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  “Sorry,” I said, a little embarrassed. “I’m not used to having all this estrogen.”

  We grabbed the lingerie and walked back to my apartment.

  Now, I could see Ken’s face from a block away (how I loved not having to wear glasses!) and it looked a bit ashen. I didn’t say anything to Lucy, but I knew something had to be up.

  “Lucy,” Ken called out.

  “Hey, Ken,” Lucy called back.

  “You know, your mom and Mrs. Freedberg are out looking for you both. They seemed pretty worried.”

  “Your mother just can’t leave me be for two seconds, can she?” I said, turning to Lucy.

  “Hold on.” She stopped me. “Ken, do you know where they went?”

  “All I know is that both Mrs. Freedberg and your mother locked themselves out of both apartments, with no keys, so they went looking for you.” Then he turned to me. “By the way, I got in a lot of trouble because of you. You said you were Mrs. Jerome’s other granddaughter.”

  “I am,” I answered in a way that made it quite obvious I wasn’t.

  “You think I was born yesterday?” he asked me.

  “Ken, this is very important,” Lucy broke in. “Do you know where my mom and Mrs. Freedberg went?”

  “They didn’t say. Your mom was in a big huff, and she dragged Mrs. F. with her.”

  “Oh, for Christ’s sake. Let’s go up and see if they left a note or something.” I motioned to Lucy and grabbed my keys out of my bag. “I’ll take it from here. Thanks, Ken,” I said as we walked to the elevator and pushed the up button.

  “But who are you?” Ken asked. “What do I tell them if they come back?”

  “Tell them that you saw Mrs. Jerome, and that she’s out looking for them, too,” I said as the elevator door opened.

  “But where is Mrs. Jerome?” he asked.

  “She’s out looking for them,” Lucy and I answered at the same time as the elevator door shut.

  My heart sank when I walked into the apartment. Sitting right on my table in front of the Paris mirror was Barbara’s bag. Frida’s blood sugar must have dropped, because there was also a pack of my cheese and crackers. You don’t even want to know what goes on when Frida’s blood sugar drops. The woman turns into a crazy person. If she was anywhere with Barbara right now, Barbara was probably seeing a side of Frida she never knew existed.

  “Oh, I feel awful,” I said, taking a look in Barbara’s bag. “Her keys are in here. Her cell phone. Where could they be? Do you think we should just call the guys and cancel?”

  “I should at least,” Lucy answered, grabbing her cell phone.

  “Well, then, I should, too. Let’s call it a day.”

  “Why should you cancel?” she asked me. “How are you going to explain yourself?”

  “I’ll tell them the truth. I’ll tell them that I woke up and I was twenty-nine years old. I’ll prove it to them the way I proved it to you.”

  “Gram, you’re not going to do that. You’re going to go on the date.”

  I took a seat on my sofa. I noticed that Barbara had taken the cakes off the table and thought she had probably thrown them out. No doubt she took a little piece before she did, but that was neither here nor there.

  “Lucy, enough is enough. It’s obvious I can’t do any of that now. Your mother is probably at the police station filling out a missing persons report. Knowing her, soon she’ll have the entire Philadelphia police force looking for me.”

  Lucy stood in front of me, seemingly deep in thought.

  “No. I will handle Mom. You are going on your date.”

  “I can’t do it,” I said and put my head in my hands.

  “You’ll do it, just like we said you would, and I’m going with you. This is your day, not Mom’s, and tomorrow you can deal with her.”

  “But your mother—”

  “Should grow up already,” Lucy insisted. “And Gram, you need to take a stand and stop treating her like a child. She is a middle-aged woman. It’s about time she started acting her age.”

  “You know I hate that phrase.”

  “Gram, it’s true.”

  “You don’t understand, though. No matter how old your child gets, she’s still your child.”

  And then Lucy walked over and joined me in the chair. “Not today, Gram. Not today.”

