Even if she had been a person who shared, she wouldn’t
share that now. There was no need for Henry to hear it.
Not now. Not ever.
h h
h h
Avoidance was a fickle friend. The doorbell rang at all
hours, as hard to ignore as the heavy odors that now
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Rules for Moving
infused their hallway, a mash-up of comfort food smells:
butter, noodles, stew.
Sometimes at night when she was in bed with Henry,
who didn’t want to sleep alone in his room anymore, he
would tell her he heard a tapping, someone lightly tapping at their door. When she investigated, first with a suspicious glimpse through the peephole, then with a swift swing
of the door, as if that might be enough to scare away an
intruder, there was never anyone there. There was just
food. A breakfast casserole. A baked zucchini. A mac and
cheese. Aluminum foil tins pressing one against the other
so that everything would fit on the doormat, as if there
were an acknowledged edict against tin touching floor.
No one seemed to ask themselves where this food
would be stored or who would eat it, meals cooked to
serve six or eight or twelve. She wondered if people
didn’t know how to divide the quantity in a recipe or if
they’d decided, en masse, that it would look too pitiful,
a meatloaf for two.
She reminded herself daily that each meal was an act of
kindness. But the cumulative power of the kindness—she
really wasn’t used to kindness—made it hard to breathe.
It didn’t take long for her small refrigerator and freezer to become jammed and for the food to turn. Getting rid
of the food posed its own set of problems. One night she
carried a bag of spoiled chili to the incinerator room, only to find the chili cook holding the garbage chute open.
“Hey Lane,” the chili cook greeted her. “Look at this.
Second time in a week. Pizza box. Stuck.”
Lane tried to remember her neighbor’s name. Was
it Ann? Amy? Emily? She had no idea. All she knew
was that she’d been introduced and reintroduced to the
woman who brought her the chili too many times to ask
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her name now. The woman’s nostrils flared as she picked
up the scent of something familiar.
“Oh. Sorry.” Lane backed out of the room. “I just
remembered—” She moved the Hefty bag behind her,
the lump of uneaten chili visible, like a ghost, through the white plastic. “I have to get back because—Good night!”
Her voice accidentally came out giddy. As she hurried
down the hall, she could feel the bewildered chili cook
trying to puzzle out her strange behavior.
When she got back to the apartment Henry was sit-
ting up in bed, waiting. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I won’t do it anymore. I’m not crying now. See?” He offered her a
smile so fake she felt it like a punch to the gut.
She had no idea he’d been crying. “Aw buddy, you can
cry. Cry whenever you want. It’s good to cry. Otherwise
your feelings can get all stopped up.”
It was during one of her long intervals of wakefulness—
in those hours of the night when it seemed as if the night itself decided how long a minute would be, how long an
hour—when Lane resolved that in the morning, she would
call Miss Mary, the school student assistance counselor.
After the call, she would go for a swim. She could feel it in her bones when she fell out of her routine. Now more
than ever, she needed to disappear into the meditative
state she found when swimming laps.
h h
h h
Miss Mary said it was perfect timing. Her weekly Loss
Circle was meeting today, at lunch. With that organized,
Lane headed to the new gym she’d joined in Midtown West.
This gym was ten minutes closer to her office than her
old one, which meant she’d get in ten more minutes of
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Rules for Moving
swim time. It also meant she wouldn’t have to deal with
the hypercompetitive culture of her old gym. She’d gotten
two reprimands in the past month; one for swimming too
slow, one for stopping midlap to hang on the wall. That
she’d stopped because of a foot cramp and only needed
to hang for a moment till it passed did not matter to the
pool’s overzealous self-appointed monitor.
The new pool was a much better fit. As she tucked
her shoulder-length hair into her cap, she felt her body
relax. At her old pool, the cranky monitor hadn’t been
entirely wrong about Lane’s swimming speed. She always
started out slow, taking a lap or two to let her worries
cycle through and then out of her mind. But by the end
of the second lap she’d accelerate with a sudden switch in speed that she experienced as if a hand were at her back
giving her a push. She didn’t require a swimming moni-
tor to push her to get on with it. She was quite used to
giving a push to herself.
Today she ruminated about Henry: wondering whether
the Loss Circle would help him, wondering whether she
should have asked exactly what happened in a Loss Circle,
wondering if, whatever happened, Henry would like it.
He did like Miss Mary. She liked her too. Maybe she’d
call Miss Mary later and ask for some tips on things to
do at home to help Henry work through his grief. There
was nothing she wouldn’t do.
