I look into my cup. The tea is so heavy it’s nearly opaque. “I don’t think that’s true.”
Carol nods. “I guess it doesn’t matter, because it’s clear you think that cheating is unforgivable.”
“Isn’t it?”
Carol lifts her shoulders, slowly, to her ears. “I don’t know, is it?”
“We made vows, we made promises. I don’t think I’d ever be able to forgive him if he did this to me.”
“Maybe Eric doesn’t exist right now.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean maybe this trip isn’t about him. Maybe it’s not about whether or not you love him or whether or not he’s a good person and a good husband or does or does not deserve this. Maybe this is just about you.”
I look at my mother, at Carol, impossibly, solidly, here.
“Do you think that’s true?”
Carol blinks once, slowly. “You know good people make bad choices.” She looks down into her cup. “Good people do bad things all the time. Does it make them bad, too?”
Carol is still staring at her tea. I see her swallow.
“Are you okay?” I ask her.
She nods. “Yes, yes, of course. That’s just my opinion, for whatever it’s worth. I don’t think bad action makes you a bad person. I think life is far more complicated than that, and it’s reductive to think otherwise.”
There’s the Carol I know, opinionated about everything.
She stretches. “I’m going to clean up these plates.”
Carol gets up to her feet and begins stacking the dinner plates from the coffee table.
“Here,” I say. “I’ll help you.”
I lift one and then it spills over. The remaining contents of oil and garlic go straight down my dress, soaking into the silk.
“Shit.”
“Oh!” Carol says. “Not your gorgeous dress!”
“I’ll blot it,” I say. “Do you have baby powder?
“Blot?” Carol asks me.
I stand up. “You can dab it with powder and then let it sit. It should get most of it out.”
“How do you know that?”
The question startles me. You taught me. But she didn’t. Carol didn’t. In fact, the reality is that right now, I’m teaching her.
“My mom,” I tell her.
Carol hooks a wineglass between her chest and thumb. “Of course,” she says. “The woman who knew everything.” She smiles.
“Where is your bathroom?” I ask.
She points with her free hand. “Just through the bedroom on the right-hand side. Powder should be in the cabinet. I’ll lay out something for you to put on.”
“Thanks.”
Carol heads to the kitchen, and I hear the clattering of plates and the turn of the faucet. I go into the bathroom.
I take off the dress and loop it over my arms in the sink. I dab it with a hand towel to rid the fabric of the excess grease, and then locate the baby powder and sprinkle a generous helping over the material. As I’m washing my hands I notice all Carol’s products on the sink. Some tried-and-true—Aveeno, she used that right up until the end. Others will be discarded later. I pick up a bottle of golden perfume and inhale the scent. Honeysuckle.
I open the door and can hear Carol back in the kitchen, the water on. I’ve found myself in her bedroom. I see the clothes she just laid out for me on the bed—a button-down shirt and a pair of drawstring shorts. I fold the towel I’m wearing and put them on. They smell like her. I smell like her. I think about all her clothes lying in her closet in Brentwood, waiting for her return.
There’s a double bed with a white linen bedspread. To the left of the room, curtains billow in the breeze. There is a small closet where a few dresses hang. Colorful, floral prints. One blue linen. I recognize a pair of purple sandals that lace at the ankles.
I move around the room and touch everything softly, gingerly. I don’t want to disturb the air molecules. It feels like being in a museum—that she just stepped out for coffee, tomatoes, to mail a letter thirty years ago and never came back. Perhaps that’s what this is. A snapshot.
A big gust of wind blows the window back up against the wall. It makes a snapping sound, and I go over, making sure it’s not broken. It isn’t. Outside it appears like a storm is brewing. The evening is overcast, now, and the wind riled.
I close the window, snap the safety guard in place. And just as I’m turning to head back into the kitchen, I spot a framed photograph. It’s on the nightstand, propped up on top of a book. I recognize the frame. It’s small, silver. It has sat in my parents’ house, on my mother’s nightstand, for thirty years.