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  Len hesitated. “I don’t know.”

  “Lenny, I think it could work. Don’t turn it into a battle. Just offer her something else. Something she wants more than those precious girls, God help her.”

  “But what? What could I possibly offer her?”

  “You own that house, don’t you?”

  “Yes. Well, we owe on it still. But yes.”

  “The money Dad left you? You put it into the house?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good. So you’ve got equity in it. Give her the house. Do you have savings?” She didn’t wait for a response. “Give her that, too.” “And then what, Margie? Raise the girls with no place to live and no money?”

  “Oh, come on, Lenny. Stop being dramatic. Do you want those girls or not? You have your job. That’s more than a lot of single parents have. Find an apartment. Find a babysitter. And voilà.”

  She made it sound so simple. So easy. And Len couldn’t object, for Margie never had. He had been barely four when their mother died; his sister had shouldered the responsibility for his care as if she had been born to it. She hadn’t gone to her senior prom because he had come down with the measles. He had insisted he was fine, but his forehead had burned beneath her cool hand. “It’s just a silly dance,” she had said. “And you’re my brother.” As if that settled it.

  “Well,” Margie was saying now. “What do you think?”

  Len sighed, but he could feel his mood lifting. It just might work.

  “I think you’re right, Margie,” he said. “As always.” The words were swollen with his unspoken gratitude. “Thank you, Margie,” he added softly, aware, as ever, of the smallness of the words compared to the enormity of his sister’s sacrifice, the vastness of her love for him.

  “You’re welcome,” Margie said. “Now—we should really get off this phone. And I meant what I said—I’ll talk to Daniel about giving you a hand, just until you get on your feet. Good-bye now, Lenny.”

  When Len hung up the phone at last, his ear burned where he had held the receiver against it. His tiny office was stuffy; the small window didn’t open. Suddenly, the little room couldn’t hold it all—the plans, the possibility. Len was suddenly desperate to be outside in the cool, spring sunshine. Quickly, he left the room, leaving the door open behind him.

  The wind on his face, when he had made his way through the maze of offices and classrooms and stepped outside at last, was so cool and light that he felt his spirits soar, buoyed by Margie’s confidence in her plan and set alight by the glorious breeze.

  His step was light as he walked along the campus sidewalk. Even in the mathematics complex, the poetry of the spring morning was undeniable. Students lounged on blankets in the grassy quad, threw Frisbees, smiled.

  Would it really be okay? Len wondered. Was it possible? He remembered the fleeting euphoria he had felt the last time he had decided to leave his marriage. It seemed a lifetime ago now.

  It was a lifetime ago, he realized: Emma’s lifetime. Laurel had derailed his plans then with the announcement of her pregnancy. The memory of it sobered him, slowing his steps and unsettling his stomach. Laurel wasn’t stupid; she would find a way to do it again.

  But then Len thought of baby Emma, of her bright, round face and serious eyes. He had been right to stay before, he thought. If he had left then, Emma might have been lost to him. But she was not lost, and somehow this thought gave him confidence. In geometry, two points made a line, but three—that was a plane, a whole shelf of possibility, extending infinitely in every direction.

  It was possible, he thought with certainty now. He could do it. He could leave, and keep his daughters. They would be a family.

  Please, he thought, raising his eyes to the startlingly blue sky. Please, let it be possible. Please let us be a family.

  CHAPTER 13

  Len

  Len felt like hollering. He felt like sending Margie a dozen roses—two dozen. For she had been right. Wasn’t she always right? His attorney had just called him at work: Laurel had accepted the terms of the divorce agreement. She was insisting on some minor modifications, his attorney had said. But the custody. She had agreed to the custody. She would not pay child support; he would not pay alimony. She would get the house, mostly paid for, and all the money in their savings account. And he—he would be free. He felt an unexpected bubble of gratitude rise in his chest. She was giving him the girls. Oh, thank you, Laurel, he thought. Thank you.

  It took Len only one day to make the arrangements. The receptionist at the student housing office had frowned at him.

