Eddie clucked sympathetically and set the wineglasses on the kitchen table.
“I told her, I said, ‘Oh, honey. It’s not always going to be this way. You just don’t have things organized yet,’ I told her. ‘You’ve always been so good at organizing.’？”
“Where is…Jeff? Where is her husband in all this?” Eddie asked.
“She says he’s useless. Worse than useless. She says he’s scared of babies. Well, that’s what she gets for marrying a weird scientist type.”
Eddie clucked again and pulled out his chair to sit down.
“So I am thinking now is my chance,” Lily said, settling across from him. “When am I ever, ever again going to get to step in and take charge? Hee hee!”
Throughout his life Eddie had heard his mother talk about how wild and scatty her sister was, but this was his first in-person experience of it. （Had Morris been a calming influence, maybe?） Lily’s face was stretched tight with excitement; her eyes seemed to give off light. “Lily to the rescue!” she crowed. “Well, face it: I’ll never have this chance with my other grandchildren. That wife of Robby’s is Madame Know-It-All, and besides which, they’re off there on the Eastern Shore with her own family close by. Oh, it’s true what people say about daughters-in-law.”
Eddie had no idea what people said about daughters-in-law. （His own mother had only sons-in-law, Robby the Girl’s husband and Candle’s, both in other parts of the country.） He said, “Yeah, I can see why you’d want to help out. And I know Serena’d be glad to have you. But still: are you sure you should be selling your house yet? Don’t you want to change your mind about listing it?”
“No, I do not,” Lily said, and she took a big swig of wine and set her glass back down decisively. “I’ll have a lovely third-floor apartment that I won’t even need to furnish, because it’s already filled with tasteful antiques from Jeff’s side of the family. Say, maybe you’d like to buy my house! Just think: it would come completely stocked.”
Eddie smiled and said, “Thanks anyway.” He could just imagine Claude’s reaction if he proposed they move to Cedarcroft.
* * *
—
Lily did have a nice set of dishes—a complete set, not just mismatched odds and ends like Eddie’s. And two of her frying pans were cast iron, seasoned to a rich glow, and she also owned a Crock-Pot big enough to feed an army. Every time Eddie remarked upon something, not even saying for sure that he would take it, Lily made one of her crowing sounds and reached for a cardboard carton. She had a whole stack of them, the professional movers’ kind, heaped flat in one corner of the dining room alongside a stack of fresh newsprint. Each piece of china had to be wrapped in its own sheet of newsprint, which meant that one carton was quickly filled and they had to start in on another. “Hold on, there,” Eddie protested at one point. “My car’s a subcompact, may I remind you.”
“So? You can make several trips,” Lily told him.
He declined any furniture. “I’m overfurnished as it is,” he told her, “what with all that Mom and Dad passed on to me when they moved. Oh! But do you have any spare lamps?”
“Do I have lamps!” she said. “Do I! Just come with me, my boy,” and she led him into the living room, where one lamp, a crane-neck, appeared to be perfect for reading, although the other two were more ornamental.
It was then that Eddie happened to notice the recliner. “I remember this,” he said. “It used to be Pop-Pop’s.”
“Right, and Grandpa Wellington’s before that,” Lily said. She stroked the back of it affectionately—the slightly arched curve of worn brown leather. “A genuine family heirloom. You need this, I tell you.”
“But wouldn’t one of your kids want it? Robby, maybe, seeing as he’s a papa now?”
“Robby! His wife would throw a fit. She’s big on that chrome-and-glass style. And I already asked Serena, but she said, ‘Please, I beg of you, don’t bring me any more objects.’？”
Eddie sat down in the recliner and tipped it back. Pretty comfortable, all right. Although it wasn’t his own comfort he was thinking of; it was Claude’s. He could see Claude reclining in it happily every evening, the crane-necked lamp lighting the term papers he was grading.
“Morris used to claim this chair was better than a sleeping pill,” Lily said, still stroking the leather. “He’d settle into it after supper and whoops! Next thing you knew, he’d be snoring.”