Elsie went to the fridge and pulled the double doors open. Standing directly in front of them, she undid her bathrobe and tipped her head back. “Invigorating.”
Phoebe tried to cover her smile as her mother intervened. “Elsie, is your room too warm? I can turn up the air-conditioning.”
“My room? It’s cold as a crypt.”
“Well, would you like something to eat? I can make you a little snack.”
“A snack!” With some effort Elsie retied her bathrobe and joined Phoebe at the island. Elsie was alert and delighted, as if she’d just arrived at a party. “Look at us! Nocturnal beasts, we are. Like a bunch of alley cats circling the dumpster.” She giggled.
“Blueberry muffin okay?” Jane asked.
“Make it a double,” Phoebe said.
They watched as Jane sliced and buttered the muffins, and set them on plates. She pushed them gently across the island like a bartender, and Phoebe and her grandmother fell into them. The summer-ripened berries were both tart and sweet on Phoebe’s tongue, and mixed with the butter—heaven! Phoebe closed her eyes with pleasure. Even Jane, who shunned sweets, could not resist. She reached across the island and swiped a piece of Phoebe’s.
“Hey!”
Elsie looked up, and dabbed a crumb delicately from her bottom lip. “You’ve got to be quicker, dear.”
The women ate in silence, savoring the dim quietude. When Elsie was done, she stood. “I am going to lie down. And then, I hope, to dream.”
Phoebe stood, too. “Let me help you back to bed, Nana.”
Gently, she guided her grandmother across the house and into her room, where she helped her into bed and pulled the covers up.How strange it was to take care of someone who had taken care of you for so many years. Her grandmother sat up pertly, holding the edge of her blankets like a little doll.
“Would you like me to turn the light out, Nana?”
“You used to be afraid of the dark, do you remember?” Elsie asked.
Phoebe did not, at first.
“Whenever I came to babysit you kids so that your parents could go out for an evening, you never wanted to go to bed with the lights out. Oh, the fuss you put up.”
As Phoebe listened, the memories came back. The sense of worry in her chest at being alone in the dark. The unsettling feeling of going to bed in a house when her parents were not in it. “You would rub my back and tell me stories, about when Mom was a little girl.”
Elsie nodded. “That’s right. It helped you to sleep.” She cocked her head, studying Phoebe closely through her watery eyes. “Are you having trouble sleeping, dear?”
Phoebe could not help it. Without warning, tears flooded her eyes and spilled down her cheeks. She hadn’t slept well in weeks. She didn’t know if she ever would again.
“Oh, honey.” Elsie reached a shaking hand and pressed it to Phoebe’s back, and Phoebe found herself leaning in to it like she was a little girl all over again.
“Nana, I’ve made such a mess of things.”
“There, now. It can’t be all that bad.”
Phoebe grabbed the edge of her T-shirt and blew her nose into it. “Oh, but it is. That house we bought? I can’t afford it anymore.”
Her grandmother didn’t answer, and at first Phoebe thought that the lightbulb was flickering again. But then she said, “It is just a house. Four walls. A roof. A door. The house does not matter.”
But itdid. It was the place she would raise her children, just as her parents had raised her. Where memories would take shape and form, into scratches on the floor from a favorite dog’s toenails, into marks on the doorframe, counting the years by a child’s height. Where birthday candles would be blown out and wishes made. Some that would never see the light of day, but were made nonetheless. Like Phoebe’s own, as a little girl, when she biked up to the lake house and saw the young couple with the baby and saw her future.
“Nana, we need to finish our home.”
“You already have a home.”
At first, she thought Elsie was not understanding. “No, Nana, this is my childhood home. Rob and I can’t stay here for good,” Phoebe tried to explain.
Elsie’s brow furrowed in frustration. “When your grandpa and I got married, we did not have a house. We lived in a tiny apartment in Yonkers. Our first real house was just a cottage, a little ranch in Westchester. But we raised all four kids in it.” She paused, her watery blue eyes wandering softly across the ceiling as she remembered. “Later we moved. The house was bigger, nicer. But no matter where we lived over the years, the walls didn’t make a difference.” Here, she looked at Phoebe. “From the day we got married, we had our home. We had each other.”