  My head was swimming. My child. Frida. Me. What was I going to do? How would I explain this to Barbara and Frida, anyway? They would never get it like Lucy did. It goes back to what I was saying before: there comes a point in a person’s life when they stop accepting new ideas. Lucy wasn’t at that point yet. Frida and Barbara, however, were. They would never accept the fact that I was twenty-nine years old.

  Maybe Lucy was right, maybe there does come a point where the parent has to stop caring for their child’s every feeling. There comes a time where you just have to stop and say, “My days of teaching and worrying are over. It’s time for you to stop relying on me to take care of you. It’s now up to you to start living your own life. I can’t give you the answers anymore.” Was Lucy right? As a smart as she was, Lucy didn’t know what it meant to be a mother. From the moment they put that child into your arms, you deal with this quandary. How much do you give? How much can you give, when your heart keeps telling you to mother your child, no matter how old she is, but your head tells you something different?

  And then I went back to the other side of the argument. Today, I’m Lucy. I’m not seventy-five-year-old Ellie. Today I’m selfish. No matter what my heart told me, if I was going to live as a twenty-nine-year-old woman, even for one day, I should start thinking like one, too. Or at least try to. So today would be my day to be selfish, to remember who I am outside of being a mother. Tomorrow there would be a whole lot of change.

  “What are you thinking?” Lucy asked me.

  “I’m thinking that I’m going to do what you said. I’m going to continue with my day. I’m going to go into my closet and pull out my makeup and spruce myself up for tonight. I’ve got a date.”

  “But I still think that I should look for Mom and Aunt Frida.”

  “Lucy, what was it that we said in the beginning?”

  “It’s your day.”

  “That’s right. It’s my day, and I want to spend it with you, okay? End of story. Change subject.”

  Lucy went silent. Now she was the one thinking.

  “Tomorrow, Lucy,” I said. “Tomorrow.”

  “But . . .” she started.

  “And that’s the last time we’re going to discuss it today. Let your mother deal with her own problems.” I took her hand. “Now, let’s continue with my day. We don’t have that much time left.”

  Truthfully, despite the things I said, I don’t know how much of that I really believed, but I had to try. If I was going to look the part, I was going to try to act the part, too.

  Lucy took my hand and we went to my closet.

  I put on Lucy’s underwear and bra and slipped into the black dress and took a look at myself in the mirror.

  “I think I’m going to hem it just a bit,” Lucy said, taking a look. “It will make the dress look less sophisticated and more playful.”

  “Yes!” I exclaimed. “Hem it a little shorter! I want to show off these young legs.”

  Lucy went to pull out my sewing machine. She was the only one who ever used it anyway. The thing must have been thirty years old. It’s a good thing I had it.

  After we picked out a nice three-inch heel (I wanted to wear my old four-inch platforms from the seventies, but Lucy protested), Lucy pinned the hem. I was about to put on my robe to walk into the other room, then I decided against it. I left Lucy in the closet to sew and walked through my apartment in the bra and underwear, taking a look at myself in the Paris mirror as I walked by, and headed into the kitchen to make a little something to tide me over.

  “Gram,” Lucy called from the closet, “maybe after today you could start coming with me to buyers—you know, as kind of an agent.�
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  “I’d love to!” I called out, feeling flattered.

  I took the cold chicken out of the fridge and cut it up and grabbed some bread. A nice chicken sandwich would be just the thing, I thought. I put the food on a tray with two glasses of iced tea and walked back to the closet, taking a look at myself once again as I passed by the Paris mirror.

  “A little something to tide us over so we don’t eat like savages tonight,” I announced.

  “We’re going out for dinner,” Lucy said, thinking she was reminding me.

  “Oh, I know, but who eats on dates?”

  “I eat on dates,” Lucy said and laughed.

  “A lady should never show a large appetite on a date.”

  “Why not?” she asked.

  “It’s not proper,” I told her.

  “But why?” she asked.

  I thought about it. “You know what?” I smiled. “I have no idea.”

