“How are you actually?” she asked.
“Tired of thinking about it,” I said.
She said that was probably healthy.
I said I thought so too. That the phase where it was the main thing in my head was passing and I wanted it to finish passing.
“Has it changed anything?” she asked. “With them.”
“Some things,” I said. “My mom called on Tuesday.”
“Like normal Tuesday.”
“Pretty much.”
Sophie knows that the normal Tuesday call matters more than it might look. She knows the history of the Tuesday calls — that they started when I was at Meadowfield and my mother wanted to be present in my life during a period when she couldn’t be present in a more material way, and that the calls have continued ever since, every Tuesday, rain or shine, regardless of whatever else was happening. They are the connective tissue of a relationship that has complicated interior structures but is, at the surface, intact.
I told Sophie about the Jenna call and the message I’d sent her. I told her about dinner with Olivia in November.
Sophie said, “Look at you, having relationships with your family.”
I laughed. I said it was a process.
She said, “Most things are.”
We split the dessert. It was better than expected, which is the best possible outcome for a dessert at a restaurant you’ve been avoiding for fear of disappointment.
I walked home from the restaurant, which is twenty minutes and which I do when the weather allows because I like the transition between being somewhere and being home. It was October-cool but not cold. The city was doing the thing it does in the fall where it looks slightly more deliberate than usual, like someone arranged the light and then left.