Chapter 22: Boxes

I owned a dozen boxes, a rice cooker, and a bookshelf.

That was what four years with Dustin and eight years in a one-bedroom had left me.

On the last Saturday of April, Cosima and Sasha carried it all up Gina's back stairs.

Cosima carried the lamp and the opinions.

Sasha carried the heavy things and apologized to each one.

"Sasha," I said, "it's a box of sweaters. You can drop it."

"I don't want to drop it in front of Gina."

"I'm right here," Gina said from the landing. "I can hear you."

"I'm sorry."

"Stop apologizing. You're making the stairs nervous."

Cosima put down the lamp and looked around the long room with its brick walls.

The green door, the old quilts, and the couch with the empty frame above it.

"It's very you," she said to Gina.

"Is that good?"

"It's exactly what Rae needs. It's warm and there's nowhere to hide."

She hugged Gina, which Gina allowed with a stunned look, and then she hugged me and whispered, "You look like someone who sleeps."

"I do sleep."

"I know. I've been waiting for this since college."

By four o'clock the boxes were stacked in the corner, and Sasha had gone down to open the gym.

Cosima lingered at the door.

"Show her," she said.

"Show who what?"

"The photo. It's in the green bag. I checked it twice."

I had forgotten I had asked her to carry it.

I took the bag to the couch and set it in my lap.

Inside, wrapped in a gray scarf, was the photograph of my mother.

She sat on the library steps in her gray cardigan with her reading glasses pushed up in her hair.

Caught in the middle of a laugh.

Behind her you could see the card table, with its stack of other people's forms.

I had taken that picture myself, the April before she got sick.

"Oh," Gina said softly.

She had come to stand behind the couch.

I held the photograph up beside the empty frame, and the two of them looked made for each other.

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