The Good Afternoon

The first time my mother remembered me in six months, I was in the parking lot buying a birthday cake she could barely eat.

The grocery store had written HAPPY BIRTHDAY, MOM in purple frosting. It had always been Mom’s favorite color, at least when she could remember it. The woman behind the counter asked if I wanted flowers in the corners. I said sure, because there are some questions you can only answer by surrendering.

My sister’s picture popped up for video call while I was trying to keep the cake level on the passenger seat.

“She’s asking for you,” Nora said.

I looked at the phone. “What do you mean?”

“I mean she knows your name. She knows it’s her birthday. She asked where her girls went.”

At the nursing home, my mother had spent the last several months looking at me with the polite alarm of a woman whose neighbor had let herself in without knocking. She still liked me. She said I had kind eyes. Once, she asked me if my mother knew where I was.

“I’m coming,” I said, trying to squash down the little bubble of hope I felt.

“I know. I told her.”

I hung up and drove carefully, because it was Lansing and the road was full of potholes and I had just spent $39 on a specialty cake for a woman who might not remember me by the time I got there.

At the first red light I checked my face in the mirror. I had frosting on my sleeve. It occurred to me that I had spent more time getting ready for dates I did not want to go on than I had getting ready to see my mother come back from the place she'd been disappearing into for two years. To be fair, I had no way of knowing whether or not she would.

The light changed. Someone behind me honked. I wanted to get out and ask him what kind of emergency he thought he was having that he couldn’t wait one millisecond for me to lock back in.

Nora was waiting outside Room 14. She had Mom’s birthday cardigan folded over one arm, the green one with pearl buttons. Mom used to put it on whenever she expected company, even if the company was a plumber.

“She’s still here,” Nora whispered.

I went in.

My mother was sitting upright with her hands on top of the blanket. Someone had brushed her hair. She saw me and opened her arms.

“There’s my little radish.”

I had not heard that name since I was seventeen and announced, with the conviction only a seventeen-year-old can manage, that she was never to call me that again.

I put the cake down and climbed into the space beside her. She smelled like lavender lotion and the warm cotton of her sheets. Her arms were thinner than I remembered, but they knew what to do with me.

“You came,” she said with relief in her eyes.

“Of course I came.”

“I thought I’d missed you.”

Nora turned away. I held Mom harder.

I wanted to ask where she had been. I knew she wouldn't have an answer. Still, for a second, the question stood between us like she had gone away on purpose.

The doctors had explained that this could happen. A good hour, maybe a good afternoon. Nobody knew why, and nobody could promise another one, so they told us to enjoy it. The instruction felt obscene, like being handed a coupon for a meal after a house fire.

But we did. We brought in the cake. Nora fastened the cardigan around Mom’s shoulders. Mom complained that the frosting was too sweet, then asked for another bite. She remembered the name of Nora’s son and that he was afraid of moths. She remembered the dog we had as kids, who ate an entire roast off the counter and somehow remained the favorite member of the family.

For forty-seven minutes, we were just a normal family celebrating a birthday on a Tuesday.

Nora told Mom about her son losing his first tooth. Mom remembered how Nora had once swallowed hers in her sleep and insisted for a week that the tooth fairy owed her hazard pay. Nora laughed so hard she dropped her fork. I hadn't heard her laugh like that in a little over two years, around the time Mom had been diagnosed.

Mom asked about my apartment. She wanted to know if the windows still stuck in the summer. I had moved out of that apartment eight years earlier. I told her about the house I lived in now, and she listened with the pleased attention she used to give me when I described something I'd made. I would have gladly answered her questions for the rest of my life.

Then my mother looked at the empty chair beside the window and said, “Where’s June?”

Nora’s fork stopped halfway to her mouth.

June was our youngest sister. She had not visited home in three years. Their last conversation had happened in our mother’s kitchen, loud enough for the neighbors to hear through closed windows. Mom had found out June was pregnant and had told her, in words I can still recite, that she had a talent for ruining her own life and would probably ruin the baby’s too.

June left. The baby came. Mom sent a quilt. June sent it back.

It had taken Mom four months to make the quilt. She sewed little white stars into a dark blue sky, the same pattern she had made for each of us. I helped her box it up. June called me when it arrived and said, “Does she think I can wrap Evie in this and forget what she said?”

I told her no. I picked up the returned box from June’s house and brought it back to Mom’s a week later. Mom put it on the top shelf of her closet and never asked me to help send anything again.

June wasn't the only one she'd hurt. Mom had a tendency to find the worst thing you secretly believed about yourself and say it aloud during an argument. When I was twenty-six, she told me that taking care of everyone was the only reason people kept me around. She apologized a few days later, but I still thought about it every time I walked into her room with clean, folded laundry.

Illness did not make my mother’s words disappear. Some days, I thought her forgetting them was an additional insult.

“She’s at home,” Nora said.

