program. She knew the program never made it to market. A big company had bought it out, though, just so they could bury it. Everyone but her dad had made buttloads.

He put the point of a finger against the glass, seemed to trace something.

“I know, Dad.”

Immediately Doe understood she was intruding.

“I can still smell dry ice.”

Her mom’s voice hung in the air. She’d taken off her glasses and was looking at Doe’s father. Dad came over, stood behind his wife, and draped his arm around her shoulders.

“I guess you can miss anything,” he said.

He leaned over the brim of her hat and kissed her on the forehead. Doe’s mom clutched his hand in hers and they were quiet for a little bit. Doe wondered if maybe she should come over and join the vibe. She was already giving enough this afternoon.

Moving ahead, she asked were they ever going to this memorial or what? For emphasis she swished her little dancer’s caboose, did a few chevals, and sashayed out of the office, heading down the hallway of cubicles, with any luck catching the eyes of a few cute nerd boys, especially that odd one with the medieval red beard. Mousy women with buds in their ears were eating lunch at their desks and revising their dating profiles. She could hear her father a ways behind, joking about digging up his Sub Pop Singles of the Month collection, whatever that meant.

Their driver was a genial man from Central America. Doe’s mother had requested he take them across town via St. Marks Place, and the driver had some trouble programming this into his console, as it was not the satellite system’s preferred route. Doe’s mother politely insisted, saying it would be appropriate for today. She responded to Doe’s eye rolling by asking why Doe could be so lovely to everyone else and take out all her troubles on her. Doe answered by staring out the window. She felt at the hairpins in her bun, thought about jabbing them into her own eyes.

The car passed an American Apparel, an Insomnia Cookies, a Crumbs, Johnny Rockets, and competing banks on opposite corners of an intersection. Her father wondered out loud who had air rights on the little places. Her mother did not acknowledge him, but finished using her hand sanitizer and now shut her eyes, running away to that private happy nirvana place where she pretty much lived these days. Everyone else in the car was staring at a screen, the driver using one to guide him, her father now checking email, Tilda thumbing out an answer to a text. Doe began flipping back through photos of herself, deleting away the uggos. It was quiet in the car, except for Tilda cursing her programmers every time she read a response, then attacking her little screen. Doe noticed her father being distracted by Tilda’s conversation, paying attention to words like
specifications
and
platform.

“Who’s organizing this thing anyway?” Tilda asked, now speaking toward the backseat. “How come they contacted you and not me? I dated him. Five months. That’s not chopped liver.”

Doe’s mother seemed to be reminded of something, and responded by looking into that depthless shoulder bag of hers, and extracting a single folded page of typing paper. Now she took off her sunglasses and moved her attention to the lines of neat laser printing. Her lips began moving slightly but no sound came out. She found a pen, began making quick marks.

“I’m not saying you shouldn’t be involved,” Tilda continued.

“Money and time. Disease and cures.” Apropos of nothing, her father had started—though whether he was talking to Doe, or the rest of the car, she could not tell. Preoccupied, like he was still engaged with some previous conversation, whatever ideas were in his head. “I used to think money and rational decisions and technology could be medicine, they could fight against time. For the city I mean. Time is the blight and this is the cure.” He motioned out the window. “Well…”

The driver was muttering that it made no sense for St. Marks in-the-Bowery to be located two numerical streets away from St. Marks Place, and he was displaying enough irritation with traffic that Doe’s father quieted down and let the driver concentrate, following the screen instructions, turning off Astor, then executing a series of quick maneuvers down a pair of small, residential side streets.

The large, stately stone spire acted as a guiding point, and they gradually came closer. White tents of a farmers’ market littered the large gray courtyard. Blond ponytailed women strode past teenaged buskers, oblivious to their twangy little songs, talking instead on phones. Toward the stately columns a few men and women in dark clothes were making their way into the large old church.

Doe’s father helped her mother, and Tilda took the other side, making Doe the proverbial fifth wheel, on the far side of their little chain, the group entering the lip of the chapel, being greeted by a pair of middle-aged women—a short pudgy one and a taller pudgy one, each in simple black—the short woman had straight white hair to her linebacker shoulders, a small, golden septum ring, and, between her black-laced bosoms, a clunky silver cross pendant; the taller one boasted long black dreads, colorful rosary beads, and, at the end of dragon-patterned hose, high black platform shoes. Each nodded respectfully, offering a folded, light blue paper.

Doe recognized, vaguely, the man in the picture. An older version of him used to drop by and collapse on their couch, where he’d complain about not knowing his way around Brooklyn Heights, and lament missing his shot to move out here before prices got nuts. Like once or twice a year. Doe’s mom always beamed, laughing at everything he said, loading him down with food when he left. At least once Mom had gone into her purse for him, emerged with a checkbook. Doe asked, low, the deal with this guy again? Instead of an answer, she heard acoustic guitars, loudspeakers playing Pink Floyd, the annual swimming adventures of two lost souls in a fishbowl.