Turn 27 of 233

Offer Mom some of the casserole and sit together in the quiet and show her the bathroom mirror, let her see the full picture of what I become. Mom leaves and says she will deal with dad. I continue life as I had been

Lena stands and walks to the counter and peels the foil back. The casserole is still warm — a dense, creamy layer of scalloped potatoes and ham, the kind Janet has been making since Lena was small, the kind that tastes like Sunday afternoons and the kitchen window steaming up. Lena spoons a generous portion into a bowl and eats it standing at the counter, the flavor rich and familiar on her tongue, and then she spoons another portion and carries it to Janet on the couch. Janet takes it without speaking, holds the bowl in both hands, and they sit together in the quiet while the casserole cools between them.

After a while Lena says, "Come here. I want to show you something." She leads Janet down the short hallway to the bathroom, bare feet on the hardwood, Janet's clean sandals quiet behind her. Lena stands in the doorway of the bathroom and tips her head toward the mirror — the full-length one bolted to the back of the door, the one where she stood weeks ago and whispered the wish. The mirror is smudged with toothpaste and dust and the ghost of old fingerprints. In it, Lena can see the whole of herself: the golden tan across her shoulders and the tops of her breasts, the pale undersides where the sun doesn't reach, the thick dark hair on her calves and thighs and below her navel, the enormous soft belly resting over the waistband of shorts that barely qualify as clothing, the heavy breasts, the tangled unwashed hair, the dirty callused feet, the muscle visible beneath the fat when she shifts her weight. She sees Janet behind her in the mirror — five foot four, neat and clean and composed, looking up at the daughter who is now a foot taller and thirty pounds heavier and utterly transformed.

Janet stands very still. Her eyes trace the whole of Lena — top to bottom, slowly, the way you look at a landscape that has changed while you were away. Her mouth works. She looks at the mirror and then at Lena's face and then back at the mirror, and whatever she is feeling — shock, grief, love, fear, the strange complicated tangle of all of it — she holds it behind her eyes the way she has always held things, with the quiet discipline of a woman who keeps her own counsel. She doesn't cry. She doesn't lecture. She looks.

"This is me," Lena says. Not defiant. Not asking permission. Just stating what is true.

Janet is quiet for a long time. The bathroom is still. The light through the frosted window is gray and soft. Then Janet reaches up — she has to reach up, Lena is so much taller now — and puts her hand on Lena's shoulder, on the tanned skin, the warm skin, the skin that smells like sweat and sawdust and two weeks of sun. Her hand stays there for three seconds. She doesn't squeeze. She doesn't pull away. She just touches, and then she drops her hand and turns and walks back to the living room.

At the front door Janet turns with her hand on the knob. She looks up at Lena — the full height of her, the bare chest, the belly, the shorts, the dirty feet — and her face is doing the thing it does when she is deciding something inside herself, the quiet machinery of resolve clicking into place behind her eyes.

"I'll deal with your father," Janet says. "Stay here. Keep doing what you're doing. I'll call you." She pauses.

"I'll call you, Lena. I promise."

"I know you will," Lena says. Janet opens the door and steps into the hallway and pulls it shut behind her and Lena listens to her clean sandals on the stairs, getting quieter, until they're gone.

The apartment is quiet. Lena eats the rest of the casserole with her hands, standing at the counter, the potatoes creamy and the ham salty and the whole thing tasting like something she can't name. She finishes the bowl, licks her fingers, and lets out a belch that rolls through the empty apartment. Then she drops to the floor and works her body — push-ups, squats, deadlifts with the cast-iron pan, plank holds until her arms shake — and the pride is there, steady and sure, the ground beneath everything. Sunday comes and goes the same way: food, exercise, rest, the couch, the floor, the open window. Monday is the east side residentials. Walt is expecting her at seven sharp. She'll be there at five-forty.