asking,” their mother said. Then she closed her eyes and leaned her head back a little into Mara’s brushing. She seemed to relax, and that allowed Mara to relax, too. Mara thought about the sense of peace that came from listening to Vic busy herself at the kitchen sink, and she thought about what it would be like to be grown-up and to be the one who brought that comfort to someone else. She tried to imagine herself Vic’s age, but it seemed too far away to envision. When she was very little, five or six, after a family road trip to California, Mara told her parents she’d decided to grow up to be a billboard painter and paint new billboards every day that would make drivers feel peaceful instead of wanting to honk their horns. She was too young to understand her parents’ amused reaction. A few years later, she announced she would write a book that her parents would edit, though what kind of book remained uncertain since her mother worked on nonfiction and her father edited poetry. A poetic book about pretzel baking, or maybe mountain climbing? That plan, too, drew indulgent smiles. Now, when she closed her eyes and thought about the future, it seemed fuzzy, full of sharp edges and dark holes and no colors at all. Was this only since her father had left? She couldn’t remember.
Vic turned off the faucet as their mother murmured.
“What?” Vic turned.
“Oh. Oh, nothing. He just takes himself too seriously, your father.” She cleared her throat. “Do you see him much?” Her voice was affected. She was trying to pretend the question was casual.
“Mom,” said Vic, “I don’t want to talk about Dad, or you and Dad. If I get involved, I’m going to end up having to pay two hundred bucks a week for three years of therapy. As a dancer, I can’t afford it.”
Their mother waved her hand, her eyes still closed. The gesture was unclear: Did she accept Vic’s refusal, or was she waiting for a chance to ask again? Vic seemed concentrated on cutting the ends off the strawberries, and for a few minutes the only sound was the brush pulling through their mother’s hair.
“Don’t hold close to anything, girls,” their mother said at last. “That’s my best piece of maternal advice. Don’t count on anything because everything changes and that’s all you can count on.”
Mara looked up from her mother’s hair to exchange a glance with Vic. When their mom began talking to them like that, making pronouncements and saying “girls,” it meant nothing good. It meant she was feeling morose. That had been true even before their dad had moved out.
“Isn’t that kind of a cliché, Mom?” Mara said, not unkindly. In fact, she sounded like her mother herself, who used to point out clichés when looking over Vic’s or Mara’s school papers. Their mother ignored her.
“Some changes are for the best. Sure, they are,” their mother said. “Learning how to make rice pudding. Consummating my relationship with your father. Earning more money. Those were good changes.”
Vic grabbed a dishtowel, held it under the colander, and brought the strawberries to the table. “Eat,” she said to Mara.
“But the rest—well, the bottom line is, cling to nothing. Even when I was your age, Vic, and I could feel men watching me as I walked down the street, and even when my energy was boosted by every breath I took, I knew what was coming. That eventually my hair would lose its sheen, my skin would turn fragile, and I wouldn’t bounce up a set of stairs.”
“Mom,” Vic said, “you look great. Besides, everything doesn’t change.”
“What? What doesn’t change?” Their mother’s voice had grown loud and a bit harsh, the way she had spoken to their father at the end, in the days before he’d left.
“Mom,” Vic said soothingly, “we’re always going to be your daughters.”
Her mother shook her head as though to shrug Mara off, so Mara stopped brushing. “No more cribs, no more wet wipes or playgrounds. You live in your own apartment, and Mara will be next,” their mother said, not pausing to allow Mara to protest that she wasn’t yet in high school. “It changes. It already has. So. Name one thing that doesn’t.”
Vic shook her head and looked up at the ceiling. “Memories,” she said after a minute, grinning like she’d called out the right answer on a game show. “Memories don’t change.”
“Are you kidding?” their mother said. “Whatever happens in the future makes whatever happened in the past look different. Sometimes completely different. Try again.”
Vic sat at the table and leaned forward. She hesitated, her expression searching and determined. Mara was rooting for her older sister, although in much the way one would root for an underdog—full of doubt and trepidation. And then Vic smiled. “The stones.”
The stones. Yes. Vic was brilliant to remember them. Everywhere they went over the years, the four of them collected everything from large pebbles to small rocks and brought them home. The stones were rich with memories—their own family memories and those that predated them, their mother said. The stones were their family’s version of a photo album. Sometimes for special meals, they put four or five in a pile on the table, a centerpiece. Generally they were kept in two bowls on the bookcase. Vic and Mara had spent many hours sorting through them. Their dad sometimes carried one in his pocket, and after a hard day, their mother would sit in a chair by the window and rub one.
Their mother stared at the palm of her right hand as though she could see her future there. “Even stones change,” she said. “Smoothed by waves. Pitted by sand.” But her voice sounded less certain. “And wind . . .” She trailed off.
“Those stones are exactly the same as the first time we brought them into the house, Mom.” Vic handed Mara another strawberry before she moved to the living room and then returned, bringing a bowl of stones with her.
Mara’s mother glanced at them, then turned her face to the wall.
“Look at the quartz streaks in this one,” Vic said, holding one out and waiting until their mom took it. “Remember how we found it on that trip to the Southwest?”
“And this orange one with a smooth spot in the middle of all the rough,” Mara said, emboldened by Vic’s success. “Remember how Vic used to say it was the stone with a stomach?”
“And this one, Mara, you said looked like a peach with a bite missing,” said Vic.
Their mother looked at both of them. “You girls,” she said, and finally, shaking her head, she laughed. She actually laughed. It sounded gentle, like a real laugh, and it filled Mara with hope, and with a sharp longing she’d been denying—a yearning for those old days when twice as many people lived in this apartment, and it felt alive, and she’d never felt scared, like she did sometimes now, of shadows that stood in corners.
Their mother reached for the bowl, letting her fingers skim over several stones before she selected one. “This is the one that fits in your eye,” she said to Vic. “Remember?”
“And this one,” said Vic, “I used to be able to balance it on the bridge of my nose.” She tried, but it fell to the table and all three of them laughed. Mara loved the way laughter made her chest feel lighter. She’d never noticed that before, in the old days. Still laughing, she reached up and pulled another stone out of the bowl.
“Look at this one,” she said, giggling. “The lopsided heart.”
As
