Chapter 2 - The Work of Staying
Lillian read the line a third time, quieter, as if it might alter its meaning under her breath.
“Mom wouldn't write this about Dad.”
“She did,” Reed said. “I sat with her when she dictated the first draft. She insisted on writing the final copy herself.”
“Why were you there?”
“Your mother and I served together at Walter Reed, long before either of you were born. When she was sick, I visited. I brought terrible cafeteria coffee and told her stories she had already heard.”
Lillian kept her eyes on the page. “She was too weak to hold a pen that week.”
“She wrote it over two mornings. Celia brought her a wider pen grip.”
The Air Force colonel had remained in the hallway, beyond the half-closed door. Maeve could see her silhouette between two dresses hanging on a wardrobe rack.
“Go on,” Reed told Lillian. “Read what she wanted you to have.”
Lillian sat on the vanity bench. It was too low; her skirt spread across the rug like spilled milk. She read silently, a crease deepening between her eyebrows.
Her mother's letter did not contain a grand absolution.
Maeve was where she believed she was needed. I asked her not to leave the evacuation while patients were still waiting. I made that choice knowing it might be our last conversation. I will not let anybody turn my choice into a punishment for her. But Lillian, I saw how much I left on your shoulders. Please don't confuse being the child who stayed with being the child who mattered more.
At the bottom of the first page, Eleanor had made a little drawing of a teacup. Maeve recognized it before she recognized the exact wording. Their mother used to draw a teacup in the margins of notes when she was worried, a joke about the endless cups of lukewarm tea offered to military families waiting for news. Once, when the girls were teenagers, she'd drawn fifty-seven of them during a long parent-teacher conference. Lillian had counted.
“I remember those,” Lillian whispered. “She drew them when the doctor couldn't tell her when she could go home.”
Maeve remembered another version: Eleanor drawing them during an argument about Maeve's decision to accept a training position on the opposite coast. Their mother hadn't ordered her to stay, but she had kept drawing. Maeve used to believe that meant disappointment. Seeing the cups now, she wondered how often she'd mistaken worry for judgment.
Lillian turned the letter over. On the back, in smaller writing, Eleanor had made a grocery list and crossed it out. The pages weren't a perfect farewell, prepared for a movie scene. They had been written by a tired woman who had been interrupted by somebody asking whether she wanted chicken broth. Lillian pressed a thumb over the crossed-out word apples, and that ordinary mistake nearly undid her.
There were two more lines to each daughter. To Lillian: You are allowed to leave the house without asking what needs washing first. To Maeve: Answer the phone when you can. I don't need you to be good at everything. I need to know your voice.
Maeve felt the last sentence under her ribs, sharp as a swallowed pin.
She had not answered her mother's last voicemail. She had watched the notification appear on a borrowed satellite handset and put the handset back in its holder because an ambulance was coming in and she was afraid of what a private call would do to her composure. When she'd returned, the network was down.
Lillian folded the paper along an existing crease. “You could've called me.”
“I tried three times that night.”
“After Mom died.”
“Yes.”
“You could've called me before. For the whole month.”
Maeve looked at the dark makeup smudged beneath her sister's eye. “I know.”
“That's it? You know?”
“No. I have excuses. Some of them are real. I was on a ship, then ashore, then working twenty-hour shifts. But I could've found a way to ask how you were doing. I thought if I called, I'd have to tell you I wasn't coming.”
“You did tell me. In a text.”
“I did.”
Lillian pressed the letter against her lap. “I slept on a chair by her bed. Dad kept telling me to be strong because you were off doing important work. Do you understand how that sounded?”
“Like you were doing the unimportant work.”
Lillian's silence was answer enough.
Reed stepped toward the door. “I'll leave you two.”
“Why now?” Maeve asked before he reached it. “Why did Dad ask you to wait?”
Reed rested his hand on the brass knob. “He told me Lillian was already struggling and this would confuse her. Later he said it would reopen wounds. I believed him longer than I should have. I mailed a copy to each of you last winter, but both came back undelivered. Then Noah invited me.”
Lillian shook her head. “My address hasn't changed.”
“Your father gave me a forwarding address. An apartment you moved out of years ago.”
Maeve didn't answer. The general looked older than he'd looked under the ballroom chandeliers.
“You should've called me directly,” she said.
“I should have.”
He left. The sound of dishes being wheeled along the corridor seeped into the room.
Lillian stared at her wedding shoes. “Did she die mad at me?”
“No.”
“You weren't there. You don't know.”
“True.” Maeve swallowed. “But I know she loved you. She talked about you whenever we managed to speak.”
“Easy for you to say.”
Maeve thought of arguing and didn't. The biggest thing she'd learned in command was that giving the true answer wasn't always the same as listening.
“I kept her apartment,” Lillian said. “Dad wanted to sell the house. I told him no. I put her scarves in plastic bags so they wouldn't smell like mothballs. Then one day I opened one and couldn't smell anything at all.”
Maeve sat on the carpet because she couldn't bear to stand over her. She remembered her mother leaving windows open in cold weather to rid the house of stale air. It used to drive their father crazy.
“I have her scarf,” Maeve said. “Blue one. I took it when I left.”
“The one with the hole?”
“She burned it on the stove.”
They both smiled, and the smile was worse than crying.
Lillian touched the corner of the letter. “If this is true, why did Dad let me hate you?”
Maeve had asked herself a version of that question for years. She knew it would be too convenient to answer without hearing him.
“We can ask him,” she said.
“Not in front of everyone.”
“Not in front of everyone.”
A soft knock came. Noah's voice followed.
“Lil? The caterers need an answer. They can hold dinner, but the kitchen's running out of room.”
Lillian tried to laugh. Her mouth wouldn't manage it.
She stood up, wiped beneath her eyes with the back of her hand, and pushed the door open. Noah studied her face. Then he looked at Maeve on the floor and the folded paper in Lillian's fingers.
“Can we take ten minutes?” Lillian asked.
“Sure,” Noah said. “Except your dad's telling people Maeve manufactured the whole thing.”
Maeve rose so quickly her knee hit the vanity. The letter shivered in Lillian's hand.
May you like
“Then,” Lillian said, “I think dinner can wait.”
