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I think about it for a second as we lie there. There’s no way I could see him again. I couldn’t look into his blue eyes and know that I could never be with him. To think that I couldn’t run my hands through that gorgeous head of hair, to explain to him what I knew. Maybe I
am
depressed.

“Lucy, I . . . I just can’t.” I lay my head on the pillow and turn away from her again.

“Jesus, Gram, what are you so upset about? What is it that was so bad that it’s made you become a recluse? You say I got what I wanted? Well, damn straight. You got what you wanted, too!”

Now I’m angry with her. “What the hell did I get out of this whole thing? I want to know, Lucy—what did I get? You got what you wanted, but you know what I got?” I sit up in bed and stare right into her eyes. “I got nothing but heartache. I got to see what it was like to be young again? Big deal. My daughter learned from her mistakes and moved on. Frida turned a corner with all her anxieties. But me? I never got to know why all this happened. I never got an answer to my question. I was supposed to be selfish. I was supposed to be doing this for myself, and not for anyone else, and I got nothing in the end. And you know what? That pisses me off.”

I punch the pillow and lay my head on it again.

Lucy is now fuming at me. I can see she is, but frankly, I don’t care.

“Well, Gram, guess what?”

I don’t answer her.

“Boo-hoo.”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“I mean boo-hoo that you didn’t get the answer to your question. Boo-hoo to all of it.”

“You have no idea what you’re talking about. You have no idea what it’s like to live as many years as I have. When you get to be my age, then we can talk. Until then, Lucy, you have nothing to say on the subject.”

“You think you’re so old? What do you think? Do you think your life is over before you find that answer?” she asks me.

“Yes, as a matter of fact, I do.”

“You know as well as I do that you’ve got the constitution of someone twenty years younger than you are. Believe me, with the attitude you’ve got going right now, you’re going to waste the next twenty years of your life, and then what?”

“And then that’s it,” I grumble.

She takes a deep breath and gets off the bed. “Fine, live this way.” She heads toward the door. “Live the rest of your life this way. See if I care.”

“Thank you, I will,” I tell her, burying my face in the pillow.

“I gave Zach your number. He asked if he could call my grandmother to talk about Ellie. He also said he had something else to tell you, but I don’t know what. The least that you can do is talk to him about what happened.”

“You better not have,” I warn her.

She stops and puts her hands on her hips in dramatic fashion. “For once this week, Gram, stop thinking of yourself. Start thinking like someone from your generation!”

I hear her shut the door to the apartment, but now I’m up. I’m so angry with her I could scream.

It’s almost eleven at night, but I’ve got so many feelings going on in my head, everything from anger to sadness. Damn her.

I put on my slippers and walk out of the bedroom. I can’t remember the last time I walked around the apartment. It almost feels like these other rooms didn’t exist.

I walk into the kitchen to make myself a cup of tea. I put some water in the kettle, turn on the stove, and grab some tea bags. I go into the cabinet and take out a cup and saucer. I use my good bone china every day. You should, too, if you don’t have small children. It’s a lesson I’ve learned: enjoy the things you have. Until recently I hadn’t used the good china since a few years before Howard died, when I gave my last Thanksgiving dinner. There was so much cooking and cleaning for me to do after the dinner that I said my time was over. I told Barbara I was passing the baton to her. Barbara doesn’t make the turkey or the stuffing or anything else. She gets it catered. I think that’s wrong. She can’t throw a turkey in the oven?

Oh, screw it already with what Barbara does wrong. She’s a good girl.

Anyway, it occurred to me one day that all that gorgeous china was boxed up and I wasn’t doing anything with it. Even in my current state, it still gives me a thrill when I take out my china for a simple cup of tea.

I bring my cup into the dining room and sit at my table.

It’s so quiet in this apartment as I bring the teacup to my lips and then put it back on the table.

