My mother tried to make our fifth anniversary about herself

My mother tried to make our fifth anniversary about herself, asking me to move a dresser on the night my wife and I finally had dinner plans.

Then she dismissed Rose’s gift as “some silly little book”—the book ruined while she watched our daughter—and for once, I didn’t let it pass…
My sister told me Mom had been crying, and before I could ask what had happened, she added that she had somehow ended up in trouble over the dishwasher.

That sounded familiar enough that I nearly missed the part about the crying.
“What did you do to the dishwasher?” I asked.
“Loaded it.

Apparently incorrectly.”
Anna had stopped by our mother’s house and found her bawling.

Mom hadn’t even heard her come in.

When Anna asked what was wrong, Mom said she was fine, just tired, then got angry at being asked.

Anna stayed for an hour.

By the time she left, she knew more about Mom’s opinions on dish placement than about whatever had upset her.
“You should call her,” she said.

I made a noise that wasn’t a commitment.

My daughter, Daisy, had made me appreciate how many meanings one small sound could carry.

Mine meant I had heard Anna, loved our mother, and did not especially want to be the next person getting something wrong in her kitchen.

Then I thought of the date.
“What day is it?”
“The thirty-first.

Why?”
“It’s this week, isn’t it?”
Anna went quiet for a moment. “Oh.

Yeah.

It is.”
Every year, around the end of August, Mom became short-tempered and tearful.

We had grown up knowing there was a stretch of days when ordinary questions were more likely to get an extraordinary answer.

As children, we hadn’t known what to call it.

Mom was sad, then Mom was annoyed, and then Mom insisted she wasn’t either of those things.

We learned to notice without saying we had noticed.

Anna remembered an afternoon when Mom made everyone stay quiet.
“She wouldn’t tell us why,” she said. “Just that everybody needed to be quiet that day.”
I remembered the candle.

One day a year, Mom used to light a particular candle and put it on the windowsill.

I’d assumed it was something to do with church, though Mom’s actual attendance had never quite matched the impression she liked to give.

Neither of us knew what it meant.

It was strange comparing memories as adults.

The afternoon Anna remembered and the candle I remembered had existed in the same house, but neither of us had been given enough information to put them together.

We had simply carried them around as separate examples of how careful we sometimes needed to be.

I wanted Mom to be all right.

I also knew that asking whether she was all right could become the thing she was angry about, and I wasn’t eager to repeat Anna’s visit over the phone.

When you live with somebody long enough, you can acquire a detailed knowledge of the rules without ever being told the reason for them.

Anna and I knew the week, the mood, the candle.

We didn’t know the loss, if there was one, or who we were supposed to be quiet for.
“You really should call,” Anna said again. “I think she’d want to hear from you.”
“I’ll get to it.”
“You’ve been saying that a lot lately.”
I had.

I was busy, but busy wasn’t the whole explanation.

Mom took a certain amount of preparation, and lately I had been running out of time to prepare.

Our fifth wedding anniversary was that Saturday.

Rose and I had been together since college, long enough that Anna still enjoyed imitating the version of me who had discovered a brilliant girl and apparently felt the entire family needed regular updates on her brilliance.
“I was not that bad,” I said.

.

“You were exactly that bad. ‘I met someone, and she’s so smart.’”
“She is smart.”
“I know.

You were probably right.”
There was a fondness in her voice that made me smile.

Anna could tease me about Rose without making Rose smaller, and I appreciated that more than I used to.
“She’s your person,” she said.
“Yeah.

She is.”
I looked toward the ordinary evidence of our life together: a baby’s things where adult things used to go, a house in which we could lose a conversation halfway through because somebody needed picking up.

I loved that life.

I also couldn’t remember the last meal Rose and I had eaten without keeping track of what a third person was doing with a spoon.

Anna asked what we had planned.
“Dinner at home.

I got her a little something.”
“At home?”
“We like low-key.”
“I could take Daisy.

You two could go out.”
I told her we were fine.

It came out automatically, the same easy answer Rose and I had been using whenever the idea of a proper night out appeared and brought its arrangements along with it.
“When was the last time?” Anna asked.
“The last time what?”

.

“Dinner out.

Just you and Rose.

No baby.”
I thought about it.

Then I thought a little longer, which was not helping my case.
“Probably before Daisy.”
“Jason.

That’s over a year.”
I knew how old my daughter was.

Somehow, I had failed to apply the same information to my marriage’s restaurant history.
“Home’s good,” I said. “Low-key is good.”
Anna let me have that, though not with much conviction.

