Like Mother, Like Mother by Susan Rieger

Author:Susan Rieger [Rieger, Susan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2024-10-29T00:00:00+00:00

* * *

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Grace came home from Chicago to her monk’s cell in Joe’s apartment. Home was Joe; he was expecting her.

After spending the summer in Tallahassee, working for Mr. G., and living at home, Ruth took the job with Joe and moved into the sunny, spacious second bedroom at Lila’s. Gran and her mom were sad she wasn’t staying on but they didn’t press. “We raised her to think for herself,” Gran said. “She took us at our word.” Mr. G. understood. Mrs. G. pushed it. “Don’t look back, lest you turn into a pillar of salt.”

Grace was secretly envious. To her surprise, she preferred Lila’s apartment. It had come decorated, not to Lila’s taste but to someone’s. Joe had bought a few basic items, beds, chairs, a sofa, but his heart wasn’t in it and the space was unwelcoming, like the lobby of a midlevel suburban Hyatt. There were only two decent reading lamps, one by Joe’s armchair in the living room, one by the side of his bed.

“I never thought a place this clean could be depressing,” Grace said to Ruth.

“It reflects its owner,” Ruth said.

In September, Grace got a permanent position as the NYC correspondent for The Town Crier, a weekly Washington rag. She had worked on The Crier for two summers and had done “very decent work,” according to its cranky editor, Jim Duffy. He offered her the position, knowing she was burning to get out of D.C. A Globe alum, Duffy had started the weekly paper on GoFundMe. Investors got a year’s subscription and a T-shirt with the paper’s legend: The LowDown on the High Ups. Her salary was thirty thousand dollars.

Despite the low salary and tabloid slant, Grace was grateful to Duffy. I’ll work there a year, and then I’ll move on, she thought. She rented a tiny studio apartment in Williamsburg. Her parents gave her fifteen hundred a month. “You need to eat,” Joe said.

Grace planned to move to New York on the first of October. As much as she had longed to graduate from Chicago, she dreaded life without Ruth. Ruth makes friends easily. I do not. Ruth likes lots of different kinds of people. I like Ruth, Artie, and two or three others. How will I cope?

She talked to Joe about it. “Ten days to New York, then I’m going to be Ruthless.” They were having a late dinner in the kitchen, take-out tandoori chicken and beer. The sun was still shining but the autumnal slant threw the room into shadow and the trees lining the street had turned black-green, matching Grace’s mood.

“I don’t think that’s the way to start a new job, a new life,” Joe said. “Can’t you settle for ‘professional.’ ”

“No, I mean literally,” she said. “I’m not going to have Ruth and she’s not going to have me. Ruthless and Graceless.”

“Ah,” Joe said. “Word names. Both of you. Serendipity.” Without getting up from his chair, he reached sideways to open the fridge door and plucked two more beers.

“We’ve never once eaten in the dining room,” Grace said, “even though you brought the old dining table.

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