“Now,” says Simone. Her hands are shadowy on the steering wheel. There is the quiet tick of the turn signal, the glow of the moon. “Here. Natalie, you go first.”
“Well,” says Natalie. She appears to be thinking about it, and then to come to some internal resolution. She shakes her head quickly the way she used to do as a kid when she got ocean water in her ears. “Okay. The first thing is... she was constitutionally sound.”
“Great!” says Simone encouragingly. “Say more.”
This is what Natalie chose? thinks Mae. But then Natalie goes on, and they all start nodding along, because it’s true. “I mean, she was healthy. That’s it! Maybe her immune system was built up from being around kids all the time, at school and at home, but she never got the colds the rest of us got. Never got the flu. Always took care of us when we got sick. Honestly, I don’t remember her being in bed a day in her life. Do any of you?” They all shake their heads. “That’s why it was such a shock when she got Sick with a capitalS.”
Mae’s eyes are moist.
“That was lovely, Natalie,” says Simone softly. It’s as if Simone has turned into a pastor and they are all part of her congregation. But it’s working, the pastor vibe. “Mae?” says Simone.
“She had beautiful handwriting,” says Mae, looking at her wrist, just visible from the streetlights and the moon.
Jordan goes next: “She had gorgeous legs, but she hated her stomach.”
“She always knew who the shyest kid in the class was and shenever called on them without warning. She was allergic to humiliating people.”
“She hated rodents as pets but she let me have one anyway.”
“Until you killed it.”
“Right. Until I killed it.”
“She never went to Italy.”
“Or apparently Paris.”
“Her pancakes were not great.”
“But her French toast was amazing.”
“She always pulled over for little kids selling lemonade.”
“Always.”
“She couldn’t knit. She tried to learn but she was terrible at it.”
“She made the best brownies.”
“Her hands were always cool and dry.”
“She cried if an animal died in a movie but not necessarily if a person did.”
“She was always awake first.”
“Her coughs were loud but her sneezes were quiet.”
“She reminded us to look at the sky.”
That’s the best one, so they all look at the sky through the windshield and out their respective windows. They’re doing that just as Simone pulls into their driveway, and they understand that Simone has given them not only a ride home, but a gift: the gift of focusing on Theresa and letting their squabbles go, if only for a moment.
“Out you go,” says Simone. “Water and Advil, ladies. Water and Advil.”
Inside, Mae wonders if her sisters notice that the lights are just as their mother always left them at night, with a single table lamp on in the living room, like a ghost light in a theater.
Calvin is in the kitchen, drinking a cup of tea and reading something on his laptop. He looks up when they troop in. His face,bathed in laptop light, looks happy and relaxed. “There they are, the Shipman girls!” he says. “Have fun?” He sounds so hopeful that they all nod and say yes, yes, so much fun that they got a ride home from Simone, so much fun that they have to go back for Mae’s car in the morning. They do not saywe’re barely speaking to Mae, and they do not saywe can’t believe she went to your wedding. They do not saywe still cannot believe you had a wedding for Mae to go to.
“Okay,” says Calvin. “I can take you back in the morning. Kara went to bed after the kids were settled.”