Before we finished talking, she told me once more to call Mom.

I didn’t call immediately.

Meanwhile, Rose had a conversation with her own mother that took a rather different turn.

I wasn’t at the bakery for it; I learned about it from my wife.

Her mother, Deb, had seen through “I was just in the neighborhood” and supplied both coffee and a muffin before Rose could organize a decent objection.

Deb remembered our anniversary too.

She also remembered me trying to make a fondant flower there, an undertaking that had apparently left a permanent impression.

I could live with being described as a good man who was slow with a rolling pin.

There were worse assessments of a son-in-law.

Rose hadn’t gone there simply to discuss cake decorations.

She told her mother she was tired of how my mom treated her, and of the times I noticed something and still said nothing.

She didn’t need me to fight.

She needed to feel that I stood with her.

Hearing that afterward wasn’t pleasant, mostly because I couldn’t reasonably dispute it.

I often saw what happened.

I saw Rose become quieter.

I heard a remark turn something thoughtful she’d done into something faintly ridiculous.

Then I tried to keep the conversation moving, hoping that getting through the moment would count as making it better.

It didn’t make it better for the person who had been hurt.

Deb’s response, as Rose described it, involved bread.

I had spent enough time around that bakery to know Deb could explain a surprising amount of human behavior through dough.
“You can’t rush a rise,” she had said.

Apparently I was proofing.

Thirty-some years of learning to keep the peace wouldn’t disappear in an afternoon, but Deb thought I was changing.

She advised warmth and time rather than putting me in a burning oven.

I was grateful for her confidence.

I was less comfortable with how much patience the arrangement seemed to require from Rose.

Then Deb asked about our anniversary plans.

She was not impressed with dinner at home either.

In the version Rose told me, her mother dismissed the prospect of spaghetti beside a baby monitor and announced that she was taking Daisy.

When Rose pointed out that Saturday was a working day at the bakery, Deb said she’d close early.

The muffins would keep.

Her granddaughter wouldn’t stay little.

So we had dinner plans after all.

Rose was pleased in a way that made me feel both pleased and faintly foolish.

We’d defended staying home with such determination that I had almost forgotten we were allowed to want something else.

A table for two.

Food brought by someone else.

Nobody taking turns eating while the other person retrieved an object from the floor.

There was nothing wrong with the evenings we spent at home.

Some were lovely.

But dinner there carried its usual possibilities: one of us getting up, a meal going cold, a conversation postponed until we were both too tired to remember what had seemed worth discussing.

I wanted to sit across from Rose with no useful household task competing for her attention.

The practical arrangement was already made.

Deb wasn’t being persuaded or inconvenienced; she wanted her granddaughter.

We didn’t have to turn the offer into a debt before we accepted it.

I had already bought Rose a gift.

Five years was wood, according to the anniversary list I had looked up with more seriousness than I intended to admit.

I wanted the evening around it to feel like a gift too.

By the time I spoke to Mom, Saturday had acquired a shape I was looking forward to.
“There you are,” she said. “I’ve been trying to get hold of you.”
She needed me Saturday.

There was an old dresser in the spare room, something that had belonged to my father, and she wanted it out of the house.

It was too heavy for her, and she couldn’t stand looking at it another day.
“Saturday’s our anniversary, Mom.

Rose and I have plans.”
“Saturday?”
“Five years.

We’re going to dinner.

Deb’s taking Daisy.

It’s our first night out since she was born.”
I said I could move the dresser Sunday or the following week.

It wasn’t going anywhere.

Mom stopped at the part about Deb.
“She’s watching Daisy?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, I could watch her.

I’m her grandmother.

You didn’t even ask me.”
The dresser remained in the spare room while we moved on to a different grievance.

Mom said it was fine.

Everybody had their plans and preferences.

I knew the tone well enough to understand that nothing she had just described was fine.
“Mom, we’ve talked about this.”
“It’s one thing, Jason.”
One favor.

One Saturday.

She would drag the dresser out herself, apparently, and hurt her back, and be laid up for a week.

I wasn’t to worry or let it spoil dinner.

I closed my eyes for a second.

I could have said I’d come early.

I could have tried to fit her into the day until the difference between helping and surrendering became hard to identify.

In the past, finding a way to do both had often seemed easier than defending why I shouldn’t have to.

But I had offered another day.

The help was available.

The part she objected to was that it wasn’t available exactly when she wanted it.
“Don’t do that,” I said. “I’ll help you.

