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me, and he was going to get me in a lot of trouble. So I had to leave." "Do you want to go back to Philadelphia?" asked Ella. "Back to Rose?" "No!" said Maggie, so vehemently that Ella jumped a little in her seat, and Lewis accidentally hit the horn. "No," she repeated. "I don't know where I want to go. I don't really have a place in Philadelphia. I was in an apartment, but I got evicted from there, and I can't go back with my father, because his wife hates me, and I can't go back with Rose ..." And she'd sighed a piteous sigh and wrapped her arms around her knees, throwing in a small shiver for dramatic effect. "I guess maybe I could go to New York. I'll get a job and save up my money, and I'll go New York. Find a roommate or ... something," she'd concluded. "You can stay with me as long as you need to," said Ella. The words were out of her mouth before she'd considered them, before she'd thought to wonder whether it was a good idea or not. Judging from the look on Lewis's face, the answer was probably "not." Maggie had been evicted. Then she'd been living with her sister, which, for some reason, hadn't worked out. She didn't feel welcome at her father's house. She was stowing away—whatever that meant—in a school where she wasn't enrolled, living in the library. How could that add up to anything but trouble? As Lewis steered them through the airport traffic, back toward Golden Acres, Maggie had sighed, cupped her chin in her palm, staring out the window as the palm trees and traffic rolled by. "Florida," she said. "I've never been here before." "How is . . ." Ella began. "Can you tell me about your sister?" Maggie was quiet. Ella pressed on. "I looked Rose up on the Internet, at her law firm ..." Maggie shook her head, staring out the window, as if envisioning her sister's face reflected in the glass. "Is that, like, the worst picture in the world? I kept telling her to make them take
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another one, and she kept saying, 'It doesn't matter, Maggie. Don't be so superficial.' And I said, 'That picture's out there for the whole world to see, and it isn't superficial to want to look your best,' but of course she didn't listen. She never listens to me," said Maggie, and then closed her mouth as if worried that she'd said too much. "Where are we going, exactly? Where do you live?" "We live in a place called Golden Acres. It's ..." "... a retirement community for active seniors," she and Lewis recited together. In the rearview mirror, Maggie's eyes widened in alarm. "A nursing home?" "No, no," said Lewis. "Don't worry. It's just a place for older people." "Condominiums," added Ella. "And there are stores, and a clubhouse, and a trolley that runs for people who don't drive anymore ..." "Sounds great," said Maggie, obviously not meaning it. "So what do you do all day?" "I volunteer," said Ella. "Where?" "Oh, all over. The hospital, the pet shelter, the thrift store, Meals on Wheels, and there's this woman I'm helping, she had a stroke last year. ... I keep busy." "Do you think I could find a job here?" "What kind of job?" asked Ella. "I've done everything," said Maggie. "Waitressing, dog grooming, hostessing ..." Hostessing? Ella wondered what that meant. "Barista, bartender," Maggie continued, "baby-sitting, working in an ice-cream shop, working at a fried-dough stand ..." "Wow," said Ella. Maggie wasn't through. "I sang in a band for a while." Maggie thought better of telling the grandmother the name of the band, on the off chance that she'd know what a whiskered biscuit even was. "Telemarketing, spraying
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people with perfume, TJ.Maxx, the Gap, the Limited . . ." Maggie paused and yawned hugely. "And at Princeton I helped out this blind lady. I cleaned her house. I brought her things." "That's . . ." Again, Ella was out of words. "So I guess this will be okay," Maggie said. She yawned, redid her ponytail, then curled up on the backseat and fell instantly asleep. At the next red light, Lewis looked over at Ella. "Okay?" he asked. Ella gave him a small shrug, then a smile. Maggie was here, and no matter what the truth turned out to be, that was something. When Lewis pulled into his parking space, Maggie was still asleep in the backseat, with a lock of brown hair stuck to her sweaty cheek. Her bitten fingernails were so precisely like Caroline's fingers that Ella felt her heart lurch hard against her rib cage. Maggie opened her eyes, stretched, grabbed her backpack, and stepped