The hatchback inches forward. Everyone in Tova’s middle lane seems to be switching over to the right lane. Perhaps there’s something blocking the lane on the left. She’s about to switch on the blinker when the cell phone rings from its spot in her cup holder.
Tova jabs the screen. “Hello?” Nothing happens. Janice showed her how to make the cell phone work like a speaker, but now she can’t remember which of the little round icons does this. She tries another one and says again, louder, “Hello?”
“Mrs. Sullivan?” A male voice bleats from the device.
“Yes,” Tova says. “This is she.”
“Hi, this is Patrick. I’m with admissions at Charter Village. How are you today?”
“Fine, thank you.” Tova gives one last sidelong look at her rearview mirror and holds her breath as she guides the car into the right lane. She exhales, wondering if Patrick can hear it on the other end of the line.
“Good. I’m calling to make sure it’s okay to process your final deposit.”
“I see,” Tova says.
“We haven’t received your authorization form yet. Perhaps it got lost in the mail?”
“Oh, well, you know the postal service these days.”
Now all of the cars that merged right are fighting to make their way left. Why can’t anyone make up their mind? The cars remind Tova of a school of feckless fish dodging a predator’s attack, moving in unison, not realizing they’re fleeing the shark on one side only to be devoured by the seal on the other.
Patrick clears his throat. “So I’m calling because we need that final deposit in order to secure your move-in date, which is—hang on, let me check—oh, it’s next month.”
Tova hits the brake pedal a bit harder than intended. “Yes, I believe that’s correct.”
“No wonder my supervisor flagged this. Well, given the circumstances, I can take your verbal authorization to make the draft. Is that okay?”
Tova swings around a semitruck, back into the other lane, which is now zooming along at a good clip while the other lane stands still. How odd such things can be. Each little decision about which lane to choose determines exactly how you get where you’re going, and when. When Will was alive, he used to accompany Tova to do the grocery shopping sometimes, and he would always pick the slower checkout line. They used to joke about how he had a knack for it.
She and Will had gone to the grocery store the afternoon of the day Erik died. Tova remembers buying a box of those junky cream-filled snack cakes Erik always liked. Had Will chosen the slow checkout lane that day? If he’d picked the faster one, would they have arrived home in time to see Erik before he left for his job at the ferry dock? Would they have caught him sneaking beer from the fridge? Would he have mentioned that he was seeing a girl now? Would he have told Tova her name was Daphne and he couldn’t wait to bring her over for supper?
Would any of this have changed anything?
“Hello? Mrs. Sullivan? Are you there?”
“Yes.” Tova blinks at the phone in the cup holder. “I’m here.”
“Are you all right?” There’s a note of concern in Patrick’s voice. Tova pictures him hovering over a telephone at one of the desks inside the glass-walled office she walked by on her Charter Village tour.
“Go ahead,” she says. “Process it.”
Not Even a Birthday Card
Cameron has already mopped half the building when a flustered Tova hurries through the front door, almost an hour late.
“I’m sorry I’m late,” she says.
“No worries. We’ve well established I can handle this on my own.” He smiles, but doesn’t add that he’d been disappointed, again, when she hadn’t showed. That, strange as she is, he has looked forward to their evenings together. And today has been a bit lonely. He’s hardly said two words to Ethan since their argument. All that garbage Ethan’s apparently been spreading around town . . . it doesn’t even make sense. Something about a bad check. From a thousand years ago. Like Cameron needs any reminding that his mother was a loser.
Tova nods, then leans in conspiratorially. “I won’t double-check the trash liners this time. I trust you.”
Cameron gasps, feigning shock. “You trust me to assemble garbage cans! Wow, I’ve arrived.” He laughs, and Tova laughs along with him. “So, where were you, anyway?”
“Oh, well, it’s been quite an adventure.” Tova picks up a rag and begins to wipe down the glass front of the bluegill exhibit, while relaying an almost-unbelievable story about Grateful Dead memorabilia and online auctions and some guy at a warehouse down in Tukwila who almost wouldn’t hand her purchase over because she couldn’t confirm her friend’s email address, which she’d used because she doesn’t have one of her own. She scrubs at a fingerprint on the glass as she talks. Her cheeks are flushed in a most un-Tova-like way.