Nothing Is Quite Forgotten in Brooklyn Read Online Free

not to keep money around the house. Con called her home number again, then resumed looking. She found three or four afghans and an unfinished sweater that her mother had been knitting for her years ago. She had half an idea that if she found a piece of identification of her mother’s she could perhaps convince someone she was Gert, though why that would get the locks changed and herself on a train to Philadelphia she didn’t know. Then she began to feel that she almost was Gert, that she was turning into Gert, as if her mother had left the pills, the bathrobe, even the running water, so Con could give up her own life and smoothly take over her mother’s. Something was holding her mind, slowing it and making her afraid. She looked in the mirror. She looked like herself, but maybe it was something in the air here, in the cat dander or flying orange fur, that gave her mother a stubborn passivity underneath the exterior of a sturdy old woman who could take the train to Rochester. (Why had Marlene invited Gert? Marlene’s mind was supple and quick.How did she endure Gert?) Like Con, Gert had short reddish hair—now dyed. Her face was thicker than Con’s, but similarly shaped. Con couldn’t go out for a run, but she ran the short length of the apartment several times because she couldn’t imagine her mother running.
    Her mind swirled with fears she couldn’t quite separate and name; this must be the feel of her mother’s mind. She found a piece of paper and a pencil and made a list, something either she or her mother might have done. Call a locksmith , she wrote. Find the super . She dialed the superintendent’s number and got a machine. She left a message. Then she unlocked the door, stepped onto the landing—nobody was there—and rang the three doorbells on the floor. Nobody answered. Inside, she replaced the chain, but even with it in place, the door could be opened a couple of inches.
    The locksmith was not going to change the locks for free, that was undeniable. She wondered if there really was a phone number for crime victims, and doubted that whatever service it reached would pay to have the locks changed. When a locksmith did call back, she explained what had happened. But he wouldn’t even take a check, he said, not that she had a checkbook. “I’m sorry,” he said, and did sound sorry.
    Con couldn’t think of anyone in New York City from whom she might borrow money. She now couldn’t make any call at all. She stood with her hand on the phone and took her hand away again. She stared at the newspaper her mother had left on the table, which offered a week-old story about airport security. New procedures were going to require that passengers be asked if they’d had help packing their suitcases. She atelunch—her mother was well stocked with soup and canned tuna—and touched the wall phone in the kitchen again, then went into the bedroom, where she put her hand on the receiver of the bedside phone, then took it away, got into bed, and slept. She fell asleep thinking of her mother on these sheets.
    When the phone woke her, she was momentarily disoriented, then reminded herself it was afternoon, still Monday. The machine on the kitchen counter picked up and from the bedroom she heard her mother’s announcement, reciting the phone number. Gert recited it twice. Meanwhile Con realized that the caller might be Joanna, and reached for the phone near the bed. “Hello?” she said as the announcement continued.
    Marlene’s voice said, “Can you turn that thing off?” but the announcement had ended. “I’m going to wire you money,” Marlene said then.
    â€œDon’t bother,” Con said. “But how would you do that?”
    â€œWestern Union.”
    â€œBut I’d have to go to the Western Union office. I can’t leave.”
    â€œYou can’t get somebody to stay there for a few minutes?”