out of the car, blinking. Ella followed her gaze. There was Irene Siegel, pushing her walker across the parking lot, and Albert Gantz, slowly unloading an oxygen tank from his trunk. "It is the blight man was born for," Maggie said in a low, resigned voice. "What was that, dear?" asked Lewis. "Nothing," Maggie said. She shouldered her backpack and followed Ella inside. True to her word, Maggie got a job at a bagel shop half a mile from Golden Acres. She'd work the early shift creeping out of the apartment at five in the morning, working through breakfast and lunch. And then what? Ella had asked, because Maggie rarely reap ' peared at the apartment before eight or nine. Her granddaughter had shrugged. "I go to the beach," she said. "Or the movies. Or the library." For weeks, Ella had offered dinner. Each time, Maggie refused. "I already ate," she'd say—although, skinny as she was, Ella sometimes wondered whether Maggie ate anything at all. She'd decline Ella's offers to watch TV, to go to a movie, to join her at the Clubhouse for a bingo game. The only thing that had gotten even a
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flicker of interest was Ella's offer of a library card. Maggie had accompanied her grandmother to the small, one-story library, filled out her forms with Ella's address, then disappeared into the Fiction and Literature shelves, emerging an hour later with her arms full of poetry books. And that was that. For May. For June. For July and August. At night, Maggie would come home, nod hello, and disappear. She'd emerge for a shower, then slip silently into the back bedroom, easing the door closed behind her, carrying her single towel, her shampoo, her toothbrush and toothpaste, with her as if she were an overnight guest, even though Ella had told her that she was welcome to leave her things wherever she wanted. There was a small television set in Maggie's bedroom, but Ella never heard it go on. There was a telephone, too, but Maggie never called anyone. She read, Ella knew—every three or four days she'd notice a new library book in Maggie's bag, thick novels, biographies, books of poetry, the kind of odd, fragmented, non-rhyming poems that never made sense to Ella—but Maggie never seemed to talk to anyone, and Ella was starting to worry that she never would. "I don't know what I'm going to do," she said. It was eight in the morning, almost eighty-five degrees, and she'd fled to Lewis's apartment after Maggie had glided past her and out the door again. "About the weather? Just wait. It can't last." "About her," said Ella. "Maggie. She doesn't talk to me! She doesn't even look at me. She pads around on her bare feet ... I never hear her coming. . . . She's out until all hours, she's gone when I wake up. . . ." Ella paused, took a deep breath, and shook her head. "Well, normally I'd say to give her time ..." "Lewis, it's been months, and I don't even know the story with her sister, or her father. I don't even know what she likes for dinner! You've got grandchildren ..." "Grandsons," Lewis said. "But I think you're right. This calls
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for drastic measures." He nodded, and got to his feet. "We need to call in the big guns." Luckily, Mrs. Lefkowitz was home. "Let's start out with a few questions," she said, moving back and forth across her cluttered living room in her familiar plant, sigh, shuffle, stomp. "Do you have prunes in your refrigerator?" Ella stared at her. "Prunes," Mrs. Lefkowitz prompted. "Yes," said Ella. Mrs. Lefkowitz nodded. "You got Metamucil on the kitchen counter?" Ella nodded. Didn't everyone? "What magazines do you subscribe to?" Ella thought. "Prevention, the thing the AARP sends . . ." "Do you get the HBO and the MTV?" Ella shook her head. "I don't have cable." Mrs. Lefkowitz rolled her eyes and plopped down on an overstuffed armchair, on top of a needlepoint pillow that announced, "I'm the Princess." "Young people have their own things. Their own music, their own TV programs, their own ..." "Culture?" Lewis supplied. Mrs. Lefkowitz nodded. "There's nobody here for her," she said. "Nobody her own age. How'd you like to be twenty-eight and stuck in a place like this?" "She didn't have anywhere else to go," said Ella. "Neither do prisoners," said Mrs. Lefkowitz. "It doesn't mean they have to like being in jail." "So what should we do?" Ella asked. Mrs. Lefkowitz struggled to her feet. "You got money?" she demanded. Ella nodded. "Then let's go," she said. "You drive," she said, pointing her chin at Lewis. "We're going shopping."
