Part 1

I was trying to fit the last turkey sandwiches into a cardboard box when I realized I was still saving the best-looking ones for Paul. My mother’s funeral reception was over. The room had begun to lose its borrowed warmth, and I was standing beside a folding table, deciding which sandwiches my husband might prefer, as though getting his lunch right would restore some order to the day. I put the one with the torn bread on top. It was a small rebellion. At the time, it was all I had energy for. The woman helping clear the table offered me another container. I thanked her, though I already had enough food for a faculty meeting. People had been feeding me since Mom died, leaving dishes and pressing parcels into my hands. I understood the impulse. There were things you could do with aluminum foil that you couldn’t do with grief. “Will you manage that?” she asked. “Yes. Thank you.”

The box was awkward rather than heavy. I balanced it against my hip while finding my keys, then checked beneath the table for my purse, which was already on my shoulder. I teach European history to teenagers. Most days, I can remember which treaties they’ve confused and who owes me an essay. That afternoon, I couldn’t keep track of a bag attached to my own body. Outside, the Evanston air smelled of damp leaves. I put the food on the passenger seat and stood beside the car before getting in. I didn’t particularly want to go home. That was difficult to admit. Home was supposed to be where I could take off the shoes that had been pinching since morning, wash my face, and stop answering questions about whether I was holding up. But Paul had begun treating my mother’s illness as something that had happened to him. He didn’t put it that plainly. He talked about strain, about our neglected marriage, about how long it had been since we’d enjoyed ourselves. I knew he was tired of the hospital and care-home visits. I was tired of them, too. The difference was that I couldn’t leave my mother there and decide I’d done enough. I settled behind the wheel and adjusted the box so it wouldn’t slide. A corner of the lid had come loose, and I folded it back into place. My mother would have asked whether I’d eaten. Helen had been very good at asking a practical question when the emotional one was too large. During the last year, when breathing tired her and conversation came in shorter stretches, she still wanted to know whether I’d remembered lunch. Sometimes I lied. Sometimes she knew. On better afternoons, she asked about my students. She liked hearing about the ones who argued with me, provided they had a respectable reason. I’d sit beside her describing some classroom dispute while she listened with her eyes closed. Once, when I stopped because I thought she’d fallen asleep, she said, “Well, was he right?”

I laughed so loudly a nurse looked in.

"I missed that already: being able to tell her something that had nothing to do with medicine."

I missed being a daughter who could bore her mother with an ordinary workday instead of watching a machine and trying to decide whether the next breath looked harder than the last. She had worn her sapphire ring through most of my life. Square-cut stone, platinum setting, a weight to it that I’d recognized when she let me try it on as a girl. I used to turn my hand in the light and imagine having somewhere important to go. Mom would tell me not to knock it against the table. I’d considered that a disappointing instruction for such a glamorous occasion.

"Later, I came to associate the ring with ordinary things: her hand on a steering wheel, a cup lifted from a saucer, fingers checking whether I had a fever."

It had never belonged only to special occasions.