Bobby shrugged. “It turns out you can always use more love.”
Ever since Alice dropped out of med school, Bobby had tried to encourage her pursuits. Whether it was training for a marathon she never ran or fostering kittens until it became clear that Agatha was not willing to share Alice with another cat or learning the very practical language of Latin because she wanted to recognize the roots of the words she loved to read, Bobby always supported her. And when Alice inevitably gave up Latin or knitting or quit skiing after one awkward fall, Bobby didn’t urge her to keep trying, to persist. Instead, she told her that knowing what you didn’t want brought you one step closer to knowing what you did. Bobby had always known what she didn’t want—someone to replace Paul. Thus, Alice concluded that her mother was asking for a story not because she wanted to find love but because she wanted to encourage her daughter.
Instead of saying that she could see what Bobby was up to, she said as forcefully as she could, “I don’t think it’s a good idea for me to write something for you.”
“Why not?”
“Because you’re my mother.”
“And that’s a problem because?”
“Because everything.” Because what if she didn’t like the story? Because what if she did? Because what if it reflected an unflattering image of Bobby? Because what if Alice could summon no story at all for the person in the world most important to her?
“Just consider me like anyone else. I’ll even pay you.”
“I’m not going to take your money.” In truth, Alice took her money all the time. Even this bowl of semi-edible spaghetti and meatballs, this tannic table wine, it wasn’t like Alice chipped in for them. “Why now? Why are you suddenly open to love?”
“For so long I wasn’t ready. Lately, though... I still feel your father with me all the time. He makes me strong. I’m emboldened by his memory. Maybe it’s getting older—”
“You aren’t old,” Alice said with familiar panic. She couldn’t bear the idea of her mother gone too. Every time the thought crept in, when Bobby took too long to return Alice’s call or rescheduled plans because she was tired, that intense pain localized in her chest. She was terrified by all the ways she could lose her mother. It was as bad as when she recognized she was falling in love.
“I didn’t say I was old,” Bobby said with mock indignation. “I just, every time I meet someone, at some point or another, it hits me: he isn’t Paul. He will never be Paul. I’m realizing that’s an impossible standard. At my age, I’m tired of impossibility. I want to believe in the possible. Your father taught me how to love. It would be a shame to squander that.”
This was not how love worked. You couldn’t compensate for one love with another. You couldn’t honor a soul mate by loving someone new. What did Alice know? She ran the moment a relationship crossed into territory that was remotely intense or even possible.
“I’m sorry.” Alice focused her attention on twisting and untwisting her pasta. “I don’t know how to write something for you.”
Bobby was not like the others, not simply because she was Alice’s mother. Alice’s stories weren’t magic, but they did help people change. Bobby didn’t need to change. She simply had already experienced her great love. Alice couldn’t write her mother a story because she was truly convinced that Bobby was complete as she was.
Bobby did not get through the dismissiveness of her peers and instructors in medical school without building a strong resistance to pushback. If she didn’t bow in the face of that rejection, she wasn’t about to take no from her daughter.
“Look,” she said. “If you write something and decide you don’t want me to see it, we’ll never talk about it again.”
“You really want this? It isn’t just your way of being supportive or whatever?”
“I really want this.”
“Okay,” Alice said, wanting to be done with the conversation. “On two conditions. First, if I decide I can’t go through with it, we never discuss it again.”
“I already agreed to that. What’s the second?”
“You promise never to make this spaghetti and meatballs again.” Alice dropped her loaded fork into her bowl.
Bobby laughed. “It’s terrible, isn’t it?”
“It really is,” Alice agreed.
Bobby held out her hand. “So, we have a deal?”
“We have a deal.” Alice shook on it, knowing full well that there would be no story, that like her previous pursuits endorsed by her mother, this too would quietly fade.
4
Worth the Wait
Alice proceeded with her week, having no intention of sitting down to draft her mother a story. Sure, this deception brought about a reciprocal guilt, but ultimately no good could come of writing something she did not believe would aid her mother. With the others, she really wanted to help them become better versions of themselves. This certainty of purpose was what prompted an image for the story that poured onto the screen as though she had no control over the words she committed to the page, not even as she was composing them. Even if she’d wanted to appease her mother, she had no idea where to start.
That Saturday, Alice had a wedding at the courthouse, her favorite venue in Santa Barbara. Whenever she had an event in the gardens, she made a point of arriving early to spend some time at the top of El Mirador, the clock tower. On afternoons when Bobby had needed a quiet house, Alice and her father often climbed the tower, joining hordes of tourists scaling the steep steps to the open air above. The winding staircase was narrow and musty, like a portal to the past, like they were ascending an ancient tower in Bruges or Palermo. When they arrived at the top, Santa Barbara became somewhere just as far away. Paul would look out over the vista and ask his daughter if she could see the dragons flying above the tiled roofs, the mermaids diving in the waves, the golden chariots carrying soldiers made of chocolate. Paul had a sweet tooth, even in his imaginings. “They’re princesses not soldiers,” Alice would tell him. “Mermen, not mermaids.” They would make up stories for the princesses, their one great weakness a tendency to melt, and for the mermen, who wished they could come to land.