  “These apartments . . . Professors don’t . . . They’re for graduate students.”

  But Len had not relented. The posting he had seen on the bulletin board didn’t say ‘graduate students,’ he insisted. It said, ‘members of the university community.’ And wasn’t he a member?

  Shrugging, she had handed him the application.

  “They’re not that nice, you know.”

  She had been right. They weren’t that nice at all. The carpet was dirty, the walls stained. The few pieces of furniture that came with the apartment were utilitarian and ugly, and the smell of old cigarette smoke hung in the air. Len stood in the doorway, the single key dangling from his fingers, and felt his spirits deflate.

  But the girls wouldn’t care, he told himself. So why should he? He spent all day on Saturday cleaning. He rented a carpet cleaner from the hardware store and shampooed every room. He scrubbed the tiny bathroom and the walls, and wiped down the cheap furniture with polish, so that the unmistakable lemony scent of it filled the rooms.

  When he was finished, he drove to the Kmart in Eureka and pushed a cart methodically down the rows. He had not squabbled with Laurel over who would get which towel, which pot. In the lingering profusion of gratitude, he had told her she could keep it all. He had taken only his own things, and the girls’.

  Now, he was struck by all that he would need. He chose things sparingly: a bathmat, three towels, baby shampoo. In the kitchen aisle, the cornucopia of cooking supplies overwhelmed him. Studying the prices, he picked out a frying pan, two pots, a cheap set of silverware, and some plastic dishes.

  Despite his care, the items piled up. As he waited at the register, he saw another shopper move behind him in line, and then, seeing his cart, choose a different register. The total, when the salesgirl rang it all up, made his heart fall. But he pulled his MasterCard from his wallet and handed it over. There was nothing for it. They needed a home.

  Back at the apartment, his spirits lightened. It was satisfying to take his bags of purchases from room to room, putting everything in its place. The neat order of it pleased him. When he was done, he took the boxes of his own things that he had taken from the house—Laurel’s house, now—and unpacked them, too.

  Only when everything was put away did he take out his wallet and pull from inside it a carefully folded piece of paper. When he had gathered his belongings at the house, he had copied down Sarah’s number from the paper that was still stuck on the wall beside the phone.

  He had not called her yet. Each time he thought of it, he had put it off. He was embarrassed, he knew, at all that she had seen. He was embarrassed by Laurel, he realized, and he understood immediately that it was not a new feeling: he had been embarrassed by Laurel for years. But she’s not my wife now, he thought with relief. This has nothing to do with her.

  Still, the feeling persisted, and he had not made the call. What must Sarah think of him? He told himself that setting up the apartment was the most important thing, although he knew it wasn’t. They could survive without a towel or a frying pan. But there had to be someone to pick up the girls in the afternoon when their daycare closed; Len was teaching two evening classes that quarter.

  She’s not the only babysitter in the world, Margie had said, and of course she was right. But the girls knew Sarah; they were attached to her. And there had been so much upheaval. Tomorrow, Margie would arrive, and on Monday evening, he woul
d bring the girls here. They would leave their mother and their home. He wanted to try, at least, to give them one thing that was familiar to them. He could picture Jessie’s face lighting up, if he could just tell her that Sarah would be back.

  The thought of it made him pick up the phone at last and carefully dial the number, waiting impatiently as the dial unwound after each digit.

  Just as he had expected, Sarah refused at first. No, she really didn’t think she should. She had meant her resignation to be final. But Len persisted.

  “Please,” he begged. “So much is changing for them. They’re about to lose so much. They need—”

  “That’s not my fault, is it?” she said quickly, cutting him off.

  Len’s face burned. It was not his fault either, he thought, and yet he couldn’t shake the feeling that he, too, was to blame.

  “No,” he said quietly. “You’re right. I know it has nothing to do with you. I just thought . . . I just wanted . . . It’s fine. I just had to ask.”

  He was about to hang up the phone when Sarah said, “Wait.”

