I looked down at the container of meatballs in my lap. I’d wanted to cook the girls something sophisticated, something that wouldn’t be served by a cafeteria lady in a hairnet. Good Housekeeping had a recipe for salmon mousse canapés in last year’s holiday entertaining issue, but my mother had wrinkled her nose and said yuck when I told her what went in them. I’m not spending nine dollars on a nice piece of salmon just so you can turn it into mush. There was a pound of chuck in the freezer left over from Christmas; I was welcome to that. I’d sealed the meatballs in one container and some chopped parsley in another. I could at least impress the women by sprinkling fresh herbs over the dish. My father had taught me to finish a dish with something green. He’d happily moonlighted as the home ec instructor every time Mrs. Paulson had another baby. Cooking was one of my favorite hobbies, but it had died along with the only other person in my family who appreciated good food.
I sighed, full of pity for myself. Maybe I could freeze them for next week. The parsley wouldn’t keep, so I’d have to buy some more, but parsley was cheap. And I was sporting an especially vile blemish on my chin. I’d just started on a new medication, Acnotabs, that I’d seen advertised in that same issue of Good Housekeeping. “Now stop acne where it starts… inside your body.” I was supposed to start seeing an improvement in two to three weeks. Maybe by next week I could attend the grief group and not have to worry about finding a seat in the shadows. And certainly by the time my father’s ceremony rolled around, I’d be a brand-spanking-new version of myself. Everyone would see that I’d come a long way over the last few years, and maybe they’d stop looking at me like that. Like I was fragile but also frightening.
I started at the knock on the car window. Someone was speaking my name. “Ruth, right? Ruth?”
There was fog on the glass, and I wiped it away to see Tina, waving and smiling and talking, though I couldn’t hear most of what she was saying through the pane. I rolled down the window.
“I ran out of windshield wiper fluid!” She smacked her forehead with the heel of her hand. “I’m always running out of windshield wiper fluid here! I’m from Texas,” she said, as though that might explain it, “trying to get used to all this rain.”
At this I brightened. “Actually,” I informed her, “it rains more in New Hampshire and Florida than it does in Washington State.”
Tina put her hand on her hip with an I’ll-be-damned laugh. “Is that true?”
I nodded earnestly. “We have a reputation for rain, but actually what we don’t have is good water pressure. Think of it like a shower. The rain mists out, so it feels like it’s raining all the time. With the exception of June through August, of course, when it’s the most beautiful place you’ll ever visit.”
“Fascinating,” Tina agreed, and we smiled at one another.
My mother exited the gas station. She had her head down, counting out her change, and when she looked up to see me smiling at a woman she didn’t know, she picked up her pace. “Ruth?” she ventured shakily, once she was within earshot.
Tina turned around. “Oh, hi. I’m Martina Cannon. Tina, if you want. I’m in the grief group with Ruth.”
My mother raised her chin imperiously and accepted Tina’s outstretched hand as if it were Tina’s great honor to meet her. “I’m Shirley Wachowsky. Ruth’s mother.”
“I’m so sorry for your loss,” Tina said, and my mother braved her condolences with a fatigued exhale.
“Thank you. I keep telling my daughter that I’m the one who needs this group, but with two grandchildren, who has the time?” Her laugh was absurdly modest. There was nothing at all taxing about having two grandchildren.
“Oh!” Tina said. “I didn’t realize you had a difficult relationship with your husband.”
Well, no shit. I clapped my hand over my mouth, trapping my surprised laugh in my throat. No one had ever leveled my mother so breezily before.
My mother gathered herself to her full height, not very tall. “I’m not sure what that means, exactly, but we need to get going.” She stepped around Tina and hoisted her purse higher up on her shoulder, holding it tight to her person as though Tina were a hoodlum who may try and swipe it.
Tina gave me a little wave over her shoulder. “See you in a few,” she said, and then she winked at me.
My mother shot me a scathing, wordless warning through the windshield, but I did it anyway. “Actually,” I called after Tina, “would you mind giving me a ride?”