Except for Mark's room, the bow window is the brightest place in our apartment. I keep my drawing board there, and most days I more or less have all the light I need. My son and I have a new condominium in an old building: the architect who first bought it had knocked down a few walls to create one big, open room at the front, where Mark and I work and play. Mark's bedroom gets the same Western exposure as that big front room. When we moved here three years ago, I took the bedroom at the back. Since I spend most of my day either at the drawing board or visiting clients, it doesn't matter to me how much light I get when I'm not working. I know Mark needs it, though. From the long-legged chair at my drawing board, I can look out across the fake Tudor castle that the builders named Chester Court and see everything that happens in the street outside.

That is how, at 7:30 am on the last Saturday before Thanksgiving, I saw a man and a woman escort my neighbor Daphne into an ambulance and drive her away. The manager of Chester Court must have sent them. I'd been watching Daphne's apartment for the past week now, never seeing her out with her basket at the usual time anymore, never seeing the curtains open. The band of dirt on the bottom of Daphne's slacks had grown to be a full two inches wide, and someone in her family must have come out of the woodwork to take care of her, put her in an institution or something. Two men wearing masks with filters like moose nostrils got out of the truck and went in through Daphne's entrance.

Helen phoned later, as the big truck dragged the Jet-A-Way up to the front of the house with a loud scrape. She is the best ex-mother-in-law a person could hope for, more reliable even than my own mother. Standish and I had moved in with her when I first discovered I was pregnant; Mark was born in her guest bedroom. Until Mark was five, and Standish left, Helen had insisted that her house was our house. Even then she hadn't wanted me to leave, but I knew that it was time.

Mark and I didn't visit Helen as often as she would have liked, even though we lived only 20 miles away. When you work for yourself, you have to take on projects as they come to you--it's hard to know whether the work will be there later. Besides, Helen was often visiting Honduras to help administer diphtheria vaccines, or traveling to Indian reservations to see the missions. Helen loved to be needed; she volunteered constantly. She called us every Saturday that she was home. During the years I lived in Helen's house, I alternated between feeling close to her and feeling like one of her projects. So I listened to Helen talk about her upcoming trip to the mission church in Barbados as I watched the work guys carry out a torn, rose-printed lampshade and a wing chair with dark stains on the armrests. What kind of smell could be so horrible in that apartment, I wondered. Urine? Dampness? Unemptied garbage? Maybe it was that rotting-fruit smell that drifted off her as we passed on the street.

"Meg?" asked Helen. "Are you still there?"

"Yes, sorry. I was a little distracted. They're emptying out my neighbor's apartment. I'm pretty sure she must have been a little bit crazy."

"How awful. That poor woman. Isn't there anything you can do for her?"

I hadn't even thought about it. There's the difference between Helen and me. Helen would immediately see the tragedy in the situation and think of helping. My mind was full of meeting my deadline for the brochure that I had to finish by Tuesday, and whether Mark's cold weather jacket from last year would look presentable enough for our visit to Helen over Thanksgiving weekend. As the phone conversation went on and my mind drifted, Daphne's furniture took on its own life for me. Had she chosen that white leather couch herself? Had she once been well enough to walk into a store and try on the plaid jacket that arced into the Jet-A-Way? A breeze fluttered through the sleeves of a peacock-blue dress as it went over the dirty sides of the refuse bin. Daphne's face had always been so closed. She had never responded to my hello, and yet she had once preened before a mirror as a clerk had said the color blue matched her eyes.

"I don't think there's much to do. She probably shouldn't have been living alone," I answered.

"Oh, it's just a crime the way we treat the mentally ill. I just get so angry sometimes."

And I didn't. I could never be like Helen with her great causes, or even Standish, who drew and painted obsessively. In college, Standish had been everyone's idea of what an artist should be. He was the one who insisted that we live with Helen when I became pregnant with Mark so that he would not have to interrupt his series of factory paintings to get a job. I was the one who designed department store ads and supermarket flyers so that we could have a little cash to chip in for groceries. I needed my own money so that I could buy a lipstick for myself without a calm, rational family discussion, and neither he nor Helen had ever understood that.

"Yes," I answered lamely. "There's so much unfairness." Somehow I always felt like one of the bad guys when Helen railed against the ills of society.

"Is Mark still asleep?" asked Helen.

"He's probably reading. Lately he reads by himself as much as he can."

"Is he looking forward to Thanksgiving?"

"Oh, yes. He's been talking about it for weeks."

