This story is reconstructed based on FBI records.
The carpet in the Harvey's lobby had a gold vine running through the red, and by two o'clock I had counted the same twelve leaves so many times I could have drawn them from memory. Twenty-nine years driving a school bus had made waiting the one skill that never left me. I knew how to sit in a chair and watch a door.
My daughter Tessa was coming down from the south shore on her lunch break — forty minutes, she'd told me once, and a sandwich eaten standing up at the appliance-parts counter she supervised. I hadn't seen her since April. In June I had told her I was thinking about August, and she had said August was busy, and I had heard in that whatever I needed to hear.
In my purse was a receipt from the movers, folded down to the size of a matchbook, the carbon still purple in the creases. Twelve boxes, one bed frame, a cedar chest with my husband's tools in it. Pickup from my former home, through the end of the month. The delivery address I had written out myself in blue ballpoint, and I had looked at it so often the ink had gone soft.
I had six quarters in the coin purse and a dime in case. The payphones stood in a row along the wall by the elevators, and the alcove smelled of cigarettes and hot plastic and the carpet cleaner they used at night. Nolan answered on the fourth ring. He always answered on the fourth ring, as though he'd had to walk a long way to get to it.
"Mother. I was going to call you tonight." "I'm at Harvey's," I said. "I'm meeting Tessa at two." There was a radio going somewhere behind him and a sound like a forklift backing up. "You're meeting Tessa," he said. "At two." "On her lunch. Tell me about the closing, Nolan. Don't make me ask twice."
He is a warehouse scheduler and he schedules everything, including bad news. He gave it to me in order. The buyers sign Friday morning at nine, the lien on the property is paid at the table, and what's left after the realtor's percentage is mine by the following Tuesday. "Friday's the twenty-ninth," he said. "Tuesday's September second. You'll need somewhere to be before then."
"I'm already out of that house," I said. "My boxes are in storage. I paid them through the month." "Through which month?" "September," I said, and let it sit there on the table between us like a bill.
In June I had told Nolan that Tessa had agreed to take me in. He was quiet a moment. "Mother, does Tessa know the truck's coming on the second?" "I told her." "That wasn't what I asked." I looked down the row of phones at a woman in a sun hat feeding a dime into the slot. "I have to go. She'll be off that escalator any minute and I don't want her hunting for me."
"I'll call you Friday after the signing," Nolan said. "And Mother — if Tessa hasn't said the actual words to you, you tell me Friday and I'll find you a locker. There's a place off the highway rents by the month. I'm not going to have you sleeping in a chair in somebody's front room because nobody wrote anything down."
The receiver went back in the cradle and I stood there with my hand still on it. What Tessa had said, on the telephone in June, was: That's good, Mama. Then she'd said she'd have to move some things around. Then she'd said she was glad I was getting out from under that house. Three kind sentences. Not one of them was yes, and I had folded all three into a yes and carried it around like a receipt.
I found a table where I could see the escalator and ordered coffee I didn't want. The cocktail waitress set down the cup and a plastic creamer and said, "You waiting on somebody?" "My daughter," I said. "She's never late." That was a lie in two directions, and it came out of me as easy as breathing.
"If she's not here in ten minutes I'll bring you another on the house," the waitress said. "It's the slow hour." She went off with her tray up on her shoulder, and I practiced what I would say. I decided I wouldn't mention the second of September until after we'd eaten. I'd mention the weather and the drive down and her boy's new job, and then I'd tell her, and she would have to say yes to my face.
I took the receipt out once more and turned it so the address faced in and put it away. Two twenty-two by the clock over the cage, and still I watched the escalator as if keeping my eyes on it would oblige my daughter to appear. A man stepped off carrying a folded newspaper. Behind him came a woman whose coat was Tessa's color, but whose face was not.
The waitress passed again, her tray empty now. "Another cup?"
"Not yet." I covered the saucer with my hand, an unnecessary little gesture, and she left me alone. I had enough money for another cup. What I couldn't afford was another small thing arriving before I had decided whether I wanted it.
Friday the house would belong to the buyers. Tuesday the money would be mine, and that same day the truck was due at the address I had supplied. Put that way, it sounded like an orderly retirement, the kind Nolan could write on his calendar. It contained no blank space for a daughter to say she had meant something else.
I could have called him back. His number was still in my fingers, and the phones were within sight. I could have said that I had taken three kind sentences and made a contract out of them. Instead I straightened the creamer beside my cup and kept the folded receipt in my purse. I would ask Tessa when she came. That was the promise I made myself, without deciding whether I would let her answer.