Mebel startles, her gaze ping-ponging back and forth from Samuel to Hannah, who look at her with earnestness. “You’d do that? Truly? But aren’t you kids all about privacy?”
“You have seven bedrooms in the house, Mami,” Samuel says dryly. “I think there will be enough privacy for everyone.”
Hannah, looking somewhat less confident, nods. She puts on a smile. “I bet that some days we won’t even see each other.”
Chapter 2
They were wrong, of course.
Mebel may be a lot of things—glamorous, for one, blessed with good taste, for another—but it must be said that “unobtrusive” is not one of her positive attributes. She knows this about herself, and yet she cannot bring herself to stop. It’s one of the things she’s been brought up to be as a trophy wife, to always be at her husband’s beck and call, not only to attend to all his needs but to predict them before he himself realizes it. Mebel had excelled at her job, and now to lose Henk means to lose not only her identity but the one thing that has occupied her brain for the last forty years. And she hasn’t just lost Henk, but also her social circle, because she cannot bear the humiliation she would go through once their friends hear about Henk leaving her. And so for days after Henk leaves, Mebel steadfastly replies with noncommittal responses to all messages from their friends, all the while politely declining any dinner invitations.How does one cope with the loss of not just one’s marriage, but one’s social life as well? It’s simply impossible.
Which is why, at exactly six fifteen every morning, Mebel still gets up and makes a spinach, cucumber, ginger, turmeric, and carrot juice. (Well, she gets the helper to do it while she supervises.) Then, before the juice can turn brown—or browner than it already is—she putters up the curved staircase and knocks on Samuel and Hannah’s bedroom door. The first morning she did this, Hannah opened the door and blinked blearily at her before thanking her for the juice. But now, three days after they have moved in with her, Mebel is comfortable enough to wait just one second after knocking before opening the door and letting herself in.
Hannah sits up in bed as Mebel walks in with the juices, and Mebel makes a good show of averting her eyes. “Mami, wha—”
“Don’t worry!” Mebel trills. “I’m not looking! I’m just here to deliver your juice.”
Samuel groans. “Mami, I told you, we don’t need juice every morning.”
“Nonsense,” Mebel says. “Do you want a healthy colon or not?”
Samuel slaps his hands over his face. “Does the lock on the door not work? I could’ve sworn I locked it last night.”
“Silly boy, I used my master key so you don’t have to get out of bed. Now, drink your juice, there’s a good boy. And you too, Hannah.” But when she turns to give Hannah her brown juice, she’s surprised to see a scowl on Hannah’s normally sweet, placid face. Mebel blanches. When her mother-in-law was still alive, Mebel was always careful to school her face into a pleasant expression around her despite the many sharp jabs the woman doled out over everything from Mebel’s makeup to the curtainsthat Mebel had chosen for the house. And now, here is Hannah openly frowning at Mebel, who’s only here to serve her freshly squeezed juice, after all. Does she not realize how fortunate she is to have a mother-in-law like Mebel?
But as Mebel is about to say something, Hannah takes a deep breath and says, “Thank you, Mami.” She takes the juice from Mebel and places it on the side table.
“You should drink it now, before it turns even browner,” Mebel says helpfully.
Hannah’s cheek twitches, then she gives a smile that doesn’t reach her eyes and says, “I’ll drink it later.” With that, she lies back down on the bed and pulls the blanket up over her head.
For a second, Mebel stands there, unsure what to do. Times like these, Mebel feels like there are at least five different personalities inside her vying for control. Personality One, the caring mother, wants to nag Hannah and Sammy into drinking their juice now. Personality Two, the strident Chinese mother, wants to shout them out of bed; after all, it is seven in the morning, that’s practically the afternoon already. Personality Three, the petulant child, wants to stride out of the bedroom and, if not slam the door behind her, then at the very least close it with a firm click to let Sammy know that she is displeased. Personality Four, the peacemaker, wants to make cheerful conversation to smooth over this awkward moment. Then there’s Personality Five, who seems to have gained power these last few days. Five just wants to curl up into a tight ball and sob her eyes out, something that Mebel has been doing the last few nights as she lay alone in her super-king-size bed.
Mebel considers all five personalities, then adds one more to the mix. Personality Six, the doting grandmother. Her spiritslift, and with one last cheery “Okay, don’t forget to drink your juice!” Mebel hurries out of the room. She crosses the hallway and lets herself into the bedroom where Freydis and Aelgifu are sleeping. One of the nannies is sleeping on a single bed next to their travel cots. She doesn’t stir when Mebel lets herself in, but one of the twins does. Mebel thinks it might be Aelgifu, though she’s isn’t too sure. It’s too dark in the room to tell which one is which. Not that she has better luck even under good lighting conditions. She still hasn’t quite gotten the hang of telling the twins apart, which makes her wonder if she’s a bad grandmother. Then again, it’s hardly her fault if the twins insist on looking so much like each other, is it?
Aelgifu (or Freydis, who even cares at this point) lifts her little head and coos. The nanny remains sleeping. As Mebel walks toward the cot, Aelgifu pulls herself up and reaches for Mebel.
“Oh, my sweet darling,” Mebel whispers, bending over and lifting the baby. Or rather, she tries to do so, but what actually ends up happening is Mebel’s back twinges and she cries out, more in surprise than pain, and drops Aelgifu back into the cot. Aelgifu plops onto the soft padding, and there is a moment of shocked silence. Mebel says, “It’s okay, don’t—” But Aelgifu’s little mouth opens wide, her eyes scrunch closed, and the next thing Mebel knows, the room is filled with a piercing wail.
The nanny bolts out of her bed, her eyes wild, her hair standing up in weird angles. She sees Mebel still bent over the travel cot and Aelgifu screaming, and hurries toward them. She lifts Aelgifu from the cot with the ease of someone in her early twenties who has no idea what back pain feels like and bounces her on her hip while walking away from Mebel. Meanwhile,Freydis is awakened by the noise and she, too, starts to whimper. Mebel tries to straighten up, but her back catches once more, and so she hobbles to Freydis’s cot, trying to make soothing shushing noises. They come out as gasps of pain, but she’s hoping that at age one, Freydis wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between the two.
The door swings open. “What’s going on?” Hannah says. “Why are they awake?” Her gaze lands on Mebel, still crouched over the cot like an evil witch with a poisoned apple in her outstretched hand. Hannah’s eyes narrow.
“I was just—” Mebel starts to say.
“I think she dropped Freydis,” the nanny says.
“I did no such thing!” Mebel snaps. “And Freydis is right here.” She looks down in time to read the nameAelgifustitched onto the toddler’s onesie. “Oh, right. This one’s Aelgifu.”
Hannah, her face cold as a stone, strides over to the cot and plucks Aelgifu from it.
“I really did not drop Freydis,” Mebel says, and even she hears the guilty whine in her voice. Once again, she tries to straighten up, but her back isn’t having it.
“Why are you in here?” Hannah says.
The acerbic tone in Hannah’s voice fires Mebel up enough that she wills her back to straighten. She winces at the tension in her back; she’s going to pay for this later, but right now, what she really needs to do is stand up for herself. “I wanted to see my grandbabies,” she says in a voice as stiff as her back feels.
“It’s not even seven o’clock in the morning,” Hannah says, bouncing Aelgifu hard on her hip. “They’re not supposed to be awake for another hour. You know how cranky they get when they don’t have enough sleep.”
