“No.”
“Do you have any of his paintings?”
“Sadly, no,” I said.
My mother had cleaned out his studio after his death, throwing every single one of his paintings into a bonfire in the yard. I remember her face, soot-stained and grimly determined in the firelight. For weeks, until the snow came, there was a burned circle of earth and a pile of coals and ashes in our front yard.
“But they were married, right? Your parents?” Olivia stepped back from the window, did another twirl.
“Yes.” Then I added, “Nice piqué, little mouse.”
She looked thoroughly unimpressed with my newly acquired ballet terminology. “So why isn’t she Mavis Russo?”
“She was. But she changed her name back to her maiden name, Holland, after my father died.”
Olivia stopped her twirls and looked at me, her face scrunched up. “Why?”
“I don’t know, sweetie.” I rubbed my temples. I was getting a headache.
Olivia peered out the window again. The driveway still had only our Volvo sitting in it.
“Well, can I ask her?”
“Maybe not when you first meet her, okay? It might make her sad to think about when her husband died.”
She frowned, considering this. “Daddy said she’s a famous artist.”
“Yes,” I said.
“And she’s very busy, which is why we never see her.”
“Yes, that’s right.”
“Is that why you’re an artist too? Because she is?”
I felt my body stiffen. “Maybe,” I said.
The truth was, I rarely thought about it. This one thing, other than blood, that connected me to my mother.
“Maybe Izzy will be an artist when she grows up too,” Olivia said, pulling me away from my memories. “Just like you and Grandma!”
I smiled, thought of Izzy’s forays into art: she’d done assemblage pieces with broken dolls mixed together with mechanical parts, a stint with photography, mixed-media collages that contained broken mirrors. Lately she was making short videos. Her latest was a series calledThings That Piss Me Off: dog shit on her boots, overly friendly cashiers, people making assumptions about her sexual orientation or even imagining it might be any of their goddamn business.
“Would you change your name?” Olivia asked me. “If Daddy died?”
The question startled me. I couldn’t imagine my life without Mark. He was the one person who made me believe that I deserved the perfect life I’d somehow stumbled into, when all along I felt like an unworthy imposter.
“Well, I certainly hope he’s not going to die for a very long time, but no, I would keep calling myself Alison O’Conner.”
“Why?”
“Because that’s who I am. And because you and your sister areO’Conners, and I want to have the same last name as you. Our name connects us; it means we’re family.”
She furrowed her brow. “But your mom didn’t have the same last name as you. Didn’t she want to? Didn’t she want to be connected to you?”
My headache intensified. I massaged my temples, trying to ease the steady throbbing. “I can’t say what she was thinking. But I know that I would keep my last name.”
“I like you being Alison O’Conner,” Olivia said.
