Kathie Nicely.
Mary edged up onto an elbow. The woman who had walked out on her family. A flash of heat shot through Mary, even as she remembered the woman: petite, pleasing-looking. “Huh,” Mary said quietly, and lay back down. Kathie Nicely, behind her smile, had not cared for Mary, and only now did Mary understand that it was because Mary had come from such humble beginnings. “Humble beginnings” is what Mary’s mother-in-law had said of Mary’s background. It was true. They didn’t have two nickels to rub together. But Mary had been a cute little thing, a cheerleader, when she caught the eye of the Mumford boy, whose father had that huge business in farm machinery. What had she known? Lying on her bed, Mary shook her head. Less than nothing she had known.
Well, she thought, turning on her side, she knew some things now: the fact that Kathie Nicely had never really acknowledged her. Mary waved a hand dismissively. But they had gone to one of the girls’ weddings. The oldest girl? It must have been. Years ago.
Wait. Wait. Wait.
It came to Mary now. Kathie Nicely had already moved out, and people at the wedding were whispering that she’d had an affair. And somehow—why would this be the case?—it was this, the whisperings, that had caused Mary to understand that her own husband had been having an affair—with that dreadful fat Aileen, his secretary. It had taken a few days to get the confession from him, then Mary had her heart attack— Well, of course she hadn’t remembered Kathie Nicely when her own world had tumbled down around her so.
—
She reached across the bed and tugged her yellow leather pocketbook toward her, found her phone, and put her earbuds in; Elvis sang “I’ve Lost You.” Two years older than Mary, and from the same little town in Mississippi that Mary had been born in, Elvis Presley had always been her secret friend, though she had never once seen him, whisked off as she was to the farmlands of Illinois when she was just a baby so that her father could take a job in a filling station owned by his cousin in a town called Carlisle. One time, Elvis performed two hours from where she lived, but with the children so little she could not go to see him. Oh, Mary had spent more time thinking about Elvis than anyone could have imagined, and in this way the pleasure of her mind—because it was her mind and could not be known by others—had developed early in her marriage. In her mind, she had been backstage with Elvis; she had looked into his lonely eyes and let him see that she understood him. In her mind, she had consoled him about the “fat and forty” remark that the stupid comedian had made on national television; in her mind, they had spent time alone while he talked to her of his hometown and his mama. When he died, she wept quietly for days.
But Paolo—she had told Paolo of her fantastical life with Elvis, and Paolo had watched her, one eye partially closed, then he opened his arms and hugged her. The freedom. Oh God, the freedom of being loved—！
She woke to see her daughter in the doorway. Mary patted the bed beside her. “Come, honey. That’s not his side, I’m on his side.”
Angelina placed her shiny little computer on the dresser top and went and lay down beside her mother. Mary said, “Look at that ocean. It goes all the way to Spain.” Angelina closed her eyes. Mary sat up a bit. “Say, how’s your father’s brain?” She belched softly, the apricot filling of her earlier cornetto returning on her.
“He’s not demented,” Angelina said, “though I watch out for it.”
“Good,” Mary answered. She found a tissue in her large yellow pocketbook and touched it to her lips. “I meant his cancer, though.”
Angelina opened her eyes and sat up herself now. “There’s no recurrence of the cancer. Don’t you think we’d have told you?”
“I don’t know,” Mary answered truthfully.
“We’re not mean, Mom. We’d tell you if Dad got sick again. Come on, Mom.”
“Angel, of course you’re not mean. No one said you were mean. I was just asking.” Mary thought: I am a fool. This clarity of belief made her feel sorry for her daughter and weepy again. She sat up farther. “Come on, let’s not think about it.” From her yellow leather pocketbook she pulled out a plastic bag of used tissues and dropped them into a wastebasket beneath the table by her bed.
Angelina laughed. “You’re so funny. Your constant collection of used tissues.”
And this made Mary laugh—to hear her sweet child laughing. “I’ve told you, when you have five girls and they’re all home sick with colds, you have to just keep walking around picking up tissues—”