I walked over to the stairs, called out to see if the kids were okay, and they shouted that they were. When I stepped back into the kitchen, my mom said, “I knew you were coming.”
“Is that right?” I said, feeling my skin getting itchy, my heartbeat picking up.
“A man called a while ago. Cal or Carl or . . . something like that. Asked if I’d heard from you.”
“What did you tell him?” I asked her.
“I said I hadn’t seen you all summer, that I hadn’t even talked to you,” she said.
“Okay,” I said, because I knew there was more.
“He said that I should call him if you turned up with two kids,” she continued, now finally looking at me. “Said he’d pay me for my trouble.”
“So did you call him back?” I asked.
She shook her head. “He was so stiff, so formal. I didn’t like his tone. So, no, I didn’t call him back.”
The water was finally boiling, and I poured in the macaroni.
“You’re welcome,” she said.
“Madison’s husband,” I said, “he’s—”
“I don’t want to know,” she told me.
“Well, the kids, Bessie and Roland. Something you need to know—”
“No, I don’t need to know,” she said. “I won’t keep you from what you want to do, Lillian. I’ve never kept you from what you want—”
I huffed, my turn to interrupt her.
“You do what you want, but just let me have my peace,” she said after a few seconds.
When I looked over at her, she seemed so old, even though she was only forty-seven, and I knew that sometimes she adopted the mannerisms and posture of someone much older to avoid having to do things that she didn’t want to do. If I’d been a man, if I’d been handsome, she would not have been reading a magazine about coastal living and yawning. I think, maybe, if I’d been anyone other than her daughter, she would have acted differently, but I made her feel old, because I was hers.
I stirred the pasta, started putting hot dogs in a pan.
“I never pictured you with kids,” she said. “You didn’t seem the type for it.”
“That makes two of us,” I replied.
“We’re so hungry!” Roland shouted from the attic.
“Let ’em come on down,” my mom said, indicating the table. She stood up and filled four plastic cups with water.
“Come down!” I shouted up at them, the rickety house letting sound shoot through the walls and floors, and then they were thumping down the stairs.
“Hi!” Roland said, again waving to my mom, who took her magazine and pulled her chair over near the window.
I heated up the hot dogs, nearly burning them because I was also straining the macaroni, and then I mixed everything together in a pot. I got some plates and served them.
“Don’t you want some?” Roland asked my mom.
“I guess so,” she replied, and she pulled her chair over to the table. She took a bite and nodded. “It’s good,” she told me. She always liked it when I cooked for her, whatever it was.
“You’re quiet,” my mom said, pointing her spoon at Bessie.
“I’m a little tired,” Bessie replied.
“She’s cute,” my mom said to me, her spoon still fixed on Bessie, who brightened a little.
“We’re on a trip,” Roland announced, wanting my mother’s attention.
“For how long?” she asked. I wondered how long it had been since she’d talked to a child. To anyone.
“We don’t know,” Roland said. “It’s hard to tell.”
“Just for a little while,” I told the table, not hungry, pushing my food around my plate.
“We don’t stay anywhere for very long,” Bessie admitted.
“Well,” my mom said, “it’s better than just staying in one place for your entire life.”
“I don’t think so,” Bessie said, looking at me now, like she wanted me to say something, but my mind was somewhere else, not in this house. This happened a lot, where my body was right here, in the house where I’d grown up, but my mind was hovering just outside it, waiting to see what it was that I was going to do.
After the kids fell asleep, I was still too keyed up to do anything. Being back in this house, in the attic, felt like sliding down the biggest slide in the world, just an utterly cosmic joke. I tried to imagine my life before this summer, all the times I moved out and then moved right back. I had been so smart, and then when things didn’t work out exactly how I’d hoped, it was like I pushed that curiosity way down inside myself. I’d wasted so much time.