Tuesday, November 10
Jo was waiting on the step when Willa got there. She had put on the repaired dress for the fitting and covered it with a coat that didn't quite close over the beads.
“Don't start,” she said.
“I didn't.”
“You looked.”
“I have eyes.”
“They're very busy.”
Willa unlocked the car she'd borrowed from the school's pool for the evening, an arrangement Luis had made with a sigh and a charge she'd already paid. Jo lowered herself into the passenger seat, gathering the dress under her coat. She had a shoebox on her lap.
“You can put that in the back.”
“No, I want it.”
They sat while Willa adjusted the seat back from where the last driver had left it. Jo opened the shoebox and lifted out a pair of shoes. Black, low heels, the insides lined with something soft.
“Forty years,” she said. “I've finally bought shoes you could cross a parking lot in.”
“Wasn't that the point of shoes?”
“Not these. These were for arriving.”
Jo held one at an angle to admire it. Her stocking had a small hole by the toe. Willa saw it and looked at the street.
“Mom, about Beth.”
“What about Beth?”
At once. Nothing preventing it.
Jo's phone rang inside her handbag. She swore, found it, and looked at Willa.
“Sorry. The fitting woman. I left my damn glasses.”
“Take it.”
The call lasted two blocks. Jo explained where she thought the glasses were, then remembered she'd put them in the shoebox. She opened the tissue and found them.
“Don't tell her,” Willa said.
Jo looked at her and said into the phone, “No rush. I'll have another look.”
When she hung up, they both laughed. Jo put the glasses on, turning to look at Willa over the top.
“What about Beth?”
Willa checked the mirror.
“She's got a lot going on.”
“Yes. She's very busy. She told me.”
“The tour.”
“I know about the tour, Willa.”
There it was, the annoyance of being treated as a woman who didn't understand that her daughter had a job. Willa could hear how easily the next sentence would become another thing Beth had asked her to do.
“Right,” she said.
Jo put the shoes back in the box.
“I'll miss her,” she said after a while.
Willa drove.
“I don't mean she shouldn't go. I know you think I mean that.”
“I didn't say that.”
“She used to want to come. When she was little. You hated it. She'd stand at the side with a bottle of water and look at me as if I'd invented electricity.”
“She was seven.”
“I liked her when she was seven.”
Willa turned into Simon's street. There were no spaces near the house. She went around the block and found one under a tree, two streets away.
“Can you walk?”
“In these shoes? I can invade.”
Jo got out holding the shoebox. Willa went around to take it from her, and Jo let her. The beads of the dress clicked softly under her coat as they walked. At the corner, Willa could have stopped them before the house. Instead she rang the bell when they reached it.
Simon opened the door before the sound had finished.
“You're early. Good.”
He took the shoebox, not knowing why he was taking it, and led them in. From the kitchen came the smell of garlic and something roasting. Beth stood at the sink in a dark blue sweater, drying her hands.
“Hi,” Willa said.
Beth looked at her, then at Jo. “Hi.”
Jo kissed Beth's cheek and told her to look at the shoes. Simon put the box on a chair, and Jo objected that somebody would sit on it. He moved it to the sideboard.
“Now we can admire them while we eat,” he said.
“I thought so.”
He brought drinks. Willa took water. Jo asked for wine and then told him he didn't have to open a bottle just for her. He held up the already open bottle, and she said, “Very good. You anticipated the performance.”
Beth gave Willa a look across the room. Willa couldn't tell whether it was a question. She nodded a little anyway, the kind of nod that promised something would be all right without saying what.
Simon had put the cabinet doors on. The kitchen looked finished until you saw the strip above the counter where the tiles ended.
“Don't look at that,” he told Jo.
“I was looking at the wine.”
“Then keep doing that.”
They sat at the table. Simon brought a dish of squash, a platter of chicken, a small bowl of green sauce he'd made and didn't trust. He said it was meant to be sharp.