Just not Saturday.”
“I’m sure she’s got something wonderful planned for you anyway.

Some silly little book that you’ll have to pretend to love.”
I stopped shifting the phone against my ear.

Rose had given me a rare book about the Roman Empire.

It was exactly the sort of thing I could become embarrassingly absorbed in, and she had found it because she listened when I talked about what interested me.

I hadn’t pretended to love it.

I had loved it so plainly that Mom had been irritated from the beginning.

That was the part I couldn’t dismiss as a difference in taste.

Nobody required Mom to enjoy Roman history.

I wasn’t asking her to read it or listen to a lecture.

She had only needed to let me be happy that my wife had found something special for me.

Later, while Mom was watching Daisy, the book had been damaged.

Pages torn.

Something Rose had chosen so carefully reduced to a thing I didn’t know how to repair.

I didn’t know precisely what had happened.

That uncertainty didn’t make Mom’s remark easier to hear.
“Don’t,” I said.
“Oh, don’t get sensitive.

I’m sure it’ll be very thoughtful.”
“The book was extremely important to me.

It was something Rose knew I’d love.

Something that showed she actually listens to what I care about.”
I reminded her that it had been wrecked while she was watching Daisy.
“Are you blaming me?”
“I’m saying it meant something to me.

And for some reason, it bothered you from the second she gave it to me.”
I didn’t get to finish.
“Of all the weeks,” Mom said, her voice changing. “Of all the weeks for you to come after me and accuse me of something I didn’t do.

You chose this week?”
“What do you mean, this week?”
“Never mind.

Enjoy your dinner.”
She ended the call.

I stood holding the phone, with Saturday’s practical problem still entirely solvable and my mother making it sound as though defending my wife had been an act of cruelty.

Continue below

Chapter 2/6
Rose looked at me when I put the phone down.
“Your mom?”
“Yeah.”
“You okay?”
I told her about the dresser and the timing.

Saying it out loud made it harder to pretend Mom had simply forgotten our anniversary.
“I don’t think it’s a coincidence,” I said.

Rose’s expression changed, just slightly.

She didn’t leap into agreement or begin listing everything else Mom had done.

She waited to see what I was going to do with the fact I had noticed.
“She turned it into a guilt trip,” I said. “But we’ve got dinner Saturday.

That’s what matters.”
I wanted that to be a reassuring sentence.

I knew I would have to make it one by keeping the plan.

Rose had heard intentions from me before.

I couldn’t expect her to relax simply because this particular one sounded convincing to my own ears.

There were other strained relationships around Mom, and ours wasn’t going to be settled by my refusing to move furniture one particular evening.

Rose had missed Anna’s birthday a couple of weeks earlier because it was held at Mom’s house.

That had hurt Anna.

Before our anniversary dinner, Rose spoke to her about it.

She told me about the conversation afterward, including the parts that hadn’t been comfortable.

She wasn’t proud of having missed the birthday, and she didn’t want her silence to suggest she hadn’t cared.

Anna said Rose had been absent lately.

She understood Mom could be difficult, but avoiding every gathering Mom attended would mean missing a lot of our family’s life.

I could hear my sister in that argument.

Family events were supposed to be where you showed up even if showing up was inconvenient.

I had believed that for so long that I hadn’t often asked who paid for everybody else’s comfortable afternoon.

Rose explained that she didn’t consider it running away.

She was choosing not to go somewhere she knew she would get hurt.

Anna told her Mom wasn’t doing it to her.

It was simply how Mom was.

That was an explanation I recognized too.
“So right now, I’m choosing to keep my distance,” Rose had said. “For me and Daisy.”
Anna didn’t think she could handle things that way.

Rose told her they didn’t have to agree.

I was sorry they had needed that conversation.

I was also glad it hadn’t ended there, because Anna had something important happening in her own life, something that deserved more room than another discussion of our mother.

She and her husband, Tim, had been licensed to foster.

They had talked about it since they were dating.

Tim’s father had been in foster care, and Anna’s work as a nurse helped her feel they might be able to do something useful.

They had imagined waiting until after having children themselves, then decided they could begin now.

Rose congratulated her.

Anna explained that the goal was helping children return safely to their families when possible.

She knew she became attached easily.

The training hadn’t persuaded her that she could somehow arrange not to love a child just because the placement might end.

She and Tim were doing it anyway.

When Rose told me that part, I felt proud of my sister.

