Winter Garden

But each day it went on, each time Mom seemed disconnected to the world and confused by it, Meredith lost a little bit of faith in Dr. Burns’s assessment. She worried that it had to be Alzheimer’s instead of grief. How else to explain her mother’s sudden obsession with leather shoes and pounds of butter (which Meredith now found hidden all through the house), and the fairy-tale lion that she sometimes found her mother talking about?

Meredith touched her not-mother again, soothing her as she would a frightened child. “It’s okay, Mom. We have plenty of food downstairs. ”

“I’ll sleep for a minute, then I’ll go to the roof. ”

“No going to the roof,” Meredith said tiredly.

Mom sighed and closed her eyes. Within moments, she was asleep.

Meredith went around the room picking up the blankets and other items Mom had dropped.

Downstairs, she put a load of clothes in the washer so they’d be ready to go when she got here tomorrow. Then she finished the two care packages for Jillian and Maddy.

It was ten o’clock by the time she was done.

At home, she found Jeff in his office, working on his book.

“Hey,” she said, coming into the room.

He didn’t turn around. “Hey. ”

“How’s the book going?”

“Great. ”

“I still haven’t read it. ”

“I know. ” He turned to her then.

The look he gave her was familiar, full of disappointment, and suddenly she saw the two of them and this moment from a distance, and the new perspective changed everything. “Are we in trouble, Jeff?”

She could see that he was a little relieved by her question, that he’d been waiting for her to ask it. “Yeah. ”

“Oh. ” She could see that she’d disappointed him again, that he wanted to talk about these troubles she’d suddenly excavated and tripped over, but she didn’t know what to say. Frankly, this was the last thing she needed now. Her mom was crossing the road into crazy and her husband thought they were in trouble.

Knowing it was a mistake and unable to correct it, she left his office—and his sad, disappointed look—and went up to the bedroom they’d shared for so many years. She stripped down to her underwear and put on an old T-shirt, and climbed into bed. A pair of sleeping pills should have helped, but they didn’t, and later, when he crawled into bed, she knew he knew she was still awake.

She rolled over and pressed up against his back, whispered, “Good night. ”

It wasn’t enough, wasn’t anything, and they both knew it. The conversation they needed to have was out there, like a storm cloud, gathering mass in the distance.

Seven

In mid-February, green was the color of defiance. White crocuses and snowdrops blossomed overnight, their thin, velvety green stalks pushing up through the glittering white blanket of snow.

Every day, Meredith vowed to talk to Jeff about their troubled marriage, but each time she made such a promise to herself something would happen that moved her in a different direction. And the truth was that she didn’t want to talk about it. Not really. She had enough on her plate with her mother’s increasing confusion and weird behavior. A newlywed might not be able to understand how troubles in a marriage could be ignored, but any woman who’d been married for twenty years knew that almost anything could be overlooked if you didn’t mention it.

One day at a time; that was how you made it through. Like an alcoholic who doesn’t reach for the first drink, a couple could simply not say the sentence that would begin a conversation.

But it was always there, hanging in the air like secondhand smoke, an unexpected carcinogen. And today, finally, Meredith had decided to begin it.

She left the office early, at five o’clock, and ignored the errands that needed to be done on the way home. The dry cleaning could be picked up later and they could go a day without groceries. She drove straight to her mother’s house and parked out front.

As expected, she found Mom in the winter garden, dressed in two nightgowns and wrapped in a blanket.

Meredith buttoned her coat as she went out there. Nearing her mother, she heard the soft, melodic cant of her voice saying something about a hungry lion.

The fairy tale again. Her mother was out here alone, telling stories to the man she loved.