Page 37 of Flirting with Forever

“Good heavens, that’s a lot of food!” Only her mother could make one sentence mean so many different things at once.

Fifty shades of judgment. How kinky.

“I’m having a party for some friends tomorrow afternoon.”

“Here?” Her mother looked around. “Won’t it be a little cramped?”

Only someone whodidn’tlive in New York would think that a two-bedroom with a full living room and eat-in kitchen would be too cramped for a party. In Connecticut they threw parties in event spaces large enough for the partygoers to have to speak to one another through bullhorns.

“It’ll be perfect,” Mary said crisply, starting to unpack the groceries. “I didn’t expect you today. Just in the city for some shopping?”

It was a ridiculous question considering not once in her mother’s life had she come to Brooklyn for shopping.

“No.” Naomi looked down at her hands for a second. “I actually came to see to Tiff’s gravesite.”

Mary froze, a twelve-pack of seltzer in one hand and a ring of shrimp in her other. If visiting Tiff was something her mother ever did, Mary had never heard boo about it.

“Really?”

Tiff was buried in Green-Wood Cemetery, a hilly peaceful oasis that sprawled kitty-corner from Prospect Park almost out to the water. Mary went there often to visit Tiff’s grave, but as far as Mary knew, her mother had been there exactly once. The day that Tiff had been interred.

“Yes. I go about once a year to make sure that everything is being cared for.” Naomi sniffed and wandered to the kitchen window, her arms crossed over her chest. “She was my big sister after all.”

Something about the wordbigthrew Mary for a loop, forcing her to view stiff, proud Naomi in a different light for a moment. A little girl tagging along after her older sister, wanting to play. Tiff had insisted that there’d been a time she and Naomi had been close to one another. Mary tried to picture them sipping wine and watching trashy television the way she herself used to do with Aunt Tiff. Nope. Try as she might, she couldn’t insert Naomi into the image.

“Have you gone yet? I’ll go with you if you’re headed over there now. I try to go every few weeks.”

Something in Naomi’s expression folded down, whether with disapproval or softness, Mary couldn’t tell.

An hour later, the two women were walking the windy, paved path to Tiff’s grave. They arrived side by side, her mother as sure-footed in the path as Mary was, and Mary wondered if maybe she came more often than she was letting on. The gravesite was well cared for, as all the plots were in Green-Wood. The stone itself had lost that devastating crispness that new graves had and was starting to give way into a softer dignity. It had been six years after all.

Mary pulled a sprig of dried lavender from one pocket and laid it atop the gravestone, removing the sodden one she’d left there two weeks ago.

“Tiff’s favorite,” she said.

“I know,” Naomi replied, reaching out to touch the lavender for just a moment. They stood side by side for a long while until Naomi shifted next to Mary. Mary realized, with a start, that her mother was crying, pressing a handkerchief to her face.

“Mom.”

“This is what you want?” Naomi asked, pointing to either side of Tiff’s grave. “Buried between two strangers?”

Mary’s eyes grew into round coins, shock making her mother’s words move in slow motion. There was no way—it wasn’t possible—no one would drag their daughter to her beloved aunt’s grave in order to guilt her over being single.

Mary turned on her heel immediately, striding back down the path and toward the main road. She’d catch a cab by herself, and her mother could get her own ass back to Connecticut.

“Mary!”

Her mother sounded more shocked than angry.

A moment later, there was the swift clicking of sensible heels and then a strong hand at Mary’s elbow. “Where are you running off to?”

It didn’t help that her mother still had tears gathering in her eyes.

“I cannot believe that you’d use Tiff’s grave as a prop to guilt me for being single.”

“I—What?No!”

Naomi stopped walking altogether, but Mary kept on going. A moment later, she was back at Mary’s elbow.

---