The Law of Loving Others Read Free Page A

by with potato salads or bagels and lox, brownies wrapped in tinfoil.
    â€œThanks, honey,” my mother said, “but I’m okay, I promise. I ate a big lunch.” Then she looked at me, asked if we’d hit any traffic on the way back from school.
    â€œHere and there. It wasn’t terrible.”
    My father asked if Daniel was a good driver. “I never trust those city kids,” he said.
    â€œHe actually is! His dad taught him to drive stick shift upstate when he was fifteen. He’s barely a city kid.”
    â€œOh right. The second home, of course.”
    â€œSpeaking of second homes, I’m gonna go over to Annie’s after dinner.”
    â€œWell, of course,” my father said, “you’ve been home for forty minutes and it’s already time for you to leave.”
    â€œVery funny. Annie was away over Thanksgiving so I haven’t seen her in so long.”
    â€œEmma,” my mother said, and turned to me. “Before you leave, can you just take a look at the closet with me? It won’t take long, I promise.”
    â€œYeah, sure.”
    â€œI’ll clear the table,” my father said. “You guys can go.”

    MY mother and I went into the master bedroom, which suddenly struck me as so old-fashioned and outdated. Something about the way the sun had drained the color from the wallpaper, and the clutter of photographs, the framed artwork from when I was a child. The walk-in closet was narrow but long, with a single lightbulb dangling from the ceiling. There was a shoe rack on the floor that held a dozen pairs of pumps and leather flats, shoes that my mother had bought decades ago and probably hadn’t worn since the eighties.
    â€œOkay, look,” she said. Her small, unadorned hands brushed past various fabrics—cotton skirts, velvet and silk dresses. “Just look.”
    â€œI’m looking. And I don’t get it,” I told her. “All your stuff is here.”
    â€œI know it seems that way, but just look closely.”
    â€œI don’t understand what you’re talking about, Mom. All your stuff is here. This is the same stuff that’s been in your closet since forever. Maybe that’s the problem. You’ve had all of it for so long, you don’t even remember it.”
    I realized that I sounded exactly like my mother and I felt a faint prickle at the back of my neck, a warning that, unaccountably, there’d been some strange shift in her thinking. Maybe she’d just had a long day or a bad night’s sleep, but I felt a sliver of panic creeping in.
    â€œNo, Emma, just listen to me. I know everything looks the same, but it’s not. Everything’s nearly identical, but that’s the problem. Someone switched it all, as if I wouldn’t notice. Look at this dress.” She lifted up the hem of a floral dress. “These flowers used to be tulips and now they’re lilies.”
    â€œ
Someone switched them?
What are you talking about! You’re being crazy.”
    Was she drunk? Was this a brain tumor? Or was she just getting older—would this be the place where that irrevocable shift toward dementia would start to occur? But my mother was barely fifty. It seemed absurd, way too early.
    â€œ
I’m crazy?
What about the person who broke into the house and stole my clothing and then tried to replace it?”
    â€œMom, you’re being ridiculous and you’re actually freaking me the fuck out. Please just stop!”
    I’d only cursed at my mother one other time that I could remember. I was in the sixth grade and we’d gotten into this huge fight over practicing the violin, which I hated and was terrible at. I could never quite get my fingers coordinated enough, was never able to play without thinking, couldn’t just feel the music and move effortlessly, the way my mother seemed to be able to do with every instrument she played. It had been a stupid idea, taking