Page 17

“Daddy is afraid Alan Ellsworth will drink too many martinis and start telling his awful jokes.”

This time, she smiled. “Your father may have said something similar.”

For a few minutes, there was only the scrape of my spoon, the rustle of paper, and the low murmur of the television. Outside, a lawn mower coughed to life, stalled, then started again.

I watched my mother circle a name on the guest list.

“Mom,” I said.

“Mm?”

“Did you ever wonder what your life would’ve been like if you’d made different choices?”

The pencil stopped moving.

I knew it was too much for breakfast conversation. My mother believed difficult conversations belonged after dinner, preferably in another room and with someone else, but the question had slipped out before I could stop it.

She looked down at the folder. “What kind of different choices?”

“Marriage.”

Her face changed so slightly I might have missed it when I was twenty-three. At fifty, I caught the flicker. The small tightening around her mouth. The way one hand moved to straighten the edge of a florist card that was already straight.

“What has Paul done?” she asked.

“Nothing.”

“Then why are we discussing regrets before nine in the morning?”

“I didn’t say regret.”

“No,” she said. “You said different choices. Women usually use phrases like that when they’re trying to sneak up on regret in better shoes.”

That was so perfectly Bitsy I almost laughed.

She closed the folder halfway, keeping one finger inside to mark her place. “Paul is a good man.”

“I know.”

“He’s kind to you. Educated. Well-off. He comes from a family that understands responsibility.”

“I know that too.”

“And he loves you.”

I looked down at the grapefruit. Its remaining pink sections gleamed under the kitchen light, neat and sugared and already cut apart.

“Does he?”

My mother was quiet long enough that I looked up.

“Lorrie,” she said, and there was less correction in her voice than I’d expected.

“Love isn’t always what girls think it will be when they’re young.”

“What is it then?”

She looked toward the window over the sink, where the hydrangeas outside were heavy with blue blooms.