  I put the chicken back in the fridge, took out a bottle of Champagne, and grabbed two glasses. I always keep a bottle in the fridge; you never know when an occasion might arise. Lucy couldn’t fault me for that.

  I went back into the closet.

  “Now you’re talking,” Lucy said, laughing, as she finished the hem.

  “Just a little something for our nerves,” I said.

  “And of course to celebrate.”

  I popped the cork, poured the Champagne into the glasses, and handed one to Lucy.

  “What should we toast?” I asked her as I stood stripped nearly down to my twenty-ninth birthday suit.

  “To us?” she asked.

  “To us, and to youth!” I toasted.

  We clinked our glasses and took a sip.

  “Okay, try this on for me,” she said, unzipping the dress and handing it to me.

  “Do you think I need stockings?” I asked her, heading toward my lingerie drawer.

  “No, Gram, you don’t need stockings.” She balked as if I were talking nonsense.

  “Of course I don’t.” I smiled. “I’ve always envied that you never wear stockings. I’ll never get used to this day.”

  I slipped into the dress and Lucy zipped me up. I put on the black heels.

  “Stunning,” Lucy whispered.

  “Now you,” I urged her.

  Lucy got out of her clothes and put on her dress, a red halter. Hers, however, hung to her knees.

  “What do you think?” she asked.

  “Stunning.” I smiled back at her, taking her hands in mine.

  “I need to take a picture of this,” Lucy said, running out of the closet.

  “Yes!” I shouted, then stopped. “Do you think that I can even be photographed?”

  “What do you mean?” she asked, coming back in with her bag and taking out her cell phone.

  “Well, I’m not real today,” I told her.

  “Oh, you’re real.” She laughed. “Besides, only vampires can’t be photographed.”

  “Where’s the camera?” I asked her.

  “In the phone,” she said.

  “The phone has a speaker and a camera?” I asked.

  “Yes, Gram.” She sounded a little agitated.

  “Well, I didn’t know,” I said.

  “Well, if you’re going to start working with me, you’re going to have to get one of these newfangled cell phones.”

  “There’s so much I have to learn,” I said, nodding.

  “Just when you think you know it all.”

  “So true,” I said.

  Lucy stood next to me and pointed the camera at our faces.

  “Maybe we can get the guys to take a picture of us later,” she said.

  “That’s a good idea, but let’s get this one now so we’ll have it.”

  We put our arms around each other and stuck our heads together.

  “Now give me a big smile, Lucy. You never show your teeth in pictures.”

  “I have a look I like when I take pictures,” she said.

  “Yes, and it’s boring. I want one picture with a full smile.”

  “No,” she said adamantly.

  I grabbed her side and proceeded to tickle her. A grandmother always knows the tickle spots.

  Lucy howled with laughter. Her laughter made me laugh.

  That’s when she snapped the picture.

  “I hate it!” she said, taking a look. “Let’s take another one.”

  “No,” I said. “I love it! Can you make a copy of it? Does the phone come with a printer?”

  “No, it doesn’t.” She smiled at my naivete.

  “Just when you thought all the technology was past you.”

  And with that, we went into the living room to finish the rest of our champagne.

  “Where do you think they are now?” Lucy asked.

  “Who knows?” I shrugged. “We’ll take Frida’s keys and Barbara’s bag down to Ken. He’ll return them when they come back here.”

  “You think they’ll come back?”

  “If I know your mother, she’ll want to move in with me after this.”

  “Boy, I’m not looking forward to the time when we see them again.”

  “You and me both.”

  This made us laugh. Again.

  I looked down at my watch.

  “It’s almost seven,” I told Lucy.

  “We better leave. We don’t want to be late.”

  “Oh, they’ll wait. If there’s one thing I know, it’s that it’s good to keep them waiting.”

  “Is that what you used to do with Grandpop?” she asked.

  “The poor man wasted half his life waiting for me. He was happy in the end, though.”