There are memories of my life everywhere I look. The walls
of my home are different, but its contents are the contents I’ve saved my entire life. Even the table I’m sitting at—five generations of women in my family have sat at this table. This gives me a little spark of joy. This was my mother’s table that she oiled and salved constantly. How she loved this table. How many holiday dinners were spent around this table? So many generations dined there, my grandmother and mother, my mother and me and Barbara, all the way down to Lucy. I can almost hear the laughter and all the conversations we’ve had at this table. I can smell my grandmother’s brisket and my mother’s apple pie. I realize this table will be here for the next generation in my family. Barbara and Lucy will own this table one day, and if Lucy is lucky enough to have a child of her own she’ll sit here, too.

I pick up my cup and saucer and walk toward my black baby grand piano. It’s the most expensive side table anyone could ever own. I can’t remember the last time I had that thing tuned, and I can’t remember the last time anyone played it, but I don’t care. Barbara didn’t think I should bring it with me when I moved, but I insisted on it. I still love that piano. I love it in all its beauty, from the shine coming off the sides to the whites of the keys.

I look at all the pictures I’ve compiled through the years, framed in silver. The happy, smiling faces of each family member and friends don’t tell the whole story, just the good parts, and for right now, it’s all I want to see. Barbara at ten blowing out the candles on her birthday cake; Barbara at eighteen, at her high school graduation; Howard and me on one of our many wonderful trips; and so on. Then I see a picture so jarring it makes me drop my good bone china cup and saucer on the floor, shattering them. It’s a picture I’ve never seen before, but it’s set in a silver
frame like all the others. It’s next to the picture of Barbara and Larry on their wedding day, and just beyond Lucy’s prom photo.

It’s Lucy and me. Me at twenty-nine. It’s the picture we took last week, before we went on the big date. We took it with her camera phone. The picture scares the living daylights out of me. Maybe because it’s proof that it really did happen. They say that pictures don’t lie, don’t they? For that one day, I was a seventy-five-year-old in the body of a twenty-nine-year-old. The smiles on our young faces prove that. I got to do something with my granddaughter that no one else has ever gotten to do. For one day I lived the life my granddaughter lives. I got to see what it was like to live in her generation. I’ve never seen smiles on two happier people. It’s such a beautiful photo that I don’t even care that I spilled tea all over the floor and it’s ruining my hardwood. I can’t stop staring at this picture.

It must be over ten minutes before I set the picture back on the piano and head toward the kitchen to get a dishrag and the small wastepaper basket. I bring them back to the living room, where I clean up the floor and throw the broken china pieces into the basket.

As I look around the room, my eyes lead me to the books on the bookshelf just beyond the dining room. A lot of them were mine, but most of them were Howard’s. I kept his old law books, which he studied from time to time. I like the way they look, with their leather-bound covers and gold-etched writing, so I kept ten of them. Really, though, they give me comfort. It makes me feel closer to Howard when I miss him from time to time. Even when Howard retired, it gave me such a nice feeling to see him get a new law book in the mail. It told me that being
a lawyer wasn’t just something he did to earn a lot of money; he truly liked what he did and was interested in keeping up with it long after he didn’t have to anymore. He studied the laws and verdicts in these books for cases he sometimes spent years on, cases of the clients he came to know as friends. The books remind me of stories he’d tell me from his life, stories from his work life, which was most of his life. These were his scrapbooks of memories. It’s very much like my converted bedroom/closet, the one that holds the clothes and all the beautiful memories attached to them. Howard had his books. I have my closet.

I take one of the books from the shelf. I don’t know why I’m doing it. Something in me is causing me to take it in my hands. The damn thing is so heavy; it must be five hundred pages. Did he really read all these books? I have never taken these books from the shelf. The only time I ever touch them is when I dust. I had movers pack them up at the old house, and the movers put them on the shelf here. Boy, they really jammed them in there.

As I continue to pull at one book, another comes out with it and starts to tip over the side of the shelf. I quickly try to grab it while holding the other law book in place, but it falls out of my hands and onto the ground.

I pick the book up off of the floor and take it in my arms. The leather smell from the cover is already making me feel better, more secure in some way, if that’s possible. Why? I don’t know.

