Member-only story
Henrietta Hortense In The Time Of COVID-19
From a child of her heart.
My brother and I have a fairy godmother. Ours arrives not by pumpkin coach, but via the classified section of the newspaper.
It is 1965. My mother, pregnant with me, has a vacant apartment in our rambling Victorian house. A woman sees the ad, and makes an appointment. She takes one look at our kooky place and knows it’s exactly the right home for herself.
Taking that apartment forges a life-long friendship with our family.
She is our third parent, without the drag of parenthood. Her apartment is an extension of our own. We don’t have to knock. My little brother and I waltz in and wake her up, so she can get ready for work at the library.
Sometimes we cook her breakfast. I can still see him standing on a chair in his pajamas, scrambling her eggs just so.
One day we wake up late. My mother tells us that we just missed her; she left for work. We run outside, sobbing, to the end of the driveway, spotting her black Saab at the end of the road, before it makes the right turn to town.
She checks her rearview mirror, and sees us there, desolate because we didn’t say goodbye.
The Saab backs up. The day is saved, the disaster averted.
