FIFTY EIGHT
"House of Stein, Simon speaking." "Do they know you answer the phone like that?" asked Rose, rolling over on the bed. It was ten o'clock in the morning. Ella was off holding crack babies at the hospital, and Maggie was on one of her top-secret missions, which meant that Rose had all four rooms of the apartment to herself. "I knew it was you. Caller ID," said Simon. "How are things? Are you relaxing?" "Sort of," said Rose. "Sun and fun, fruity drinks, the occasional cabana boy?" Rose sighed. Simon was teasing, as usual, and he was funny, as usual, but he didn't sound quite like himself yet. The Jim thing, she thought. And the whole secret-grandmother thing, and Rose's sudden departure for Florida. She'd have to go home soon and start making things right. "The only cabana boys here are eighty years old, with pacemakers." "Watch out for them," said Simon. "It's the elderly ones who always surprise you. Are you okay?" "I'm fine. Ella's fine. And Maggie ..." Rose furrowed her brow. Maggie had changed, and Rose wasn't sure she trusted it. She got out of bed, carrying the phone as she strolled toward Ella's living
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room. "Maggie's become a businesswoman," she said. "She's a personal shopper, which actually makes a lot of sense. She's got really great taste. She always knows what to wear, and what's going to look best on other people. And the people here, lots of them don't drive anymore, and even the ones who do sometimes have a hard time getting around the malls ..." "I have a hard time getting around malls," said Simon. "It's genetic. The last time my mother was at Franklin Mills, she called the: police because she thought her car had been stolen, when in reality she'd just forgotten where she'd parked it." "Oof," said Rose. "So is that why she put twenty stuffed animals in the backseat, and tied all of those ribbons to the antenna?" "No," said Simon, "she just likes ribbons. And stuffed animals." Thiere was a pause. "I was kind of angry at you when you left, you know." "About Jim Danvers?" Rose swallowed hard, even though she'd been expecting this. "Yeah," said Simon. "About that. I'm not upset that it happened. I just want to feel like you can tell me things. Like you can tell me anything. I'm going to be your husband. I want you to lean on me. I want you to say good-bye before you go somewhere." Across the line, Rose heard him swallow hard. "When I came home, and you weren't there ..." Rose closed her eyes. She remembered that feeling too well, it was like to walk into an empty house and find that the person you loved had disappeared without a word. "I'm sorry," Rose said. "I'll try." She swallowed hard and walked in front of the bookshelf filled with the pictures of her, and Maggie, and her mother in her wedding dress, smiling a smile that said that she-had her whole life in front of her and that it was going to be a life filled with happiness. "I'm sorry about leaving the way I did, and not telling you about Jim. You shouldn't have had to find out that way." "Probably not," said Simon. "But I was too hard on you about
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it. I know how stressed out you've been, with all the wedding stuff." "Well," said Rose, "I'm the one with time for it." "Oh, along t hose lines," Simon said. "You got a call last night from a headhunter." Rose's pulse quickened. When she'd worked at Lewis, Dommel, and Fenick, she'd get calls from headhunters a few times a week, people who'd come across her name and resume in some legal directory and would call her trying to get her to jump to another firm, where she would undoubtedly wind up working even longer hours. But since she'd taken her leave, the phone had stopped ringing. "Someone from the Women's Association for Women's Alternatives." "Really?" Rose was trying to remember whether she'd heard of the group, and what they did. "How'd they get my name?" "They need a staff attorney," said Simon, sidestepping the question, which gave Rose her answer—Simon had called. "They do advocacy work for low-income women. Custody, child support, visitation, stuff like that. Lots of time in court, I'd bet, and the pay's not great because it would be a part-time position at first, but I thought it might be interesting." He paused. "Of course, if you're not ready yet ..." "No! No," said Rose, trying not to shout. "It sounds ... I mean, I'm very . . . Did they leave a number?" "They did," said Simon, "but I told them you were on vacation, so no hurry. Go enjoy yourself! Put on your bathing suit, go give some old man a coronary." "I've got to call Amy first. She's been leaving me messages every day since I've been here, and we keep missing each other." "Ah," said Simon. "Amy X." Rose grinned. "You know she only called herself that for three weeks in college." "I thought she called herself Ashante in college." "No, Ashante was high school," said Rose, remembering when
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her best friend had renounced her "slave name" midway through Mr. Halleck's honors U.S. history class. "Give her my best," said Simon. "Which will probably not be good enough for her." "Amy likes you just fine." "Amy doesn't think anyone's good enough for you," said Simon. "And she's right, but I'm not bad, generally speaking. And you know what?" "What?" Simon dropped his voice to a whisper. "I love you very much, my bride-to-be." "Love you, too," said Rose. She hung up the phone, smiled as she imagined him at his cluttered desk, then dialed her best friend. "Girl!" shouted Amy, "tell me everything! How's the grandmother? Do you like her?" "I do," said Rose, surprising herself. "She's sharp, and nice, and . . . happy. I think she was really sad for a long time, and that she's really happy now that Maggie and I are here. The only thing is, she stares at me a lot." "Why?" "Oh, you know," said Rose, feeling uncomfortable. "Not seeing me and Maggie grow up. I told her she didn't miss much." "Au contraire, my sister. She missed you winning all those science fairs. She missed you dressing like a Vulcan for three years' worth of Halloween parades. ..." Rose cringed. "She missed us in leg warmers and ripped sweatshirts," said Amy. "Okay, granted, I wish I'd missed that, too." "We were trendy!" said Rose. "We were pathetic," Amy corrected her. "Let me talk to the g-momI I've got stories!" "Forget it," Rose said, laughing. "So tell me this ... is Maggie coming to the wedding?" "I think so," said Rose.
