As she stood outside Irena’s door, she thought back to when she’d made an offer on her flat, fifteen years before, and the estate agent, rather embarrassed, told her that she had to meet Irena before her offer could be accepted. It had put other people off, he’d said, but Eleanor had been charmed by the idea and agreed immediately, going round the next day to sit in Irena’s warm, cinnamon-scented kitchen, where they’d talked and laughed, so that afterwards she’d waited by her phone like an excited schoolgirl, desperate to know if the object of her affection returned her feelings.
They’d always been more than just neighbors, she and Irena, more than just people who exchanged polite chitchat when they bumped into each other. They’d sat in each other’s kitchens and learned things about each other, they’d helped each other out of bad situations, they’d carried milk and medicine to front doors, they’d included each other at times of festivities. Then, a few years earlier, Irena’s daughter, Sarah, had rung Eleanor and said she had begun to worry about her mother living alone, with both Sarah and her brother living over an hour away in different directions, but Irena was refusing to move. Eleanor had totally understood her reluctance to move and had also been appalled at the idea of her not being there, so she’d told Sarah to call her anytime if she was worried about her mother, and that she would make sure she went to see Irena at least once a week. So now she had supper with Irena every Thursday, unless she was away or tied up with work, and it had become a little oasis in her week, which she sometimes thought she needed more than Irena did.
It wasn’t Thursday, in fact it was Tuesday, but Eleanor longed for Irena as she stood outside her door and the hall light clicked itself off. She longed for her in a way she used to long for her mother, who five years earlier had finally lost her grip on a sanity that had been tenuous for a while and now wouldn’t recognize her, even if she’d been able to speak. Eleanor knocked and tried not to cry. But as soon as Irena opened the door, leaning on her walking stick, and the sweet fog of her flat hit her, Eleanor couldn’t stop herself, her mouth simply pulling toward the ground and her tears spouting from her sore eyes.
“Eleanor, Eleanor,” Irena said in her accent, which still retained its Polish roots. “Child, what is the matter?”
But Eleanor couldn’t stop crying or form words into sentences, so Irena pulled at her elbow and she allowed herself to be led by this tiny woman who hobbled in front of her to the little kitchen at the back of the house.
“Sit,” Irena said, pointing at a chair with her stick and so Eleanor sunk gratefully. “Do you need tea? Or vodka?”
Eleanor laughed briefly. “Vodka.”
Irena reached down to a low cupboard and produced a dusty bottle and two grimy shot glasses, which she placed on the table before sitting herself. “Now, you tell me what has happened.”
Eleanor accepted the little glass, greasy with fingerprints and age, downing the warm liquid, which rushed through her blood. “You know my friend Nancy?”
“The one with the big house and lots of complaints?”
Eleanor felt ashamed that her descriptions of Nancy had resulted in Irena seeing her this way. “Yes. She died last night.”
“Oh my God.” Irena crossed her bony fingers over her pigeon chest, which made Eleanor think of her heart and how much sadness it had had to endure, and she wondered how the woman had been able to bear it. “I am so sorry. How did it happen?” Irena said.
“I think, maybe—I mean, they seem to think she was murdered.” The concept still didn’t feel real to Eleanor; surely murder was something that happened to other people.
“The lady by the river? I heard about it on the news this evening.”
“Yes.” Eleanor’s tears had now dried, but her body had developed an internal tremor. She poured them both more vodka and they both downed a shot. “I don’t know what to do, Irena.”
“Nothing tonight but weep. And then you get up tomorrow and you start doing.” She placed her hand over Eleanor’s and it felt like wax paper.
“No—but you don’t understand. I saw her the night she died, and I wasn’t nice to her.” The words felt sharp in Eleanor’s chest.
“You argued?”
“Not really, no. It was an argument we’d been having for a while. I suppose I sort of disapproved of how she was living, and I was angry with her that she couldn’t seem to sort it out.”
“Ah.”
Eleanor forced herself to look into Irena’s eyes, trying to find the judgment she felt should be there, but if anything, they looked worried, kindly even.
“We only bother to argue with the people we love, you know.”
Eleanor tried to smile, but her face hurt too much.
“When my children were little and told me I was mean because I shouted at them about their manners, or told them they couldn’t eat sweets for breakfast, or all the other things that make mothers cross, I used to tell them that it takes so much more effort to be stern than it does just to say yes—that if I wanted an easy life, I would let them do all they asked. But I also told them I loved them too much to always say yes, that I took the time to scold them and argue with them so they would learn what was right or wrong. Anger is often not cruelty, Eleanor, it is more often love.”
“But the last things I said to her were so unkind. I feel terrible.”
Irena shook her head. “I don’t think I have ever told you, Eleanor. But when my husband died, I felt guilty for months afterward. I was forever going over and over in my head how I could have made him more comfortable, or told him I loved him more, or hidden my sadness better. Anything I could find to torture myself with, I did. Until one day I realized all I was doing was hiding from my grief. That the guilt allowed me to make it about me, not about losing him.”
Eleanor tried to let Irena’s words penetrate, but she felt hollowed out by grief, as if it were eating away at her and she had to grab hold of something, anything, to pull her back. “I’m not sure how I can go on.” She hated herself for saying those words to Irena, a woman who had experienced such hardship, but she couldn’t stop herself.
Irena reached out her hand and cupped Eleanor’s face so she was forced to meet her eyes. “You will go on because you have to.”
“How did you do it, Irena?” Eleanor’s voice was no more than a whisper, and it felt like the whole world had contracted around them. She stared at Irena’s creased face, as if precious secrets were held within its pendulous folds.
“I remember that I am nothing special,” Irena answered. “I have this picture in my head of the world and all these bright lights shining out of it. All that goodness everywhere. And it reminds me that what feels like a great tragedy to me is nothing more than a small sorrow in the big scheme of things.”
The idea of Nancy’s death being seen as something small was almost revolting to Eleanor. She felt her face contracting around the idea.
Irena registered her grimace and smiled gently at her. “Maybe you are not ready to hear this yet, Eleanor, but sorrow is a bit like sacrifice. We, as women, absorb it so others don’t have to. But then one day we stand back, and we say, enough, I have done my bit, let another person take this. So we pass it on, and the next woman steps forward and it all begins again. All our sorrows and sacrifices are small, ultimately, and that is a good thing. That is the way of the world.”