Jordan pulls the book out of her hands. “Nope,” she says. “We don’t have time for reading.”
“It’s short!” protests Natalie. “It’sBunbun!”
“I said no,” says Jordan sternly.
“Well, put it in the keep pile. I want it for Scarlett. It’s hard being the middle child.”
“I can’t believe you still have a complex about that.” Jordan rolls her mind’s eye because Natalie would get mad if she rolled her actual eyes.
“It’s not a complex! It’s real.”
“I call BS on that,” says Jordan. “Being the eldest is much harder.If you’re in the middle you can play up or play down. You’re never alone. And every road is at least partially paved for you. Where are the books about bunnies who are the eldest children?”
Natalie rolls her actual eyes and says, “I’ll find one and buy it for you for Christmas.” Then, as an olive branch of sorts, she says, “Being youngest is the easiest.”
“Onehundredpercent,” agrees Jordan. And harmony is restored. They keep going. A broken grill is back there, with a partial set of rusted tools. A fan with a broken blade. A vacuum from the 1970s—must have belonged to Theresa’s parents—whose canister looks like a spaceship.
Jordan tries to introduce the next thing casually, as though she’s simply making conversation about something that just occurred to her, even though she’s been thinking about it since lunchtime. “Oh, hey,” she says. “The girls are too funny. While you were in Portsmouth, after we were done withIvy + Bean,they were playing house.”
“Okay?” says Natalie. She brushes her hands on her shorts.
“It’s just... I didn’t know that was a thing kids still did.”
Natalie laughs. “You didn’t know kids still had imaginations?”
Jordan tries from a different angle. “Evangeline was the dad and Scarlett was the mom. She went looking for an apron! She told Evangeline to sit down while she brought him dinner!”
“What are you getting at, Jordan? That aprons are inappropriate? Aprons are a practical kitchen tool.”
“Mom never wore an apron. The whole thing just seemed, I don’t know—subservient.” Natalie’s shoulders tense. “Like, why weren’t they pretending they were doctors, or journalists, or astronauts?”
“Sometimes they do,” says Natalie. “They play all kinds of things. It sounds like today they decided to play house.”
Jordan clamps her mouth shut because she’s not sure what’s going to come out of it if she leaves it open.
By the end of the two hours the storeroom looks better but the floor of the garage looks much, much worse. Jordan is torn between feeling completely overwhelmed and succumbing to nostalgia and emotion as she looks at the three piles. All of these things were once new, and were purchased with the hope and optimism that they’d be put to their intended use. Maybe some of them were, but certainly many of them were not. She imagines someone buying the picnic set with plates and cups tucked inside plastic sleeves. Had anybody ever even picnicked with this set? It suddenly all seems unbearably sad.
“I’m back to thinking we should just throw it all away,” says Jordan. “Forget the donating. If we’re getting the dumpster anyway.”
Natalie crosses her arms. “Why are you so eager to get rid of Mom’s stuff? Just like you’re eager to get rid of the house.”
Here we go, thinks Jordan. “I’m not eager,” says Jordan. “I’m practical. We’re not going to change Dad’s mind, the house is going on the market, why torture ourselves going through dozens and dozens of things when nobody really needs more things? Why not just dump it?” She picks up a toddler booster seat and points it at Natalie to prove her point. “I mean, do you need more things in your life?”
“I don’t needthat. That thing wouldn’t pass even a rudimentary safety test.”
Natalie goes back into the storeroom and comes out with a cardboard box. They peer in together. It’s full of old romance novels. She puts the box on the garage floor and pulls out one of the books. It’s swollen and water-stained, like it went for a vigorous morning swim in the ocean twenty-five years ago and has been trying to dry out ever since. “Oh my,” she says. “Do you ever remember Mom reading anything like this?”
Jordan shakes her head and holds out her hand for the book. On the cover, a bare-chested, dark-haired, suntanned man in jeansis pressed up against a woman in a flowing lavender gown with a lace-up bodice. The laces are half undone. “It’s an actual bodice ripper!” she says gleefully. “Or at least a bodice unlacer.” She studies the cover. “I’m trying to figure out the incongruity of the jeans with the gown. Like, what restaurant do they have a reservation at?”
Natalie studies the book. “I’m pretty sure they’re skipping dinner,” she decides. She turns her attention to the box. “Maybe these were Mom’s secret guilty pleasure. Maybe she read them in the bathtub.”
“Did Mom even take baths?” asks Jordan. “I think I remember her taking a bath, like, once, ever, when she strained her back. And yet we kept giving her bath salts and candles for Mother’s Day as though she had all day to soak.”
“Kids are the worst,” says Natalie. “No awareness of context.”
“Can’t read the room,” agrees Jordan.
Whether by accident or design all of the girls were late winter or early spring babies, so Theresa had them sleeping through the night in time for the first day of school in September. She never missed a year of teaching until she got sick. When Jordan thinks of Theresa she thinks of someone constantly in motion, buzzing from here to there, grading spelling tests at the kitchen table, carrying baskets of clean, unfolded laundry to each of their bedrooms, where she’d drop them on the floor with athunkas if to say,There. My part is done.
