not to study it for a lingering strand of hair, her own DNA tangled in the fibers. It was easier that way.
Ann was thinking of that last day with her dad and how there were so many things she had always wanted to ask, preparing herself to do so if only he woke up one more time. And when she looked up, she saw someone who looked just like Rosemary Looney across the pizza-strewn kid-littered room, sitting with a toddler at one of the Formica booths, her hair almost completely gray but worn the same way. Ann thought of how Rosemary often sat on the arm of her dad’s chair, how they all laughed when her round bottom slid down into his lap and his arms quickly locked around and held her there. He said he was never ever going to let her go and continued holding tight even when she squirmed and laughed and said she needed to go check on dinner.
Ann never knew exactly how the two ended it, only that it was never the same after she broke her arm. Then one night, Rosemary stopped by —not to stay, she stressed, when Jimmy opened the door —but to gather up the rest of her pots and pans. Their dad had spent many recent nights there with them, sometimes asking about their days and offering help withhomework, but usually just settling in with whatever they were watching on television. That night, Ann wandered out onto the back porch and saw him follow Rosemary to her car, heard Rosemary say, “Please, Bill.” Ann’s father’s name on her tongue sounded so personal and revealing, and he looked weak and helpless, like he might fade into nothing. “You know I would never do anything to hurt them,” she said. There was a long pause and then a gasp between sobs, something so inhuman and demeaning in the moment, not unlike the memory Ann had of her mother’s thin white legs struggling in attempt to raise herself onto a bedpan. “You know me. You know better.”
“But I can’t risk losing their trust,” he said. “What choice do I have?”
Ann strained to hear her answer if there was one. And at the end of so many relationships, she has thought that if only she knew the answer, if only she knew what Rosemary thought, then she might know the secret to finding something honest and lasting.
And now Ann is ringing the doorbell, standing where Rosemary stood and took a long shaky breath before leaving that last time, where Ann’s mother had been many summer nights as she called them in to supper, no knowledge of the minute cancer cells coursing through her blood. The pink dogwood tree they planted when their mother died fills the side yard. And the sight of Jimmy is a shock, like seeing their dad. “Hey sis,” he says. “Lookat you.” His face is the same, just older, and when he hugs her close he feels so much like their father that she wants to let go and collapse into the tears and worries of a frightened eight-year-old, but then his wife is there, so easily wound up and slipped into the role of the lady of the house. He has done it all before. Three other times in fact. The old wife and two kids and dogs are across town. The one before her childless and in San Francisco. The one before that is rarely even mentioned, a few months post-college, a mutual mistake that should have just been a summer living together. And here is the new wife and new guinea pig – looking dog and the baby two months from being born.
“Come on in,” he says and steps back, the open door like a time machine, a portal she fears entering, but then everything seems so different, it’s a relief. Gone is the pale green carpet and formal Queen Anne furniture their mother loved, gone is the big braided rug in the family room, a horrible place to fall asleep for the weaves and marks left indented in your face. Now the living room is pale pink, and big cream leather sofa parts —ottomans and such and glass-topped tables —fill the space. An enormous entertainment center fills one whole wall. The only reminder of the past is the old free-standing
Ann was thinking of that last day with her dad and how there were so many things she had always wanted to ask, preparing herself to do so if only he woke up one more time. And when she looked up, she saw someone who looked just like Rosemary Looney across the pizza-strewn kid-littered room, sitting with a toddler at one of the Formica booths, her hair almost completely gray but worn the same way. Ann thought of how Rosemary often sat on the arm of her dad’s chair, how they all laughed when her round bottom slid down into his lap and his arms quickly locked around and held her there. He said he was never ever going to let her go and continued holding tight even when she squirmed and laughed and said she needed to go check on dinner.
Ann never knew exactly how the two ended it, only that it was never the same after she broke her arm. Then one night, Rosemary stopped by —not to stay, she stressed, when Jimmy opened the door —but to gather up the rest of her pots and pans. Their dad had spent many recent nights there with them, sometimes asking about their days and offering help withhomework, but usually just settling in with whatever they were watching on television. That night, Ann wandered out onto the back porch and saw him follow Rosemary to her car, heard Rosemary say, “Please, Bill.” Ann’s father’s name on her tongue sounded so personal and revealing, and he looked weak and helpless, like he might fade into nothing. “You know I would never do anything to hurt them,” she said. There was a long pause and then a gasp between sobs, something so inhuman and demeaning in the moment, not unlike the memory Ann had of her mother’s thin white legs struggling in attempt to raise herself onto a bedpan. “You know me. You know better.”
“But I can’t risk losing their trust,” he said. “What choice do I have?”
Ann strained to hear her answer if there was one. And at the end of so many relationships, she has thought that if only she knew the answer, if only she knew what Rosemary thought, then she might know the secret to finding something honest and lasting.
And now Ann is ringing the doorbell, standing where Rosemary stood and took a long shaky breath before leaving that last time, where Ann’s mother had been many summer nights as she called them in to supper, no knowledge of the minute cancer cells coursing through her blood. The pink dogwood tree they planted when their mother died fills the side yard. And the sight of Jimmy is a shock, like seeing their dad. “Hey sis,” he says. “Lookat you.” His face is the same, just older, and when he hugs her close he feels so much like their father that she wants to let go and collapse into the tears and worries of a frightened eight-year-old, but then his wife is there, so easily wound up and slipped into the role of the lady of the house. He has done it all before. Three other times in fact. The old wife and two kids and dogs are across town. The one before her childless and in San Francisco. The one before that is rarely even mentioned, a few months post-college, a mutual mistake that should have just been a summer living together. And here is the new wife and new guinea pig – looking dog and the baby two months from being born.
“Come on in,” he says and steps back, the open door like a time machine, a portal she fears entering, but then everything seems so different, it’s a relief. Gone is the pale green carpet and formal Queen Anne furniture their mother loved, gone is the big braided rug in the family room, a horrible place to fall asleep for the weaves and marks left indented in your face. Now the living room is pale pink, and big cream leather sofa parts —ottomans and such and glass-topped tables —fill the space. An enormous entertainment center fills one whole wall. The only reminder of the past is the old free-standing
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