She could be firm with Rose about Mom and still be a woman preparing to open her home to a child whose future she couldn’t control.

People didn’t always fit neatly inside the conversation that frustrated you most.

Rose had told her she was there for whatever they needed.

Even an eleven-at-night phone call.

I loved her for offering that without using it to settle the disagreement between them.

By Saturday, I wanted us to have one evening in which neither of us had to explain what kind of daughter, son, sister, or in-law we were being.

I wanted to take my wife to dinner, give her the little wooden gift I had chosen, and stay long enough to remember how a conversation sounded when we could finish it.

Chapter 3/6
At the restaurant, Rose sat down and looked around as though we had managed to enter somewhere slightly improbable.
“I forgot what this was like,” she said. “Sitting at a table without worrying about somebody throwing a spoon at my head.”
“Live it up.

Order something you need two hands to eat.”
She was having a cocktail, she announced.

A whole one.

She intended to finish it while it was still cold.
“You’re living on the edge.”
For a while, the biggest decision either of us needed to make was on a menu.

I hadn’t realized how good that would feel until I found myself reading it without glancing down to see what Daisy might have dropped.

Deb had our daughter.

We had the evening.

Rose looked beautiful.

I told her so, and she pointed out that I had already mentioned it twice while we were getting ready.
“You can keep going,” she said.

I intended to.

Then my phone lit up with Mom’s name.

I looked at it.

Rose noticed, of course.

She had become good at noticing what happened to my attention when Mom called, and I disliked knowing she had needed that skill.
“It’s my mom.”
“Right on time.”
I left it unanswered and tried to return to the conversation.

Mom was fine, I said.

It was nothing.

I didn’t actually know what she wanted, but I knew I didn’t want to hand her our table simply because she had found the number.
“Where were we?” I asked.
“You were telling me how beautiful and perfect I am.”
“Right.

That.”
She smiled and reached for the gift she had brought.
“Me first.”
I took it from her, curious and pleased in the ordinary way you are when the person you love has been keeping a small, harmless secret.

Then I opened it.

At first, I simply recognized the cover.

It was my book.

I looked up at Rose and back down again, needing both pieces of information at once: the book in my hands, my wife sitting across from me watching me understand.
“The Roman Empire book?”
“It’s yours.

Yeah.”
“But the pages—”
“I saved them.

Most of them.”
She had found an older man who owned a bookshop on Third.

He restored old books, and he had helped with the work she couldn’t do herself, particularly the binding.

Some pages had needed to be recreated and reprinted.
“It’s not perfect,” she said.

I turned a page carefully.

I remembered the damage, the torn paper, the feeling of looking at something that had been cared for until it came into my possession and somehow became wreckage.

Now I could open it again.

The repaired pages didn’t disappear into perfection.

I could see care had been needed, and that made me handle them more gently, not wish she had found a replacement.

I hadn’t known she had kept the pages.

I hadn’t known she had been finding somebody who understood how the pieces fitted back together.

While I had been trying not to be upset about a ruined gift, she had been doing something about it.
“You fixed it,” I said.
“I wasn’t going to let it stay broken.”
I wanted to say something adequate and found that the simple facts were more than I could improve on.

She had given me a thing I loved.

Then she had cared enough to give it back to me.
“This is incredible.”
She started to explain the imperfections again.

I shook my head before she could finish apologizing for them.
“It’s the best gift.

You’ve somehow managed to do that twice in one year.”
She looked pleased, and I was grateful to see it.

Too often, lately, something she had done for me had ended with her being made to feel foolish for doing it.

I kept my hand resting on the cover for a moment.

Across the table, Rose reached for her drink, still cold, and I thought we might finally be getting the hang of being out together.

Then Mom called again.

Chapter 4/6
Rose glanced toward the phone.
“Your mom again?”
“Yeah.” I left it where it was. “It’s our anniversary.

She can wait.”
I didn’t want the calls to become the main thing we would remember, so I reached for my gift before we could spend another minute discussing them.
“Don’t let me forget this.”
Rose took it, and I found myself explaining before she had finished opening it.
“Five years is wood, apparently.

I looked it up like a nerd.”
There was our anniversary date, engraved in the wood.

Beneath it were words from the vows I had said on our wedding day.

She read them, and her face softened.
“To be loved is to be seen.”
Five years earlier, I had meant those words about her.

She had understood me when I was still a college student being insufferable to my sister about a smart girl I had met.

She had married me knowing the subjects I could talk about too long, the things that mattered to me even when they weren’t especially impressive to anybody else.

