Friday, November 13
Jo had cleared a space at the dining table. It was the first thing Willa noticed: not the good coffee or the sharpened pencils, but the absence of things. Her mother had moved the newspaper, the pill organizer, the loose envelopes. There were two chairs on the same side, facing a little recorder propped on a book.
“I don't need to be recorded eating,” Willa said.
“Then don't eat.”
Jo pushed a plate of toast toward her.
They had three hours before Willa's first lesson. She had come prepared to be late. Jo had come prepared to have the whole day.
“Where are we starting?” Willa asked.
“The end.”
“Of which thing?”
“The stage thing. Mae wants to hear ten minutes on Sunday. We haven't got ten.”
“We've got two.”
“Then we need eight. Look at us. Mathematics.”
Willa put her notebook down. Jo had written bits of their exchange on separate cards, giving each line a great deal more space than it deserved. She kept the cards in a box that had held chocolates. Willa remembered eating those chocolates, picking the soft centers out with Beth and leaving the ones their father liked. She couldn't tell whether Jo remembered the box.
“I'm not a prop,” Willa said when Jo slid a card toward her.
“It's your line.”
“Then I know it.”
“Good. Say it.”
They tried the beginning. Jo gave Willa too much time to answer. Willa filled it, then hated the answer for sounding prepared. On the second attempt she rushed her mother and landed over the joke instead of after it.
“Sorry.”
“Don't apologize. Do the useful thing.”
“Which useful thing?”
“Better.”
Willa made a face at her. Jo grinned, suddenly the young woman in the photographs. It was infuriating how little effort that took.
They went back to the exchange about children as volunteers. Jo wanted it near the top. Willa thought people would have to know why they were arguing first.
“They know. You're my daughter.”
“That's not an argument.”
“Wait until you have one.”
Willa looked at her.
“Not for the act,” Jo said.
“I know.”
“Then don't give me the face.”
Willa pulled the page toward her. “What's the first thing you want?”
“In life?”
“Here.”
“To get a little credit.”
“Then ask for credit.”
Jo looked at the recorder.
“I gave you the best years of my life.”
Willa waited a beat. “I thought those were the ones that sold out.”
Jo laughed once, delighted, and held up a finger before Willa could write.
“Again.”
“I gave you the best years of my life.”
“And you never let me forget to buy a ticket.”
“Worse.”
“I know.”
“The first one.”
They kept it. Jo tried a reply and made it too long. Willa told her so. Jo said she was setting something up.
“You've set it up. It's got plumbing.”
Her mother laughed, then put that on a card too.
“Not everything we say is material,” Willa said.
“Nothing is until it is.”
They moved the line. Willa slid her chair closer to the recorder.
“You don't get to retire from being a daughter,” Jo said.
“Apparently I can go part-time.”
“No pension.”
“I'm only thirty-nine. There's time to find another mother and finish my hours.”
“Good luck. The others have waiting lists.”
Willa laughed. Jo didn't stop to admire herself. She was listening already for the next turn, leaning toward the answer, hands still around the card.
Willa gave her one about references. Jo rejected it without speaking, just a small wave of her fingers. Willa tried again.
“Will you at least write me a recommendation?”
Jo looked at her over imaginary glasses. “Willa attended.”
Willa stared, then laughed so hard she had to turn away from the recorder.
“That's cruel.”
“That's a school report.”
“You were my school report.”
Jo's smile faded a little. Willa had found the wrong edge.
“Not that.”
“Why not?”
“Because then it becomes an explanation.”
It was true. Willa hated that it was true. She scratched out the line and left the space open.
They listened to the recording. Jo held her head at an angle, not looking at Willa. Willa heard herself laugh, then heard how the laugh left the next line naked. They needed a different path into it.
“Do you hate hearing yourself?” Willa asked.
“Not as much as I hate hearing people imitate me.”
“I'm not imitating you.”
“I didn't say you were.”
“You looked.”
“That's my face when I'm concentrating.”
“No, it's your face when you've found a young woman who might be doing something wrong.”
Jo turned toward her. “Is it?”
For a second Willa thought she would have to answer as a daughter. Then Jo repeated the face, exaggerated slightly, chin down and eyebrows lifted. It was so recognizably hers that Willa laughed again.
“You've given me your grandmother,” Jo said.
“You gave me her first.”
“Take her back. I'm done.”
At ten thirty, Jo got up to make more coffee. Willa stayed at the table and looked at the cards. The mother's lines were full sentences, the daughter's sometimes only three words. She moved the cards until they could both read them from the same side.
They moved to the floor by the window to try standing. Jo wanted to remain by the microphone; Willa wanted room to cross away from her. In the dining room they had to imagine the theater, and every attempt ended with somebody bumping the chair.
“That's why people rehearse in rooms,” Willa said.
“This is a room.”
“A room without a dresser in the middle.”
“Your father bought that dresser.”
“He should have thought about blocking.”
Jo put one palm against the dresser as if asking it to stay calm.
“Don't worry. She's not in charge.”
They began again. Willa moved at the wrong time and stole her mother's laugh. Jo stopped.
“Do you want the laugh?”
“Yes.”
“Then let it come where it belongs.”
“That sounds like advice designed by the person it's coming to.”
“It is.”
Willa waited.
Jo took a breath. “All right. You come in sooner. I won't do the little look.”
They tried it. The rhythm changed; the laugh belonged to both lines now instead of the second one. Willa felt a pleasure so sharp it was almost resentment. Her mother had given something up and the work had improved. There was a version of this in which they could keep doing that.
“Better,” Jo said.
“Yes.”
“Don't look so surprised. I'm occasionally useful.”
Willa moved the cards into the new order. She checked the clock and wanted another three hours.
Then Jo found the card about Beth.
“Here?”
Willa read it. An organized daughter who could leave a burning building without forgetting the deposit. Jo had added a little turn about checking out properly, returning every key.
“Not keys,” she said.
“Fine. Not keys.”
“We've got the alarms.”
“Yes. You wrote that.”
Willa looked at the rest of the cards. They had seven minutes now, perhaps eight with a room.
“Don't make it about Simon,” Willa said.
“It isn't about Simon.”
“The apartment either.”
“We don't have to say apartment.”
They worked the words until no street, husband, or home was mentioned. Beth could still be recognized. That was part of what the joke did.
“Beth leaves a family the way decent people leave a vacation rental,” Jo said.
“With all the arguments washed and put away,” Willa said.
“Instructions by the kettle.”
Willa looked at an imaginary sheet. “‘Your mother takes two sugars and constant reassurance.’”
“One sugar.”
“See? We're already falling apart.”
Jo laughed. Willa wrote it on the card.
For a moment neither moved. Then Jo took the card and put it at the end of the row.
“There.”
Willa checked the time. She would have to leave now if she wanted to arrive early for the lesson.
“Can we do it once more?”
“You'll be late.”
“I've got time.”
They did it once more. Willa took the laugh on the family rate, then handed the next one to her mother, and when they reached Beth she didn't slow down.
At the door Jo gave her a container of soup. Willa protested without energy.
“It's lunch,” Jo said. “People doing work sometimes have it.”
Willa took the soup and the new cards she'd written. She put them on the passenger seat and drove to the school.