At the end of her second lap, she arrived at her desti-
nation: empty-brained peace.
h h
h h
It was three weeks to the day after Aaron’s death that Lane opened the door—Henry was getting dressed for school
27
Nancy Star
when he told her he heard someone tapping again—and
found a woman in the midst of placing a lasagna on her
doormat.
The fact that there were, at that moment, three lasagnas
in her refrigerator and one in her freezer was no excuse for her reaction. Nor was the fact that this particular lasagna was so large it made the doormat beneath it look like a
dirty sisal trivet. Still, she should have said, “Thank you,”
and taken the food inside.
The woman was one of several ladies in the build-
ing who had confusing faces. Smooth, shiny foreheads,
high-placed puffy cheeks, mouths permanently fixed in
odd smiles. Only their hands—Lane noticed them when
they pressed the elevator buttons—showed their age.
Upper eighties was her guess but nineties was not out of
the question.
The ladies adored Aaron and why wouldn’t they? He
always took the time to stop and talk, asking after their
health, complimenting them on their hair, listening to
their problems and then pointing them to Lane for pro-
fessional advice. They’d cornered her several times in
the elevator asking her opinion: what to do when friends
died and no one called to tell them; what to do about
children who didn’t send thank you notes when they got
a check; what to do about resta
urants that seated them
in the back, near the toilets. Lane would shrug off their
questions with a weak smile and they’d respond with an
icy silence. She didn’t mind. She was fine with any kind
of silence.
None of this excused her reaction. The only thing
wrong with the woman was her timing. Hers happened
to be the lasagna that broke Lane’s filter.
“I was going to divorce him,” Lane told the woman.
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Rules for Moving
“What?”
“Aaron. We were going to get divorced. He was a
drunk. You probably didn’t know that. He was very good
at hiding it. I was going to leave him. With Henry. I’m
very sad for Henry. But for me, it’s really a relief.”
The woman stood, blinking, in the dim hallway.
Okay, that was a mistake. “Sorry.” She picked up the
huge foil tray, which felt like deadweight in her arms.
“I’m overwhelmed. I’m sure you can understand. You’re
so kind to bring over a meal.” Her filter malfunctioned
again. “It’s very big.”
“Poor boy.” The woman grabbed her lasagna. “Loses
his father.” Her deep-set eyes narrowed and her gaze
locked on to Lane’s. “Ends up with you.” She turned and,
kitten heels clicking, hurried to the elevator.
Lane stood, stunned. Henry called out, “Mom?”
“Coming.” She shook off the woman’s words and
locked the door behind her.
h h
h h
That night as they lay side by side in bed, Henry shim-
mied closer to the wall and said, “We have a small family
now, right?”
“Yes.” Lane twirled one of Henry’s dark curls.
“But that’s okay because families come in all sizes.”
She nodded and smiled. This must have been some-
thing Miss Mary had told him.
“And now we have something in common.” Henry
grinned.
Lane felt herself relax at the sight of his smile. “What’s that?”
“I don’t have a dad and you don’t have a dad.”
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Nancy Star
Her body went heavy as stone. “Aw buddy. I have a
dad. Remember Grandpa Marshall? Remember when
we visited him in Florida? He’s my dad. And Grandma
Sylvie is my mom.”
“I forgot.” He flipped onto his back and closed his
eyes. “Sorry.”
She saw a tear escape down his cheek. “It’s not your
fault you forgot. They weren’t at the funeral. It’s under-
standable you assumed—” She stopped. “They wanted
to come but there was a—” She stopped again. “It’s my
fault. It’s been too long since we’ve seen them.”
He squeezed his closed eyes tighter. “Why?”
How could she explain? It wasn’t anything she’d
planned. It happened so slowly she’d barely noticed. She
hardly visited them, then she never visited them. She
called them less and less; they called her less and less.
Everyone seemed content with the arrangement. How
had she missed the flaw in this? Aaron’s parents had died
when he was young. Hers were the only grandparents
Henry had.
“You know what?” Lane said. “We should visit them.
What do you think?” Henry didn’t answer. His breath-
ing was soft. He was finally asleep. She started to get up, slowly, so as not to wake him.
His eyes opened into slits. “Did someone knock? I
think I heard someone…” His voice trailed off. His eyelids fell. His lips parted.
Lane listened to the soft click of his little-boy snore.
Had someone knocked? She slipped out of bed, tucked
in the blanket around him and padded to the peephole.
As usual there was no one outside. She opened the door
slowly, so it wouldn’t make any noise. There was a basket
on the welcome mat. It was the biggest one yet, even
30
Rules for Moving
bigger than the huge overfilled corporate gift basket the
Guild sent over, the one filled with muffins, bagels, cof-
fee beans, mugs, kitchen towels, scented candles and a
giant teddy bear.
