Chapter 5
I told him that I loved him. I told him that love did not require me to be a funding source for a life in which I was not welcome at the table. I told him that when he was ready to have a different kind of conversation, I was here, and I would be here, and the door would be open.
Then I told Genevieve that the country club had been notified, and that Clara would be sending a summary of the canceled authorizations by end of business today, and that she should review it with her own financial advisor before calling the bank again.
I went inside.
My granddaughter was at the kitchen table with the gift open in front of her, a small illustrated book about the kinds of birds that lived in this part of the country, which she had mentioned wanting three months ago in a way that I had been holding on to. She was already on the third page. She did not look up when I sat across from her, but she moved the book slightly toward the center of the table so I could see the illustrations too.
We sat that way for a while. The rain had started again outside, soft and steady. I made a second cup of tea, in the good cup, and set a glass of juice across from me without asking, because she always wanted juice.
She asked me what the bird on page seven was called.
I told her.
She said it was a funny name for something that looked like that.
I told her that a great many things had funny names once you examined them closely.
May you like
She turned the page.
Benjamin and Genevieve were still in the driveway. I could hear the murmur of a phone call through the kitchen window, the specific quality of a voice managing a situation rather than resolving it. That was going to take time, and the time was going to be uncomfortable, and the discomfort was going to be instructive in ways that no amount of my absorbing things had managed to teach in fifteen years.