“Then we should put it between the sisters,” Jo said.
Willa laughed. Beth moved the bowl nearer Simon.
For a few minutes it was easier than Willa had expected. Simon described the disastrous ordering of tiles; Beth corrected one detail; he protested and then conceded she had made the calls. Jo asked how many children he was teaching this year, listened to the number, and said she had performed to fewer people for considerably more money.
“I'm in the wrong job,” Simon said.
“Not until you have to go back the next day.”
He laughed. Beth's face softened. He had worked hard to make this table, this food, this ordinary evening in which nobody needed to get up and fix something. Willa took more squash.
Jo asked about the tour.
“Six weeks,” Beth said.
“I know how many weeks.”
“You asked how long.”
“I meant where.”
Beth named the first three stops. Simon supplied the fourth. He had looked it up.
“I was telling Willa I might come out,” he said. “If we can find a weekend when I'm not committing crimes against music.”
“Lovely,” Jo said.
Beth cut a piece of chicken into smaller pieces than she needed.
“It's a full schedule.”
“We'll see,” Simon said.
Jo talked about a tour in which a man had driven her to three hotels because he'd remembered the shape of the first one but not its name. It was a familiar story, not a set exactly. At the second hotel he'd become certain she was the one who was confused and asked whether she'd been here before.
“Had you?” Simon asked.
“Of course. I couldn't remember either. That's why I'd hired a man.”
He laughed with his head bent over his plate. Willa told Jo she shouldn't admit that part.
“That's the part they like.”
“That's why you shouldn't admit it.”
Jo put her fork down and looked at her.
“Listen to her. One good set and she's giving notes.”
“One?”
“One I've seen recently.”
Simon looked up. “Saturday?”
Willa nodded.
“Beth said you were trying something.”
“She was terrific,” Jo said.
Beth reached for her glass. Willa saw her fingers stop against the stem.
“It was Rafi's,” Willa said.
“I know what room I was in.”
Simon smiled at her, waiting for more. Jo was looking at Willa in a way she could not remember seeing across this table before: proudly and without a joke about the amount of help it had required.
“I mean it,” Jo said. “She had them. You know when you can feel them move? They're just waiting for the next thing. She had that.”
Willa wanted the sentence to go on. She wanted Simon to hear the next part too. Beth's glass touched the table with a small sound.
“She found the chair,” Jo said.
Willa knew then. He doesn't know. She only had to say it.
Instead she smiled at her mother.
“Don't do the set,” she said.
“I'm not doing the set. I'm telling him you were good.”
“I heard,” Simon said. “That's great.”
“She comes on and there I am. Not a friendly audience, her mother in the middle of it. And she doesn't worry about me at all. She just does it.”
Jo was pleased with herself for having allowed this. Willa could hear that and still wanted it. She looked at Simon, who was looking at her with a sort of new respect, as if the thing she'd been doing for years had become real at his own table.
“Then she gets to Beth,” Jo said.
Beth put down her napkin.
“Mom,” Willa said.
It was still not the sentence she needed.
“The apartment,” Jo said to Simon. “That little place. I'd have thought she'd go mad in it, but Willa says she's bought herself a man with upholstery.”
Simon stopped smiling. Not all at once. The smile went first from his eyes, then the rest followed.
“What apartment?”
“Jo,” Beth said.
Jo looked at her.
“What?”
“Stop.”
Willa set her glass down. She had been holding it without drinking. The base caught the edge of her plate.
“Simon doesn't know,” she said.
For a moment the kitchen sounded very large: the refrigerator running, water shifting in a pipe, a car outside driving over the loose cover in the road.
Jo looked from Willa to Beth, then at Simon.
“Oh,” she said.
Simon kept his eyes on his wife.
“What apartment?”
Beth took a breath.
“I rented a place.”
“Where?”
“Not far.”
“When?”
“A couple of weeks.”