I open up the book to the first page and run my fingers over the ones I’ve yet to look at. The pages feel lopsided, though; Howard must have written notes in here. So I turn to the middle of the book, and that’s when I find them.

Jammed between pages I find papers and cards and notes, all
with my handwriting on them. As I sort through them I realize they’re all from me.

To Howard on this special birthday.

Happy 10th Anniversary to My Darling Husband.

Happy 25th Anniversary. Seems like yesterday.

Dear Howard, You don’t need my luck! I know you’re going to win this case today. I have all the faith in you. Can’t wait to celebrate!

And on and on. I grab another book and, sure enough, there are more cards from me. I take another book off the shelf, then another. There’s a picture of us standing in front of the Eiffel Tower. I remember asking someone to take that picture. Here’s another from Miami Beach, when we were young kids, just married. There are birthday cards, pictures, notes. I take down the rest of the books and leaf through them. I find so many cards and pictures and notes I wrote him through the years, I can hardly hold them all in my hand. He saved every one. But why? Why didn’t he tell me? Why didn’t he just let me know that he appreciated them?

And then I come to another book, where I find a bunch of canceled checks between the pages. There must be about a hundred of them in there. I pick one up and look at it. They’re all made out to my mother, and they go month by month, years’ worth, and I know exactly what they are.

Howard gave my mother a check for two hundred dollars every month from the day we were married until she died some twenty-five years later. I forgot about that. Believe me, two hundred dollars was a lot of money in those early years. I know he upped it with inflation, but I had nothing to do with it by then,
and I’m not going to look now. The check went out from his office. When Howard gave my mother that first check, he told her that it wasn’t to be spent on groceries or paying bills. It was for her to enjoy her life. My mother was able to have an apartment in Boca Raton, Florida, and play bridge to her heart’s content. The one thing I was never really sure of was if my mother actually said to Howard that he needed to give her the money, as kind of a dowry, or if he did it by himself. I never asked. A wife just didn’t ask those questions then. Still, handing me that first check to give her and then knowing she got checks every month after that—God, I loved him for that.

And suddenly I remember a conversation Howard and I had a few years back, something I totally forgot.

A few years ago, just before Howard died, in fact, he and I were sitting in our backyard, out on the veranda. Howard was reading the paper and I was looking at a magazine. It was so peaceful out there. I’d had gorgeous cushions made for the deck chairs, a butterscotch crème color, and Howard and I loved to sit out there in the summertime. Howard said he always regretted that we never had a pool, but since I never got my hair wet, I couldn’t have cared less. I remember I looked up for a second and saw that my hydrangeas were in full bloom, their fabulous pinks and purples lining the backyard. I could hear the birds singing in that big maple tree on the far side of the lawn. Howard and I had just come back from a week in Cabo San Lucas so we were both relaxed.

“Howard?” I asked him. “Remember how you used to give my mother that two hundred dollars a month?”

“Yep,” he said, turning the page of his newspaper.

“Did my mother make you do that?”

“No,” he said matter-of-factly. “She let me marry you. I thought she should be paid in return.”

He didn’t look up from his paper the whole time. He had no idea that what he was saying meant so much to me. I started to sniffle a little bit.

“What?” he asked. He still didn’t look up from his paper.

I wrapped my cashmere shawl around myself and took a deep breath. “Thank you,” I said and smiled, looking at him.

He looked up at me for a second. Then he patted my leg.

I close the book I’m holding and put it back on the shelf—those checks are still none of my business. Then I put the cards and photos back in each book and place them all back in the bookcase, carefully, one by one. Maybe I’ll look at them again from time to time.

I sit back down on the couch and smile. Of course Howard hid all of these things from me—he was always unable to show his love like that. That’s not every man from our generation. Sol, Frida’s husband, wasn’t like that. You could always see that he and Frida were a team. Men of Lucy’s generation, like Zachary, they show their emotions. Their fathers must have taught them something they wanted from their fathers, that kind of comfort. Most men of my generation, though, acted like Howard. They treated us like second-class citizens, but now that I think of it, maybe my mother was right all those years ago when she said, “He works hard and he provides for you.”