Ellen wanted to go to the dry cleaner on the way home.
“The dress isn't urgent,” she said. “But we're out.”
Nora checked the time before she could stop herself.
Ellen saw. “I can get it next week.”
“No. Of course. We'll get it.”
Her mother put the scarf across her knees and folded the gift bag into a square. She had been folding bags Nora's whole life. There was a cupboard at home full of them. Every time Nora decided she would make fun of it, she needed a bag.
At the dry cleaner, the dress was not where the woman expected. Nora waited in the car with the engine off, watching her mother talk to someone at the counter. Ellen took a receipt out of her purse, put on her glasses and showed the woman a date. The woman disappeared. Ellen turned and mouthed something through the window that Nora couldn't understand.
Nora's phone buzzed.
Mae had sent a recording. Just the last minute, the message said. I can still change it before four if you hear anything.
Nora opened it, then stopped. She could listen now. Ellen was inside anyway. It would be less rude to Mae than allowing the request to sit there for an hour. Then she could be properly present when her mother came back.
She wrote, Can't before four. With Mom.
There was a pause. Mae wrote, Okay. Happy birthday to her. Going with what we've got.
Nora stared at the screen, waiting to be needed more urgently.
Ellen came out carrying the dress. It was pale green, something Nora didn't recognize, with a jacket that hung separately over the hanger.
“What's that for?”
“Diane's friend's anniversary.”
“You're going to that?”
“Apparently.” Ellen laid the dress carefully on the back seat. “I've met them six times. I know the dog better than the husband, but there's dancing.”
“You like dancing?”
“I liked it before you got here.”
Nora looked at her. Ellen smiled out the windshield, not waiting to have the fact approved.
They drove home. Her mother described the other guests, most of whom Nora did not know and one of whom she knew entirely through her habit of bringing a salad nobody wanted. Nora stopped trying to connect them to a story she already understood and listened to Ellen's account of the seating problem.
It turned out to be funny. Ellen had no idea how badly two of the men disliked each other until one asked whether there would be assigned places and the other immediately said yes. Nora laughed. Her mother looked pleased, then annoyed that the pleasure had made her miss the turn she was supposed to point out.
At the house a large box waited on the porch. Ellen inspected the label, then looked at Nora.
“Mae?”
“I think so.”
“She didn't have to.”
“She knows.”
Inside were flowers, not a fashionable stiff arrangement but a loose mass of yellow and white ones that looked as though they'd been invited to spread out. The card wished Ellen happy birthday and apologized for not being there to supervise the cake.
Ellen read it twice.
“I'll call her.”
Nora took the scissors from the kitchen drawer and cut the wrapping. She knew where the drawer was. She could still find almost anything in this house by reaching before she thought.
“Can you do the stems?” Ellen asked. “I'll get the vase.”
They stood together at the sink, her mother holding flowers while Nora trimmed them. Ellen kept pointing out which ones should be shorter, then moving them back up after Nora had cut them. The kitchen looked much the same as it had when Nora last lived there, except for a small framed print above the toaster.
“Is that new?”
“I made it.”
Nora leaned closer. A blue chair, a yellow wall, a window with too many panes. The chair was slightly out of proportion and very definitely a chair somebody cared about.
“At the class?”
“Yes.”
“I didn't know you'd gone back.”
“I told you.”
Nora looked at the print again. “It's good.”
“It's got a chair in it. That was my aim.”
The flowers were ready. Ellen carried the vase into the front room and moved several things to give it the place she wanted. Nora stayed in the kitchen, rinsing fragments of stem out of the sink.
“Ben says you were looking at the old television thing,” Ellen called.
“Who told him that?”
“Nobody. I sent him the link after you said about the opening. He says he still has the better copy.”
“I didn't say I was looking at it.”
“Well, I was.”
Nora dried her hands. Her mother had the old laptop open on the coffee table. Sam had set it up for her with a large icon for the things she actually wanted. Nobody in the family had been able to persuade her that the space around the icons needed filling.
“It's ninety seconds,” Ellen said. “You can bear me having ninety seconds.”
“I've borne worse.”
“I have, too. I was at your school concert.”
Nora sat on the edge of the couch. Ellen pressed play.
There she was. Twenty-five, a younger, thinner nervousness in the same arrangement of face. The skirt was worse than she remembered. Her hair looked as though she'd been promised the exact amount of time needed to finish it and then had been called into the studio early.
The host said her name brightly. Nora watched herself take the microphone and grip it too close to her chin.
“My apartment buzzer's broken,” the young woman said. “Which is great because I'm not very good at asking people to prove who they are.”
There was a laugh. Nora didn't remember a laugh there.
“I just let them in and then have a difficult little conversation about why they came.”
Another laugh, smaller. The young Nora hurried over the end of it.
She had a bit about the voice on the intercom sounding unlike the actual person. Friends arrived from downstairs speaking in deep, threatening tones, then came into the apartment apologizing for the traffic. On the television she demonstrated both, but the difference wasn't enough. She was too careful about her face, too unwilling to make one version ugly.