This basket—it made no sense—had a puppy in it. Not
a stuffed puppy, a live one. For a moment she thought,
Okay, a stray puppy hopped into a food basket and ate all the food. But it wasn’t a food basket. There was a cushion at the bottom, with a pattern of tiny dog bones. It was a
puppy basket. Someone had left a puppy on their doormat.
She stared at the small white ball of fur that stared
back at her. What was she supposed to do with a puppy?
She had no puppy food in the house, no puppy bowls,
no puppy crate or puppy pads. Whoever left the puppy
hadn’t even left a leash. She sighed and told the puppy,
“Wait right there.”
The puppy’s wagging tail drummed a beat against
the side of the basket. He started scrambling to get out.
“Okay,” she told him as she scooped him up. “I’ll bring
you with me if you promise not to wake up Henry.” The
puppy answered by licking her face. She held him tight,
ducked inside, grabbed her phone, and hurried back out
to the hall.
The man on duty at the front desk in the lobby picked
up on the first ring. She explained the situation: some-
one had left a puppy on her doormat, by mistake. “Can
you come up and get him? With a leash if you have one.
leave Henry alone.”
Henry’s name worked like magic The front-desk man
said he’d be right up. Lane put the puppy back in the
basket. She didn’t want to pet him, but she did. When
he moved his little head so that she would rub behind his
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Nancy Star
ears, she didn’t want to do that either, but she did. When she heard the elevator door open and saw the front-desk
man walking down the hall with a leash, she leaned down
and whispered to the puppy, “It’s for the best. The only
pet I ever had was a turtle and it died after three days. You can do better than me.” Against her will, she kissed the
top of the puppy’s warm head and whispered, “Be good.”
As the front-desk man briskly attached leash to collar,
Lane asked if he would mind not telling Henry about this.
He nodded in agreement and left without saying a word.
Inside she washed up, got into pajamas, and slipped
into bed. She laid her arm across Henry’s chest and once
she was sure he was still sleeping, pulled him close and
held him tight.
h h
h h
In the morning Lane told Henry the good news. Next
week, instead of school, they were going on a trip. “On a
plane. To Florida. To visit Grandpa Marshall and Grandma
Sylvie. Isn’t that great? I’ll still have to work, but not all day. And maybe this time we can convince Grandma and
Grandpa to go to the beach. That would be amazing,
right?” She heard the fake cheer in her voice and stopped.
She’d said enough. When it came to her parents, the less
&nb
sp; said the better.
An hour later, when they left for school, Lane noticed
one of the doormen from their building standing in front
of the building next door. He was chatting with the super
while her puppy did its business on a tree. Not my puppy, she reminded herself and quickly swiveled Henry in the
opposite direction, to catch a cab that had just discharged its fare.
32
CHAPTER THREE
Henry snuck open his eyes. His mother’s legs were now
uncrossed. When she first got into bed with him, she
was on her back and her legs were crossed tight, like
scissors. Now she was on her side and one of her knees
was touching his leg.
Before What Happened, it was against the rules for her
to stay in bed with him all night because if she did that, he would never learn how to sleep by himself. Sleeping
by yourself was something everyone had to learn in order
to be called a grown-up. But now that they were in what
his mom called the New Norman, it was okay for her to
stay in bed all the way till morning.
Probably the reason she made her legs go uncrossed
was to be comfier. But what if that wasn’t the reason.
What if her legs got uncrossed because she was dead?
Sometimes his breathing made a loud drum sound
in his head and he couldn’t hear quiet things—like was
his mom comfy or dead—so he held his breath to listen.
But he still couldn’t hear. Probably if he poked her he
would know the answer—he guessed, comfy—but then
he’d have to tell why he poked her and her face would
get Mad.
Some people yelled a lot when they got mad and
some people yelled never and she was the one who yelled
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Nancy Star
never. The way he could tell she was mad was her voice
got stricter and a vein came out on her forehead.
Worse than mad was Disappointed. She hardly ever
got mad but she got Disappointed a lot. Disappointed was
when her voice went quiet.
h h
h h
The first time he asked his mom if she was going to be
dead soon, her eyes got Poppy-Out Big, which meant,
Surprised. When her eyes went back to normal she asked
him if he wanted to talk about his feelings. She said, “It’s good to talk about your feelings because if you don’t they can get all stopped up.” She waited for him to say something back and when he didn’t, she asked if he knew what
All stopped up meant. He said, “Yes.” All stopped up was what happened the day he used too much toilet paper.