  Len waited. There was silence on the line for a moment.

  “Are you still there, Dr. Walters?”

  “I’m here. And it’s Len.”

  “I’ll do it.”

  “Really?” he asked.

  “Yes. They’re good girls. I miss them. And if Laurel is really out of the picture, I guess it’ll be okay. You seem like a good dad.”

  Relief washed over him. Then gratitude. “Thank you so much,” he gushed. “Thank you.”

  “I’m not doing it for you, you know,” Sarah said. “I need the job. But you’re right, the girls could use a little stability.”

  “Oh, Lenny. Oh dear.” Margie said when she arrived, standing in the doorway just as he had done and taking in the apartment.

  Len sighed. “I did the best I could.”

  But all his efforts were nothing compared to Margie’s. All week, she scoured yard sales and thrift stores, and by Saturday the kitchen was stocked. She packed up the plastic dishes and the cheap pots that he had bought and asked Len for the receipt.

  “I’m taking these back,” she said. “Really, Lenny, you can always find kitchen supplies second hand. And good ones.”

  The girls’ room, too, was transformed. A framed picture of a puppy hung on the wall; the changing table had been thoroughly scrubbed and covered with a soft cloth. She had also put herself in charge of unpacking their things. She studied each piece of clothing, and then added it to one of three neat piles on the rug: to keep, to sew, to cut up for rags.

  “Really, Lenny,” she said. “The state of their clothes.” He blushed and laid some bills on the table.

  “Could you get them what they need?”

  But that afternoon, the little pile of money was still there, and the girls’ dresser was full of neat stacks of shirts and pants and dresses.

  He smiled at her in gratitude. “Really, Margie,” he said, echoing her. “You should have used—”

  She cut him off. “I can certainly buy my nieces some clothes, Lenny. And don’t worry, I didn’t spend much. There’s a nice little thrift store I found.” She wrote the name down in neat letters and stuck it to the fridge with a magnet. “For next time, when I’m not here.”

  The best part, though, was how the girls loved her.

  “You seed me when I was a baby?” Jessie asked, her eyes wide. “Like Emma?”

  “Yes, I saw you. You were even smaller than Emma is now,” Margie told her. “A little tiny baby.”

  “And Emma? You seed baby Emma, too?”

  “Saw, Jessie, not seed. No, no. Emma wasn’t even born yet. There was just you.”

  Jessie frowned at that, disbelieving, and Len smiled. Already Jessie could not remember a time when her little sister did not exist.

  Len did not know how Margie did it all. By the end of the week, the kitchen cupboards were full, the freezer packed with Tupperware containers of frozen meals.

  “Just remember to transfer them to a baking dish when you heat them up,” Margie said, opening the freezer door to show him the neat stacks. “I did think about buying you one of those microwave ovens, you know. If anyone needs one, it’s you. But I don’t trust them. I heard somewhere recently that the Russians banned them—did you know that? And with these girls in the kitchen all the time—well, I just didn’t think it wise.”

  In the afternoons, when Len returned from work, the girls were both in dresses, Jessie’s longer hair in two neat brown braids tied with bows, Emma with a barrette on the top of her head.

  The first time Len saw them like that, he laughed deeply. “Oh, Margie,” he said. “They look so . . .” And he laughed again, “Ho, ho, ho.”

  “Daddy,” Jessie said. “Laugh like that again. You sound like Santa!”

  But Margie looked sheepish. “So . . . ?”

  “So?” Len said.

  “You said, ‘They look so . . .’ So what?”

  Len reached down and swung Emma to his hip. “So beautiful,” he said, grinning. “You girls look so beautiful.”

  Jessie looked down at her dress. “I don’t like dresses.”

  “Oh, Jessie,” Margie said. “You look nice.”

  “But I don’t like dresses.”

  “Well, when Aunt Margie’s gone, I guess you won’t have to wear them,” Margie said.

  “You’re leaving?”

  “Yes, sweetheart. I have to go back to my home. But I will miss you very much.”

  “Are you leaving now?”

