"Would you like me to give you a lift?"

It was Mike. He must have guessed how I felt.

"That would be great."

I got my coat and purse and went outside. Mike was moving toward the driver's side of his car, and Claudia toward the pa.s.senger side. I hadn't known that she was coming.

Mike's car is a little, two-door model. The backseat was a narrow, uncomfortable bench. I'd never seen anyone ride in it. Claudia opened the pa.s.senger door, pressed the lever below the seat, and pulled forward on the leather headrest, folding the seat down. She flattened herself against the open car door, her hand still on the headrest, waiting very politely for me to crawl into that narrow backseat.

I'm older than you, I wanted to shriek. I'm the mother of this man's children. I should be in front, not you.

But the harder you hit a Bobo doll, the faster it slaps back into place. I might care who sat in front, but she cared more. That would always give her the advantage.

Eight.

M.

ike had knelt down to examine his front tire. He was right to stay out of this estrogen drama. If he'd said one word about my being in the front, I would have instantly launched into a stupid tomboy riff about how I didn't mind having to duck my head, stick my b.u.t.t in the air, and corkscrew myself into the backseat. In fact, I would have tried to slither my way through the procedure as quickly as possible to make the point that I was more flexible and agile than Claudia.

My nice mom-type therapist had asked me why I felt patronized when anyone tried to help me. Was I confusing help and pity?

After wasting a session protesting that I wasn't, I reluctantly admitted that I probably was. I couldn't stand the idea of people feeling sorry for me. People had felt sorry for my mother . . . because of me.

Grand Rapids, Michigan, is not a small town, but East Grand Rapids, where we'd lived, is. It's a suburb, small enough, affluent enough, h.o.m.ogeneous enough that when "Dr. Bowersett's little girl" spent the day outside the princ.i.p.al's office for mouthing off to a guidance counselor, people heard about it.

And my mother got such sympathy from the other ladies, such polite, triumphant sympathy.

Through all my adolescent garbage, my mother had been loyal and optimistic. She'd gotten exasperated, impatient, even angry with me-she was not a saint-but she'd never given up on me. She'd never thought that I was naughty by nature or that my misdeeds were her fault because she hadn't quit work. It was as if she'd intuited, long before the medical establishment would have supported an ADD diagnosis for me, that my unease with myself and the world was something biochemical, something that I truly could not help.

I'd always pretended that I didn't feel guilty about what I was doing. So what if I didn't want to take the AP cla.s.ses? So what if my friends' families couldn't afford to live in East Grand Rapids? I did feel bad about how hard I was making things for my mother, but I couldn't figure out how to change.

Years and years later she was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. It progressed rapidly, and during the final months of her life, in the spring before Mike had left, the person she'd wanted with her was me. Both Dad and Chuck were doctors, but I was her daughter.

Being valuable to her, being necessary to her, eased much of my guilt. I was finally paying her back for how she had stood beside me when I had been determined to push her away. She was the one who'd directed me into nursing, who'd never for one moment let me believe that nurses were just people not smart enough to be doctors.

Frightened by the fact that she was going to die, Dad and Chuck wanted her to have whatever she wanted, and what she wanted was me. Dad was torn about pressuring me to spend more time with her. Chuck was not. He would call me, grim and insistent: "You need to get back out here."

But Mother was in Michigan, and I had obligations at home. Jeremy was a senior in high school; Zack was floundering during his last year of middle school. Even though Mike was still home, the last four months of her life were a nightmare for me. When I was in Michigan, I felt that I should be at home. I missed the Sports Banquet at which Jeremy received the crew team's Coach's Award. I was so disappointed by that; I would have loved to be there. Zack needed me even more than Jeremy did. His reports from school seemed to be getting worse by the day, and Mike was too angry with him to help.

But when I was home, I ached to be with Mother.

Even though I was able to take unpaid leave from work, I was exhausted. Before I left Michigan, I would cook maniacally, filling my dad's freezer with meals he could reheat. I would come back to D.C., stop at the grocery store on the way home from the airport, and cook the exact same meals for Mike and the boys to reheat when I left again. I bought lightbulbs in Michigan and toilet paper in Washington even though it was Dad's bathrooms that needed tissue and the lights in my home that were missing bulbs.

I went home for Jeremy's graduation and then flew right back to Michigan. Mother died a week later. Three months after that, Mike moved out.

Our therapist noted the timing, and in the bland, nonjudgmental tone that therapists must have to practice, he asked Mike, "How did you feel about the choices Darcy made during her mother's illness?"

Mike looked puzzled for a moment as if he couldn't imagine how that question was relevant. But he was plenty smart, and in a second, he got it. "Are you saying that that had anything to do with my leaving?"

The therapist made a little gesture.

"That's ridiculous," Mike said, then turned to me. "Darcy, it had nothing to do with it. I understood why you needed to be in Michigan, but she died in May. It was more than three months."

