I wore the burgundy dress whenever my son, Julian, called by video. It had belonged to my better years, when my husband and I attended school fundraisers and complained about stiff banquet chairs. The sleeves hid careful mending, and the camera softened the faded collar. Julian always said I looked elegant. I always angled the screen away from the utility sink behind my chair.
After my hip surgery, I moved into the converted laundry room behind my niece Lydia’s house. She called it a garden apartment. It had one narrow window, a hot plate, and a bathroom reached by crossing the covered patio. I paid Lydia nine hundred dollars each month from my pension. She brought groceries twice a week and said Julian’s business had been difficult, so I should not trouble him with complaints.
Julian lived across the country and had built a software company large enough that magazines sometimes printed his photograph. Wealth did not make him observant. I did not make observation easy. When he asked whether the support arrangement worked, I said yes because Lydia was family and because admitting need felt like submitting an invoice for motherhood.
He arrived without warning on a windy Thursday. His conference had moved to our city, and he wanted to take me to dinner. I had just spilled soup on my everyday sweater, so I pulled the burgundy dress from the back of the closet. Julian stepped inside while I was fastening the cuff. He looked at the bed beside the dryer vent, the extension cord powering my kettle, and the plastic tub catching a ceiling leak. Then he asked why I was living there when he paid eight thousand dollars every month for my care. Outside the narrow window, Lydia’s sprinkler clicked across a lawn I was never invited to use.