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TWO

“ I didn’t plan for this,” Donna says, twisting the pull-tab on her Diet Coke. She tips her head back and combs her fingers through her blond streaks, dislodging tiny beads of hardened hairspray that sparkle as they fall to the drab linoleum floor. “What to do, what to do?”

Eddie watches them fall while he waits for the microwave to do its work, reheating the leftovers he’s doggie-bagged home from the kitchen at Sunset Ridge Assisted Living where he works as a prep cook: poached chicken with mashed potatoes (made from dried flakes) and “vegetable medley.” What a ridiculous name, vegetable medley. He closes his eyes and imagines a chorus of carrots and peas singing you say tomato / I say tomahto , a frozen-foods variety show. Green beans with jazz hands and pearl onions with top hats.

The microwave dings, ending Eddie’s silly vision. He slides a plate in front of Donna and sits down at the little dinette table across from her.

“Thanks, kid,” she says, sinking a fork into the mound of mashed potatoes.

“Wait,” Eddie says. “Salt.” He pushes the shaker across the table. Sunset Ridge leftovers always need salt. The cooks there are practically forbidden to use it. Something about excess salt contributing to chronic high blood pressure among the residents.

“And butter,” Donna says.

Eddie unwraps a pat of Sunset Ridge butter and pushes it with his forefinger into Donna’s potatoes. “I washed my hands,” he says preemptively, watching it melt into a little pool. He unwraps another and pushes it in, too.

“Thanks,” she says. She takes a bite. “Your hair’s getting long.”

“Is it?”

“This Albert character is nuts,” Donna says. “You taking care of an old lady? In New York City? Ridiculous.”

In a flash, Eddie’s New York fantasy returns. He’s inside his imagined apartment now, sitting across the table having supper. But not with Donna, with his handsome boyfriend, who reaches a thick-wristed hand toward Eddie, taking him by the forearm and smiling broadly. Behind him, the giant canvases he’s been working on, sprawling abstract expressionist paintings that, after dinner, they’ll sit on the floor in front of and gaze at while they talk about nothing, with Eddie’s head in his boyfriend’s lap, and his boyfriend’s hands in Eddie’s unruly hair. He closes his eyes to imagine those hands. Strong, warm, gentle—

—suddenly Eddie’s breath is gone. In his reverie he’s forgotten he’s eating. He’s choking on a bite of mashed potato. He drops his fork and throws his hands up to his throat. His eyes start to water, turning quickly to red.

Donna springs up and claps him on the back as he struggles for air, gripping the edge of the table. After a few strong whacks, the potato dislodges onto the floor. Eddie inhales greedily.

“Easy,” she says, handing him his glass of water. “Breathe.”

He takes it and sips, catching his breath. He coughs again.

Donna holds her hand between his shoulder blades for another moment until he regains his rhythm. He puts a hand up to signal he’s all right, and takes another sip. She sits back down. “Don’t worry,” she says, laughing to comfort him. “No need to choke yourself. You don’t have to go. I won’t make you.”

But she is misunderstanding. He wants to go. He is going. He is definitely, one hundred percent going. It’s so clear to him—the opportunity, the vision, the reality. It’s like kismet, fate, already written. He has to go. He gulps some water, then gulps some more.

“She asked for me.”

“She’s probably delirious from whatever drugs they gave her in the hospital. She has no idea what she’s asking.”

“What if she does? She’s our family.”

Donna’s fork stalls in the air. She squints her eyes at him, studying his expression, then smiles, bemused. “Oh, you’re a good kid. Generous. But, no. I can’t force that on you. We’ll find another way.”

Eddie puts his own fork down. “I think I should go.”

Donna laughs. “Eddie, you’re young! The last place you should be is stuck in a stuffy old apartment taking care of a hundred-year-old lady. And you don’t even know her.”

Eddie’s mind is racing now. He needs a real argument. While he thinks, he stalls. “She’s only ninety-nine.”

She rolls her eyes. “Your point?”

Eddie keeps going. “And I do know her. We went to visit once. Remember?”

Donna waves her fork in the air. “You were six. Or were you five? What could you possibly remember?”

“I remember her laugh. I remember the lipstick mark she left on your cheek. I remember she had yellow flowers in her hair and a long skirt with bright green polka dots. I remember she had a pink purse with two stuffed bunnies poking their heads out of the top. And I remember the giant necklace she wore, with the clacking gold beads and that gigantic emerald in the middle. She said it was the biggest one in the world, given to her by a prince, or was it a king?”

As he talks, he wonders if this is really recall, or just a fantasy he once had about her.

Donna tilts her head, studying his eyes. “I can’t believe you remember that so well.”

“She liked me,” he says, certain now that his memory is accurate. “She called me Lollipop.”

Donna reaches over and takes his chin in her hand, studying his eyes. “Yes, she did,” she says. “And I’m sure she still likes you. What’s not to like?”

He wipes his stained cuff across his nose. “Shut up.”

“But you can’t go to New York. It’s too much for you. She needs someone who understands how to take care of her. Someone who understands all the details.”

“Who says I don’t? I’m around old people all the time at Sunset Ridge. I know how they are, how they think, what they need. I probably know more ninety-nine-year-olds than anyone.”

“But they have nurses at Sunset Ridge. Assistants. Administrators. Doctors on call. You wouldn’t have any of that with Cookie. You’d be all alone. What if she falls and breaks a hip?”

“Don’t they have 911 in New York?”

“What if she needs help going to the bathroom?”

