Mona Simpson

At Bob’s Big Boy, one day in the summer, my mother and I pressed together in the phone booth and emptied her purse out on the metal ledge. There were hundreds of scraps of paper, pencils, leaking pens, scuffed makeup tubes, brushes woven with a fabric of lint and hair, a bra, and finally, my mother’s brown leather address book, with the pages falling out. We wanted to call my father in Las Vegas. It was already over a year since we’d flown there. The number was written, carefully, in brown ink.

I was feeling the napkin in my pocket, trying to assure myself that the cake was still there. I’d held the piece inside my pocket all the way home on the school bus. I’d held it tight. I was worried now; the napkin was still there, but it seemed empty, the cake must have somehow slipped out. My fingers dug into the pocket, touching every part of the lining. It seemed amazing, impossible. It never occurred to me that I might have crumbled it, holding too hard. Finally, while my grandmother dealt cards for double solitaire, I took the napkin out under the table and spread it open on my thighs. There was nothing but a pile of crumbs.

I passed Benny’s room every day, we kept the door shut and I was the only one who went in. I said I had to clean and I did clean every day, wiping dust with a soaked rag before it ever had a chance to settle. I oiled that old wood dresser, wiped the windowsill. We’d built the house ourselves when we were married, so it showed just how many years had gone, that wood. And then I polished each one of his things. He had that fish hanging on the wall that he caught in Florida, they each had their rifles mounted over his bed, and then there were all his models. He spent hours putting those together when he was little. He had such patience.