The Inseparables Read Free

restaurant, she had asked him about her lecture. “What did you think about my class?” she asked. She remembered that she thought he was lying when he told her he thought it was fascinating. Were there groups he could join? he asked her. What could he do to help? Were there any books he should read?
    Oona flipped through the pages until she got to the back. “This is my favorite,” she said, holding up the author photograph. “This picture of you is wonderful.”
    “Chocolate is wonderful. The ocean is wonderful. That picture of me is ludicrous.”
    “Come on. That’s your problem with this thing. Embrace it!” Oona tried to get her to hold the book. “Embrace it! Embrace this woman!”
    They had kept the same picture. Hubbard had wanted everything in this new edition to stay the same. Vintage typeface. Vintage sexual outrage. Vintage Henrietta. Since she was doing this for the cash, she had not put up a fight. It was the most contrived, most outrageously foolish photograph ever taken of her: the ecru turtleneck; the collection of dangling silver amulets; the white evening gloves up to her elbows; a tumbler of iced tea in her right hand; flared gray corduroys rising a foot above her navel; mustard-colored sunglasses; her old Himalayan pussycat, Albert Camew, asleep beside her. In her left hand, she held that stupid silver teapot. She had forgotten the photographer’s name, but he was German, tall, delicate, blond, a little deaf. He loved the book ( all the hysterical women! ) and was thrilled when he saw the teapot across room. Ooh. That is vonderful. I love it. Go! Now! Hold it up to the light! They’d taken the picture here in the living room, in front of the mantel. She remembered Harold standing off to the side, holding Oona against his chest. She was nine months old then, maybe ten. Harold had always claimed to love the book, even amid the outrage, even as everyone wanted to know which of Eugenia’s lovers was actually him.
    Crossing the room, Oona gave off a small, quiet sigh at the mess the house had become. Boxes cluttered the whole first floor, as well as the barn and the garage. Now that Harold was gone, Henrietta needed to move. The intricacies of her financial distress were not complicated. The accounts were drained. The credit cards were at their limits. She had not saved enough. She was underinsured. She had come perilously close to bankruptcy. Death, it turned out, was very expensive. Because of this, she had packed everything these last few weeks, put forty years into boxes, watched as her husband’s closets were emptied, his sock drawers discarded, his car sold, every trace of their life together dismantled and put away. So many rooms were crowded floor to ceiling with cardboard that the windows were blocked and the light could not get in. Bit by bit the house began to feel less like a home and more like a gloomy, light-starved storage locker. Oona wanted to help, to pay, to write checks, to rent her an apartment, and whether it was maternal pride or some deeper stubbornness, Henrietta cut off the discussion whenever it came up. With Oona it was more complicated. With your children it was always this way.
    Coming back from the kitchen with a tall cup of coffee, Oona noticed a black suitcase wedged in between two large boxes.
    “What is this?” Oona said, not as a question, but as an accusation. She put her hands on her hips. “I can’t believe you still have this, Mom.”
    “Can we skip this part, please? Can we go back to when you were excited about my awful book? When you were spinning and talking about cults and pubic hair and bone dust?”
    Oona flung the suitcase up onto the counter and began to unzip it.
    “Please don’t,” Henrietta cried. “Please.”
    Before Harold died, they had a vacation to Barcelona planned. They were set to leave a week after he passed, and for some reason he had already packed, and put the suitcase by the back door, which, for the past eleven months, was