instinctively want on your side—or as far away from your side as possible—but her sexuality is so potent, so uncontrived and primal, she could easily serve as a model for some pagan fertility goddess.
The clothing disagreement has been laid to rest for the moment in favor of—I see her scan the apartment—reviving the Living Space Dispute.
My fists clench.
“I still don’t see,” she says, plunking down the grocery bag filled with something intriguingly solid onto my counter, “why you feel you have to line a greedy land-lord’s pockets for a space this small. Honestly, honey—you could drown in your own sneeze in here.”
“The place is rent-stabilized,” I say. “Which you know. And it’s mine.” Well, for all intents and purposes. “And it’s a damn good thing I didn’t let it go, considering…things.” I clear my throat. “What’s in the bag?”
“Ravioli. Nonna made it this morning. And you could live with Nonna and me, you know. Especially now that I’ve moved all my stuff up front to the dining room, since we don’t really need it anymore, so there’s an extra room besides the third bedroom, you could use it for an office or studio or something. I mean, c’mon, think about it—even if you split the rent with me, think how much money you’d save, and have twice the space besides.”
Twice the space, but half the sanity. I cross to the kitchen, remove the plastic container from the bag. “Right. You wanna take bets on who would kill whom first? Besides, you actually expect me to believe those rooms are vacant?”
My childhood memories are littered with images of tripping over the constant stream of strays my parents took in, friends of friends of friends who needed someplace to crash until they found a place of their own, or the grant money came through, or whatever the excuse du jour was for their vagrancy. I never got used to it. In fact, every time I got up in the middle of the night and ran into a stranger on my way to the bathroom, I felt even more violated, more ticked, that my space had been invaded. Which is why, I suppose, despite the pain of paying rent on my own, I’ve never been able to stomach the idea of a roommate. Not one I wasn’t sleeping with, at least.
And Nedra is well aware of my feelings on the subject, that much more than the normal grown child’s need for independence propelled me from her seven-room, rent-controlled nest. Unfortunately, what I call self-preservation, she has always perceived as selfishness.
“I don’t do that anymore,” she says quietly. “Not as much, anyway.” I snort, shaking my head. “Look, I’m not going to turn away someone who genuinely needs my help,” she says, almost angrily. “And, anyway, Miss High and Mighty, since when is it a crime to help people out?”
I look at her, feeling old resentments claw to the surface. But I say nothing. I’m feeling fragile enough as it is; I have no desire to get into this with her right now. Which is, duh, why I didn’t want to be around her to begin with.
Then she sighs. “But I am more cautious than I used to be. I don’t take in total strangers the way Daddy and I used to. Not unless I have some way of checking them out.” She rams her hand through her hair, frowning. “It upsets your grandmother, for one thing.”
Well, good. At least her mother-in-law’s getting some consideration, even if her daughter didn’t. I notice, however, she doesn’t contradict me about the killing-each-other part of my observation.
I return my attention to the plastic container of pasta in my hands. Defying their imprisonment, the scents of garlic and tomato sauce drift up. Traditional, artery-clogging ravioli, stuffed with plain old meat sauce, the pasta made with actual eggs. My knees go weak. I put the container in my empty fridge, make a mental note to call Nonna when I get back to thank her—
“I’m sorry, sweetheart,” Nedra says softly. So softly, in fact, I look up in surprise.
“About?” I ask, since I don’t think we’re talking about the Hotel Petrocelli anymore.
“What do you think?”
Ah. I almost smile. “Oh, right. You hated Greg, you detest his family and everything they stand for. I somehow don’t think you’re real torn up that it didn’t work out.”
“Well, no, I’m not, I suppose. I couldn’t stand the thought of your marrying into that bunch of phonies.”
An exquisite pain darts through my left temple. “Just because they don’t live the way you do, don’t think the way you do, that doesn’t make them phonies.”
She gives me that okay-if-that’s-what-you-want-to-believe look, then says, “Whatever. But what I feel about them doesn’t matter. Not right now. I can still feel badly for you. I know you loved him.”
And I can tell it nearly kills her to admit that. But before I can say anything else, she goes on.
“And it kills me to know you’re hurting. I remember what it feels like, suddenly being single again. And it’s the pits.”
I’m staring at her, unblinking. Is this a “Twilight Zone” moment or what? Empathy? From Nedra? On a personal level?
I think I feel dizzy.
“And I also know what it feels like,” she continues, her dark eyes riveted to mine, “the first time you go out into the world after something like this. That you look at everyone around you and wonder how they can just go on, living their normal lives, when your own has fallen apart.”
For the first time, I notice the dark circles under her eyes, that she looks tired. Worried, even.
I have seen my mother outraged, exhilarated, devastated. But not once that I can remember have I ever seen the look in her eyes I see now. And I realize she’s really not here to torture me, at least not intentionally, but because she needs me to need her. As a mother, as a friend, as anything I’ll let her be.
Oh, dear God. She wants to bond? To do the whole we-are-sisters-in-tribulation thing?
My eyes are stinging as I turn away to toss my sunglasses and a book into a straw tote. The criticism, the clashing of opinions…I know how to brace myself against those, how to grit my teeth against the sting. This…this compassion, this whatever it is…
I have no idea what to do with that.
“We better get going,” I say, snatching the stupid video off the coffee table before tramping through the door.
An hour and a half later things have returned to normal. Or what passes for normal between my mother and me. We got into a political fracas before I even hailed the taxi, an argument that wasn’t fully cold in its grave when we arrived at Grand Central and she launched into an unprovoked attack on several hapless passersby for ignoring a homeless man on the sidewalk, to whom she gave a ten dollar bill.
It was ever thus. I know my parents sure didn’t earn the big bucks as instructors at Columbia, especially not in those early years, but they were profoundly aware of those who had less, to the point where their socialistic consciousnesses weren’t at peace unless they’d given away so much of their earnings to this or that cause, we were barely better off than the poor wretches they supported. Generosity is all well and good—don’t look at me like that, I give to charity, jeez—but weeks of living off lentils and boxed macaroni and cheese night after night because we couldn’t afford anything else got old real fast.
I
