Love Saves the Day

Anise’s eyes narrow in confusion. “Why does anybody keep anything? To help you remember.” Then she looks around this room, which is still empty except for the Sarah-boxes, and doesn’t say anything else until she sees the black garbage bag with the bird-clothes. “No way!” she says happily. “Look at all these! I made most of these for your mom, you know. We had disco outfits for when we went to her kind of clubs”—Anise makes a face—“and all these little punk-rock-girl clothes for when she came with me to the places where I played.” She holds up a shirt that looks like it’s been clawed up, held together with silver safety pins. “Did you know your mom was a drag king for about thirty seconds back in the day?”

Laura has been sitting cross-legged on the floor with me in her lap, watching as Anise looks through everything but not doing much herself. I feel her surprise in the sudden slight movement of her arms and shoulders as she says, “Wait, what?”

Anise laughs. “Nobody wanted to give a girl DJ a break back then. It used to kill me to see Sarah spending so many hours at Alphaville, making audition tapes nobody would listen to. So one day I came up with the idea of dressing her like a guy. Neither of us had much in the way of a chest”—Anise looks down at her own skinny shape—“and she was so tall anyway that all it took was some clever needlework. In the clothes I made, and with her hair up under a hat, she looked like a very pretty boy.” Anise’s smile is gentle. “I never saw anyone as beautiful as your mother who was so completely unaware of how beautiful she was. Like it was nothing. The first time I met her was in a store where she was trying on dresses. She came out of that dressing room looking like a model, but you could tell just by looking at her that she didn’t see it when she looked in the mirror.” Anise makes a funny face and sticks out her tongue. “I thought somebody should tell her what a knockout she was.”

Laura’s voice is hesitant. “So why did she stop? Being a DJ, I mean,” she adds, when Anise looks confused. “She talked about it sometimes, and even when I was a kid I could tell how much she loved it. Why did she give up the way she did?”

Anise’s eyes widen. “Because of you,” she says. “Because once you came along, nothing else was more important. Not even her music. She used to say you were her music.”

Laura’s fingers have been stroking my fur, and the pressure from the tips becomes a bit harder, as if her fingers are curling up. I start to purr, hoping it will ease her tension. “But then, why did she have that record store? Why did she raise me in that neighborhood?” Laura is starting to sound angry. “Why did we live the way we did if I was more important to her than anything else?”

“Go sing that sad song to your husband. My mother didn’t love me enough.” Anise looks as mad as Laura just sounded. “You forget—I was there. What kid was ever happier than you were? What kid ever had a mother who adored her the way your mother adored you?” Anise’s hands rise into the air and start making gestures. “Your mother gave you a family,” she insists. “She gave you a life. Isn’t that what every parent wants, to give their children what they never had? Do you think I can’t tell what you’re hoping to give your children just by looking at this apartment?”

“You haven’t seen me in fifteen years.” Laura’s voice is low and sharp. “You don’t know anything about me or what I’m trying to do.”

“Don’t I?” Anise’s voice doesn’t get louder, exactly, but it sounds more powerful. “I know you’ve been letting one horrible day roam around in your head like a monster you can’t kill and won’t ever let die. And yes, I know how bad that day was for you,” she adds when Laura takes a breath as if she’s about to interrupt. “Bad things happen and people spend months and years trying to recover because they don’t get the kind of help from friends that your mother did. Help she didn’t get from those grandparents of yours, who you don’t even remember because they never cared enough to meet you. You had the Mandelbaums for grandparents and that girl who lived upstairs—what was her name? Maria something?—for your sister, and Noel from the store and everybody in the neighborhood your mom made a point of knowing so they’d all look out for you. You had a mother who picked you up at school every afternoon and built an entire life around being able to spend time with you. And she was lucky, because not everybody has the chance or the resources to do what she did.”

Laura doesn’t say anything when Anise’s rush of words stops. I look up and see the skin of her throat tightening, like those times when she wanted to say something to Sarah, but couldn’t.