“No,” Em said. “There’s room in the closet now for her boxes. Toni will sort out her own stuff. When she’s ready.”
I sighed, looking from the big gay pride flag over my sister’s bed, her painted mirror and mixed-media collage, to my own blank walls. “My side looks so empty now.”
“Plenty of stuff under the bed,” Em said. “If you want to hang something.”
I knelt on the braided rug to drag out the box that held my mother’s obituary, her review clips, and gallery show brochures.There were photographs, too: my mother as a child with an unsmiling Uncle Henry, one of her holding me in one hand and a drink in the other, a candid shot taken on some Mediterranean island with a young, dark-haired man I’d always suspected was Toni’s father. I sifted through them, trying to winnow my memories of my mother from the artifacts of her life. To see her. Toknowher, the way Toni said.
“I don’t remember all these.” I touched a photo of our mother on the front porch swing with Toni in the crook of her arm.
“I took that one.” Em cleared her throat. “It’s important for you girls to have memories of your mom.”
Even if Em had to create them.
The realization brought tears to my eyes. I picked up the Annie Leibovitz portrait that had appeared inVanity Fair: Judy Gale posed in front of a pile of twisted rope titledFamily Ties. Ha. Good one, Mom. My mother stared back unapologetically.
“You should get that one framed,” Em said.
I traced the features of my famous mother’s face, the dark, expressive eyes Toni had inherited, the widow’s peak I saw in the mirror, the irrepressible hair.
“Did you ever resent her?” I asked suddenly.
“Judy?” Em snorted. “How could I? She gave me you.”
Which... My eyes welled and overflowed. All my life, I’d figured there must be something wrong, something missing in me, some secret flaw even a mother couldn’t love. But I had been loved, all along.
I just hadn’t seen it.
I gripped her hand. “I love you, Aunt Em.”
She squeezed my fingers back, hard. “I know.”
I laughed shakily, tears leaking. We sat on the braided rug, laughing and crying, holding hands, the portrait of my mother on the floor between us.
—
It was after midnight in London when Reeti called, bubbling from herthaka, her official blessing by the groom’s parents before the engagement ceremony. She propped her phone against the bathroom mirror to model the red lehenga Vir’s mother had given her to wear on her wedding day.
“What do you think?” she asked, twirling for the camera.
“You look amazing.” Not only the dress. Her face shone.
“You’re coming, right?” she demanded. “For the ceremony?”
“When is it?”
“Not for months. My mother’s going nuts with planning.”
“I wouldn’t miss it for the world,” I promised before we ended the call.
She was so happy. And I was happy for her, that she’d found the person who saw her, who would be there for her, who cared for her and made her care.
The lump was back in my throat. I scrolled through my camera roll until I found it—the selfie I’d taken with Tim at Malahide, with our heads close together and the castle behind. Like a scene from a fairy tale. One of the old ones, where the princess wanders in exile for a hundred years, and the prince is blinded falling into a thornbush. The picture blurred.
Don’t message, I’d said. And he hadn’t.
I need space to write my dissertation, I’d said, and he’d given it to me.
Noble, stupid prince.
