“All My Children is set in Pine Valley, it has the Tylers, the Kanes, and the Martins; it’s been on for, like, forty years, that’s more than ten thousand episodes. …” She details a bit about Erica and the Cortlandts.
“And then, this week …” She lays out the story lines — the past history, who was married to who, who fathered what child, what secrets have not yet been revealed.
“Ash, how long have you been watching these shows?”
“A long time,” she says. “I started when I was, like, seven and was home with mono for a month and Mom let me watch them with her.”
“Your mom watched them?”
“She loved them. She’d been watching the exact same shows since she was in junior high and stuck at home with a broken leg. And once, at an airport, she actually saw Mrs. Tyler, Mrs. Phoebe Tyler! Mom saw her at the airport and ran over and helped her with her bag. Her ‘real’ name was Ruth Warrick. She died a few years ago. Mom said something about having seen it in the newspaper.”
“You really miss your mom,” I say.
“I have no one,” she says.
“Well, I’m very glad to see you, and Tessie and Romeo will be happy to see you — you’re gonna love Romeo.”
“Could we go to the cemetery?” she asks. “Would that be weird?”
“We can go — I’m not sure how it would be.”
“What’s it like there?”
“We were there for the funeral; do you remember?”
“Not really.”
“It’s like a big park and there are some trees and the graves are flat.”
“Why?”
“Because that’s the Jewish tradition, to have flat graves, and a year after the funeral there’s what’s called an unveiling, and the plaque with your mom’s name will be there. And whenever you visit you leave a small stone on the marker, which indicates that you were there and the person is not forgotten.”
“Why does it take a year?”
“That’s the tradition. We could go visit your grandmother — would that be fun?”
“Can we take her out?”
“Like where?”
“I don’t know. Just out — it’s like she’s one of those fragile dolls in a box that you can just kind of look at, and maybe she’d like to get out and go somewhere.”
“We can certainly ask her; my sense is, she’s pretty happy where she is — but, like I said, we can ask. So what do you think? Visit Grandma? Bake cookies? Clean your closets?”
“We could bake cookies and bring them to Grandma,” she says.
“We could.”
“Okay, so tonight, when we get home, we’ll make cookies.”
“Tonight, when we get home, we’ll have dinner and go to bed.”
“Okay, so tomorrow morning we’ll bake the cookies and go see Grandma,” she says, pleased to have a plan.
“When you bake cookies, what do you do?” I ask a couple of minutes later.
“What do I do?”
“Like, how do you make them?”
“We either do slice-and-bake or we mix together all the things that are listed on the back of the chocolate chips — they call that ‘from scratch.’”
“And you know how to do that?”
“Yes,” she says, like now I’m the idiot. “Have you never made cookies?”
“Never,” I say.
“We better stop at the store,” she says, and we do. Ashley makes a beeline for the chocolate chips, and we buy everything as directed on the back of the bag, plus extra milk.
“You have to have really fresh milk,” she says. “Otherwise there’s no point.” And then she looks around, smiling at the rows and rows of groceries. “I really miss grocery stores,” she says in a way that reminds me of the oddity of her existence, and how boarding school is an isolated kind of social/educational incubator.
We make the cookies, and when the kitchen starts to fill with a wonderful warm chocolaty smell I feel deeply accomplished. We immediately eat too many and drink the milk, and Ash was entirely right when she said it was all about the milk’s being fresh. It’s amazing — a truly sublime experience. We start laughing for no reason, and the cat comes out and rubs my leg for the first time since I gave away the kittens — I pour her a saucer of milk.
And when the cookies are cool, we go to the nursing home. On the way there, I explain about Grandma’s progress and Grandma’s boyfriend.
“I don’t get it, are they married or not?”
“Not officially.”
“And what’s the deal with her crawling and swimming?”
“Remember how she was in bed last time we saw her?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Well, she’s out of bed now. We’re not sure if it’s a new medicine or perhaps she forgot why she was in bed. I myself can’t remember exactly what happened. I know that we put her in the nursing home because she was bedridden — I’m not sure anyone ever knew why.”
“Well, so that’s cool, she’s getting better.”
“That’s one way to describe it.”
“Hi, Mom,” I say as we walk into her room.
“So you say,” she says.
“What’s wrong?”
“They’re here,” she says with a particular expression of annoyance, as though long-awaited aliens have finally made themselves known.
“They are?” I say.
“Yes,” she says, definitively. “They came this morning and they haven’t left yet.”
She looks up at Ashley. “You look less Chinese — did you have work done?”
“Mom, this is Ashley — not Claire.”
“Who are your people?”
“You are my people,” Ashley says, kissing her.
“Mom, Ashley is your granddaughter, she is one of us.”
“It’s a pleasure to meet you,” she says, shaking Ashley’s hand.
“Mom, I’ve been meaning to tell you — when I visited Aunt Lillian, I got your jewelry back.”
“The diamond engagement ring?” my mother asks.
“No, some pearl earrings, a bracelet, the necklace with the ruby, and a few other little things, a pin, and a little necklace. She was very happy to give them back — seemed to want it off her chest.”
“I’m sure,” my mother says. “Did you look at her hand? Is she still wearing the engagement ring your father bought for me?”
“I have no idea, Ma,” I said. “It really seems like something the two of you should work out together. When you told me to ask her for the jewelry you didn’t mention a diamond engagement ring.”
“I wanted to see what she would fess up to — before I really put the screws on her,” my mother says.
Time for lunch — in the dining room. The floor assistant comes to take her to the dining room.
“I’m not going,” she says.
“Why not?” I ask
“A protest,” she says.
“I don’t think they’re going to bring your lunch,” the aide says, shaking her head.
“They used to,” my mother says.
“That was before,” I say.
“Well, it’s not like I’d miss much,” she says.
“Don’t be too sure,” the aide says. “It’s chicken and pasta.”
“Damn,” my mother says.
“What?”
“I really like the chicken and pasta, it has lemon and broccoli, and I get one of the girls from the kitchen to slip me some olives and capers. It’s almost like real food.”
“I brought dessert,” Ashley says holding up the cookie tin. “Homemade.”
“Fine,” she says, “we’ll go.” And up she gets, and as she leads us down the hall I notice she’s walking with a certain jounce or bounce in her step.
“Mom, you’re walking really well,” I say.
“It’s the dancing,” she says. “If you think of dancing, then you can walk; it’s just like stroke patients who sing in order to talk.”