“Still good ones ahead,” Stone says. He kisses the side of her face.
I see a tear escape down her cheek. I should feel like an intruder. I should excuse myself, let Bonnie rest, let her be with her son. But I don’t. Instead, I press my fingers into Bonnie’s open palm. I feel her hand close around mine.
“I’m glad I’m here,” I say.
She opens her eyes, and when she looks at me it’s like no time has passed. I’m seventeen again, back in her living room being handed a bowl of popcorn.
“Me, too,” she says.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
No one knows where Sylvia’s money comes from. Not my mother, who grew up here. Not my father, who has always been at least partially in charge of the finances of Broad Beach. Certainly not me.
“There’s money,” Sylvia says. “It’s not yours, so don’t worry about it.”
My grandmother was always a riddle. Beginning with: Who was my grandfather? My mother tried to find him, I think, online—she didn’t get very far.
“He left,” Sylvia said. “That’s all we need to know.”
Sylvia wasn’t cold about it, not exactly, although it couldn’t have been easy for my mom anyway—to have such little information, to have a mother with such little interest in giving her any. But Sylvia was never very interested in the past, hers maybe especially. “Keep it moving, baby” was her favorite things to say.
I asked my mother about it once, and her response was vague. Something like “You can’t miss what you don’t know.” But I knew she did, miss something—if not him than the idea of a nuclear family.
Marcella had met her own grandparents just three times in her life. Once when she was too little to remember.
“A practical woman,” my mom once told me when I asked.
“My mother was not sentimental,” Sylvia has said. “But she was from the Old World. No one had that luxury back then.”
When I was growing up Sylvia would sometimes disappear for long stretches at a time, telling no one she was leaving or where she was going.
When she’d return I’d ask her, “G-money, where did you go?”
Her answers were always a skirt. “To a luxurious villa.” Or: “Somewhere fabulous.” Or: “My favorite city.” Or: “To a really good time.” No real explanation.
It bothered my mom. She wanted to know where Sylvia was, if she was safe, and, mostly, when she was coming home.
“It’s not good for Lauren,” my mom would say. “You act like there is no one relying on you here. You have a family.”
Sylvia would always scoff. “She’s not my daughter; she’s yours. But if you’re asking for my parenting advice, I think she could do with a littlelessstability.”
In my early years I was in awe of Sylvia—she seemed to me less like a grandmother and more like a fairy godmother. Popping in and out, always in a cloud of mystique and expensive perfume, always with a treat or dress or doll. I looked forward to her leaving because I knew when she returned there would be something to celebrate. She was an apparition, an energy, the embodiment of everything Marcella wasn’t.
As Sylvia got older we spiraled off in different directions—I moved out just as she started to stay closer to home. Over time Sylvia stopped traveling entirely.
“I’ve seen it all,” she told me. “There’s nothing more for me out there that isn’t here.”
I expected my mother to love this—it’s what she always wanted:Sylvia home, in her orbit day in and day out, finally. But instead of becoming closer over the years, they’ve grown more distant. They have dinners together but don’t do much of anything else. At least, I don’t hear about it.
After I leave Bonnie’s I come home to an uncharacteristically busy house. Sylvia is doing tai chi with an instructor over Zoom, who blasts through the computer at a screech.
My dad is having breakfast in the kitchen, watching television at a volume that is clearly trying to compete with the living room sound, and my mom is banging around pots and pans, cleaning up the sink.
“Hello!” I holler, over the noise.
Sylvia gives me exaggerated, overhead waves. “Want to join?”
She’s dressed in black leggings that buckle at the knees and an old T-shirt that has “Coors Cowboy” on it.
