Chapter 11: Seven Cards

Pearl came down the stairs one step at a time, with a hand on the rail.

She sat beside me on the bottom stair, which creaked under both of us.

For a while neither of us said anything.

Then she put her hearing aids back in, one and then the other.

"I want to hear you properly," she said. "Go on. Yell."

"I'm not going to yell at you."

"Then I'll start."

She turned to face me, and her enormous glasses were wet.

"You were twenty-two and we'd buried your father in June. In July that boy left and you didn't get out of bed for nine days."

"I remember."

"I sat on this staircase every night and listened to you not cry."

Her voice cracked.

"He wrote in December and I thought, if I tell her he's out there, she'll go after him, and he'll leave her again."

"And then I'll have nobody."

"Pearl."

"I wasn't thinking about you," she said. "That's the truth. I was thinking about me."

I had been ready for an excuse.

It's hard to stay furious at a woman who says it straight.

"Then each year it got harder," she said. "A year became three."

"Then you got engaged to that ironed shirt, and I thought, thank God, she's moved on, and I put the tin in a drawer."

"Then why did you call him?"

"Because I met Preston's mother." She said it with great dignity. "And I decided I'd rather lose you than watch her have you."

I put my head down on her shoulder.

It was bony and smelled of lavender and lozenges.

"You don't get to run my life," I said into the sequins. "Not even out of love."

"No, baby."

"I mean it."

"I know you do."

"I'm still angry."

"Good. Stay angry. I'll make tea."

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