Florence Gordon (29 page)

After a little bit of rest and a little bit of bourbon, she felt revived.

There was an odd static in the emotional air of the room. Daniel kept changing the music, Janine kept scrolling through delivery menus. Florence felt as if she and Emily were the only calm ones here. They were like adversaries after a battle, joined by mutual respect.

“I’m confused,” Florence said. “How many of you are leaving? And where are you going?”

“Dad and I are going home,” Emily said. “From there, from thence—I’m applying to colleges. Assuming someplace accepts me, I’ll probably transfer in January.”

“And you?” Florence said to Janine.

“She’s got work she needs to finish,” Emily said. “Her thing ends in December. Then she’s coming home too.”

Janine hadn’t said anything. She reached for her glass of wine, staring at it closely, as if it might have something to say.

Florence didn’t know if Emily’s version was accurate or if she was intent on preserving some idea of her family that was no longer true.

“Why don’t you visit us?” Emily said to Florence.

“I’d love to visit,” Florence said.

“We should set a date. We should set a date right now. You’re probably pretty free this year. You have a sabbatical, right?”

“Actually, I’m not sure how free I’ll be. Every time you think you have some free time, the responsibilities start rushing in.”

“Like what?”

“That’s the thing. You can’t be sure until they do.”

“But I just want to know what could happen that could prevent you from making a date to stay with us for a while.”

“Emily,” her mother said.

“No. I just want to know what kind of responsibilities you tend to have, when you’re a big-time intellectual.”

“I feel like I’m missing something here,” Janine said. “Subtext.”

“What’s subtext?” Daniel said.

“Stop it, Daniel,” Florence said. “You were under the same roof with me and Saul for eighteen years. The same roofs, anyway. You know what subtext is.”

“Were you and Dad always talking about subtext?” Daniel said.

“No, we weren’t talking about it. But the idea of it was always there. Like a subtext.”

“Now I’m totally lost.”

“I’m not,” Emily said. “I just want to know what my grandmother’s doing this fall. I just want to know why she won’t commit to visiting us.”

Emily looked enraged. She had the light of battle in her eyes.

What a magnificent girl, Florence thought.

It was clear that Florence wasn’t going to say anything to anybody, but if that was the case, Emily thought, she was going to do everything she could to make her feel bad about it.

“I’m offended that you won’t commit to visiting us.”

“I have speaking engagements, I have deadlines. I’m trying to finish this book.”

“You have a laptop. The point of a laptop is that you can move around with it. You can even write with it on your lap. That’s why they call it—”

“I know what the point of a laptop is.”

“Anything you need to do, you could do at our house. I don’t know if you’ve heard about it, but there’s this thing called the Internet—”

“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves here, Emily,” Daniel said. “I’m not sure I want my mother underfoot. She’s very clean, but she has a lot of demands.”

“Let’s return to this subject by email, after you get home,” Florence said.

“I just want to know—”

“Stop it.”

There was a new sharpness in Florence’s voice. Emily had been scolded by Florence before, but this tone of voice was something different.

Emily went to the kitchen and put on some water for tea. Her hands were trembling. Her lips were trembling.

I’m a lightweight, she thought. I thought I could get into the ring with the big gorilla. But all it took to shut me down was a little slap.

She didn’t know why she was approaching it like this. She could have just told her parents that she was sure that Florence was hiding something, sure that Florence was ill. But she had too much respect for her grandmother to do that.

“I’m sorry about that,” Daniel said to his mother. “I don’t know what’s gotten into her.”

Daniel bored her. Florence didn’t want any of this cottage-cheesy politeness. She loved it that her granddaughter had tried to fight with her.

“Don’t you dare apologize for her,” Florence said. “If I ever see you people again, she’ll be the reason.”

It was more than she’d meant to say, but Daniel and Janine, to their credit, only laughed.

After dessert, after coffee, after a drink in the living room, Florence said goodbye to Daniel and Janine. Emily watched her give them her usual arm’s-length embrace.

“Let me get you a cab,” Daniel said.

“I don’t need you to get me a cab. It’s a lovely night. I’m going to walk for a few blocks, and then I’m going to get myself a cab. It’s touching that you want to protect me, but I’ve done well enough so far.”

“Suit yourself,” Daniel said.

Emily walked to the hallway so she could have a moment alone with her. She didn’t want to say goodbye in front of the others.

“Take care of yourself, my young friend,” Florence said, and she opened the door.

There had to be more. There had to be.

“I’ll walk you out,” Emily said.

She thought Florence would say something special to her. But she didn’t know what she expected. Was it that Florence would finally tell her what was going on? Was it that Florence would boil down her entire life’s message? She wasn’t sure. She was only sure that Florence would say something special.

On the street Florence touched her arm and started south.

That was it. That was all. Emily never saw her again.

In the days that followed, Emily kept hoping for a phone call or an email, but she didn’t get one. Three times that fall she wrote to Florence, but Florence didn’t reply.

Even after Florence’s death—her terrible death, so unforeseen and so foreseeable—Emily kept hoping that a letter would turn up in Florence’s apartment, written for her alone.

There was no laying on of hands; there was no last word. The old lady had eluded her once again.

That was one way of looking at it. The other way of looking at it was that the teaching, the passing on of whatever could be passed on, had already been done. This was the conclusion Emily would finally reach, but it would be years before she got there.

As she watched Florence making her way down the street, Emily couldn’t believe that it was over. She kept expecting her to come back and say something more.

Thanks to the friends who read early drafts: Emma Barrie, Robert Bedick, Amy Edelman, Todd Gitlin, Vivian Gornick, Liselle Gottlieb, Harvey Klinger, Mark Levinson, Ilana Masad, Howard Parnes, Ann Patty, Katha Pollitt, Marc Siegel, and Chuck Wachtel.

Thanks to Henry Dunow and Lauren Wein, for their editorial guidance.

And something more than thanks to Heather Harpham.

B
RIAN
M
ORTON
is the author of four previous novels, including
Starting Out in the Evening,
which was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award and was made into an acclaimed feature film, and
A Window Across the River,
which was a book club selection of the
Today
show. He teaches at New York University, the Bennington Writing Seminars, and Sarah Lawrence College, where he also directs the writing program. He lives in New York.