"So, Mike, you felt that three months was a long time?" the therapist asked.

"I guess." Mike didn't sound like his usual confident self. "My leaving had nothing to do with her mother's death."

"And you, Darcy . . . did three months feel like a long time to you?"

Hardly. "I still think about picking up the phone to call and ask her something."

"So the two of you had very different perceptions about where Darcy was in the grieving process."

"I wasn't thinking about that," Mike insisted.

When we were walking to our cars after the session, he could not leave the subject alone. He was caught between an apology and a need to justify himself.

During the session I had been inclined to let him off the hook. Of course he hadn't consciously been trying to punish me for how much time I'd spent with my mother. But standing there in the therapist's parking lot, I realized that if there was a hook in his gut, it was right where it belonged.

So he hadn't been thinking about my mother's death. I believed that. But he should have been. Why hadn't he noticed that I was stumbling around in a fog of grief so murky that I felt completely lost?

"It's been a lot to handle," I said. "Mother dying, Jeremy going to college, your leaving. They all feel connected."

He didn't like that. "Come on, Darcy. I'm not the kind of guy who kicks people when they're down."

"Before you flounce around saying that about yourself, you need to be sure you can tell when a person is down."

His lips tightened. He couldn't stand to have his judgment or his insight questioned. "Of course I can tell."

"Believe what you want," I said. "You always do."

And that was the last of the therapy sessions we attended together. From then on, Mike started discovering his last-minute scheduling conflicts.

One thing people say about ICU nurses is that we don't process our feelings, that we never discuss the deaths or the catastrophic disabilities, that we just move from one crisis to the next. That's probably true, but I can't imagine why people think that's a negative. If your husband or child were in the hospital with multisystem organ failure, would you want your nurse dragging in, grieving for the last person who had been in that bed, or would you want her alert, optimistic, and rational, focused on your loved one and only your loved one?

Those of us who are really good in the ICU, who can provide great patient care year after year, don't turn into totally different people when we go home at night. Our att.i.tude about our own problems is the one we take to work-fix it if you can, and then move on. Furthermore, seeing what problems the ICU familes are facing puts some perspective on your own little deals.

So I was sitting in the backseat of a well-maintained, well-insured car driven by a law-abiding, completely sober individual. Where exactly was the big problem?

I.

had a lot more sympathy for Rose's problems. Her sister hadn't come for Christmas. "Her son's hockey team qualified for a holiday tournament," she'd told me.

But Annie had checked the school's Web site. The tournament was starting two days after Christmas and had been on the team's calendar all season. Qualification had never been in question. Obviously Holly had simply decided not to come.

So Guy, extrovert that he was, had invited any and all who didn't have holiday plans . . . and people who, on December 22, don't know what they are doing on Christmas frequently aren't the most socially adept beings on the planet. It had not been a fun family holiday.

Rose came into the kitchen to help me unpack the groceries. "We have appointments with the caterer for tastings and at the rental company to try to finalize the linens. And the dishes . . . and the chairs and G.o.d only knows what else. I hope you know you're welcome to come."

I knew that Claudia would be very interested in everything at the rental company. "Can I go to the caterers and skip the tablecloth thing?"

"Absolutely," Rose said. "Now I a.s.sume Claudia told you what she wants to do with those rehearsal-dinner dresses?"

"No, she hasn't said anything. I suppose we ought to get started on finding a location and stuff."

"Finding a location?" Rose had been folding a grocery bag. She stopped and sounded exasperated. "Everything's almost done. Claudia's just waiting for us to finalize the wedding menu so that she doesn't duplicate things. Do you really know nothing about it?" Rose jerked the folds of the bag. "When the two of you don't communicate, that puts me in the middle, and I don't like that."

I grimaced. She had a point.

"I know," Rose continued, "that when she makes plans and decisions-like with that Christmas trip or now with the rehearsal dinner-you figure that it's her responsibility to call you, and you're probably right. But she's not going to do that. As far as she's concerned, you don't exist. She never talks about you; she never refers to you."

"That's sort of creepy," I admitted, "but I guess that's better than her trashing me all the time."

"Actually, from my point of view, it would be easier if she did trash you. I could discount the negatives, and at least I would have some information."

"I hadn't realized that it was so extreme. I'll try to do better. What's going on with-" I broke off. "No, I'll ask her. Or Mike. He bears some responsibility here."

"Not with what she wants us to wear. I'm sure that's her bailiwick."

Apparently Claudia had a hypothesis to prove-that the aesthetic quality of candid group photographs could be improved if some thought was given to a few garments. Her notion, according to Rose, was that if the dresses of the key female partic.i.p.ants included, for example, the same diagonal lines, the resulting photographs would be more pleasing.

"She wants people to dress alike?"