“I can figure it out.” His confidence is flowing now, words spilling quickly. “I can help her get dressed. I can help her have a bath. I can make three meals. I’ll make sure she takes her pills, whatever they are. I know how to do all those things. I’ll fix cups of tea. I’ll play cards. I’ll run errands.”

He blinks and another vision sweeps in: He’s on a New York City street, greeting neighbors who know his name as he makes his way from the corner shop to the pharmacy to the stationery store and back again. Everything is sunny and shiny and colorful and melodic and scrubbed so, so clean, like a happy New York movie.

“Eddie?”

He shakes his head to clear the vision and return to Donna. “I can do this,” he says. “And besides, can’t Albert help if I need it?”

“Yeah, he strikes me as a real team player.” Donna pushes her plate away. “Besides, you’re only eighteen.”

“No shit,” he says.

She raises a wry eyebrow. “You kiss your mother with that mouth?”

“Sure do, Donna,” he says. “And besides, eighteen is an adult. I can vote, join the military—”

“Not that old cliché.” She leans back and lights a cigarette. “Eighteen is a baby and you can’t tell me otherwise. Besides, you need more young people in your life, not more old people. You get enough of those at Sunset Ridge.”

“What’s wrong with old people?” he asks, feeling defensive. He likes spending time with old people. They are so much less annoying than his peers. They don’t care what he wears or what songs he likes. They don’t spend their lives staring at phones. They don’t sit around chasing the latest shiny object on the internet. They tell stories. They play games. They laugh at his jokes, and he laughs at theirs. Sometimes they’re mean, but young people are meaner. And old people talk about things that matter, like living, like dying. They even listen when he tries to explain his elaborate fantasies, the ones that crop out of nowhere when he is, for example, microwaving dinner. Maybe Cookie would, too.

“Nothing,” she sighs, sounding exasperated now, like a mother.

He plays the card he’s been holding. “Donna, how old were you when you moved to Mesa Springs?” He already knows the answer, of course. She was nineteen, only a year older than he is now.

“That was different.”

“Was it?” It’s not a real question, because he already knows the answer. Things had been very bad back then. She was so desperate to get away from New York, to get away from Eddie’s father. She never told him exactly why, but it wasn’t hard to guess. “I never asked you how you had the money to move to Colorado in the first place. You were really on your own, weren’t you? Did you have anyone to turn to?”

She takes a deep drag. “I had Cookie,” she says quietly.

“Was she rich?”

“No,” Donna says. “None of us were rich. We never have been. But she helped. Just enough. It’s not cheap to fly across the country, you know.”

Eddie’s mind flashes to the four hundred and twenty dollars stashed in his dresser drawer, saved carefully over the last year of paychecks from Sunset Ridge. “I have one hundred and twenty bucks,” he says, keeping the extra three hundred to himself for now.

“You can’t make it to New York on a buck twenty. They’ll push you out of the plane over Missouri.”

“I’ll take the bus,” he says quickly. “Mesa Springs is on the cross-country route. It stops practically across the street. It has to be cheaper than the plane.”

Donna waves her hand through the swirling smoke from her cigarette. He can see her expression beginning to soften. Is he breaking through?

“I was never able to pay her back,” she says, looking at the ceiling where she’d peeled away the paint. “I was ashamed about that. All these years, I was ashamed. I suppose that’s why we lost touch. She was busy. I was busy.”

“Maybe this is the way,” he says.

Donna turns her gaze back to his eyes. She squints, focusing. His instinct is to look away, but he fights it, holding her gaze.

“She is pretty great,” Donna says. “She ran that bookshop in Greenwich Village for sixty years. The Contrarian. That was its name. The Contrarian. It really fit her. She always had balls. I guess that’s how she made it to ninety-nine. Balls.”

Eddie smiles. “You kiss your kid with that mouth?”

“Oh, Eddie. I wish I’d done things differently.”

“There’s still time,” he says.

She tips the rest of her Diet Coke into her mouth, then drops her cigarette, only halfway smoked, into the can. He hears it fizzle in the dregs. She zips up her sweatshirt, a light gray Champion. It used to be Eddie’s sweatshirt until he outgrew it a year or two ago. A hand-me-up. It’s too big for her, but she says she likes it that way. She gets up and stands by the window, looking out toward the mesa.

“It’s not so bad, here, is it? It’s not New York City, but it’s not so bad.” Her voice is melancholy, regretful.

“Do you ever miss the city?” he asks.

“There’s no place like it,” she says, eyes fixed on the mesa.

Eddie gets up and stands next to her at the window. The sunset is thickening now, saturating the sky a menacing ruby red. Wildfires had been burning across the Western Slope for weeks now.

“What do you want, Eddie?”

He shrugs.

“Do you want to go to New York?”

He shrugs again.

“I would if I were you,” she says.

He tips his head to the side and lays it on her shoulder, still watching the sky. She curls her arm up around his chin to his hair.

“I’ll trim this tonight,” she says, gathering strands in her fingers.

“Okay,” he says.

They stand quietly for a minute or two or ten, watching the red sky transform into purple, oxblood. It glows.

“Things haven’t been easy for you,” she says.

“Or you,” he says.

She drops her arm and nudges his head off her shoulder. “You’re nuts, you know.”

“You always say that.”

“And I’m always right.” She leans her own head onto his shoulder now, and standing together, they watch the sun finally sink below the mesa. It’s dusk now, and Eddie feels like everything is about to change.

Oh, Eddie. Didn’t you know by then that everything already had?