Helen's house was the perfect grandmother home. She had inherited it from her parents, and it was full of antiques and the toys Standish had played with as a child. At one time, it had been a farm, and most of the apple trees still stood in a gnarled circle at the back of the house. Mark loved to climb them. Here in Manchester, we had a yard with a swing set behind our building, but it wasn't the same as Helen's house.

Mark wandered into the kitchen and leaned against my chair. He didn't cuddle very much anymore, but when he was sleepy, he still sought the warmth of my body. "Mark's awake," I said to Helen. "Do you want to talk to your grandmother?" Mark nodded. I wandered away, picked up a sponge, and began to scrub at the spatters on the stove. I had made soup last night. "Can I ride the old bike?" he asked Helen. "I'm big enough now." I tried not to feel resentful. I had bought him a new bike for his birthday just two months before, but he still wanted to ride Standish's old Schwinn. He replied "uh-huh" and "yeah" to a few more things, then handed the telephone back to me.

"We'll be there on Wednesday," I said to Helen. "I'm looking forward to it, and I know Mark can hardly wait."

As I was saying good-bye to Helen and assuring her that I could remember the way to her house, Mark wandered over to the window. He watched the workers heave the white, vinyl hassock into the Jet-A-Way. A cloud of dust and scraps of paper flew up.

"Whose stuff is that?" he asked.

"Daphne's. You know, the lady with the old red raincoat?"

"They're just throwing everything away?"

"Yes," I answered. I didn't really want to explain the situation to him. If I explained it, I would be part of it. "She was sick. She couldn't live alone or take care of herself anymore."

Mark nodded. Now that he was awake, he no longer melted into my hug. He stood there, enduring it and my explanation. "Sometimes, you know, people just aren't in control any more. They could hurt themselves or someone else." He stood for a minute, waiting for me to say something else. He looked at me for a while with a serious, expectant look on his face. I felt that I should tell him something important, something he could reflect on later. But nothing came to me.

We arrived at Helen's house on Wednesday with five pounds of flour, three pounds of the organic butter she liked, and a bag of cranberries. I knew that Helen didn't need these things, but I hated to show up empty-handed. I still needed to prove to Helen that I could provide for her grandson, that I didn't just want to show up at her house and take from her. Once I stepped over the threshold of Helen's house, I would lose some of my adulthood. I would stop being the person who met deadlines and paid rent and become the poor little pregnant girl she had taken in eight years before.

"Look at everything you brought," said Helen, taking the bag from me. Helen is a slim stalk of a woman, always moving. Hiking and gardening made strong little muscles on her arms and legs. Her hazel eyes are like Mark's: they wait for an answer and they want you to be better than you are. I'm a few inches taller than she is, and I'm bigger. Not fat, mind you, but I feel as if I should be the one carrying the heavy loads because of my size.

"Well, it was on sale, and I know you love to make pies. You know, I forgot to ask who else would be here this year."

"Oh, just a few friends. Nice people from my church."

I had avoided meeting anyone from Helen's church except the occasional committee worker who had come to Helen's house to pick up clothes for the thrift shop or drop off envelopes to stuff. Before Standish left, he would somehow manage to get up at eight o'clock on a Sunday and put on a shirt and tie. He and I had both agreed that religion was a hypocritical farce, that no self-respecting God would expect you to jam into a badly decorated room and sing off key with a bunch of people who had bad breath. But Standish really wanted to make Helen happy. Most of the time I'm still angry with him, thinking of him in New Mexico living with someone named Suki. But I try to remember that he really cared whether Helen was happy. On those Sunday mornings, I always washed the floor and polished the chrome handles on Helen's stove. I would start a batch of waffles and time it carefully. The first waffle, the one that was never that great, the one that I always threw away, would be done by the time they arrived home. I could start the rest of them baking. We'd sit down together, and for a minute I'd look around at all of us, Mark in his highchair banging a rubber hammer, Helen in the same tweed suit she had worn for years, Standish there for the time being--I'd look around at us and pretend we were all going to last that way. I wondered whether these people Helen invited from her church had known Standish, but I hated to ask. Instead, I asked, "How many pies are we going to bake?"

"Just ten," Helen answered. "That's not so many, is it? I'll put some of them in the freezer for Christmas." For a minute I felt as if she were asking my permission. At least it would keep me busy, I thought.