The questions came too quickly for the answers. He put his fork on the edge of the platter, as though it had no business being in his hand.
“For the tour?”
“No.”
He waited.
“For after,” Beth said.
“After what?”
“After the tour.”
“After you come home.”
Beth's eyes shone. She looked at the table.
“No.”
Simon sat back. The chair made a harsh little sound against the floor.
Willa wanted to stand up and clear the dishes. She did not move.
“You've rented somewhere to live,” he said.
“Yes.”
“And you're telling me now.”
“I was going to tell you.”
“Are you all telling me now?”
“No,” Willa said.
He looked at her for the first time.
“Who knew?”
“Me,” Willa said.
Jo began, “I didn't realize—”
“No,” Simon said, not loudly. “I'm asking who knew.”
“I did,” Willa said again.
Beth lifted her head. “I asked her not to say anything.”
“Except at a show?”
Beth shut her eyes.
Simon turned to Willa. “You did this at a show?”
“I talked about it.”
“Did you talk about me?”
“Yes,” she said, because saying not by name would make her worse than she already was.
He looked at her face for a while. Then he turned back to Beth.
“You were out last week.”
“Yes.”
“At your mother's.”
Beth nodded once.
“In the place.”
“Yes.”
Simon pushed his plate away. The chicken on it had scarcely been touched.
“You let me buy—” He stopped. Looked toward the unfinished strip above the counter. “Never mind.”
“Simon.”
“Not a thing. It's a kitchen. They're tiles. I understand how it sounds.”
“I didn't say that.”
“You didn't have to.”
Jo moved as if to reach for him, then stopped her hand beside her own plate.
“I thought because Willa had done it in public—”
“Don't,” Beth said.
“I didn't know.”
“I know.”
But she said it without looking at her mother. She was looking at Willa.
Willa stood. She didn't know why until everyone watched her.
“We should go,” she said.
Simon laughed, an unfamiliar sound with no amusement in it.
“Now?”
“I don't mean—”
“What would you mean?”
She sat down again.
Beth got up instead. She took her bag from the floor by the sideboard. Jo's shoebox was beside it, tissue showing at one corner. Beth pushed it aside to reach the strap.
“Where are you going?” Simon asked.
“I need a minute.”
“There's a whole apartment for that.”
Beth put the strap on her shoulder. Her hands were trembling enough that the little metal buckle clicked against itself.
“I will talk to you.”
“You're talking to me.”
“Not here.”
“Where would you like? It's a small house.”
Willa could see Beth beginning to lose the ability to answer him. She had seen her sister solve flights and missing costumes and a woman who refused to go on without a particular tea. Beth stood now with her coat half off the chair, unable to get one sleeve the right way out.
Willa got up and held the coat open. Beth took it from her without putting her arm in.
“I've got it.”
She went through the hall. The front door opened and closed quietly.
Simon sat looking at the place she had been. Willa couldn't leave him with Jo, couldn't remain beside him either. She picked up the water jug, found all the glasses were still full, and put it down.
“I'll call a car,” Jo said.
“I can drive you,” Willa said.
“No.”
It was not sharp. That was worse.
Jo put on her coat. She had to reach around Simon's chair to get it, and he moved forward automatically to let her past. She thanked him in the careful quiet Willa remembered from hospitals.
At the door she touched Willa's sleeve.
“Why didn't you tell me?”
Willa looked at her.
She had no sentence that would fit in the hallway.
Jo took her hand away and went out carrying the shoebox.
Willa stayed long enough to put the dishes beside the sink. Simon didn't stop her, didn't help. The green sauce had formed a skin around the edge of its bowl.
“Do you want me to stay?” she asked.
“No.”
“Okay.”
He looked up.
“Was it funny?”
Willa couldn't make herself answer.
“Right,” he said.
She left the foil-wrapped bread he'd put by the door. She couldn't pick it up. Outside, the borrowed car waited two streets away, and she walked past it before she remembered where she'd parked.