“Maybe. But I didn’t nag Billy about dishes in the sink for twenty-seven years either. I realized it wasn’t going to change and I learned to deal with it.”
Selena nodded gloomily. “Anyway. A point hit where ... well, some stuff at work was hard and my mother was being exhausting and Walter was trying to help, I guess, and then it all just got to be too much. I had a bit of a nervous breakdown.”
Grandma did not respond to this with shock or horror. “Huh. Never had one myself. Always thought they sounded interesting.”
“It wasn’t. I couldn’t stop crying for three days. I got so tired of it. I wasn’t even crying at anything. I’d make a sandwich and cry. I’d drive and cry at stoplights. I wasn’t even sad, you understand, I just ...couldn’t.” She swallowed, remembering the sheer banality of it all, that apparently she was now just a person who cried all the time for no reason. Walter had tried reason and logic and all she’d wanted was to just be left alone long enough to stop crying, but he just kept coming in and talking to her as if he could somehow argue her out of it and she finally snapped and said, “I’mnot crying, myfaceis crying, it’s got nothing to do with me.” She’d come out of it feeling unable to trust her own brain, which had, after all, failed her spectacularly. Everything had gotten worse after that. It left her obsessively memorizing her scripts because she couldn’t be trusted to act normal on the fly, as if all her hard-won skills at simply being around other people had fallen by the wayside. “Anyway. Walter tried to help, and I know he meant well, but ...”
“Sounds like you’re well out of it,” said Grandma Billy. “Having people picking at you all the time is hard enough. Acting like it’s for your own good, that’s just too damn much.”
“Yeah.” Selena lifted her glass in toast to her absent mother. “That was the last good turn Mom did me. She died, and I had to go deal with things. Walter couldn’t. He couldn’t get away from work for that long. And we were sure I’d screw it up, but it turns out it’s easy. I mean, there’s lots of paperwork, but there’s a system, you know? You just go down the list. And everybody expects you to be broken up, so it was okay if I had to stop and be alone for a little while. That wasnormal. It was like closing the deli at night. I just had to do the things and check the boxes and it went ... fine.”
“That’s good.”
Selena nodded. “And the thing was ... I was staying in my mother’s house and he wasn’t there and ... oh god, it was soeasy. At first I thought that it was horrible of me and I must hate my mother because I was so relaxed now that she was dead. But then he’d call and I’d get tense again and I realized it wasn’t her, it washim, and that I was calm because I didn’t have to listen to him pick apart my day over and over ...”
“Christ. No wonder. That’d drive a body to more than drink.”
“I was going to go back. It hadn’t occurred to me not to go back. But then I was sitting there looking at flights and I suddenly thought,What if I don’t?” She shook her head. She didn’t think she could explain to anyone, even Grandma, what that moment had been like. How the whole world had stopped around her and the thought had rung inside her skull like a bell, leaving great tolling echoes behind. “There was only a little money left from Mom’s insurance—I didn’t dare take any out of our joint account, he’d have known right away—and I told him I had to stay an extra day to talk to the Realtor and then I just got on the train. Mom hadn’t thrown away Aunt Amelia’s old postcards. I knew the address. And at the first stop, I used a pay phone and I called the deli and told them I had to quit.” She sighed. She still felt guilty about leaving them short-handed.
She stared dry-eyed into the mojito. Her last act before she’d gone out of cell service had been to send Walter an email saying that she was sorry but it was over, and she needed time before she talked to him again. Then she’d turned off her phone because he was going to call her and talk to her and he would talk to her until he wore her down and she came back.
“Well, you got out here eventually,” said Grandma. “That’s the important thing.” She raised her glass. “Good job, you.”
It was full dark. The stars blazed overhead. Copper snored at Selena’s feet.
“We should probably turn in,” said Grandma.
Selena slugged back the last of her drink and followed obediently.
It occurred to her, as she made up a nest of blankets in front of the fireplace, that she had not thought about fetches after Grandma had asked her about Walter.
And nothing bad had happened.
She went to sleep with Copper curled up warm against her back and nothing bad continued to happen for the rest of the night.
Selena got up in the morning and the world was still there. Copper ambled outside and peed on a bush that looked dead, and then sniffed around for rabbits. Finding nothing immediately interesting, she came back up the stairs and dropped on the porch with awhumph.
Grandma was on the porch, sitting in a rocking chair. Selena grunted and went into the bathroom to splash water on her face.
“Are you to take her place?”
“What?” She looked over her shoulder. “What did you say?”
There was no immediate answer. She wiped her hands off on her jeans and went to the door. “Sorry, what did you say?”
“Eh?” said Grandma. “Didn’t say anything.”
“I’m hearing things,” said Selena.
“Well, that happens. The desert’s full of voices.”
Still half asleep,she thought.That must be it.Maybe it had been a leftover fragment of dream.
Maybe I’m losing my mind,she thought, almost reflexively. Normally she would worry about that, but she had thought it so many times recently that there didn’t seem to be much point in rehashing it so soon.
Instead she had coffee and went out to work in the garden.
Grandma left at midday. “I’ll stay another night if you want,” she said, “but I’m guessin’ you’d rather get some time without somebody chattering at you. I gotta go feed the chickens, but you know where to find me.”
