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By Root 755 0

in a baggy, and three chocolate chip cookies. I didn’t know what to call Theresa anymore. What should I say to her, this person who didn’t fit in any category I knew of. Friend, I suppose she was, although I’d never had a friend before who had gone to such lengths. I should say thank you. That hardly seemed enough. I don’t know what I’d do without you, while true, was going too far. You are good to me, was corny. It was awkward, all of a sudden. In the amount of time it took me to look in the bag I no longer knew what to say. I should say something. Here I was so hungry, eating her food, food that she’d made expressly for me. She had drunk some of her water and was looking slantwise at an ant slugging along the linoleum with a crumb.

“That was nice for Emma and Claire. Upstairs, putting them to bed.” I cleared my throat. “This is awfully good.”

She nodded, keeping her eyes on the ant. She kept watching it while I bolted her sandwiches. I couldn’t think what we had talked about over so many lunches. I half wanted to get away.

“Thank you for making this,” I choked.

It was with some difficulty that she tore herself from the ant and turned her gaze on me. There was a whole wad of bread in my mouth, bulging in my cheek. I stopped chewing. I don’t know how it happens that two people can find themselves lost in an ordinary kitchen. The old clock, the hum of the refrigerator, the fan going in the living room—nothing was making noise anymore. The table, the cluttered counter top, the full compost bucket by the sink, the chatter from upstairs—everything fell away. We were caught in an empty place. It was just the two of us, shining at each other.

It wasn’t until she shook her curls, put her hands to her face, that we looked away. She was breathless and flushed, as if she’d run a long distance right to our table. I stared up, chewing. “It’s just a mess,” she wheezed. “Alice felt responsible for Lizzy. My friend Albert talked to me about—what did he call it?—‘the quality of mercy.’ The quality of mercy. He talked about how mercy blesses the giver and the receiver. The way he said it was beautiful. I’ve tried hard to think how Alice must feel. I wouldn’t want to trade places with her, not for a minute. She’ll always feel responsible, won’t she, nothing we can say will make her think she shouldn’t have done something different. I say that to myself, ‘the quality of mercy,’ when I’m despairing. I say those words as if I’m doing the rosary and I know, Howard, I know that embracing your family will bless me.”

She was trying to catch her breath and talk all at once. “What am I saying? Of course I’d change places if it meant Lizzy would be alive. But do you see what I mean? It would be so convenient to use Alice as a great big depository: The ‘Alice did it’ dump. That’s tempting—very tempting. My sisters have fallen into the trap but I’m not going to, Howard. I’m not going to. They say that Alice deserves to be locked up. If I disagree, they give each other knowing looks—a ‘We know Theresa’s sick in the head’ look. I made the mistake of telling one of them that I feel responsible for Alice. I think they were about ready to commit me. But I do feel responsible for her, because I could have prevented the charge, because Lizzy’s—death gave Carol Mackessy the spark she needed. You feel beholden to me for the food and the baby-sitting. I can’t stand it! Could we please stop seeing it in these terms? We belong together, that’s how I think of it. Your girls are helping Audrey, they’re helping me get through the day. Sure, sure, it would be nice if Dan could wake up, if he could step out of himself long enough to realize that Alice is actually in jail because the community is going through a purging ritual. I just feel—well, mute half the time. Dan will drop over dead working before he figures out that the way through grief is grief itself. He’s fighting it with all his strength because he thinks it will kill him.”

I was eating as fast as I could, tearing the grapes off their stems. I should tell her that she was more than adequately helping