I return her squeeze. “I’ll help you,” I promise. “Whatever you need, we’ll figure it out together.”
She nods and dabs at her eyes with a fresh tissue. “I’ve been thinking about going to a meeting.”
“Like an AA meeting?”
“Yeah. That.” She looks down at our joined hands. “I called them. There’s one tonight at the church on Pulaski. I was… I was wondering if maybe you’d come with me. Just for the first one. I don’t think I can walk in there alone.”
It’s like I’m being choked from the inside out, in a good way, if such a thing is even possible.
“Of course I’ll come,” I manage to say. “Of course, Mom.”
She pulls me into a hug, and I let myself sink into it. She’s thinner than I remember, basically nothing but skin and bones beneath the sparse cotton of her shirt. She’s still my mama, though. She’s been worn down and worn through, but she’s still my mama.
We sit like that for a long time, holding each other while the afternoon darkens to twilight outside the window. After a while, I raise my head. “I was thinking about something the other day. Do you remember that time we got caught in the rain? Outside the grocery store?”
She pulls back to look at me, her brow furrowing. “When?”
“I was maybe six or seven. We were about to go inside, and then the sky just opened up.”
A slow smile spreads across her tear-stained face. “Oh my God. I do remember that.”
“You made me dance with you,” I continue, my own smile growing. “Right there in the parking lot. You were singing—what was it? Something fromThe Sound of Music?”
“‘My Favorite Things,’” she confirms with a watery laugh. “You were so embarrassed. You kept trying to drag me inside.”
“But then I gave up and joined you.” I close my eyes and remember it. “And when it stopped, there was a rainbow.”
“There was.” She touches my cheek. “You looked at me like I put it there myself.”
“You did, that day,” I tell her. “You were magic, Mama.”
I look up at her face through the ever-narrowing pinhole of my vision and try to memorize the image. There’s so much in there I want to capture. That crinkle in the corners of her eyes and the silver threading through her fading hair, and the pink Cupid’s bow of her lips.
I wrote that down on my list months ago:Remember what Mom looked like when she smiled.
Well, now, that’s complete.
“Oh, Elly,” she says as she swallows me up in a hug again. “Oh, my sweet, sweet Elly.”
50
BASTIAN
ci·lan·tro: /s?'lantro/: noun
1: the aromatic leaves of the coriander plant (Coriandrum sativum); a genetic variation near the OR6A2 olfactory receptor gene causes some individuals to enjoy the taste, while others report an unpleasant, “soapy” flavor.
2: how the same thing can go two ways, depending on how you look at it. guilt can be sorrow. guilt can be love.
The call with the limited partners drags on longer than I’d like. I sit in my office with my laptop propped open, watching Harold Fitzgerald’s puffy face fill half my screen as he holds court while the other dozen primary investors listen.
We’re running through final numbers—projected revenue for opening week, anticipated covers per night, beverage cost percentages. The usual pre-launch minutiae that makes my eyelids twitch.
“The reservation system is already at capacity for the first two weeks,” I tell them when Harold pauses for breath. “We’ve got a waiting list three thousand names deep.”
One of the other investors, a hawk-eyed venture capitalist named Taylor Brewer who made his fortune in tech start-ups, nods approvingly. “Excellent. How are we set for press coverage?”
“Cover features are scheduled inBon Appétit,Food & Wine, and theTribune, and we’ve given out nearly a hundred press passes already.Eateris sending a whole team to the gala. Every wannabe blogger with a camera and a Tumblr page is dying to come.”