  “Do you still miss Grandpop?” she asked me.

  I took a deep breath.

  “All the time,” I told her.

  “What do you miss the most?” she asked me.

  I thought about it. “I miss moments like this. I miss the look on his face when he’d see me come downstairs all dolled up.”

  “If I ever get married, I hope I have the relationship that you and Grandpop had.”

  “What makes you say that?” I asked her, feeling a little shocked.

  “He really loved you. I always loved the way he talked about you when you weren’t around.”

  “What did he say?” I asked, genuinely curious.

  “Whenever we were out together, like if we were having lunch, he’d say, ‘I’m going to order a dessert to bring home to your grandmother.’ Or other little things, like when I’d go to change the radio station in the car and he’d say, ‘Don’t ruin the buttons. They’re the stations that Grandmom likes.’ And when he always said how pretty he thought you were: ‘Grandmom is the prettiest lady in the world.’”

  “Well, I tried, you know, for him.” I said, not knowing what else to say. You must understand—Lucy would have never understood if I told her how I really felt about Howard.

  “I don’t think you ever had to try for him,” she said. “I think he meant how beautiful you were on the inside, too.”

  “No, he never felt that way,” I said.

  “You think he never noticed how wonderful you were? Don’t tell me you went through your whole life without noticing how in love with you he was.”

  Thoughts of Howard started pouring through my head. Not big things, either. Just little things like Lucy was mentioning, like the way Howard got up and made me fresh-squeezed orange juice every morning, and put the coffee on. He never made a bed or changed a diaper, but he always made sure I took my vitamins in the morning. He was always worried about that. He always opened the car door for me, always. He was always worried that I wouldn’t be warm enough in what I was wearing (I never was), and he always had a shawl of mine in the back of his car. At night when we went to bed, Howard always got my sleep mask for me. I could never sleep without my mask. But no, I wouldn’t think of those things tonight. I wouldn’t think of the good things. I would think of the things I really thought, of Howard as he really was, how I really knew
him. I wasn’t about to start feeling guilty now. After all, when Howard was having his affairs, did he feel guilty?

  “Darn you,” I scolded her.

  “What?” She laughed.

  I started to tear up.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, putting her arm around me.

  “Nothing in life is perfect,” I said, brushing her off. “Except for tonight. Tonight is going to be perfect.”

  “Well, let’s hope.” She smiled.

  “Lesson number four thousand and one. This one is very important, so really take note.”

  “I’m listening,” she replied.

  “Never give up on wanting to learn new things.”

  “Like what?” she asked.

  “Whatever it is, never get set in your ways. Always try new things, even if you don’t want to.”

  “Okay, I won’t forget to learn new things.”

  “Even if you don’t want to.”

  “It’s a deal.”

  I looked for my bag and headed over to the Paris mirror.

  “Okay, how do we look?”

  “We’re gorgeous,” Lucy said, taking my hand and standing in front of the mirror.

  I patted my hair down a little.

  “Are you ready for the night of your life?” she asked me.

  “I grabbed the cash out of my lingerie drawer, right?” I said, looking in my purse.

  “Yes, I saw you do it,” she said as I saw the cash. “Now, are you ready?” she asked again.

  “Bring it on!” I cheered.

  “Where did you learn that phrase?” she asked.

  “I’m old, I’m not oblivious,” I told her.

  Lucy opened the door and we walked out.

  “Wait,” I said, taking her arm.

  “What?”

  “What’s the name of the boy I’m going out with tonight?”

  “Zach,” she reminded me.

  “Zachary.” I smiled.

  more walking

  But you were only a block and a half from here. How could you get lost?” Officer Bea Fairholm laughed, dumbfounded.

  “I never come to this neighborhood,” Frida said and shrugged.

  “It’s four blocks away from where you live!” Bea laughed again.

  “Look, Bea, we know we were stupid. It’s been a crazy day, what with my mother going missing, and then both Frida and me without keys or money or phones or our purses.”