That afternoon, I rolled pie dough and watched Mark peddle Standish's old silver bicycle across the yard, through the circle of trees. The bike was still too big for him, and he swayed from side to side pushing the pedals to make the bike move through the dead grass. Helen's house was as cold and drafty as I had remembered it. Only in the kitchen, where the stove threw off heat, did I feel completely warm. Once we moved away from it into any corner of the room, we shivered from the dampness. So the two of us stayed at the table near the stove, long after we had pressed all the dough into Helen's collection of pie plates. Helen had stopped drinking coffee to protest growers' working conditions, so we shared a pot of green tea. I inhaled the smells of hot cranberries and cloves, apples and cinnamon baking together. I had missed times like this with Helen.

"Have you heard anything more about Daphne?" Helen asked.

"No. To be honest, I hadn't even thought about her, Helen. I was up until 2 am finishing a brochure. I had a deadline."

"Was this for a store?"

"No, stores don't seem to want brochures any more. This was for a computer company."

"Computers." Helen sighed as if I'd told her I was designing ads for the local drug lord.

"What happened to those beautiful drawings you used to do?"

"Oh, they're in a box somewhere."

"Don't you draw any more?"

"Not really. Sometimes I sketch. I just don't have the time."

"It's a shame. You have so much talent."

"Well, I guess the person who's getting to use his talent is in New Mexico." Helen didn't say anything. I wanted to apologize, but I was so sick of apologizing.

We were quiet again, sipping our tea, and Helen said, "You know how sorry I am, don't you?"

"It's not your fault," I answered, staring down into my cup. That was the problem. There was no one to blame. Standish had told me that he still loved Mark, that there was no one else in his life except me. He said he just couldn't stand another winter in New Hampshire, not going anywhere with his painting. "I wish being content day to day was all I needed," he said, "but it isn't." That sounded like bad James Taylor to me, but I had to let him go anyway. The bedroom that Standish and I had once shared was now Helen's sewing room, so that night I slept on the sofa. Not that it would have bothered me to sleep there. After all, I had taken the bedroom furniture with me when I moved to Manchester. Besides, it had been so long, and I'd dated other men. By now I should be over him. And I liked sleeping in the living room, watching the last sparks hiss out in the fireplace. I lay on the sofa, looking at the closed bedroom doors--Helen behind hers reading Simone Weil, and Mark behind his, probably playing with the toys Helen kept for him or reading Standish's old set of The Book of Knowledge.

The next day, Thanksgiving, I followed Helen as if I were a scrub nurse behind a great surgeon. She whipped sweet potatoes with brandy, and I cleaned the blades of the mixer. I wiped the counter, remembering to use the sponge she kept for surfaces that touched food. By noon, the effort of being a good daughter-in-law had nearly worn me out and I wanted to go home. Dinner was ready, and the glow of contentment I'd felt the evening before had frozen into the fixed, patient smile that I could feel disfiguring me. I wished that I could make myself a pot of coffee, and watch old Bette Davis movies in my living room, in the living room that held only memories of Mark and me. Helen's friends, Ruth and Henry, wrung my hand and ruffled Mark's hair. Their daughter, Missy, was in her early twenties. When she bent down close to Mark, her soft red hair slid forward on her shoulders.

"How old are you?" she asked.

"Eight," he replied, looking at her very seriously.

"Your Nana tells me you're a great swimmer."

"You mean my grandmother? I don't call her Nana. I just call her Helen."

"That's very sensible," said Missy. "Helen says you have a great bicycle here. Can I see it?"

Ruth put her hand on my elbow and said, in a low, confiding voice, "Helen told me about the awful thing that happened to your neighbor. How are you and Mark doing?" Why was Helen telling these people our business? Had my son and I turned into some community project?

I don't know what possessed me to say this, but I answered, "Daphne? Actually, I'm a little jealous of her. Imagine having someone just come along and clean out your apartment. Think of the junk you could get rid of in one fell swoop." Everyone was silent for a minute. Then Henry asked Mark to show him and Missy the apple trees, and Helen herded Ruth and me into the kitchen to put pickles onto the relish tray and mound the cranberry sauce in her grandmother's cut-glass bowl.

"You know," said Helen, as we worked in the kitchen, "Missy teaches Sunday school at church."

"That's nice," I answered. I tried to reign in some of my resentment, reminding myself that this was a holiday, that I didn't want Mark to grow up with any more memories of conflict than necessary. "What age?"

"Mark's age," Ruth interjected.

"What a coincidence," I said, knowing that the edge was in my voice and I couldn't pretend it away.

"Meg," said Helen, "I don't know what's the matter with you. You've been acting strangely all morning. Ruth and Henry are my friends, and Missy likes children. I thought she'd enjoy playing with Mark today so you could have a break."

I took a deep breath, trying to rescue the holiday and maintain some of my dignity at the same time. "Listen, I'm sure that Missy is a great person. But I want Mark to decide for himself about God. I don't want to indoctrinate him against his will. Standish and I both feel the same way about this."

