Nothing Is Quite Forgotten in Brooklyn Read Online Free Page A

Marlene said skeptically. Then, “Did you reach Joanna? Your mother keeps asking. She’s taking a nap, so you can tell me the truth.”
    Con hesitated. “I can’t reach her but I’m sure she’s fine.”
    â€œShe’s not at home?”
    â€œOr not answering.”
    â€œShould I call her?”
    â€œDefinitely not.”
    â€œI wouldn’t make things worse, Connie,” said Marlene. “Youknow I’m no dope. I’m right about your mother. The things she’s been saying! I’m not even going to tell you. Of course it’s not true.”
    â€œWhat’s not true?” said Con. Now and then something reminded her of the past—certainly a complicated past and maybe even a mysterious past—that Gert and Marlene had shared for years before Con was even born. She envied them that time, as if she somehow knew that they’d spent all of it telling secrets they planned to keep from her.
    â€œLook, she should be tested,” Marlene said.
    â€œYou think she’s got Alzheimer’s?” said Con. “What did she say?”
    â€œLast night,” said Marlene, “she woke up and thought she was in the train. She kept asking me what stop it was.”
    That didn’t seem so bad. “Marlene, I should hang up.”
    â€œMy doctor is wonderful. I’m making an appointment. I’m trying to spare you heartache, Connie, heartache.”
    â€œI’ll call you back.”
    â€œBut she’ll be up. I think I hear her.”
    â€œOkay, so long then,” said Con, and hung up before Marlene could speak again. She liked this attention from Marlene. The question of the Western Union office had been unresolved. Con looked in the Yellow Pages but didn’t recognize any addresses of Western Union offices in Brooklyn. Anyway, she’d have to leave the door unlocked—it couldn’t be locked without a key—and would be afraid to return. The phone machine was flashing. It had recorded their call; Con listened to the first few words and erased it. She expected more from Marlene—rescue—but that had never quite happened. As an adolescent, when Marlene stilllived in Brooklyn, Con enjoyed the fantasy that Marlene might someday invite her to come and visit all by herself—maybe for weeks at a time—but when she was finally invited for an overnight visit, Con had become lost in the tangle of subway lines. There was no good way to travel across Brooklyn to Marlene’s apartment, and eventually she gave up and made her way home. “Connie, I’m ashamed of you,” Marlene had said.
    Now Con dialed her home number again. School would be out, so Joanna might be more willing to pick up the phone. But these days she never spent her afternoons at home, where Con was often working. When Joanna was younger, Con would stop work when she turned up. They’d eat and talk, or she’d drive Joanna somewhere while Joanna talked confidingly from the backseat. Later they’d return reluctantly to work, Joanna to her homework, Con to the case she’d been working on, with their papers intermingling on the kitchen table.
    Con had a law degree, but after working in a big firm before her daughter was born, she hadn’t wanted to return to that life—to hours away from home, to pantyhose and skirts. She worked part-time, taking on cases for a women’s legal project and doing some of the work at home, barefoot. At present she was trying to keep the house for women ex-prisoners from being closed down. It had existed without trouble for two years in a neighborhood just outside Philadelphia, but now neighbors claimed the women were prostitutes, soliciting on the street. Joanna scoffed. She proposed that they drive to the street in the evening and see what happened. Con thought the women probably were soliciting on the street, but should be allowed to stay in the house anyway.
    She tried the super