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I swallowed hard, wondering if she knew about my alleged relapse. I wanted to ask her, but I couldn’t bring myself to confirm the lie and I couldn’t tell her the truth, either. I didn’t know what to say, and my mother patted my arm.
“Don’t worry about it, honey. Anyway, I can’t stand my office this way. You know me.”
“You like to clean.”
“No woman likes to clean. What she likes is to restore order. There’s a difference.” My mother smiled again. “Maybe that’s what I do with your father, too.” She shrugged it off, eyeing the mess. “ ‘Into each life some rain must fall.’ ”
I didn’t have the heart to tell her it was monsoon season. “Guess what? I stopped by the old house today.”
“In Norwood?” My mother brightened. “I miss that place. How does it look?”
“Great, but let me ask you, was it a mountain laurel or an azalea beside the door?”
“A mountain laurel.”
“I knew it. The state flower.”
“Remember the state bird?”
“The ruffed grouse.” I laughed. “Still got it.”
My mother laughed, too. “You were such a funny kid. I remember you memorized the state capitals, too.”
“I’m a font of useless information.”
“Stop putting yourself down.” My mother waved me off. “Now let’s clean this up. I don’t want to be here all night.”
“You want me to wipe the shelves down?”
“I already did. Lucky for you.”
I started picking up the books, her Dante collection. “Just tell me where these go.”
“Over there.” My mother pointed, then started picking up photographs from the rug while I shelved the books and squared them up.
“Push them to the back or lined up in the front?”
“The perennial question. To the back.”
“Agree.” I pushed the books back, then kept going while she put the photos back on the shelf, which was when I realized that they weren’t the typical pictures of her and my father at various Pennsylvania Bar Association events, but family photos.
“How did I not know about these?”
“They’re usually on the bottom shelf.”
“I haven’t seen them in ages.”
“Look at this one.” My mother showed me the photo and I leanedover, feeling a rush of emotion. It was a faded old photo of her and me when I was little, sitting on the bench in front of the Baskin-Robbins on Lancaster Avenue, grinning at each other while we ate ice cream cones. I was in my T-ball uniform, and she was in a sweatshirt and jeans.
I smiled, touched. “I remember you used to take me for ice cream after baseball. What did you use to call it?”
“The Rum Raisin Run,” my mother answered, and we both laughed.
“We were the only ones who liked rum raisin.” I thought for a second. “Wait, do you think it had rum in it? Real rum?”
“I don’t know.” My mother lifted an eyebrow, surprised. “Whoops.”
“That was fun, that we did that.” I thought about it now, looking at the photo. It was unusual that the two of us spent time alone like that. We always did things as a family. “Did you do that on purpose, being alone with me?”