“Call her,” Mom said. “Tell her I’d like to see her.”

Nora looked at me. I looked at the cake. A purple flower had fallen onto the white paper beneath it.

“We can call,” I said.

“Good.” Mom settled back against the pillows. “She should bring the baby. I want to see what I’ve missed.”

Nora and I exchanged a tense glance.

“Mom, Evie's three now,” I said.

Mom stared at me. She looked down at her hands, at the new thin skin and the veins showing through it. “Three,” she repeated. “I thought she was still small.”

I could see her trying to account for the time. I could also see that she couldn't. She asked us to call before June got busy.

Nora followed me into the hall.

“Do you really think we should do that?” she asked.

“Nora, she asked. It’s her birthday.”

“June doesn’t owe her anything.”

My gaze shifted to the floor.

“I know.”

“If we call and she says no, Mom will sit in there waiting for someone who isn’t coming.”

“Then we tell her the truth.”

Nora’s face changed. “You’ve always been good at that—from a distance.”

After Mom’s diagnosis, Nora had taken on being mom’s caregiver. She’s also the one who initiated moving mom into a nursing home when the care taking became too much to handle alone.

She went back into the room before I could object.

I stepped outside and called June. It rang four times. She picked up sounding out of breath, with her daughter singing somewhere behind her.

“Is she dead?”

I winced.

“No. She’s awake. She knows us.”

June was quiet.

“She asked for you,” I said.

“Did she.”

I could hear the pain in her voice, straining to hide behind indifference.

“She said she wants to see you and Evie.”

I heard a cabinet close. “How long is it going to last?”

“I don’t know.”

“So I drive an hour and a half with a toddler, and either she’s forgotten me again or she gets to tell my daughter I’m a disappointment?”

“You don’t have to come.”

“I know that.”

June ended the call. I stood outside with the phone against my ear until the screen went dark.

I almost called again to say that Mom knew she had done something wrong. Then I remembered the exact wording of the apology Mom had offered June three years ago: I'm sorry you think I don't believe in you. She had been so proud of herself for getting through it without raising her voice. June had cried anyway.

If Mom had something better to say today, June should be allowed to hear it from her.

When I went back inside, Mom was holding Evie’s school picture. We had tucked it into the corner of her mirror months ago. She traced the little girl’s crooked bangs with one finger.

“Does she look like me?” she asked.

“Around the eyes,” I said.

She smiled, then looked at Nora. “Is June coming?”

Nora was watching me. I could have said I didn’t know. I could have said June needed time. Both were true.

“I called her,” I said. “She hasn’t decided.”

Mom nodded. “I wouldn’t come either.”

No one knew what to do with that. Nora straightened the blanket, though it was already straight.

“I said something awful when she was pregnant,” Mom said.

Nora sat down slowly. “You remember that?”

“Every word.” Mom kept looking at the photograph. “I wanted her to be scared enough to come home. Her boyfriend wasn't any good, and she had no money. I thought if I made her angry, she'd stay and prove me wrong.”

“She was already home,” Nora said.

Mom nodded. “I know that now.”

I had heard Mom explain herself a hundred times. This was the first time she hadn't ended the explanation by asking us to agree with her.

Mom looked down at the photograph. “Could you tell her I’m sorry?”

“You can tell her yourself,” I said.

“Maybe.” She rubbed her thumb over Evie’s face. “But if I can’t.”

“What do you want me to say?”

She thought for a long time. At first I worried she'd lost the thread. Then she said, “Tell her I was wrong about the kind of mother she'd be. I don't know her little girl, but I can see she's loved.”

Her voice shook. “Tell her I shouldn't have made her leave my house to feel safe.”

I wrote it on my hand so I would get the words right. There wasn't room for all of it. Across my fingers, I wrote I WAS WRONG. On my palm: SHE WAS SAFE HERE FIRST. Below that: SORRY.

“Let me try,” Mom said.

She held out her hand for my phone. I opened June’s contact. Mom touched the little picture of her, smiling in the garden with Evie on her hip. Her fingertip rested there. After a while she handed the phone back.

“I don't know what to say if she answers,” she admitted.

“You can start with hello.”

“She might hang up.”

“She might.”

Mom looked relieved that I hadn't lied to her. She asked for a minute to think, and I gave her one.

We put on music. Mom asked for the song Dad used to sing while he washed dishes, and Nora found it on her phone. When he was alive, she complained that he sang it too loudly. She knew every word.

We waited to see whether June would come.

By three, she was calling me Nora. At three-twenty, she asked when Dad would be home. By four, she was frightened of us again.

It happened in pieces. She forgot why there was cake, but remembered that the frosting was too sweet. She asked Nora if she had finished her homework. For a few minutes, she knew she was in a nursing home and was furious with us for leaving her there. Then she stopped recognizing the cardigan on her own shoulders.

