Elena wasn’t sure whether her mother fully remembered what had happened in Syria or what she’d read about it. But Carmen’s words were so tender, so loving, that Elena decided to keep them close.
“I was worried that you were embarrassed by me,” Elena said. “You were already so angry about me missing Dad’s funeral.”
Carmen looked stricken, but her arms remained tight around Elena’s frame. “It’s funny,” she said, although it wasn’t funny at all. “I remember so much of that time. Your father… collapsing. The funeral arrangements. How I tried to contact you in the Middle East over and over again. I felt so alone here. I was angry that you’d decided to run off and seek your glory. But when weburied him and everyone came over to eat little sandwiches and exchange memories, or whatever you’re meant to do at a wake, all I could talk about was you, about how proud I was of your accomplishments, how I was sure you were saving the world.”
Elena had never expected such honest emotion from her mother. She wondered if it was the lateness of the hour, the influx of Christmas cookies, or the singing that had pushed her in this direction. She wondered if it was the medication, wreaking havoc on Carmen’s emotional core.
Elena showed the photograph of Timothy to her mother and explained that, once upon a time, she’d fallen in love with him. He’d been the origin of her ruin. “Well, that’s not entirely true,” Elena corrected. “The origin of my ruin was my desire for fame and fortune and acclaim. I wanted to be that save-the-world journalist. I suppose I still want that.” She closed her eyes and pictured Cranberry Cove. She pictured Judge Drury pulling his Lamborghini up to the auto shop and sneering at her.
“Can I ask you something?” Elena asked.
“Of course.”
“When I say the words ‘Cranberry Cove,’ what comes to your mind?”
Carmen’s nose twitched. “I get angry when I think about that place. But I think it all relates to what my father used to say about them. You know, Millbrook residents used to enjoy Cranberry Cove as a public garden, forest, and swimming area. It was my mother’s favorite place. But in the late fifties, through one loophole or another, they destroyed much of the natural reserve and built those awful homes for the super wealthy. Every time a new one was built, my father wanted to drive by and get a look at it. I remember how angry he looked, staring out the window, watching some poor construction worker hammer something into place. And in some ways, our world has changed in just the same way as Millbrook and Cranberry Cove. The richhave always gotten richer and taken what they wanted from good folks. They’ve destroyed our beautiful ecosystems. They’ve taken and taken and not given us any say.”
It was a wonderful and heartfelt speech. But Elena couldn’t help but think: she remembers everything from the past, but doesn’t she remember anything from the near-past? The past few months? The disease seemed to wreak havoc on shorter-term memories.
“Do you remember Grandma Rosa ever trying to fight the construction on Cranberry Cove?” Elena asked.
A flicker of recognition went across Carmen’s face. “It seems like Grandma was always up to her ears in something. Fighting some cause. As you know, she died before I really got to see her in action. But my dad always said she was the best fighter he knew.”
“What kind of things did she fight against?”
“She was very pro-environment, even back in the fifties,” Carmen said thoughtfully. “There are photographs of us in the woods, decked out in warm layers, playing with snow. I can’t help but think she used the last years of her wildly intellectual mind to try to build a better tomorrow for me.” Carmen’s voice wavered.
“That’s wonderful,” Elena said, swallowing down a moment of intense sorrow. “Do you think there’s corruption in the Millbrook government?”
“I think there’s corruption everywhere,” Carmen said, although it was clear she didn’t remember any of the research she might have conducted in the past few months. “You just have to know how to look for it. And you can’t leave anyone off the roster. Everyone is capable of doing evil and cruel things. If the price is right.”
Not long after that, Carmen stretched into a massive yawn and went upstairs to bed, leaving Elena on the sofa, reeling.
Was this story about to break wide open? Or, as it had since the fifties, would it continue to grow and morph and change in the shadows? Elena bit her lip and wrote in her journal: Everyone is capable of evil. In her search, Elena couldn’t leave anyone out.
Chapter Seventeen
On Monday morning, Elena woke up to a text message from James: "Would you like to have dinner together tonight?" Elena’s heart jumped into her throat. Panicked, she threw her phone to the end of the bed and jogged in place, trying to calm herself down. Everything felt like it was happening at once. By the end of a five-minute jog, she realized that a dinner date with James was everything she wanted. What was she so afraid of? She texted back: Yes! Let’s do it! And with that, she guessed, she was officially dating James.
She was the luckiest woman in the world.
Downstairs, Elena set out her mother’s medication and brewed a big pot of coffee. It was seven in the morning, and she had a heavy schedule ahead: a Christmas festival at the Millbrook retirement facility, which she and Natalie had agreed to attend together for newspaper reasons, four articles to edit, plus, she hoped, additional time to research potential corruption at a government level. Not since her days in the Middle East had she felt so energetic. Even Carmen noticed.
“You’re looking fiery today,” she said. “Is it new lipstick?”
Elena laughed. She wondered if Carmen remembered anything from their conversation last night and decided it didn’t matter. The love remained.
That afternoon at one, Elena met Natalie at the retirement facility. Natalie carried one of the fancy cameras from theGazette'sback room and took a few exterior shots of the Christmas decorations before they entered and greeted the woman at the front desk. Everywhere they looked, staff members were wearing Santa hats and holiday scrubs. From the back room came the sound of “Jingle Bell Rock,” and the woman at the front desk told them to head down the hall. Everything was just getting started.
Of course, recording the events of a retirement facility Christmas party wasn’t high on Elena’s hard-hitting journalist list. (The truth was, the other journalists at theGazettewere either on vacation or busy with other Christmas-themed articles, or such slower writers that it was silly to assign them anything that needed to be written on the day of.) But as she and Natalie walked in, Elena was overwhelmed with the joy that bounced through the room. The people living at the retirement facility were anywhere between sixty-five and one hundred and five—a broad age range if Elena had ever seen one. It was funny to imagine that Brenda, the oldest, had been forty when Ron, the youngest, was born. But here they were together, eating turkey and yams and listening to songs that everybody loved.
One of the nurses, a woman named Margorie with a very kind face, brought Elena and Natalie around the room, introducing them to some of their residents. “This is Mrs. Galloway,” she said. Mrs. Galloway is a retired middle school teacher. Isn’t that right?”
Mrs. Galloway looked incredibly proud of her forty-five years of teaching. Despite being in a wheelchair, she looked down at them from the other side of her nose.
“Forty-five years,” Elena said, genuinely at a loss. It was hard to fathom getting up every day for forty-five years and teaching thirteen-year-olds geography. Some would say that was a level of hell.
“What do you think is the secret to finding happiness in forty-five years of teaching?” Natalie asked. Elena smiled at her. It was a good question—the kind that would lead to a simpler article.