“There,” Nora said. “I should have stayed downstairs longer.”
“What?”
“The voice.”
“Oh.”
Ellen watched. On the screen the young woman had reached a line about asking the murderer to wipe his feet. She smiled to show them it was a joke, afraid they might otherwise think she had done it.
The time came to end. She could see herself realize there was less of it left than she'd planned for. She cut the wrong sentence, jumped to the last one and got a laugh so uncertain it might have been the audience encouraging her to stop.
The host thanked her. The camera caught half a second of her face before she remembered to smile.
Ellen let the clip finish, then shut the laptop.
“I watched that the whole week,” she said.
“Why?”
“Because you were on television.”
“I was bad.”
“You were nervous.”
“You can be both.”
Ellen looked at her. “Fine. You were both. I still watched it.”
Nora sat back. There was no argument in that answer, and she didn't know what to do without one.
“I thought I'd do more,” she said.
“You did do more.”
“Not that kind.”
“No.”
Her mother looked at the flowers. Nora could hear the refrigerator switch on in the kitchen. It was the sound she'd listened to as a child when she slept on the couch because somebody else was in her bed or because she wanted to be near people without admitting she was frightened.
“I was so relieved when the writing started to work,” Nora said.
“I know.”
“It was real work. It wasn't just hiding.”
“I know that, too.”
Nora looked at her hands. Her mother had said two perfectly ordinary things and Nora was suddenly close to tears.
Ellen got up to move a flower that had fallen across the card.
“You want tea?”
“No. Thanks.”
“I do.”
Nora followed her into the kitchen and put water on.
They talked about the anniversary dress. Ellen wanted to know whether the jacket looked too much like something bought only because it came with the dress. Nora told her to try it without the jacket. Her mother did, studied herself in the hall mirror and came back pleased with the result, carrying the jacket as though it belonged to someone she was not obliged to rescue.
By the time Nora left, it was after four. Mae had not sent another message.
At home she took off the gray shirt she'd worn the previous night and put it in the laundry basket instead of on the chair. Then she made coffee, despite the hour, and opened her own material.
Daniel called before she'd written anything.
“Sorry,” he said. “Quick question. Did you take the manual for the washing machine?”
“I don't know. Why?”
“It's doing a thing.”
“What thing?”
“It gets halfway through and wants my attention.”
She laughed before she meant to. “Have you tried letting it finish?”
“That's what I'm hoping the manual will tell me how to do.”
Nora looked at the cabinet beneath her counter. She had packed a folder labeled HOUSE because neither of them wanted to go through it on the day they moved the smaller things. In it were appliance manuals, an old paint sample and a piece of paper on which Daniel had written a measurement, without saying what he'd measured.
She found the washing-machine booklet. It still had a yellow tab where she'd marked the cleaning instructions.
“I've got it.”
“Great. Could you send me the page about the error message? I tried searching, but there are sixteen versions and apparently I bought the wrong personality.”
He read her the code. She photographed the page. For a minute it felt like being in their old kitchen, helping him do a task that would have taken him less time if he'd let her do it from the beginning.
“Thanks,” he said. “How was your mom?”
“Good. I was late.”
“Oh.”
He did not say of course. She heard it anyway and then was ashamed of putting it in his mouth.
“I told them about the special,” she said.
“What about it?”
“I'm performing. Opening.”
“Really?”
The pleasure in his voice was real. She had forgotten that he used to like things happening for her.
“Twelve minutes.”
“That's good. You wanted that.”
“A long time ago.”
“Not that long.”
“Fifteen years.”
“You still used to read things out in the kitchen.”
Nora looked at the open document. “That's different.”
“Sure.”
There was a pause in which neither knew whether the conversation was over.
“Mae asked you?” he said.
“Yes.”
“I'm glad.”
She wanted to tell him there was more to it. She wanted him to know the exact complicated unfairness that would explain why being glad wasn't enough. He had listened to that kind of thing for years. Sometimes he'd said she didn't have to go when a late call came. Sometimes she'd told him he didn't understand what the job was.
“Thanks,” she said.
“Send me the date?”
“You don't have to come.”
“I meant so I don't call while you're doing it.”
Nora looked down, smiling despite herself. “Right.”
“I can be happy for you without buying a seat beside your aunt.”
“Aunt Diane's a separate ticket.”
He laughed. It was an old sound and did not mean he was coming back.
They hung up. Nora set the phone beside the laptop and stared at the word she'd typed before he'd called.
Plates.
She wrote about the small one. How she'd always given it to herself, though Daniel had never asked her to. How she'd expected him to notice the kindness every time, and when he did the same thing once, she'd told him not to be ridiculous.
It wasn't a stage ending yet. It wasn't even a whole bit. She wrote it down anyway, then stood up and tried to say it without sounding as though she were presenting evidence.