Puddles

Three bras –two black and a white one, hand washed in two separate bowls– are slouched over the back of a garden chair, dripping a puddle onto the tiles. Why three for just two days, I wonder. My daughter’s home for the weekend. Alone. A formation I’m no longer used to. And neither is she, I can tell. She walks around in one of the striped bath towels she got me for Christmas, swirling a Q tip around her ear and looking for all the world like she belongs. Her hair is wet, looks longer, makes her look younger and is dripping too, just like the bras outside. Look what you’re doing, I grumble, then regret it. Everyone should be allowed a day of making puddles of themselves. And anyway, it used to be her mother making those remarks, not me. I must be getting old. I blot the water with a kitchen towel and notice it smells sweet. I’m still trying to place the scent when she walks back in, wearing jeans and a T shirt and, I imagine, bra number four. I don’t think I’ll ever understand them. She’s making tea, her back to me, trying this scenario on as one of many possibilities. I’ll just move in with Dad. I can see it in the straight line of her shoulders. But there’s too much tension there and I know she’s unconvinced. She looks lost, in fact. I don’t know the details but I can read her like a floor plan. I’m not sure what to say. Keep trying, is stationed on the tip of my tongue. Life is like that. But I relegate it to the back. I know she knows that anyway. This weekend is a time out. She’s four again and hiding under a blanket turned into cave. When she comes out the world will look a little friendlier. So I do what I used to do: hand her a flashlight and her teddy bear. Two sugars for me, I remind her, and squeeze her shoulders. What a nice surprise to have you home, I say.

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