Carmen laughed. “He never knew what to get you! I always shopped for him, wrapped the gifts, and put them in his car. Hewas a good actor, though. When you opened them, he always wore a look on his face like he was really proud of himself.”
“You bought them!” Elena felt she should have known. She remembered her grandfather’s house, how utilitarian it had been in the wake of her step-grandmother’s death. “I guess I should have known. Why would a man of seventy know which Barbie to buy?”
Carmen giggled sleepily. Just then, the doorbell rang, and Elena announced, “My friend’s here. She wants to say hello.”
“Sure thing, honey,” Carmen said. “Is it Maxine?”
“It’s always Maxine,” Elena said.
“I should have known.”
Elena hurried downstairs and threw herself into Maxine’s arms. The world outside seemed a swirling, hazy chaos, one to match whatever was going on in Carmen’s head. Maxine was the most intelligent person she knew. Maybe she could fix this.
As they tiptoed up the stairs, Elena tried to update Maxine on what she’d learned. “My grandmother died in the eighties,” she said. “I just found out.”
Maxine’s face went pale. “She abandoned her daughter.”
Elena shrugged. “I don’t know what to say.”
“No wonder…” Maxine offered, before hurrying up the stairs to find Carmen.
Following her, Elena tried to fill in the blank in Maxine’s sentence.No wonder Carmen is so broken. No wonder Carmen can be so mean. No wonder. No wonder.
But when Maxine and Elena entered Carmen’s bedroom, they found her sweet and serene and nothing like she’d been that morning or the night before. Maxine greeted her warmly.
“Elena was just telling funny stories from Christmases past,” Carmen said, patting the mattress to tell Elena to sit down again. “She remembers so much! Maxine, do you remember this much from your childhood?”
“Probably not,” Maxine said, smiling.
“My daughter always had a brilliant memory,” Carmen said, drawing Elena’s curls behind her ear. “It’s why she’s such a wonderful journalist. Often, you have to remember what you’ve heard, what you’ve seen, and whom you can trust. It’s always come to Elena so naturally. She’s like her grandmother in that way.”
Elena felt the compliment like a smack.
Not long after that, Carmen drifted off to sleep, and Elena and Maxine went downstairs to discuss next steps. Maxine had brought medication to combat Carmen’s feelings of alienation, should they come up again. “I know they will,” Elena said, trying to be brave enough to face it. “I know we’re not in the clear. I know we never will be again.”
Maxine squeezed her hand. “You’ll find a way to manage it. You both will.”
Elena’s lips quivered. She sat on the sofa, exhausted. She half considered calling James at work and asking him to come over and cuddle with her. She half-considered fleeing to Queens and never coming back. It was easier there, where she practically didn’t exist.
“Why would my grandmother do something like that?” Elena asked after a pause.
Maxine’s face was pinched. “Why does anyone do anything?”
“Money,” Elena answered with a shrug. “But I stupidly believed my family to be purer than that.”
“I don’t know if anyone’s pure,” Maxine offered.
“You are,” Elena said.
“I’m not,” Maxine said sadly. “I wish I were.”
Later, after a nurse came by the house to tend to Carmen (if she needed tending), Elena showered, bundled up, and went to the newsroom to see how the last few hours were going. She found the remaining journalists polishing off a box of cookies and listening to Christmas songs. Natalie was among them, reading over the article Bob had written that afternoon, editing everything with a big red pen. When they realized that Elena had entered, they quieted the music and straightened their spines in their chairs.
“I’m not the boss,” Elena reminded them. “I’m not my mother.”
They smiled, but they didn’t loosen up again while she was in the newsroom. She guessed it was because she looked so much like her mother: regal and tan and eagle-eyed. She had to be grateful for that.
Elena went to her mother’s office and sat down, swiveling in her chair and watching the light dim over the snowy bluffs outside. Twice, she googled her grandmother’s name and discovered that “the writer” Rosa Tompkins had written and published two novels during the 1970s, both with prominent publishing companies. The better-selling one,Honest Days, was about a nun who’d secretly birthed a child when she was a teenager and given up the baby for adoption, only to meet the baby twenty years later, when the baby tried to join the nunnery. Although it was a work of fiction, the story struck Elena as incredibly personal. Had Rosa spent the rest of her days regretting her abandonment of Carmen? Hoping that Carmen would return to her life somehow? Elena guessed so.