At three-thirty, I put my phone beside her hand. I asked if she still wanted to call June. She looked at the screen and asked who the little girl was. I turned it off. We had missed our chance while she was thinking of what to say. I couldn't blame her for that without blaming myself too.

I sat beside her and said, “Mom, I’m Rashida. I’m your daughter.”

She glanced at my hand, where I had written her apology. “That’s nice,” she said. “Are you staying for supper?”

This couldn’t be happening.

I went into the hall to call June back. She answered before the first ring finished.

“I’m on my way,” she said. “Evie’s with her dad. I’ll be there in forty minutes.”

I leaned against the wall. “June—”

“Don’t give me the update while I’m driving. Please. I just need to get there.”

I said okay. I heard her car door shut, then she hung up.

I had wanted her to make the choice for herself. She had. There was still time to turn around, if I told her what had happened. But she had asked me to let her drive, so I did.

At five, June came through the front doors carrying a little paper bag from the bakery beside the highway. Her cheeks were red from the cold. She had bought our mother a lemon tart, the kind Mom used to bring home for her when she had a hard day at school.

I met her in the hall.

“She doesn’t remember?” June asked.

I shook my head.

June closed her eyes for a second. Then she walked past me into the room.

Mom was watching a game show. June stood beside the bed with the bag in both hands.

“Hi, Mom.”

My mother looked up and smiled at her like she smiled at the aides.

“Hello, sweetheart.”

June sat down. She took the tart from the bag and set it on the tray beside the uneaten birthday cake.

“Happy birthday,” she said.

“Thank you.” Mom glanced at the tart. “That looks lovely. Did you make it?”

June laughed once, quietly. “No. You know I’m terrible at that.”

Mom smiled again, waiting for an introduction.

June stayed for two hours. She cut the tart into pieces and held a napkin under Mom’s chin while she ate. She showed her pictures of Evie. Mom said the little girl had beautiful eyes. Nobody mentioned their resemblance.

At one point Mom reached across the bed and moved a strand of hair out of June's face. June went still. Mom had done it without thinking. A second later, she asked June whether she'd visited before.

“Once or twice,” June said.

That wasn’t true, but at this point, it didn’t really matter.

She took Mom's hand anyway.

When Mom fell asleep, June came out into the hall. I showed her the writing on my palm. Most of it had rubbed away from holding Mom's hand. June turned it toward the light and read the words across my fingers.

“She said that?”

“More than that.” I told her everything I could remember. I told her about the house, and Evie, and how Mom had held my phone and wanted to call. I tried to repeat her words exactly. Halfway through, I realized I was explaining them. I started over.

June looked back at the door. “Why didn't you record her?”

I opened my mouth. We had been talking to Mom, feeding her cake, trying to get June on the phone. I could list every reason the thought hadn't occurred to me. June wasn't asking for a list. She had driven ninety minutes for a voice that had stopped belonging to her before she arrived.

“I'm sorry,” I said.

She nodded. After a moment, she let go of my hand.

Mom died in November. June came to the funeral and helped Nora choose a dress for the burial. Afterward, the three of us went through her house and the boxes we’d brought back from her room. We found the roast pan the dog had stolen from, a drawer full of birthday cards she had forgotten to send, and Evie’s school picture tucked inside the green cardigan.

The cards were addressed in Mom's handwriting. June read one at the kitchen table. It was dated the year after they had stopped speaking. Mom had wished her a happy birthday and asked if she still liked lemon tart. She had signed it Love, Mom, then crossed out the word Love so hard the pen went through the paper. Underneath, in smaller writing, she had put it back.

June folded the card along its old crease and put it in her purse. There were newer cards she didn't open. We put those in a box for her to take home if she wanted.

June kept the cards and, eventually, the quilt. I kept the cardigan. Nora took the roast pan, though none of us could imagine why she wanted it.

Sometimes June tells Evie about her visit. She tells her Grandma liked lemon tart and thought she had beautiful eyes. All of that happened. Evie likes the story and asks to hear it again.

Last week Evie asked why there weren’t any pictures of Grandma holding her. June told her they had never gotten to meet. Then Evie asked if Grandma knew her name.

June called me after Evie was in bed. She had told her yes. “I was right, wasn't I?” she asked.

“She knew it,” I said. “She said it when she asked you to bring her.”

June made a small sound of relief. I understood why she needed to ask. She had shown Mom the pictures herself, but by then Mom hadn't known whose child she was looking at.

I was there for the afternoon my mother knew who we were. June believes everything I've told her. She knows Mom asked for her, and that she was sorry. She has the card and the quilt. When Evie asks again, she'll be able to tell her that Grandma knew her name.

June came when we called. She sat with Mom and held her hand. I wish I had told her, while she was driving, that Mom had forgotten. I wish I had called the moment Mom asked for her. I wish I had thought to record her. June has never held any of those things against me. I just hate that on the day Mom finally found the words, she wasn’t the one to hear them.