Love Invents Us - Amy Bloom [50]
“All right,” Elizabeth said, “we’ll go out to Mad Nan’s Orchards and get some apples and feed the ducks. You know, I can’t have him out for more than two and a half, three hours. Is that enough?”
“Fine. Call me when you’re about to get your car.”
“Mother, we don’t need split-second timing for this. It’s not a military maneuver, for Christ’s sake.”
“I am coming with three assistants and a van. I am going to do everything but paint, and I promise not to rearrange his books or records. I don’t think Max would like to feel that I’m doing him a large favor, do you? I do think he can tolerate the idea that your mother is coming in to tidy things up a little, and to make her daughter’s life more pleasant. All right?”
“All right. Jesus, Margaret, what a business. But thank you. What day?”
“Go for a spin on Thursday. That gives me four days to set things up and get these blighters moving.”
“You do that, you get those blighters moving. Thank you.” Elizabeth put down the phone. Was God obliged to close one big window in order to crack open this ridiculously tiny door?
Elizabeth used to stand in the kitchen of her parents’ house, before Margaret had her downtown office, listening to her mother do business in that same happy, crisp, pugnacious voice. Four months ago, standing in Max’s small, dirty kitchen, helping bag chicken breasts and turkeyburgers, her mother tried again.
She asked Elizabeth to talk to her husband’s partner.
Elizabeth said, “Rachel”—now that Rachel was a doctor, Margaret no longer flinched when she was mentioned—“says Zoltow’s very friendly with his female patients, friendly to the point of lawsuit.” She slid two skinless chicken breasts onto a plate of Mrs. Dash and flipped them over.
“I’m sure Aaron could suggest someone else, then. A woman.”
“Why would I go?”
“This is no way to live.” Margaret waved her small hand around the three crowded rooms, the couch covered with blankets and Elizabeth’s underwear, the dying plants, the cornucopia of medications spilled across the kitchen table. “You’re twenty-four. Why are you doing this? Do tell me. I would like to know.”
“He’s going to die, and he was there for me when I needed him. It’s all right. It won’t take that long.”
Margaret nodded. Considering they’d never discussed Elizabeth’s relationship with Max and that Margaret never allowed herself to think anything untoward about his constant and fatherly affection for her daughter, grateful that some paternal figure had kept his hand in, it was amazing how quickly she understood. “Nothing I can say, then? Trip to Europe, that sort of thing?”
Elizabeth shook her head and put her hand out to wipe crumbs off the counter. If she had known that her mother would never again have money to spare, she might have said yes and seen Paris.
Margaret caught her by the wrist. She blinked hard and did not cry and did not say, Is your life so terrible that you prefer this? She pulled Elizabeth’s hand so close Elizabeth could feel her mother’s warm breath on her palm. Margaret said, “You need a manicure,” and pulled out a fresh bottle of Cherries in the Snow and an orange stick.
“Max, on Thursday my mother’s coming to do a little housecleaning for us and hang a few pictures.”
Max opened his eyes, his hair sticking up all over his head, like a great grey baby.
“Pictures? I can’t wait. The entire history of the Empire, in jewel tones, right here in my boudoir. Tell her thanks.”
“I did.”
He closed his eyes again, tugging the comforter up over his shoulders. When he was a little boy, he loved and imitated his stepfathers Irish tenor, the only sweet sound in a house of Mississippi ululation and breaking glass. “’Twas on the Isle of Capri that I met her, something something a thin golden ring on her finger, ’twas good-bye on the Isle of Capri.” The edge of the comforter poked his leaking right eye. He