“Anyway, the boys will be fine,” said Joy.
“I can’t believe we need to get involved with these kinds of people,” fretted Brooke.
“These kinds of people?” repeated Joy. “What do you mean, these kinds of people?”
Brooke had never, ever been snooty. Joy hadn’t brought her children up like that. Troy liked to strut about like a peacock, flicking his shiny black credit card onto the table at restaurants—“I’ll take care of this,” he’d say—but it was funny when he did it.
“Oh, you know what I mean, Mum,” said Brooke.
“No, I don’t know what you mean. You didn’t grow up in Downton Abbey, darling.”
“It’s nothing to do with money or class. I just mean people where there might be a, I don’t know, a kind of, what’s the word, criminal element?”
“We’ve got plenty of criminal elements in our family! Your own brother was a drug dealer!”
“Troy just sold weed to the private-school kids. You make him sound like a drug lord. He just, you know … saw a gap in the market.”
“I can assure you that Savannah is a nice girl in a difficult situation,” said Joy crisply.
“I’m sure she is a nice girl, and it’s awful what happened to her, but she’s a stranger, and she’s not your responsibility. You’ve got enough on your plates!” There was that new condescending tone that had begun to creep into Brooke’s voice ever since Stan had his knee operation, as if she were just weighed down with the onerous responsibility of taking care of her aging parents. It was sweet but also mildly aggravating.
“What are you talking about? We’ve got nothing on our plates.
Not a thing. Our plates are empty, darling.”
Joy hadn’t fully understood how bored she and Stan had been until Savannah arrived on their doorstep. Savannah gave Joy and Stan something interesting and new to talk about, and she was so sweet and grateful and pretty.
“And Savannah isn’t a stranger anymore.” Joy peered at Agassi’s scratchy ballpoint signature on the ball as she polished. “Every person you meet starts out as a stranger. Your father was a stranger when I first met him. You were a little stranger, when I first met you.” She saw Brooke’s outraged little red face as the doctor held her up like an animal he’d rescued from a trap. Amazing to think that angry helpless baby was now this opinionated young woman.
“You didn’t let Dad move in to your house the moment you met him,” said Brooke.
“No, but I let you move in!” said Joy, which she thought was rather witty, but Brooke’s laugh sounded hollow.
“Anyway, she hasn’t ‘moved in,’” Joy reassured her. She picked up the Navratilova ball. “This is temporary. Obviously.” She spoke in the brisk, businesslike voice she used with the accountants. “It’s just until she gets back on her feet. There’s really nothing to worry about. You’ll like her when you meet her. Logan liked her today! I could tell. You know what she’s doing right now?”
“Going through your jewelry?” said Brooke. “Stealing your identities?”
Sometimes she sounded so much like her father.
“I don’t own any jewelry worth stealing,” said Joy. “She’s welcome to it. No. She’s cooking dinner. Pasta.” The scents of garlic and onion wafted from the kitchen. “This is the third time she’s cooked! She keeps insisting! She says she loves to cook! Do you know how wonderful it is to have someone else cooking for you? Well, you do, because Grant cooks.”
There was a moment’s silence, and then Brooke said plaintively, “I’ve cooked dinner for you, Mum.”
“Of course you have,” soothed Joy. “Many times.” Brooke was a perfectly competent cook, like Joy herself, but, also like Joy, she took no obvious pleasure in cooking, grimly plunking down plates with a put-upon sigh.
Joy’s family had been, and still were, big eaters. Keeping her family fed had been a never-ending, arduous task and now that it was just Joy and Stan, she had to force herself into the kitchen each night, with the thought: This again? Savannah, on the other hand, cooked as if it was a lovely pastime, not a chore to endure, humming and cleaning as she went.
Brooke didn’t answer, and Joy heard the traffic in the background, the angry toot of someone’s horn, and she imagined her daughter behind the wheel, frowning, worrying about that damned new clinic that Joy wished she hadn’t so bravely started, worrying about her parents who didn’t yet require her concern. The time will come, my darling, we’ll get frail and sick and stubborn and your stomach will twist with love and terror each time we call, but plenty of time, don’t get ahead of yourself, we’re not there yet.
“The thing is, I hate cooking,” said Joy. The words rushed out of her mouth: traitorously, venomously. “You’ve no idea how much I hate cooking, and it just never ends, the cooking, night after night after bloody night. Each night at five o’clock, like clockwork, your father says, ‘What’s for dinner?’ and I grit my teeth so hard I can feel it in my jaw.”
She stopped, embarrassed.
“Gosh, Mum,” said Brooke. She sounded shocked. “We should get one of those meal services for you, if you really hate cooking that much. I had no idea you felt like that! All those years. You should have made us help more when we were growing up but you never let us in the kitchen! I feel terrible—”
“No, no, no,” interrupted Joy. She felt ridiculous. It was true she hadn’t let her children help in the kitchen. They were too messy and loud and she didn’t have the time or patience to be the sort of mother to smile lovingly while a floury-faced child cracked eggs onto the floor.
(She would be that sort of grandmother. Grandchildren would be her second chance to get it right. Now she had the time and the eggs to spare, and she would be present with her grandchildren. When she looked at photos of her children when they were little, she sometimes thought, Did I notice how beautiful they were? Was I actually there? Did I just skim the surface of my entire damned life?)