Home Safe by Elizabeth Berg Page B

look.
    “Well, all right, yes, you could; but do you really think it's a good idea?”
    “Of course it's a good idea! What better time? I can work anywhere, why not there? I've always wanted to live there.” Then, before Helen can protest, Tessa adds, “I don't tell you everything, you know.”
    “I know. Of course I know. Some things are private—and should be. But where you'd like to live, that's not private!”
    “In fact, sometimes it is.” Tessa puts down her carton of kung pao chicken and leans back, untucks her shirt from her jeans. She looks over at her mother. “You know?”
    “Okay, Tessa.”
    “Don't get all peeved.”
    “I'm not.”
    Tessa makes a grunting sound, the equivalent of “Right.”
    “I'm not! I'm just surprised, that's all. I mean, when did this California thing start?”
    “February seventeenth, 2004,” Tessa says. “Four-thirty-seven in the afternoon. A gray day, a storm predicted that never materialized.”
    “Okay,” Helen says. “All right.”
    “Mom. Mom. Aren't you even curious to see the house? Aren't you dying to see it? Dad had it built for you! It's your dream house!”
    What Helen wants to say is, “Yes, and that's why it's not appropriate for us to live there together. It wasn't for you and me! It was for me and Dad, and Dad is gone and now there's no reason for that house!” What she does say is, “Fine, we'll go and see it.” Some miniature version of herself that lives at the center of her brain throws up her hands. When Tessa asks when they can go, Helen says after Christmas, after she teaches her first class. They'll go then.
    “Promise?” Tessa says.
    Helen nods.
    They return to eating, listlessly now, and when they've finished, Tessa says she has to go; she's meeting a friend.
    “Who?” Helen asks.
    “A friend .”
    “A date?”
    “No. Not a date.”
    “You know, I wish you'd just consider Internet dating. People are too busy to meet any other way! I read this article about a couple who just got married, and neither of them ever thought they'd use Internet dating services, but—”
    “Mom! Mom! Mom! I said I'm not doing it. What I meant when I said I'm not doing it is that I'm not doing it!”
    Helen bizarrely interprets her daughter's strong refusal as possible interest (she was just scared! And why not! It was scary!) and blithely continues. “Oh, try it just once. What could happen?”
    “What could happen?” Tessa says, her eyes big, round pools of blue. “What could happen? Well, let's see. For one, I could meet a fucking psychopath who ends up murdering me in my bed, and not because I invited him to be in it!”
    “Okay,” Helen says. “That's just—”
    “I will not do it and I don't want you to ask me about it again, ever! Just stop!”
    “Fine. Don't do it. Stay single and end up a bitter old woman whose only love is some matted, ancient cat. Who stinks. And who snakes around your ankles every morning in that creepy way they have, begging for cat food that also stinks. Food covered with used foil that you will wash off and use yet again. And that's all that will be in your fridge except juice that you use to mix with your Metamucil.”
    “Mom. I think you're describing your fears about yourself.”
    Helen considers this. Tessa is possibly right. But she tells her daughter, “No. I wasn't alone. I had a great love. And a great marriage.”
    Tessa puts her carton down on the coffee table, leans back against the cushions. She pulls a handful of hair up close to her eyes, checking for split ends. “How did you and Dad meet, anyway?”
    Helen smiles, remembering. “Didn't we ever tell you? It was at a party. I hadn't wanted to go, I had a big pimple on my chin, but my roommate talked me into it. It was a really crowded party but I saw your dad right away, he was leaning against the refrigerator, talking to someone. He was wearing one of those fisherman knit sweaters, an off-white, and he looked so handsome. I didn't talk to him