Now the book lay on the table beside us, making my point with considerably more authority than I could manage.
“You see me for the nerd I am,” I said.

She laughed softly.

I wanted her to know that I saw her too.

Not only the mother of our daughter, though I loved watching her be that.

Not only the person who managed to keep track of all the things that needed keeping track of.

My wife, with her own feelings, her own limits, and a thoughtful streak that kept finding ways to surprise me.
“I hope you know that,” I said. “That I love you.

That I see you.”
I heard myself becoming earnest and nearly spoiled it by retreating into a joke.
“You probably don’t even remember the vow.”
“Of course I remember.”
“Yeah?”
“You made me cry in front of all our friends, Jason.

I remember.”
I smiled at her.

Five years didn’t seem possible and didn’t seem long enough at the same time.

We had a daughter now.

We had routines we hadn’t known would become routines.

We were still the two people who had stood up in front of everybody and promised to keep choosing this.
“To five years,” I said.
“To a million more.”
Then the phone lit up again.

This time, neither of us could pretend it was a stray interruption.

My attention went to the screen, and Rose’s went to me.
“Maybe she’s hurt,” she said. “Maybe something’s wrong.”
“She knows we’re here.

She knows it’s our anniversary.”
“But what if it’s an emergency?”
“It isn’t.”
“You don’t know that.”
I wished I could be certain without having to defend the certainty.

The calls had already brought Mom into our conversation, even unanswered.

Rose and I were sitting with our gifts between us, trying to work out whether I was allowed to ignore my own phone.

I was angry at the interruption, but embarrassed too.

I wanted to be the man who had just given his wife something meaningful, not the man whose mother needed to be discussed before dessert.

I understood why she wanted me to check.

Ignoring repeated calls felt wrong, even after the week we’d had.

Mom knew how to create that feeling, and I had spent most of my life responding to it before I considered anything else.
“She wants me to feel guilty,” I said. “At my own anniversary dinner.

This is what she does.”
Rose wasn’t arguing that Mom should have our evening.

She was worried there might be an actual need underneath the persistence, and I couldn’t blame her for wanting to rule that out.
“Just answer it.”
I looked at her, then at the book and the wooden gift between us.

I could answer a phone without giving away the rest of the night.

That ought to have been an uncomplicated thing for a grown man to understand.
“Give me a second,” I said.

I answered before I could start rehearsing a gentler opening.
“Mom.

What?”
Chapter 5/6
“Oh,” she said. “Am I calling at a bad time?”
I looked at Rose across the table.

Her hand was near the wooden gift, and I wanted to stay in the conversation we had been having before my phone began deciding where I looked.
“Yeah, actually.

Rose and I had dinner plans.

You’ve known that all week.”
Mom’s voice changed.

She had only been calling to wish her son a happy anniversary, she said.

Clearly I was too busy to talk to my own mother.

She would let me go.

There was an answer I usually gave at that point.

An apology, a reassurance, a few minutes stolen from whatever I had been doing so she wouldn’t feel the need to punish me for continuing it.

I didn’t give it.
“Mom, I’ve spent my entire life trying to make you happy,” I said. “And I don’t think anything ever will.

Nothing I do is going to be enough, and I can’t keep doing it.

Especially not tonight.”
I paused, hearing the words I had actually said rather than the safer version I might have preferred to remember afterward.
“Tonight I’m with my wife.”
Rose went still.
“This isn’t you, Jason,” Mom said. “This is not the son I raised.”
I had expected anger.

Hearing her sound as though she didn’t recognize me was harder.

For a moment I wanted to explain that I was the same son, that I would still move the dresser another day, that one dinner didn’t mean I had stopped loving her.

Then she blamed Rose.
“This is her, isn’t it?

She’s got you talking to your own mother like—”
“That’s my wife you’re talking about.”

“Jason.”
“She’s the best thing that ever happened to me.

And you know that.”
I was angry now, enough that the rest came out before I could tidy it.
“I know you know it, because it bothers you.”
Mom said she didn’t know who I was right then.

She just wanted to talk to her son.
“Tonight isn’t the time.

Good night, Mom.”
She was still speaking when I ended the call.

I didn’t wait for agreement.

That was unfamiliar enough that my thumb stayed over the screen for a moment after the conversation was already gone.

I put the phone down.

There was no applause, no sudden feeling that I had become a different person.