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Coaxing Maggie out of her room proved to be a costly proposition. First, there were the magazines, almost fifty dollars' worth, each one fatter and glossier and more crammed with perfume samples and subscription-card come-ons than the last. "How do you know about all of this?" Ella asked, as Mrs. Lefkowitz stacked an issue of Movieline on top of the latest Vanity Fair. Her friend waved her good arm carelessly. "What's to know?" she asked. Their next stop was a gigantic electronics store. "Flat screen, flat screen," Mrs. Lefkowitz recited as she zipped down the aisles in the motorized scooter she used for her shopping expeditions. Two hours and several thousand dollars later, Lewis's car was packed with a flat-screen TV, a DVD player, and a dozen videos, including the first season of Sex and the City, which Mrs. Lefkowitz guaranteed that all the young women were raving about. "I read about it in Time," she boasted, lifting herself into the passenger's seat. "Turn left up here," she told Lewis. "We're going to the supermarket and liquor store," she said, and smiled to herself. "We're going to have a party." At the liquor store, she accosted the pimply-faced clerk in a polyester pi nny. "Do you know how to make a cosmopolitan?" she demanded. "Cointreau . . ." the clerk ventured. Mrs. Lefkowitz pointed at Lewis. "You heard the man!" she said. Later, their arms laden with Cointreau and vodka, cheese puffs and corn chips, miniature hot dogs and frozen egg rolls, plus two bottles of nail polish (one red, one pink), and cardboard boxes full of electronics. Ella and Lewis and Mrs. Lefkowitz piled into the elevator up to Ella's apartment. "Do you really think this will work?" she asked, as Lewis put the frozen foods in her freezer. Mrs. Lefkowitz pulled up a seat at the kitchen table and shook her head. "No guarantees," she said, pulling a hot-pink piece of paper out of her purse. "You're Invited!" it read in silver letters across the top. "Where's that from?" Ella asked, peering over her shoulder.
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"My computer," said Mrs. Lefkowitz, tilting the invitation so that Ella could read that Miss Maggie Feller was invited to a Sex and the City party on Friday night at Ella's house. "I can do anything. Invitations, calendars, parking permits ..." "What's that?" asked Lewis, who'd been putting snack foods away. Mrs. Lefkowitz suddenly became very interested in the contents of her purse. "Oh, nothing. Never mind." Lewis stared at her. "You know, one of my reporters told me that there were people printing up fake parking permits. He wants to do an investigative series." Mrs. Lefkowitz lifted her chin defiantly. "You're not going to turn me in, are you?" "Not if this works, I won't," he promised. Mrs. Lefkowitz nodded, then handed Ella the invitation. "Slip it under her door when she's gone." "But, if it's a party . . . who's coming?" Mrs. Lefkowitz stared at her. "Well, your friends, of course." Ella looked helplessly at Lewis. Mrs. Lefkowitz squinted at her. "You do have friends here, don't you?" "I—" Ella began. "I have coworkers." "Coworkers," Mrs. Lefkowitz said to the ceiling. "Well, never mind. It'll just be the three of us, then." She pushed herself up from the table. "See you Friday!" she said, and thumped her way out the door.
"I feel like the witch in 'Hansel and Gretel,' " Ella said, sliding a tray of miniature egg rolls into the oven. It was Friday night, after nine, which meant that Maggie could appear at any moment—if she came home at all. "Did you get your invitation?" Ella had called toward the closing door as Maggie left for work in the morning. The girl had responded with a vaguely affirmative-sounding grunt as the door had closed behind her. "Why?" Lewis asked. Ella pointed at the lures—the piles of
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magazines, the bowls of chips and dips, the platters of deviled eggs and chicken wings and half a dozen other treats that she knew would give her devastating heartburn if she risked more than a bite. Mrs. Lefkowitz tugged at her sleeve. "One more thing," she said. "The secret weapon." "What?" Ella asked, glancing at her watch. "Your daughter," said Mrs. Lefkowitz. Ella stared. "What?" "Your daughter. Caroline, right?" Mrs. Lefkowitz said. "All of this"—she swept her hand toward Ella's living room, where Lewis was fiddling with the DVD player and contentedly eating his way through a platter of spinach puffs—"will probably work. But if it doesn't, what's the one thing you've got that Maggie wants?" "Money?" Ella guessed. "Well, that, maybe," said Mrs. Lefkowitz. "But there's lots of places she can get money. How many places can she get the story of her mother?" The story of her mother, Ella thought to herself, wishing with all her heart that it was a longer, happier tale. "Information," Mrs. Lefkowitz said. "That's what we have that the young people want. Information." She considered. "And some Microsoft stock, in my case. But for you, information ought to be enough." She nodded as Maggie's key turned in the lock. "Showtime!" she whispered. Ella held her breath. Maggie walked into the apartment as if she had blinders on, looking not to the left, and the kitchen stocked with tempting goodies, nor to the right, with the new television set on which a woman was talking about . . . no. She must be hearing it wrong, Ella thought, as the actress burbled, "I don't want to be the up-the-butt girl!" and Mrs. Lefkowitz laughed into her cosmopolitan. Halfway down the hall, Maggie paused. "Maggie?" Ella called. She could almost feel how torn her granddaughter was—wanting to stay, wanting to go. Please don't let me mess
