“What? What doesn’t change?” Their mother’s voice had grown loud and a bit harsh, the way she had spoken to their father at the end, in the days before he’d left.
“Mom,” Vic said soothingly, “we’re always going to be your daughters.”
Her mother shook her head as though to shrug Mara off, so Mara stopped brushing. “No more cribs, no more wet wipes or playgrounds. You live in your own apartment, and Mara will be next,” their mother said, not pausing to allow Mara to protest that she wasn’t yet in high school. “It changes. It already has. So. Name one thing that doesn’t.”
Vic shook her head and looked up at the ceiling. “Memories,” she said after a minute, grinning like she’d called out the right answer on a game show. “Memories don’t change.”
“Are you kidding?” their mother said. “Whatever happens in the future makes whatever happened in the past look different. Sometimes completely different. Try again.”
Vic sat at the table and leaned forward. She hesitated, her expression searching and determined. Mara was rooting for her older sister, although in much the way one would root for an underdog—full of doubt and trepidation. And then Vic smiled. “The stones.”
The stones. Yes. Vic was brilliant to remember them. Everywhere they went over the years, the four of them collected everything from large pebbles to small rocks and brought them home. The stones were rich with memories—their own family memories and those that predated them, their mother said. The stones were their family’s version of a photo album. Sometimes for special meals, they put four or five in a pile on the table, a centerpiece. Generally they were kept in two bowls on the bookcase. Vic and Mara had spent many hours sorting through them. Their dad sometimes carried one in his pocket, and after a hard day, their mother would sit in a chair by the window and rub one.
Their mother stared at the palm of her right hand as though she could see her future there. “Even stones change,” she said. “Smoothed by waves. Pitted by sand.” But her voice sounded less certain. “And wind . . .” She trailed off.
“Those stones are exactly the same as the first time we brought them into the house, Mom.” Vic handed Mara another strawberry before she moved to the living room and then returned, bringing a bowl of stones with her.
Mara’s mother glanced at them, then turned her face to the wall.
“Look at the quartz streaks in this one,” Vic said, holding one out and waiting until their mom took it. “Remember how we found it on that trip to the Southwest?”
“And this orange one with a smooth spot in the middle of all the rough,” Mara said, emboldened by Vic’s success. “Remember how Vic used to say it was the stone with a stomach?”
“And this one, Mara, you said looked like a peach with a bite missing,” said Vic.
Their mother looked at both of them. “You girls,” she said, and finally, shaking her head, she laughed. She actually laughed. It sounded gentle, like a real laugh, and it filled Mara with hope, and with a sharp longing she’d been denying—a yearning for those old days when twice as many people lived in this apartment, and it felt alive, and she’d never felt scared, like she did sometimes now, of shadows that stood in corners.
Their mother reached for the bowl, letting her fingers skim over several stones before she selected one. “This is the one that fits in your eye,” she said to Vic. “Remember?”
“And this one,” said Vic, “I used to be able to balance it on the bridge of my nose.” She tried, but it fell to the table and all three of them laughed. Mara loved the way laughter made her chest feel lighter. She’d never noticed that before, in the old days. Still laughing, she reached up and pulled another stone out of the bowl.
“Look at this one,” she said, giggling. “The lopsided heart.”
As soon as she said it, she knew she’d made a mistake. Her father had collected the heart stone along a Scottish beach where her parents had spent a week alone together when she’d been a toddler. She still vaguely remembered staying with Vic at their grandmother’s house in Virginia. Her father had hidden the stone in his luggage until Valentine’s Day, and then, sitting at this very table, he’d given it to their mother and recited some silly rhyming poem he’d written himself on the 1-train on the way home from work the night before. Mara didn’t remember actually witnessing that part, but she’d been told over the years. A favorite Valentine’s Day memory.
Their mother looked at Mara, her gaze accusing, and then got up.
“Mom?” Vic said.
“Be right back,” their mother said, her voice sounding labored. They heard the bedroom door close. Vic looked at Mara.
“She won’t be right back,” Mara said quietly.
“How long will she stay in there?” Vic asked.
Mara shrugged, feeling loyalty toward her mother surge up from somewhere unexpected. She wondered how much she should reveal. “A long time,” she said noncommittally, hoping Vic could read between those words.
“Well, I guess it’s better than screaming,” Vic said. “With Jonas’s parents, there was screaming.”
Mara would have preferred screaming to the apartment’s eerie, constant silence, but she didn’t say that. “How is Jonas?” Mara asked. It was an adult-sounding question, a question their mother or father might have asked at a different time.
Vic smiled. “Fine.” She ruffled Mara’s hair. Then she picked up a strawberry from the colander and rotated it between her fingers. “I’m going to make you a sandwich,” she said. “Do we have cheese?” She put down the strawberry, opened the refrigerator, and began moving food around, scrounging.
“Vic, I’m sorry,” Mara said after a minute.
“For what?” Vic pulled some Dijon mustard from the refrigerator door.
“You know. Saying that about the heart stone.” Her carelessness made her feel so guilty that her stomach actually hurt, and she rubbed it gently.
“Oh, angel.” Vic paused to give her a hug. “Mom’s got to stop being so damn sensitive. Maybe she needs to take antidepressants.”
“She won’t do that. You remember that book she edited about overmedicated America.”
Vic sliced some cheese, placed it on the bread, and added lettuce. She set the sandwich before Mara. “Eat,” she said.
Mara took a big bite. The cheese was a little dry and the bread a bit stale, but she didn’t mind much. Vic brought her a big glass of orange juice, and she drank some of that, too. “You know, Vic,” she said after a minute, “I have an idea about what we can do.”
“What do you mean?”
“How we’re going to make Dad come back.”
Vic sat down, her slender form suddenly seeming heavy. “Sweetie,” she began, but Mara decided to ignore her.
“If Dad knew how sad Mom really was—” Mara began.
“I think he knows, sweetie.”
Mara shook her head. “Every time he calls, you should hear her—she sounds really happy, like she’s just gotten home from a party or something. And then they start fighting. So he probably thinks she’s doing fine until he calls. But, Vic, she’s like some zombie.” That was the most explicit Mara had ever permitted herself to be to anyone about her mother over this past month.
Vic stood up, moved behind Mara, and began massaging her shoulders. “They’re so tight,” she said, but Mara shrugged her off. She didn’t want to be pacified, not now.
“You know how softhearted Dad is,” Mara said. “Whenever we got hurt, remember? Mom told us to buck up, but Dad came running with the bandages and