On Saturday morning Nora wrapped a scarf she'd bought three weeks earlier. It was blue wool, soft enough that she kept touching it before she folded the tissue over. Ellen would complain that blue didn't go with anything she owned and then wear it with everything.
Nora had chosen it in a store her mother considered unreasonable. She had imagined giving it to her without the receipt. Then she'd put the receipt in the bag because she knew her mother.
At eleven twenty-five the present was on the table, her coat was over a chair and she was dressed. She had time to answer Inez's recordings before she left.
She played the first one. Inez had kept the teacher at the end. The second was longer and better in one place, worse in another. Nora was typing a note when Mae called.
“Are you busy?”
“Leaving soon. Mom's lunch.”
“Oh, yes. Tell her happy birthday. I'm sending something.”
“You don't need to send anything.”
“I've already done it. It's arriving later. Can I have five minutes? Not to write anything. I need ears.”
Nora looked at the clock. “Five.”
Mae was trying a sequence from the older part of the act. A run about being asked to make decisions at an age when the simplest thing in her day was taking her shoes off, and even that came with a noise. It was material she'd done years before, reworked to get out of the sitcom character she'd spent a season pretending to be.
“I'm going to read it,” she said. “Don't fix the reading. Just tell me where you stop wanting the next thing.”
Nora sat down on the edge of the chair.
Mae read. Some of it was good. One line had gone missing between versions, a throwaway about a woman who called the restaurant to ask whether the soup was still on. Nora remembered it because Mae had come up with it in a car and Nora had said it wasn't a joke. It had turned out to be a joke.
“You cut the soup.”
“I know. Nobody got it last time.”
“You put too much in front of it.”
“Did I?”
Nora found the old file. She was not going to write anything, only find the line, which she did, and then she saw the paragraph before it. Mae had put the old opening back. It made the sequence sound like a speech about the difficulties of being a woman instead of a woman trying to get something done before the pharmacy closed.
“Start with the actual errand,” Nora said.
“Then I lose the setup.”
“You can lose it.”
Mae tried it. Nora laughed. The scarf was lying beside her elbow. She moved it farther from the coffee cup.
“Wait,” Mae said. “What if I don't get to the counter?”
“Then what's the scene?”
“I'm the woman waiting behind the woman. I think I'm being patient, but I'm having a whole event with my face.”
“Try that.”
Nora could hear her moving around the kitchen. The phone scraped, then Mae was farther away, giving herself room to become the person who had not yet complained and wanted the entire building to know how much work this required.
They lost the thread and found a better one. Then Nora went back to the beginning to see whether the new part fit. It did not. She altered three words while Mae objected to two of them and supplied a fourth that made both of them stop talking for a second.
The screen lit up with Ellen's name.
Nora looked at it. She'd call back as soon as they had the ending. She still had time if the traffic was good. Ben was closer, anyway. She'd ask him to get Ellen if this ran over. It was easier for him.
“Where did you go?” Mae asked.
“I'm here.”
“You can go. It's your mom's thing.”
“Just do the last bit again.”
Mae did it. Nora tried to write down the line while laughing, got a word wrong and asked her to repeat it. Mae exaggerated the wrong word. Nora said it would be funny if she used that instead. They tried it both ways.
At twelve thirty-one Ben called.
“I've got to get this,” Nora said.
Mae said, “Go. Tell her I love her.”
Ben didn't greet her.
“Where are you?”
“I'm leaving.”
“From where?”
Nora stood. Her leg had gone numb against the edge of the chair.
“I'm still home. Could you get Mom?”
“I'm at the restaurant.”
“Already?”
“Setting it up. Like I said I was.”
“I'm sorry. I got caught on a call.”
“Mom's ready. She's been ready.”
“I know. I can still—”
“I'll go. Erin's here. Just get there.”
“Ben.”
“What?”
She wanted to explain how the call hadn't been an hour on purpose. He sounded as if he already knew that.
“Nothing. I'm on my way.”
He hung up. Nora stood in the middle of the apartment with her coat in her hand. On the laptop the cursor blinked after a half-finished note to Inez. The birthday envelope was still by the coffee maker, where she'd had to move it to put the cup down.
She put on the coat, picked up the present and left.
The restaurant was busy enough that every place to put a body belonged to someone. Nora waited at the entrance behind a woman arguing about a reservation made under her husband's name, though she was unwilling to say which name that might be. From the back of the room Nora could hear her aunt Diane laughing.
The host found their table. Nora followed him past full tables, carrying her gift at an angle that made it too obvious to be an apology and not large enough to be anything else.
“There she is,” Diane said.
Ben was standing behind Ellen, helping her arrange a coat on the back of the chair. His own coat was still on. Erin had a menu open and was pointing at something for Sam, who had reached an age at which he required twice as much food as he was willing to discuss.
Ellen wore a burgundy blouse and a small silver necklace. She had done her hair carefully. Nora noticed that before she noticed the way her mother's mouth changed when she saw her.
“Happy birthday.”
“Thank you.”
Nora bent to kiss her. Ellen smelled of the perfume she wore when someone was going to remember having seen her.
“I'm sorry.”
“You're here now.”
Nora slid into the empty chair. Her menu was already open. Erin had put a glass of water beside it and ordered enough bread for everyone.
“We just got here, too,” Ellen said.
Ben looked at his wife. Erin looked at the menu.
The waiter came to take their order before Nora had read a word. She chose the first thing she recognized. Diane asked whether the soup contained cream and then, when told yes, ordered it anyway because she'd had a week. Sam wanted to know whether the sandwich could come without the things listed in the name of the sandwich.
“So bread?” Ben said.
