“I updated my social media after we broke up,” he explained. “That’s the picture I used.”
“It was the saddest thing I ever read,” Ava said. “He told everyone that he was alone and living in my basement, with no job and no hope.”
“It was supposed to be funny,” he told us. “I guess this is the whole ‘I’m not a comedian’ problem again.”
“No, it was pretty funny,” she acknowledged. “It was funny but also depressing.”
“I probably could have used your app for therapy,” he mentioned to me. “I think I’m much better now.”
I studied him and hoped so. I hoped he hadn’t felt that there had been a strange, grey film over life, or maybe just over his eyes when he looked through them. He didn’t act that way, as if everything was hard and exhausting, like it was just easier to stay inside and let the dulled-down world go on without him. But I also knew that he was upset about August—
“Emerson,” Levi said, and took my hand. He pulled me closer until our bodies were touching. “I’m not actually sad. I’m fine.”
“Are you worried about him?” Ava asked. Her mouth twitched in an odd way and I stared at her.
“Yes. You are too,” I pointed out, and then I recognized what she was doing with her lips. She was trying to keep them from smiling and thus revealing that she was thrilled that I cared so much about her brother. “Don’t you have a big project to finish?” I asked, and she immediately frowned.
“Yes, I have to get this done so it can be printed. Levi, I’m going to need a better picture than your mugshot,” she told him. “Don’t you have anything that looks less carceral?”
“Aunt Memerson,” Elliott called from the kitchen table and waved a puzzle piece. “Help.”
His big sister immediately corrected his pronunciation. “Em-er-son,” she told him, and patted his head condescendingly. He tried to bite her.
“I don’t mind if you call me that,” I said, and made myself disengage from Levi. When I sat back down, Elliott climbed into my lap and all in all, there was a lot of physical contact going on here. I thought it was great. I didn’t mind when Everly leaned over look for more pieces and also leaned on me, and I planned to hold the baby, who was napping as his mom tried to finish this giant project that she’d embarked on. Mr. and Mrs. Lassiter were coming up on their thirty-fifth wedding anniversary and Ava was planning a family party, one she’d assured us would have food. She was also planning to present them with a memory book of their years together that would include recent pictures of their adult children. That was where Levi’s mugshot had come in, and she was collecting other images from her sister, her brother-in-law, and—
“I’ll need yours, Aunt Memerson,” she mentioned. “Send me a few different pictures so I can play around with them.”
“What?” I swiveled so fast that I knocked two puzzle pieces on the floor and Woofy the dog almost got them before Everly managed to wrest them away. “Why?”
“She needs to put your picture in Grandma and Grandpa’s book,” Everly explained, and Elliott told me about wearing your nice clothes and not getting dirty until you had smiled and stood still, and then you were allowed to play with the dog as much as you wanted. “That was for my last day of school picture,” his sister then explained to him, and she had a lot to say about posing and about how their baby brother had tried to escape, but she’d held onto him real tight.
“That’s true,” Jeff said as he came in with baby Ezra. “Grandma had to step in to save this little guy.”
Elliott decided that he was done with the puzzle and wanted to play with the dog, and his sister joined him. I needed to get going, too, because I had a meeting with a new client, but I did hold the baby for a moment before Levi walked me outside. “Sure you don’t need a ride?” he asked.
“No, you don’t have to chauffer me,” I told him. It was nice when he did, since we got to see each other more that way, but I didn’t want him to have to leave his family. “I’m only going to the coffee place where you and I met for the first time.”
“I look back on that day with fondness and shame,” he said, and jiggled his jaw in a way that looked a lot like a chicken drinking.
“It was memorable,” I answered. “It made me laugh after I left. I stood on the sidewalk cracking up.”
“Good, then I did better than I thought I had. Despite your concerns about my mugshot, I’m also doing well now.” That was also good. I leaned against his side and soaked up the closeness until my stopped at the curb and I had to disengage.
I was on time for the meeting at the coffee shop, but my potential client was a little late. That was ok. It didn’t have to mean that she was inconsiderate, but maybe that she was as busy as Ava. That level of industriousness also could have pointed to a successful business, one that needed my help. Her schedule had been too full to meet with me during the week, after all, which was why I was waiting at this table on a Saturday.
Then a woman walked into the café and looked around, and when her eyes focused on me, her jaw dropped. She strode over quickly. “Pandora? Hi, I’m—” I started to say, but she was already talking.
“Oh, shit! This is crazy. It’s crazy!” she said, and stuck out her hand. “So good to meet you!”
“I’m Memer—Emerson Mack,” I responded, but she kept going.
“It’s crazy!” the woman repeated. “You look just like her.”
“What?” I asked, and then I saw what she had in her hand. She carried a copy ofDimidiate, my mother’s final published work. “What is that?” I asked. “I thought we were meeting to discuss bookkeeping—why do you have that?” No one had it. It had sold about three copies and been panned by all the erudite reviewers,which was one of the reasons…what was the reason that this woman was here?
The person who had called herself “Pandora” flipped overDimidiateand pointed excitedly to the small picture on the back. It was the publicity photo that my mother had used for everything. In it, she wore glasses and a hat as a way to diminish her beauty, but it hadn’t worked. I’d always thought that she looked like a model wearing a detective costume for Halloween.
“She wrote about you in this,” she told me. “Her approach to motherhood was fascinating. Don’t you think so?”
