Ana Turns by Lisa Gornick

Author:Lisa Gornick
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Turner Publishing Company

* * *

WITH THE CAB CREEPING UP MADISON AVENUE, PAST THE BOUTIQUES where Catherine has her personal shoppers, I call Gemma.

‘Aunt Ana, thank you! I need to tell you what happened. As soon as we got off the phone this morning, I texted Ella. I told her I’d never been so sorry about anything in my entire life and begged her to come back so we could talk.’

And Ella did, Gemma says. She arrived with new almond milk lattes and they sat together on Gemma’s couch. When Gemma explained that she’d been overwhelmed with jealousy that Ella would be helping Simona, Ella was stunned.

‘I told Ella I felt the way I had when she lorded it over me that only she was allowed to carry Simon. She said she didn’t remember that, but she was sure what I said was true. But since we were sweeping out the cobwebs, there was something she’d wanted to say for a while now.’

What Ella wanted to tell Gemma was she’d been feeling alienated from Gemma since Gemma married Greg. Gemma had ossified.

The cab turns west, toward the park transverse. Had Ella actually used that word, ossified? Or would she have said hardened?

‘Ella said that for Greg and me, numbers are more real than what we experience ourselves. She said I’d begun to remind her of Nana. We both flatten people, turn them into data points. No matter what she tells me, she said, I respond robotically. She said she could tell me she’d just been hit by a car and I’d say, Oh, that’s good.’

I imagine myself in Gemma’s shoes: hearing what to me would feel like a barrage of accusations. Sucked into a vortex of anger and confusion. Yet my nieces seem so open, neither accusing the other of remembering wrong or lying.

‘Once, when we were on a family vacation, we went to an ancient fountain where visitors throw coins and make a wish. My wish was that I could solve the Poincaré conjecture. I thought that was a perfect wish since Poincaré was French and we were in France. Ella couldn’t believe I hadn’t wished for something human: that Mom or Dad or Nana stay healthy or there be no more war or starving children.’

I remember my brother’s France trip. Catherine had organized for him to attend a wine course. It was after the class that he built his wine cellar and my nieces began their imitations of his sommelier commentary every time he opened a bottle.

‘On the card I gave Ella for her thirtieth birthday, I wrote that she’d reached the mean age for American women in the eighteenth century. She said that felt awful. So impersonal. Even worse, she said everything is scheduled with me. If she asks for my help, my first response is always I have to check my calendar. She feels like an item crossed off my to-do list.’

Gemma is softly crying. ‘I was afraid she was going to say she couldn’t see me getting up in the middle of the night to take care of a crying baby.

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