“The chicken can stay.”
“Generous.”
Nora laughed. Ben didn't look at her.
She handed Ellen the gift. Her mother opened it slowly, trying not to tear the paper even though Nora had folded it badly. She made a pleased small sound when she saw the scarf.
“Oh, this is too much.”
“It isn't.”
“It's lovely.”
Ellen rubbed the wool between her fingers. The texture mattered to her in exactly the way Nora had thought it would, and Nora felt a burst of gratitude so strong it embarrassed her.
“I put the receipt in.”
“I won't need it.”
“You might.”
“Nora. It's blue. I have half a closet.”
She put the scarf around her shoulders. Diane reached over to touch it. Erin asked where Nora had found it, and for two minutes they talked about the store and how difficult it was to buy something without a person's measurements. Nora sat back a little. She could feel the table making room for her again.
Then Ellen asked Ben whether he'd found a place to park, and Nora remembered why he had needed to find a place to park twice.
“I'm sorry I made you go back,” she said.
Ben shrugged without looking away from Sam's menu. “It's done.”
“It was work. It wasn't just—”
“I didn't ask.”
His voice was quiet. Nobody at the other end of the table heard. That was worse than being told off in front of everyone. He was making the amount of room he could make, and it wasn't going to hold the whole story.
The food arrived. Nora passed plates and moved the flower vase so it wouldn't sit between Ellen and Diane. She listened to Erin explain a problem at work involving a change in the school pickup schedule. Nora offered a solution and learned, from Erin's patient short answer, that it was the first thing they'd tried.
She ate. The pasta was good. She had ordered a thing she liked and was annoyed to have no interesting reason not to enjoy it.
Halfway through lunch Diane asked about Mae's show.
Nora told her the date, the theater, where it would be carried. Then she said, “I'm doing the opening.”
Ellen put down her fork.
“You are?”
“Twelve minutes.”
“Nora.”
Her mother's face was so plainly pleased that Nora almost couldn't bear it. Ben looked up, too. Even Sam paused his campaign to remove a tomato seed from his plate.
“You didn't say,” Ellen said.
“It only got confirmed yesterday.”
“That's wonderful.”
“It's just the opening.”
“I know what an opening is.”
Diane asked whether Mae would introduce her. Nora said she didn't know yet. Sam wanted to know whether you could say whatever you wanted on the streaming service. Erin said they were not going to help him research that.
“Say something,” Diane told Nora. “You should do a little something for your mother.”
Nora felt the table turn toward her.
“She came for lunch,” Ben said.
“So did we,” Diane said. “We can have thirty seconds.”
Nora should have let it go. Ellen was smiling now, the scarf bright against her blouse. There was a good moment available in which Nora could simply sit at the table while her mother was pleased for her.
Instead she wiped her mouth, put down the napkin and said, “Well, sixty-nine. Mom's finally reached an age where if she gets into trouble, I can tell people it's a phase.”
Diane laughed. Ellen gave her a look that was almost the one Nora had hoped for.
“My mother has two children. One is responsible, reliable, remembers the doctor's name, that sort of thing. The other's a homeowner, so—”
Ben made a sound into his glass. Nora smiled at him. There was a way to get through it, a way they could be funny about her without making her smaller than she could stand.
“She's always said the best gift is having us all together. Which is a very clever thing to say after she has our credit card numbers.”
That one got less. Nora felt the change and reached for something better.
“I put her down as my emergency contact after the divorce. They asked whether she was able to make decisions under pressure. I said she'd been doing it for me since—”
“I haven't,” Ellen said.
“I know. It's a joke.”
“No, I mean I don't have your card numbers.”
Diane laughed at that. Nora did, too, a moment late. She could have stopped there.
Sam stood up with his phone.
“We did a thing,” he said.
Erin looked at him. “After the plates, honey.”
“They said when they cleared it. They cleared Grandma's.”
He was trying to connect the phone to a little speaker Ben had brought in his coat pocket. Nora was still finishing the emergency-contact sentence when a voice from the speaker said, very loudly, “Happy birthday, Ellen!”
The table turned. Sam's face lit up in relief. It was a video he'd put together from the family, short messages collected over the previous two weeks. One of Ellen's oldest friends appeared in a kitchen, holding a glass of something she had apparently already started celebrating with. Then a cousin Nora hadn't seen in years, then a grandchild of somebody who had to be prompted twice.
Nora waited with the end of the joke still in her mouth.
She had received Erin's message asking for a clip. She remembered it now with an unpleasant clarity: Send anything, ten seconds, landscape please. She'd marked it unread because she wanted to do a good one when she had time.
Ellen held the phone in both hands. She was laughing. She leaned toward Sam to hear him explain a cut he'd made, his nervous quick words running over the recording.
“That's so good,” Nora said.
Nobody heard her. She was not needed for this part.
She picked up the napkin and folded it over her lap. At the end of the video, the little speaker played the first three seconds again before Sam managed to stop it. Ellen kissed the top of his head. Ben watched his son pretending not to be pleased.
Nora took a drink of water.
When the cake arrived she sang with everyone else. She did not try to improve the words.
Afterward, while Erin and Diane were disputing who had offered to pay for which part, Ben stood beside Nora's chair.
“You getting Mom home?”
“Yes.”
“Sure?”
Nora looked up at him. “Yes.”
He nodded once. He did not make it a larger conversation. He went to help Sam put the speaker back in his coat.
Nora's phone buzzed inside her bag. There was a message from Mae asking whether she could hear the last part once more, sometime before the afternoon got away from them.
Nora read it. Then she put the phone back in the bag and stood to help her mother with her coat.