Page 72 of Weather Girl

Javier beams. “Thank you. I tried something new, adding the braised eggplant. We’re always trying to sneak more veggies into the kids’ food.”

Cassie and Orion are oblivious, their mouths already painted red with marinara.

“Have you been to Honeybee Lounge?” Alex asks Russell. “In Capitol Hill? That’s his restaurant.”

“Are you kidding? I love that place.”

Javier brushes this off, but I know he’s pleased, and I can’t deny that I am, too.

My mother assesses Russell with a furrowed brow. “Your daughter’s preparing for her bat mitzvah? You’re... very young.”

I stare down at my plate, wincing.

“It doesn’t always feel that way,” he says with a good-natured laugh. He must be used to deflecting.

“No judgment,” she says, and there has to be a limit to the number of times this evening can shock me.

Once I’ve relaxed enough to enjoy myself, something in the living room catches my eye. It’s a woven piece of art hanging above the couch, natural colors with pops of turquoise, and it definitely wasn’t there the last time I was. “Is that new?” I ask, motioning to it with my fork.

An odd flush covers my mother’s cheeks. “I started playing around with a loom when I was...” Her eyes land on Russell, and I can tell she doesn’t want to explain where, exactly, she was. “Away,” she finishes. “And I loved it. I’m not very good or anything, but it’s so calming.”

“Mom, no. It’s amazing.”

“Really? I’ve always admired the way you do your jewelry, and I thought it would be fun to have a hobby like that. There’s gardening, of course—did you see the flowers?” I tell her I did, and that they look great. “But the weather doesn’t always cooperate, as you know. I could make you one, if you want. Once I get a little better. In fact, it’s probably for the best if all of you take some off my hands so I don’t end up living in a house made entirely out of yarn.”

“I would love that.”

I keep expecting her to purse her lips and start complaining, to make an offhand comment about my appearance or my past boyfriends, but none of that happens. In fact, it’s a lovely meal, even when the twins’ tooth fairy argument escalates to the point where Cassie flings a noodle at Orion.

Alex and I offer to clean up while my mother, Javier, and Russell keep the twins busy in the living room.

“Yarn art. Who knew,” I say as I scrub at the lasagna pan Javier told us not to dare put in the dishwasher.

Alex is ready to dry it off with a towel. “We all contain multitudes.”

In the living room, my mother lets out this unselfconscious laugh I haven’t heard in ages. Russell’s in the middle of a story, waving his arms for emphasis, and the kids are gazing at him, rapt. My heart twinges in the way it’s been known to do around Russell.

“She just looks happy,” I say. “It’s the only way to describe it. I haven’t seen her like this in so long.”

I know that a few weeks in a facility weren’t going to cure her depression. She wasn’t going to check in as one type of person and check out as a completely different one. That’s not how mental health works.

But for now, she’s taking her medications as prescribed, or at least that’s what she told Alex, and he told me. She and I have yet to discuss it, and while I want to, I have no idea how to begin that conversation.

So I’m choosing to be hopeful.

“She does.” Alex throws the towel over one shoulder before leaning in, nudging me with his elbow. “And it’s good to see you happy, too.”

•••

AFTER WARM SLICES of apple pie, Russell and I take a walk through the neighborhood. We’re lucky my parents bought the house when they did because it would be laughably unaffordable now. Houses on this street are going for four times what they paid for it. But my mother doesn’t want to move, despite the fact that she’s one of the only people in this neighborhood living on her own.

“God, everything’s so different,” I say. “There used to be a forest there, and Alex and I would dare each other to go into it at night and see how long we could last before we ran out. I was convinced monsters lived in the trees, waiting to snatch children who were foolish enough to step inside.” I wave a hand toward it. “But now it’s just houses. And downtown, when we drove in... there was so much I didn’t recognize.”

“Paved paradise and put up a parking lot?”

“More like paved paradise and put up a Five Guys,” I say. “Not quite as catchy. And maybe gentrification is the scariest thing of all.”

We head toward what used to be the edge of my neighborhood but now leads into a newer development, boxy three-story homes in shades of beige and light brown.

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