"Oh, no," Rose a.s.sured me. "She says that none of the garments would look anything alike, some would be separates, some would be dresses, all different colors and styles, but they would each have this *unifying diagonal.' "

"This is beyond creepy," I said. "Where are people supposed to find these clothes?"

"She's going to make them all and then write an article about it. With all of us ill.u.s.trating it."

I couldn't think of anything I less wanted to be involved in. "I'm totally cool with not existing on this one."

"Too bad. If you're not in on this, then we aren't. I'm not willing to go through another event like the engagement party where you are sitting in Siberia."

I made another face. "You weren't suppose to notice."

"No, Darcy, you're wrong there. I was supposed to notice. That was part of the point."

I wondered if Claudia had any idea how observant and shrewd Rose was. "I'm sorry that you have to deal with my family's c.r.a.p."

"I am too," she said bluntly. "But it's not only you. It took me less than a month in this house to realize that we had handed ourselves a plateful of other people's status issues. Yes, Jill Allyn likes working out here, but she really likes telling everyone that she can come out here anytime she wants, that she's so special she doesn't need an invitation. Then Guy wants to invite all the people who she's trying to make feel bad."

"That sucks."

"Yes, it does." Rose put the bags in the cabinet below the vegetable sink. "I really like you, Darcy, and I hope you like me. But if you want to help me, you'll start fighting your own battles. Don't make me fight them for you."

I didn't like the sound of that. I fought my own battles, didn't I? "I pick and choose." I wanted to defend myself. "I try not to sweat the small stuff. If something is important, I stand up, but this nickel-and-dime, who wears what, who sits where, I try to let that go."

Rose shook her head. "What you are calling *small stuff' are actually symbols with a great deal of potency."

She was talking like an English major . . . but that didn't mean that she was wrong. I might have pretended that I didn't mind sitting at the losers' table, but in truth, it had made me feel awful. "So what's going on with the dresses? I don't know that I want her making a dress for me."

"You'd rather shop for one?"

"No, Lord, no." But I did feel as if I had been shoved onto a train without anyone asking me where I wanted to go.

"How does Cami feel about all this? Aren't more photographs going to add to the stress?"

"Claudia swears that the photography will be very un.o.btrusive, nothing more than what we might ordinarily have. And, to be honest, Darcy, Claudia is helping Cami and me a lot. She can look at seven different unity candles and pick the one that will look best with our flowers. I'm inclined to humor her on this."

I didn't even know what a unity candle was.

I was going to talk to Mike first. Claudia might be maneuvering to turn me into a blank s.p.a.ce on the canvas, but in truth, she didn't owe me anything beyond basic decency. Mike did.

After lunch I drew him aside. "I just found out from Rose that you and Claudia have made almost all the rehearsal-dinner plans already."

"Well, yes. Claudia said June's a busy time of year out here, that we needed to lock in the restaurant now."

"Shouldn't you have consulted me? Or at least told me what you were doing? It was awkward hearing it all from Rose."

He blinked. "Oh. I just a.s.sumed . . ."

"a.s.sumed what? Did you a.s.sume I didn't care? Or did you a.s.sume that it was Claudia's job to tell me?"

He didn't answer.

I knew what was happening. He was preparing his defense. He was going to tell me all the reasons why he had done nothing wrong. "I don't want hear it, Mike," I snapped. "I don't want to hear that somehow you've done nothing wrong, and this is all my fault."

I started to brush past him, but he surprised me. "No, Darcy, wait. You haven't done anything wrong. I didn't a.s.sume that you wouldn't care, and I didn't a.s.sume that it was Claudia's job to tell you. To the extent that I thought about it, which wasn't enough, I unconsciously a.s.sumed that you would be in touch with her."

"That's not fair," I said. "That's not fair at all. Am I supposed to call everyone you ever have dinner with and welcome her into my family? That's nuts. Why would you ever imagine me doing that?"

"Because it's what you did with my mother." He was speaking slowly as if he was only now understanding this. "The whole time we were married, you and she always figured out when we were going to get together. I'd just show up."

"Mike, that was with your mother, my children's grandmother. I'm not going to make those kinds of calls with your girlfriends."

"No, no, of course not. I see now that I was taking it for granted that you were going to handle it." He took a breath and looked straight at me. "That was wrong. I apologize."

Now I was surprised. I didn't know what to say. It was unlike him to make such a simple, sincere apology.

"So can I show you everything now?" he asked. "I know that Claudia brought all her files."

I followed him into the family room. Claudia was sitting at the table with Rose and Annie. Because her posture was so good and her torso so long, she looked tall when she was sitting. Now that I was a resident of the Commonwealth of Virginia, I knew all about Robert E. Lee, the Confederate general. He wasn't a tall man, but because his height was in his torso, he looked really great sitting on a horse.