“Who’s that?” she said to Buddy. She walked to the door as the golden retriever slipped on the hardwoods with his enthusiasm.
“How was your day?” Alice asked her husband. But when he leaned in to kiss her, she couldn’t stomach acting like normal, not today, and turned the other way as if to check the simmering pot.
In answer to the rejection, Walker ignored her question. “Isn’t it a little cold for the windows to be open?” He walked over to shut them without waiting for an answer.
Without another word, he stopped at the fridge to grab a beer and went to sit on the gray suede couch in the living room. His tennis shoes, still muddy from running up and down the sides at Robbie’s game, clunked to the floor, and the television flipped on.
After a hug from Alice, Robbie sat on the hardwood floor with the back of his too-clean soccer jersey against the dark island cabinets and Buddy propped under his thighs. He retrieved a cursive practice sheet from his backpack and started to draw the letters carefully.
Alice dialed Caitlin and struggled to balance the phone on her shoulder while opening a bag of shredded cheese.
“Where are you? I made chili. Weren’t you going to come home earlier tonight so we could have Sunday family dinner?”
“I’m at Chelsea’s. Maybe it’s better if I eat here.”
Alice sighed. “I feel like I haven’t seen you.” Since the day Caitlin announced she would apply to NYU and Walker forbade it, her waking hours at the house had dwindled to near zero.
“Will you come if I tell him not to bring it up?”
“Fine. Be home soon.”
Finally, a crisis Alice knew how to solve.
Alice retrieved a beer from the fridge as a bargaining chip and walked to the family room. “If you keep this up,” she said to Walker, “she’s going to be living at Chelsea’s pretty soon.”
“We’re not letting her live at her girlfriend’s house.” He turned his eyes away from Mad Money. “The farthest I’m willing to go is Duke. It was good enough for us, right?”
She handed him the beer, and he twisted off the cap.
“Promise me you’ll drop it for tonight.”
He nodded and looked back at the TV.
When Caitlin came in ten minutes later, she and Robbie set the table as he explained the intricacies of his teacher’s post-marriage name change: “She was Miss Smith, but now we’re supposed to call her Mrs. Hersch. Isn’t that weird? Last week, she changed the name on her desk and everything.”
Caitlin nodded. “Very weird.”
The family sat at a dinged-up six-seater wooden table in the kitchen with Buddy at Alice’s feet. Like most of the house, the room felt homey but a few years too worn, the walls a warm yellow that was no longer in style and made the entire room look dark. For years, Alice had put off Walker’s pleas to work with a decorator to mimic the magazine decor of his colleagues. And since Walker’s promotion to partner at a top Atlanta law firm a few months ago, he insisted a complete remodel was the only solution. She imagined her plants in their mismatched pots and the children’s artwork gone in favor of stylized accessories, and her stomach twisted again, remembering what tomorrow held.
Alice and Walker joined hands, but Caitlin lingered before she grabbed her father’s hand. He squeezed and smiled at her. Caitlin closed her eyes.
“Dear God, Our Father,” Walker said, and on cue the family bowed their heads. “We thank you for the gifts we are about—” The telephone rang, and Caitlin hopped up to grab it.
“It’s Mimi,” she said, bringing the still-ringing phone over to Alice. Alice considered not answering, but clicked the phone on for the last ring: “Hello?”
“Hello? With whom am I speaking?” her mother said, voice dripping honey, as if she had dialed a friend and a sweet-voiced child answered instead.
“It’s Alice. Your daughter.” She tried to mimic her mother’s sweetness.
“What?” her mother said too loudly.
In the background, a nurse said: “Your daughter, Alice. You wanted to call and talk to her, Mrs. Tate.”
“Yes. Robinson is going to check you out after third period. We’re leaving for Florida at 2:00 p.m. sharp. I’ll hold you both accountable if you’re late, and we’ll go on to the beach without you. Is that understood?”
“Yes.”
“Yes what?”
Alice closed her eyes and tried to gather her patience. “Yes, ma’am.”
“Good girl.” Maura hung up.
Her mother had returned them both to this moment—the last shred of normalcy before everything with Rob fell apart—more and more frequently in the last months, as if Maura’s brain was a speeding train that knew it was about to hit a wall, as if deep inside her subconscious, she remembered about the house and its sale and demolition, as if she remembered Alice would finally be forced to go inside. But the call was only another lapse in memory, even if it felt like a victory lap to the decades-long battle of stubbornness that Alice and Maura had fought over the house.
The battle over the house intensified every year. First, when Alice came to pick up her mother from the house, she would take longer getting ready as Alice waited in the driveway, to see if she would come inside to fetch her. When that didn’t work, Maura doubled her standards for Christmas every year in a silent plea for relocation to her own home. The silver and lace tablecloth, tall burning candles, and crystal wineglasses waged war with Alice’s scratched leather-backed dining chairs, but neither Maura nor Alice voiced the battle out loud. At times like those, Richard had always acted as the buffer between Alice and her mother. He died five years ago, but she still missed him.
“How was she?” Caitlin asked, while Walker spooned sour cream into his chili.
“Sounded like a bad day.”
They ate in silence for a few minutes, forgetting the unsaid prayer. Robbie raised a full spoon above his bowl and let the chili splash back down.
“You know the rules,” Walker said to him. “Eat or you’re not leaving this table.”
Robbie rested his chin on the table and eyed the full bowl.
“If you need me tomorrow, call my cell, instead of the Center. I’ll be at Mimi’s house all day.”
“Why?” Robbie said.
“Since she’s living at her apartment now”—that’s what she and Walker called the nursing home—“I’m going to get all of her stuff out, so they can build a new house there.”
“Why?”
“Because Mimi’s house is old,” Walker said.