Page 58 of Dial F for Finance

“Fancy.” My mother stabs at the manicotti like it insulted her. “Everything is fancy with you now. Fancy coat. Fancy job. Fancy trips. You know what fancy gets you? Tired. Look at your face.”

“My face is fine.”

“It’s swollen.”

“I’m just fat, Ma,” I sigh, setting down my fork.

“I think she looks great,” Hailey says. “Success suits her. I’d love to jet set around the world for work.”

“She looks tired,” Ma says, because why waste a thesis when a refrain will do. Then she points her fork at me. “And don’t think I don’t know what happens on these trips. Hotels. Bars. Men in suits with ideas.” She turns her fork to Hailey. “Probably why you want to go.”

Hailey’s mouth falls open. “Um . . .”

“And you should go.” Ma sloshes more wine into her glass. “Yeah. I think you should. Leave. Just like your father—act like you love me to my face and then abandon me in my hour of need. Go and whore around the whole planet and leave me here to rot alone. See if I care.” She glugs down the last of her glass and stomps her way upstairs, slamming her bedroom door behind her.

Hailey looks at me. “Well . . . that was fun. Welcome home.”

I laugh so I don’t cry.

Hailey reaches for the wine bottle, finds it empty, and lifts it in a little toast to the ceiling. “To family. The gift that keeps filing claims against your nervous system.”

“I’ll go get another bottle,” I say automatically.

“No.” She puts the bottle back on the table. “Absolutely not. If you bring another bottle into this house, she’ll come downstairs for round two and start accusing the mailman of stealing her youth.”

“He did always linger at the gate.”

“That was because you were sixteen and terrifying and once told him his cologne was a hate crime.”

“It was.”

Hailey laughs, but it doesn’t last. The kitchen settles around us, the radio still cheerful in the corner, which feels out of place. Somewhere upstairs, a drawer opens and shuts with the force of a woman who wants an audience for her suffering but will accept furniture.

I pick up my fork again because the manicotti is excellent, because my mother’s food has always been the one reliable fixture in our lives.

“Do you know what happened?” I ask. “I thought she quit the drink.”

“She did. Kind of.” Hailey sighs and looks toward the counter. “When she was at the store this morning, she found out Dad’s moving in with someone.”

“Oh.” One syllable for the man who left and the woman who somehow never did. “That’s why she’s drinking?”

“That’s why she started early. She never fully quit. Just cut back.” Hailey rubs beneath one eye. “On the bright side, at least I don’t have to keep making sure Dad pays his bills anymore. Apparently, he’s someone else’s problem now. Moving to Pennsylvania or something.”

“He should never have made his bills your problem to begin with,” I say. “He’s a grown-ass man who needs to stop looking to the women around him to ease his own burden.”

Hailey shrugs. “Was he really that bad to her?” she asks. “I know what he’s like now. But I remember them being happy. I remember laughter in the before.” Her eyes widen on the last word like it was a mystical time when the world still had color.

“They were,” I say, looking over my shoulder to the stairs Ma just stomped up. “He was charming and funny and everybody loved him. The problem was, he loved too many women back. She kept forgiving him until there wasn’t much of her left.” Another bump comes from upstairs, then I hear the creak of her mattress and breathe in relief because it means she’ll fall asleep soon. “She loved him like crazy. And in the end it broke her.”

Hailey is quiet for a moment, pushing a piece of pasta around her plate. She was only ten when they split, while I was sixteen. So her memory of our parents together is different from mine.

“She wasn’t always like this,” I add, because it feels important. Because every time I come back here, I meet the woman she became and have to remind myself there was a woman before. “She was loud, obviously. Dramatic. But funny. She’d dance in the kitchen—Dad would come in and catch her about the waist and they’d spin and laugh and we’d cheer them on.” I sigh at the memory. “And she used to sing when she cleaned.”

Hailey smiles faintly. “I remember the singing.”

“She had a voice.”

“She still does,” Hailey says. “Mostly it’s just weaponized now.”