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"Is she going to replace me?" Amy demanded. "Absolutely not," said Rose. "Your butt-bow is secure." "Good deal," said Amy. "Go have a pina colada for me." "And you go keep our drinking water clean," said Rose. She hung up the phone and considered her day. No dogs to be walked, no wedding crisis to resolve. She wandered into her grandmother's living room and picked up a photo album from the top of a stack on the coffee table. "Caroline and Rose" read the label pasted on the front. She opened the book and there she was, a day old, wrapped in a white blanket. Her eyes were squinched shut, and her mother faced the camera, smiling tentatively. God, thought Rose, she was so young! She flipped through the pages. She was a baby, she was a toddler, she was riding a bike with training wheels, her mother behind her, pushing a stroller in which baby Maggie rode in like Cleopatra on her barge. Rose smiled, turning the pages slowly, watching herself and her sister grow up.
FIFTY'NINE
Maggie sat back, gave her ponytail a businesslike tweak, and nodded. "Okay," she announced. "I think that's it." She beckoned Ella and Dora over to her table in the back of the fabric store. "This skirt," she said, showing them the pattern. "This top," she said, laying a second pattern carefully on top of the first. "And these sleeves," she said, displaying yet a third pattern, "only three-quarter-length, not full length." "We'll make it from muslin first," said Ella. "We'll take our time. We'll be just fine." She gathered up the patterns. "Let's get started first thing in the morning, and we'll see what we shall see." Maggie sat back and smiled proudly. "It's going to be great," she said.
That night, Maggie came home from her shift at Bagel Bay, and a last-minute stop-off to return three of Mrs. Gantz's rejected bathing suits, and found her sister's bags stacked neatly by the door. Her heart sank. She'd failed. Rose was leaving, and she didn't even know how hard Maggie had been trying to find her a dress. She didn't know how sorry Maggie was. Her sister was still barely talking to her, barely looking at her. It hadn't worked out at all. Maggie walked toward the back bedroom, hearing Rose's and Ella's voices from the screened-in porch.
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"You'd think the little dogs would be the easy ones," Rose was saying. "But really, they're the most stubborn of all. And they bark the loudest, too." "Did you girls ever have a dog?" "For a day," said Rose. "Once." Maggie headed into the kitchen, thinking that she could make dinner for her sister, and at least that would be something, a small but meaningful gesture, an act that would show Rose she cared. She pulled swordfish steaks out of the refrigerator, sliced up purple onions and avocado and teardrop tomatoes for a salad, and set the basket of rolls right by her sister's plate. Rose smiled later when she saw them. "Carbohydrates!" she said. "Just for you," said Maggie, and passed her sister the butter. Ella looked at them curiously. "My stepmonster," said Rose, with her mouth full. She swallowed. "Sydelle. Sydelle hated carbs." "Except when she went on that sweet-potato diet," Maggie said. "Right," said Rose, nodding at her sister. "Then she hated red meat. But no matter what diet she was doing, she'd never let me eat bread." Maggie yanked the bread basket away, and flared her nostrils as wide as she could. "Rose, you'll ruin your appetite!" she said. Rose shook her head. "Like that was going to happen," she said. Maggie pulled up her chair and started on her salad. "Remember the traveling turkey?" Rose closed her eyes and nodded. "How could I ever forget?" "What is the traveling turkey?" asked Ella. "Well ..." said Rose. "It was one of. . ." Maggie began. The two of them smiled at each other. "You tell it," said Rose. Maggie nodded. "Okay," she said. "We were both home for spring break, and Sydelle was on a diet." "One of many," said Rose. "Hey. Who's telling the story?" asked Maggie. "So we come home, and what's for dinner? Turkey."