"But Meg, hon, what does Mark want?" asked Ruth.

"Well, if that's his decision, I'm not going to hold him back."

We ate dinner, and I managed to have a conversation with Missy about jazz music, of all things, and the Renoir exhibit she'd seen down in Boston the year before.

Friday we drove to the outlet store mall, and Saturday we went to Mount Snowy and rode the gondolas, things we'd done for years with and without Standish. Saturday night, as we ate more leftover turkey, Helen asked, "So, Mark, do you want to go to church with me?"

"Sure," he replied.

"Is that what you really want?" I asked.

"Yeah, Mom," he answered.

By Sunday morning, my body was screaming for 20 ounces of convenience-store coffee and a chocolate doughnut. The church stood on a wide lawn with a round rose garden in the center. I admired the heavy granite arches, but the iron fence around the garden showed signs of rust and vandalism. Inside, the front hallway looked smaller and dirtier than I had expected. I remembered from childhood the smell of floor polish and coffee, ladies in outdated suits, dandruff on dark fabric. The people in Helen's church looked as if they'd stopped in on their way to pick up a quart of milk. A smell of poor people's food, something with a lot of gravy, lingered in the air. Mark flashed his green eyes at me, those eyes rimmed with thick, dark lashes, and then disappeared into one of the frosting-pink Sunday school rooms. Helen stood with a knot of people, talking about something in her cooing, concerned voice. Maybe I could just leave now, pick up a large coffee and a New York Times somewhere.

I smelled flowery vanilla perfume, and a slender woman with a long, gray braid tapped me on the shoulder.

"You must be Helen's daughter-in-law," she said.

Yes, I thought. I guess I must be. Was everyone going to surround me and start humming?

"Don't look so scared," said the woman. "Helen just thinks so much of you that we're always hearing stories about you and your son." I had nothing to say to that, so I smiled and hoped that would do. "Shall we go in?" she asked.

I was trapped. We sat on the bulging, frayed cushions of the last pew, and she handed me a hymnal. "Don't push your luck, babe," I thought. The service dragged on, loosely following patterns I remembered from childhood. Mark was somewhere with other children, I thought--that would be good for him. Perhaps he was drawing or playing some game.

The weekend was almost over, I remembered. I was in the home stretch. As the last hymn wheezed from the organ, Helen tapped me on the shoulder.

"I'm sorry I abandoned you. The trip to Barbados is only a month away, and we still have so much to do." She thanked the woman with the gray braid for taking care of me. It really was a plot, I thought. "We'll go home soon," Helen said, "but I think the kids are going to entertain us during coffee hour."

The milling crowd gently pushed us through a pair of double doors into a large room with a stage at one end. Henry, in an apron with "Kiss the Cook" in block letters across the front, set out a tray of ham salad sandwiches on soft, sticky white bread. A little blonde girl appeared on stage and clapped her hands at us. "Ladies and Gentlemen," she said in a mock-announcer's voice, "our Thanksgiving song."

I scanned the crowd of children for Mark and saw him in the second row. It's not fair, I thought. He hasn't had time to practice. Missy stood in front of the children, sounded a note on a pitch pipe, and raised her arms to conduct the children. Somehow Mark had picked up everything he needed to know within that hour, or maybe he had learned the song somewhere else and not sung it with me. I watched Mark's face as he sang, even though I couldn't pick out his voice from the rest of the children's, and his face seemed to echo the same emotion the other faces carried. I knew he would sing that song to himself later and smile, and I would never understand why. As Missy's hands signaled to the children, their faces reflected her enthusiasm, the way Mark as a baby had mirrored my smile. When I remembered that first smile passing between Mark and me, I felt that current of happiness passing back and forth between Missy and the children. I knew that Mark was feeling something as pure and immediate as the welcome I had sent him when he was a baby. But it was something he would not be able to explain to me, something important in his life that I would never share.

That night, back in my own apartment, I stood at the kitchen window and folded the warm laundry from the dryer. Across the courtyard, Daphne's windows were still open. A few stray snowflakes blew against the screens. All winter those windows would remain open, but eventually the smell would dissipate. Someone new would arrive, scrub the floors, tear out the old wallpaper, and begin a new life there. I would never forget what had happened to Daphne, but I silently gave her windows permission to fill with someone else's light. b

Photo by Jeffry Pike
Copyright © 2000 President and Fellows of Harvard College.
All rights reserved. Comments. Last modified Fri, Oct 6, 2000.