Part Six: Margaret
His mother had been listening to all of this with her hands in her lap and the particular stillness of a woman who had raised a child alone for several years after Adrian’s father left, which was not a period she discussed often but which had given her a specific understanding of what it meant to be doing the necessary things without adequate help.
When Nora finished, Margaret looked at Adrian.
The look was not long and it was not complicated. It was the look she had given him at various points in his life when a decision was in front of him and she had a view on what the decision should be and was choosing not to say it because she believed, generally, in people arriving at correct decisions themselves.
But there was a clarity in it.
He stood up.
“Come on,” he said to Nora.
She looked at him.
“You and the babies. Come on. My car is on the north side of the park.”
“Adrian—”
“You can tell me I’m overstepping later. Right now you’re sitting in a park because your apartment is twelve degrees. So come on.”
She looked at him for a long moment — the same look she had always given him when he moved too fast on something, the assessment, the checking of his intention against the stated action.
She found what she was looking for, or enough of it.
She stood.
