Part 19 (1/2)

I laugh. And, unforgivably, do Ingrid: plod, plod.

Then we round the final corner, and Bug is gone.

”Oh, no,” Ingrid wails. She turns around and stamps her foot.

”He's gone,” I say to my mother.

”He's gone?” d.i.c.k Traeger says.

My mother starts to giggle. She puts her hand over her mouth, and she laughs and laughs.

”It's not funny,” Ingrid says. ”It's not fair.”

d.i.c.k Traeger steps over to a trash can and lets the plate of food fall from his hand. He faces my mother and crosses his arms over his chest. ”You find it funny,” he says.

She turns away from him, biting her lip. I can see she's biting it hard, hard enough for it to hurt, and I know what she's doing: trying to sober up. It's what I do in school to stop myself from laugh-ing-that, or I say to myself, over and over again, My grandfather's dead, my grandfather's dead, and although I never knew him, my mother's father, it works.

”Come on,” I say to Ingrid. ”Let's go see if it's still warm.”

We leave them standing there and cross the arcade to the empty niche. It's not warm, but there's a stone in it, and I say, ”Hey, what's this?”

”A rock,” Ingrid says. ”You stupid.”

”I think he left it here for you.” I pick it up and see that it's got some kind of writing on it. ”It's got a message on it,” I say.

”It does not.”

It's too dark right here to read it, so I step into the courtyard, out into what's left of the daylight. The stone is about the size of a hamburger patty, bigger than it looked when Bug took it from his pocket; painted on it, in dark green letters I can barely make out, are the words ”Please Turn Me Over.” I turn the stone over. ”Thank You,” it says on the other side.

I turn around. Ingrid is leaning against the wall, pouting-apparently not really looking at me. I pretend to throw the stone toward the fountain, just in case she is looking, then I put it in my pocket. I decide that I'll wait and give it to her when we get home tonight. Or maybe tomorrow.

I go back under the arcade. ”Let's go tell Dad,” I say.

”Tell him what,” she says, but she follows after me. We walk past my mother and d.i.c.k Traeger, both of whom now have their arms crossed over their chests, and I hear my mother say the word ”mistake.” We keep walking.

AFTER MY MOTHER died Ingrid and I picked a weekend and met at the house in Palo Alto to sort through her things. Instead of having children Ingrid and Bruce had bought a Universal gym, and Ingrid was lean and hard, her hair blown dry so you could see the comb marks in it.

”You know what I was imagining driving down here?” she said. ”Big fights over china and silver, like I even care.” She looked around our mother's living room, all blue and green silk-tasteful, you could have said, to a fault. She picked up a throw pillow, a little jade jewel. ”What, for example, would I do with this?”

”Sit on it?” I said. ”Listen, this isn't about apportioning, is it? Let's just make sure we know what's here and we'll sell it, OK?”

”Sure.”

Her purse still hung from her shoulder. ”Shall we have a seat?” I said.

She set the purse down and sat on the edge of the couch. I sat opposite her, my mother's wide gla.s.s coffee table between us. ”Something to drink?” I said. ”I picked up a few things on my way from the airport.”

She smirked.

”Mr. Host,” I said. ”Sorry.”

”Better you than me.” Ingrid sat back and put her feet up. ”Do you realize that until she got sick I hadn't been here since my wedding? All I can think about is standing right over there in that horrifying dress she made me buy and her making these little disappointed sounds like I'd picked it and she didn't really approve but she wasn't going to say anything. I can't tell you how close we came to blowing the whole thing off and just going to a justice of the peace.”

”If we cantaloupe,” I said, ”lettuce marry, and we'll make a peach of a pear.”

”Ha, ha,” said Ingrid, but she smiled and seemed to relax a little.

Her wedding had been the killing blow for her and my mother: when Ingrid announced that she was going to marry, my mother's vision blurred past Bruce, who coached girls' soccer and softball at a junior high school, and past Ingrid, whom she could never clearly see, and focused instead on some kind of ur-wedding, for which, at the very least, special orchids would have to be grown. It was a beautiful, beautiful wedding, a huge, gorgeous straw on the back of a very weak camel.

”You know what was in the freezer?” I said.

”What?”

”A piece of your wedding cake.”

Ingrid grinned. ”I guess she forgot to put it under her pillow so she'd dream about the man she was going to marry.”

”Maybe she was afraid she'd dream about the one she did marry.”

”Poor guy,” said Ingrid.

We started in the bedroom. Ingrid wanted a picture of the four of us on the beach when she and I were very young, and another of me at my college graduation, hair to my shoulders and a wide paisley tie. I said that I'd take my mother's bedside lamp. We stood at the dresser and looked uneasily at each other.

”I'm not really sure I feel up to her underwear,” Ingrid said.

”Courage.”

She pulled open the top drawer and her mouth fell open. ”What?”

Inside were perhaps forty small boxes-china boxes, papiermache boxes, silver and straw and wood boxes. Most of them had been gifts from me, but seeing them all together was a shock: the collection seemed to amount to a kind of fetish. (But whose fetish? My mother's or mine? And boxes-what would Herself say?) ”Jesus,” Ingrid said. She opened a box; inside was a pair of earrings. She opened another: the same. She began pulling the boxes out of the drawer and opening them: a pin, more earrings, a bracelet, tiny locks of our baby hair tied in blue and pink ribbons (and here Ingrid looked away from me, hurried on to the next box), more earrings, another bracelet. ”Why didn't she just get a jewelry box?” she said.

I saw how she could think that, I really did. But I missed my mother so much at that moment that I felt breathless: how we'd have laughed together at the idea that one thing could ever have been as satisfying to her as forty things.

”Are you OK?” Ingrid said. ”Do you want to take a break?”

”I'm fine.”

”Sure?”

I nodded.

She opened a square leather box I'd bought for my mother in Florence. ”What's this?”

In the box was a stiff, yellowing card, soft-cornered, on which were printed two letters: N. D.

”G.o.d.” I took the card out of the box.

”What is it?”

I thought: If she doesn't remember, why dredge it up? Although, to be honest, I'm not sure whom I thought I was protecting. I put the card back and closed the box. ”Actually,” I said, ”maybe we should take a break. I mean, we've been at it for what, fifteen minutes? I bought some cheese and crackers.”