I could hear the room around us again, other people eating dinner, and I had to remind myself that nobody at another table was responsible for how uncomfortable I felt.
“Sorry,” I said. “Where were we?”
Rose looked at me for another moment.
“I’m a little distracted by the Jason I just witnessed standing up to his mom.”
I let out a breath that was almost a laugh. “If I remember correctly, you asked me to grow a pair.”
She gave me a look that suggested her recollection was excellent.
“I’m working on it.”
I hadn’t proved that I would get every future conversation right.

I knew how easily a familiar voice could make me start explaining myself.

But this time I had ended the call, and my wife was still sitting in front of me with the evening available to us.

She didn’t ask me to promise I would never falter again.

We didn’t spend the next hour reviewing everything I should have said five years earlier.

We returned to our dinner.
“To five years,” I said again.

This time we managed the toast without looking away.

Later, we went home with both gifts.

The restored book was something I wanted to open properly when I could give it time, and the little wooden keepsake was something Rose carried carefully.

I liked seeing it in her hands.

For a while, the night was exactly what we had hoped: a rare evening out that belonged to the two of us.

We had been home about an hour when my phone rang again, this time with Aunt Judy’s name.

Final chapter 6/6
I answered, still expecting the ordinary warmth that usually came with Aunt Judy’s voice.
“Hi, sweetheart.

I hope it isn’t too late.”
She had waited on purpose, she said.

She knew it was our anniversary and hadn’t wanted to interrupt anything.

I almost laughed at how simple that sounded.

We had gone out, I told her.

A real date, out of the house.

Rose’s mother had watched Daisy, and it had been our first evening like that in more than a year.
“Oh, that’s wonderful.”
She sounded genuinely delighted, pleased by the idea of us having a table and an evening and nobody needing to get up halfway through a meal.

Five years, she said.

Could I believe it?

We were lucky to have found each other.
“You hold on tight to the ones you love,” she told me. “Tight as you can.

You never know how much time you have.”
I thanked her.

Then, because Anna’s call and Mom’s outburst were still somewhere in my mind, I asked her something.
“Is Mom okay?”
Judy hesitated.
“She’s been a wreck this week,” I said. “Anna noticed it too.

We realized she’s done it our whole lives, this time every year.

Do you know what that’s about?”
My aunt didn’t answer immediately.

I waited, holding the phone against my ear, no longer thinking about the restaurant.
“I think she’s mourning a friend,” she said at last. “Someone she lost this time of year.”
“Who?

Somebody I know?”
Another pause.

She couldn’t remember, she said.

I tried to fit that answer to the candle, the quiet afternoon, the tears Anna had walked in on.

Somebody important enough to leave a mark on every August, but not somebody whose name either of us had ever been told.
“Whoever it was must have mattered a lot,” I said.

Judy agreed, a little vaguely.

Then she said she needed to get going.

She had told herself she would make it to the grocery store.

She asked me to give Daisy a kiss on the head for her and pass her anniversary wishes along to Rose.
“Hold on tight now,” she said again.
“I will.

Thanks for calling.”
After we hung up, I stayed with the phone in my hand for a moment.

I didn’t know whether Judy truly couldn’t remember or simply didn’t want to tell me.

I had no name, no explanation beyond an old friend who had died.

There was enough there to wonder about.

There wasn’t enough to know.

I thought about how Judy had begun the call, telling me to hold on to the people I loved.

I didn’t know whether that had anything to do with Mom or whether I was searching for connections because I had been given so little.

It was possible to make a story out of pauses if you wanted an answer badly enough.

I wasn’t going to do that.

Whatever this week meant to my mother, I would need more than an uncertain conversation to understand it.

For now, all I knew was what my aunt had actually said.

Rose asked what my aunt had wanted.
“To wish us a happy anniversary.

She waited till late so she wouldn’t interrupt dinner.”
“Nice.”
“Novel concept in this family.”
She smiled, then asked what Judy had said about Mom.

I told her.

An old friend had died around this time of year.

Judy hadn’t supplied a name.
“That’s strange, isn’t it?” Rose said.
“Yeah.”
I could feel the familiar urge to keep turning it over, to call somebody else, to spend the remaining part of our anniversary trying to explain my mother.

Perhaps there was grief I didn’t understand.

It didn’t change what had happened at dinner or require us to keep discussing her until we went to sleep.
“I’m done thinking about Mom today,” I said.
“Fair enough.”
I set the phone down and put the restored book somewhere safe, closing its cover gently.

Rose was waiting by the bedroom, tired and smiling, and I went with her.

THE END.

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