“What?”
“What am I supposed to do?”
It was such a Daniel question that I nearly laughed.
For years, if something complicated happened, he asked me some version of that sentence.
What should I bring?
What should I tell them?
Where did you put it?
When are we supposed to leave?
What am I supposed to do?
This time I answered differently.
“Figure it out.”
Then I left.
For the next two weeks, Daniel and I communicated mostly through text and email.
Without me in the house, practical problems multiplied quickly.
Not disasters.
Problems.
Meals.
Medication schedules.
Laundry.
Appointments.
Grocery shopping.
Lorraine needed a ride to her dentist.
The utility company at her former apartment needed a final reading.
Her storage unit contract had the wrong billing address.
The furniture store had delayed delivery of a side table.
None of these things were enormous.
That was the point.
For years, my life had been made of hundreds of small tasks no one considered difficult because I did them before they became problems.
Now Daniel was seeing them one at a time.
Three days after our kitchen conversation, he texted:
Do you know the name of Mom’s pharmacy?
I stared at the message.
Then I wrote:
She does.
He did not answer.
Two days later:
Where is the property tax file?
I replied:
Office cabinet, second drawer.
A minute later:
Can’t find it.
I started typing detailed instructions.
Then I deleted them.
Look again.
He found it.
The world did not collapse.
Meanwhile, Lorraine began looking for another place to live.
Daniel wanted her to move into a newer apartment complex near his office.
She hated it.
Too modern.
Too expensive.
No trees.
She eventually found a smaller apartment in a building ten minutes from her old neighborhood.
The rent was still higher than she liked, but the building had an elevator, on-site maintenance and a community room where several women her age played cards twice a week.
Daniel complained about the cost.
Lorraine told him to stop complaining.
That made me smile when I heard about it.
The biggest surprise came when Lorraine called me herself.
I nearly didn’t answer.
“Hello?”
“It’s me.”
“I know.”
There was an awkward silence.
“I found an apartment.”
“Daniel told me.”
“I move next Friday.”
“I hope it works out.”
Another silence.
Then she said, “I owe you an apology.”
I sat down.
Lorraine did not apologize often.
I had known her for eight years.
I could remember exactly two previous occasions.
Once when she accidentally backed into my mailbox.
Once when she served me soup containing an ingredient she knew made me sick and insisted she had forgotten.
“What for?” I asked.
“I should not have spoken to you the way I did that morning.”
I waited.
“And I should not have worn your robe.”
That almost made me laugh.
“Thank you.”
“I was angry.”
“I know.”
“I thought you had changed your mind at the last minute.”
“Daniel told you I had agreed.”
“Yes.”
“But when you realized I hadn’t?”
Lorraine sighed.
“I didn’t want to admit I might have made a mistake.”
That sounded more like her.
“I had already given notice on the apartment,” she continued. “My things were packed. Your husband had told me for weeks everything was settled.”
“So you decided it was easier to blame me.”
“I suppose I did.”
It wasn’t a perfect apology.
It was better than I expected.
Then she said something I remembered for a long time.
“Daniel always did like people to make things easy for him.”
I looked out my hotel window.
“You knew that?”
“I raised him.”
For the first time in weeks, I laughed.
Lorraine laughed too.
Only for a second.
Then her voice became serious.
“I also encouraged it.”
I didn’t answer.
“When he was a boy,” she continued, “if he forgot something, I brought it to school. If he didn’t like dinner, I made something else. His father used to tell me I was making life too easy for him.”
“And then he married me.”
“Yes.”
There was no need to say more.
I had not created Daniel.
But I had continued a system that already existed.
That mattered to me because it changed how I understood my own responsibility.
I was not responsible for Daniel’s entitlement.
I was responsible for how long I had participated in it.
There was a difference.