  “No, sweetie. Tomorrow.”

  “When is tomorrow?”

  “Well, you’ll go to sleep tonight, and when you wake up, that will be tomorrow.”

  Len watched Jessie’s face fall. “But who will take care of us?”

  “Oh, sweetheart,” Margie said, pulling her into her arms. “Your daddy will take good care of you. And . . .” she hesitated, looking at Len. He had not told them yet about Sarah.

  “And Sarah,” he said now. “Sarah will help take care of you, too.”

  “Sarah!” Jessie said. “Yay!” And she did a little dance around Margie.

  That night, while Len graded quizzes, Margie sat in a straight-backed chair, sewing the last of the girls’ clothes.

  “Margie,” Len said, at last. “I don’t know how to thank you. You’ve done so much.”

  “Oh, pooh,” Margie said. “It was my pleasure. They’re such sweet girls, Lenny.”

  There was a tightness in her voice, and Len looked up at her and then away. She had never liked him to see her cry.

  They were silent for a moment. How unfair life can be, Len thought. Margie had spent her youth being a parent; she had sacrificed so much. But when she had married Daniel and wanted children of her own—well, they hadn’t come. It wasn’t fair, he thought again, that someone like Laurel had children so effortlessly, while Margie, who was so good at motherhood, could not.

  “You would be a wonderful mother,” he said at last.

  She smiled, but he could see the tears rimming her eyes.

  “I mean, you were a great mother.”

  She shook her head. “I was never your mother, Lenny. I just tried to keep doing what Mom would have done.”

  Len did not remember their mother, not really. He had images in his head, but he knew they were inspired by old photographs he had seen of her, not true memories of his mother herself. It had always saddened him before, that he couldn’t remember, but it comforted him now. If he did not remember his mother, or her death, then surely his girls would not remember the turmoil of this time, either. He would be a good parent to them, as Margie had been to him; that is what would stay with them. That is what they would remember.

  “Well, you were all the mother I had,” he said at last. “And I loved you like one.”

  Margie glanced over at him, and her cheeks were wet. “I did, too.” She leaned forward to bite off a piece of thread. “I do.”

  Len looked away. He and
Margie never talked like this. When he was a boy, she had told him “I love you” every night as she turned out his light. The words were spoken in her usual matter-of-fact way, and he had always answered in kind: “I love you, too.” But that was ages ago; it had been over a decade since they had spoken of their feelings for each other with real emotion.

  Len remembered easily the last time. On the morning that he was to graduate from high school, Margie had surprised him by bursting into tears as she fixed his tie.

  “What is it?” he had asked, alarmed.

  But she had shaken her head. “Nothing. I’m being silly. But—I’m just so proud of you.”

  Len had put his arms around her and pulled her to his chest. She was so small, he could rest his chin on her hair. He felt its softness against his freshly shaven skin.

  “Thank you, Margie,” he said, his throat tight. “And I don’t just mean because you said that. That you’re proud of me. Although that, too. I meant . . .”

  Margie had giggled against his chest as he stumbled over the words.

  “I know what you meant,” she had said.

  Now, as he looked at her, his heart swelled.

  “It’s not too late, is it?” he asked, emboldened by the moment that had just passed between them.

  Margie glanced at her watch. “It’s almost ten.”

  “I meant, for you to have children.”

  She sighed. “I’m too old now.”

  He did the math quickly in his head. She was only thirty-eight.

  “You’re not old.”

  “Oh, I know. But for having kids, I am.”

  “But there’s still a chance . . .”

  She put the needle away and folded Jessie’s dress into a neat little square in her lap. “It’s okay, Lenny,” she said. “I’ve come to peace with it. I’m happy with my life. I have Daniel. And I have you. And now I have those beautiful girls, too.”

  Suddenly she smiled. She took up the dress again and unfolded it, holding it up before her.

  “Jessie’s never going to wear this, is she?” she said, grinning, sheepish again.

  Len chuckled. “Probably not.” “Oh well.”