"Then will you at least stay and have dinner with me?" I hold up the cooler. "This is way too much for me alone. I don't have a dining table but there are tables with benches behind the motel and I've got plastic cups for the wine." I shoot her a pleading look. "Please? You need to rest before you head back anyway."
Irina considers this. "Okay. Sure. But I'm driving, so no wine for me. And you go easy on it too. You're here for a reason."
I almost say something defensive, but I swallow my words. She's right. "Trust me, I'll make this bottle last."
"Good girl."
I grab two plastic cups and a bottle of water for Irina from my room and we carry the cooler and the suitcase around the back of the motel. There's a concrete patio area with two picnic tables, and beyond it nothing but dry grass and flat farmland. It's not Matsuhisa but right now, it's so much better.
Irina sits across from me and we eat and talk about normal things. The kind of things I used to tune out and now absorb like water in dry ground. Her daughter's new boyfriend, who Irina doesn't trust as he's involved with cryptocurrency. Her husband Viktor's back, which has been acting up since he helped their neighbor move a sofa. Her wisdom tooth that's coming out tomorrow, and her fear of dentists. I tell her about my week from hell and the simple things I miss here — good coffee, a decent pillow, nice sheets.
"What would you miss?" I ask her. "If you were stuck here for two months."
She thinks about it with her eyes narrowed and her head tilted slightly to one side. "My children. Viktor. Home-cooked food, especially fresh bread." She takes a sip of water. "Like you, I'd also miss good, strong coffee. And my bed. Not because it's fancy — it's not. But it's mine. You know?"
It occurs to me, somewhere between the yellowtail and the salmon, that I've never done this before. Sat down and had a meal with Irina. We've never eaten together. She's cooked for us, served us, cleared our plates, loaded the dishwasher while we moved to the living room for coffee. She's been in every room of our house but always in motion, always on the other side of an invisible line. She was just Irina and she was always there. When I moved out I missed her but I never thought of inviting her over to my home for a coffee or dinner.
I took her for granted the same way I took everything for granted — the clean towels, the stocked fridge, the someone always being there to pick up after me. And now she's here and that makes me feel both grateful and ashamed.
I've barely been holding myself together this week. The early mornings, the work, the heat, the loneliness, the phone calls that leave me feeling worse, the nights in that room with the fridge. I've managed but managing isn't the same as being okay, andsitting here with someone who drove four hours just because she was worried about me, not because she's being paid to — that's the first time since I got here that I don't feel completely alone.
18
MAGGIE
My mother's car pulls up and she gets out carrying a huge casserole dish wrapped in a dish towel. My mother has never arrived anywhere empty-handed in her life. She could be fleeing a burning building and she'd stop to grab something she'd made for whoever was waiting at the other end.
"Mom." I meet her and take the heavy dish from her. "You didn't need to do this. You only got back yesterday."
"Nonsense. Saturday is casserole day. Has been since before you were born. Besides, the volunteers need a reward for their hard work." She kisses my cheek and walks past me toward the house.
"But your back must be hurting from the journey. It's been so bad lately and —"
"My back is my back. It'll hurt whether I'm lying down or making casserole, so I might as well be useful." She pushes the kitchen door open. "Let's get this in the oven and have a coffee, shall we? I've missed you."
I follow her inside and watch her move through the kitchen. She turns on the oven while I set the casserole on the counter,then she starts the coffee maker. She knows exactly where the filters and the grounds are. I haven't changed a thing since she moved out. Even though this has been my house for years now, my mother still acts like it's hers when she visits and I don't mind that.
She looks good. Tanned, rested, her hair freshly cut. But I notice things. The way she lowers herself into the chair instead of sitting. The way her hand goes to her back when she thinks I'm not watching. She's more hunched than she was a year ago. Her spinal stenosis has been getting worse, the nerve compression in her lower back making standing and walking painful. It's gradual, the kind of thing she'll never complain about — Gloria Dawson never complains — but it's there.
"How was Portland?" I ask, pouring coffee into the mugs and adding a dash of cream to both.
"Oh, wonderful," she says as I sit across from her. "Walt showed me some of his old haunts. We walked along the river — well, Walt walked, I shuffled — and we ate at this Vietnamese place he used to go to when he was teaching. The pho, Maggie. The pho was extraordinary."
"How is Walt?"
"Walt is Walt. Steady as a rock and twice as stubborn." She smiles into her coffee. "He sends his love. He also sent you some jam he made from the blackberries in his sister's garden. I forgot to take it from the car. Remind me."
"That's sweet. I love Walt's jam."
She takes a sip and looks at me over the rim. "So, how's it been with that darn woman?"
"Sloane?" I shrug. "She's —" I pause. Just under a week ago I would have said awful, useless, entitled. Now I'm not sure what to say because the honest answer is more complicated. "She's doing her best."
Mom raises an eyebrow. This woman who raised me, ran a sanctuary, buried a husband, and rebuilt her life, all without ever losing her ability to communicate entire paragraphs with a single eyebrow.
"I was resistant at first," I say. "You know I was. I didn't want her here. But she shows up and she does what I tell her." I take a sip. "She didn't even go back to LA for the weekend."
"Why not? Surely Daddy could send a —"