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"Turkey with the skin taken off," said Rose. "Just turkey," said Maggie. "No potatoes. No stuffing. No gravy ..." "God forbid!" said Rose. "Just turkey. We had poached eggs for breakfast, and then it's lunchtime, and out conies the turkey. The same turkey." "It was," said Rose, "a very big turkey." "We had it for dinner that night, too. And lunch the next day. And that night we were going to one of Sydelle's friend's houses for dinner, and we were so excited because we thought we'd finally get something that wasn't turkey, except when we got there we found out that Sydelle ..." "... took the turkey with her!" Rose and Maggie concluded together. "It turns out," said Rose, buttering a roll, "that her friend was on the same diet she was." "We all had turkey," Maggie said. "Traveling turkey," said Rose. And Ella sat back, feeling relief wash through her as her granddaughters started to laugh.
That night, for the last time, Maggie and Rose lay side by side on the flimsy pullout mattress, listening to the croaking of the frogs and the warm wind rustling the palm trees, and the occasional squeal of brakes as another resident of Golden Acres made his or her unsteady way home. 4 "I'm so full," Rose groaned. "Where'd you learn to cook like that?" "From Ella," said Maggie. "I paid attention. It was good, wasn't it?" "Delicious," said Rose, and yawned. "So what about you? Do you think you'll stay here?" "Yes," said Maggie. "I mean, I liked Philadelphia okay. And I still think about California sometimes. But I really like it here. I've got my job, you know. I'm going to grow my business. And Ella needs me."
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"For what?" "Well, maybe she doesn't need me," Maggie conceded. "But I think she likes having me around. And I sort of like being here. I mean, not here here," she said, gesturing to indicate the room, the condominium, the Golden Acres Retirement Community in general, "but Florida. Everyone here is from somewhere else, did you ever notice that?" "I guess." "It's good, I think. If everyone went to high school someplace else, it's not like you're always running into people who remember what you were like in high school, or college, or whatever. So you can be different, if you want to." "You can be different anywhere," said Rose. "Look at me." Maggie leaned on her elbow and looked at her sister, the familiar face, the hair spilling over the pillow, and saw Rose not as a threat, or a scold, or someone who was always going to tell her that she was doing things the wrong way, but as an ally. A friend. There was silence for a moment as the sisters lay side by si de. In her bedroom, Ella cocked her head and held her breath, listening. "I'm going to do it, you know," said Maggie. "Your Favorite Things. I'm going to open a store someday. I even know where." "I'll come down for your grand opening," said Rose. "And I want to tell you ..." "You're sorry," recited Rose. "You've changed." "No! Well, yes, I mean. It's true." "I know," said Rose. "I know you have." "But that's not what I wanted to tell you. What I wanted to tell you is, don't buy a dress." "What?" "Don't buy a dress. That's going to be my wedding present to you." "Oh, Maggie ... I don't know." "Trust me," said Maggie. "You want me to get married in a dress I've never even seen?"
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Rose gave a nervous laugh, while picturing the kind of dress Maggie would come up with—cut low, slit high, sleeveless, backless, and fringed. "Trust me," said Maggie. "I know what you like. I'll show you pictures. I'll let you try it on first. I'll come home. We can do fittings." "We'll see," said Rose. "But you'll let me try?" asked Maggie. Rose sighed. "Fine," she said. "Go for it. Knock yourself out." Silence again. "I love you, you know," said one of the girls, and Ella wasn't sure which one. Rose? Maggie? "Oh, please," said the other sister. "Don't be so sappy." Ella waited in her bedroom, holding her breath, waiting for more. But there was nothing. And, hours later, moving carefully, when she eased the door open and walked into the bedroom, both of the sisters were sleeping, both curled on their left sides with their left hands tucked under their cheeks. She bent down, hardly daring to breathe, and kissed them each on the forehead. Luck, she thought. Love. Your heart's every happiness. And, as quietly as she could, she laid two glasses of water, each with a single ice cube, on the bedside table and tiptoed out the door.
