On the fourth week a letter arrived with no return address. The envelope was cream-colored, square, with Doris's name in a careful handwriting that Meg did not recognize. Inside, a single card:
The roses will need cutting back soon. Don't let them go woody.
Meg read it twice, turned it over. Nothing on the back. She set it on the kitchen table next to the salt shaker and the week's accumulation of pharmacy receipts.
"Mom, did you get this?"
Doris was in her chair by the window, watching the street the way she did now — not looking for anything, just watching. The television was on with the sound off.
"Get what, honey?"
Meg brought the card over. Doris held it at arm's length, the way she read everything now, and her face did something complicated.
"Oh," she said. Then: "Those roses."
"Who sent it?"
"I did."
It came out in pieces over the rest of the afternoon, the way things came out now — a detail, then a gap, then the same detail told differently. Meg learned to wait for the gaps. The version that emerged was this:
Six months ago, before the diagnosis, before Meg moved back, Doris had sat at her kitchen table with a box of cream-colored envelopes and written twelve cards. One for each month. She'd given them to someone — Doris couldn't remember who, or said she couldn't — with instructions to mail them, one per month, starting in January.
"But it's almost May," Meg said. "This is only the fourth one."
"Well, maybe they started late."
"And you don't remember who you gave them to?"
Doris turned back to the window. A dog was crossing the street, unhurried, leash dragging.
"The point wasn't to remember. That was the whole point."
The second card came three weeks later. Same envelope, same careful handwriting — but Meg noticed now that it wasn't quite the same as the first. The letters were slightly larger. More deliberate, like the writer had been thinking about each one.
The property tax is due in September. The file is in the blue folder, second drawer. Tell Meg where you keep the key to the safety deposit box.
Doris read this one and laughed.
"What?" Meg said.
"I already told you about the key."
"You did?"
"The key is in the sugar bowl. I told you last Tuesday."
Meg had no memory of this conversation. She checked the sugar bowl. There was a key.
The cards weren't instructions, exactly. They were more like — Meg couldn't find the right word. Dispatches. Messages from someone who could see what was coming and had decided to be practical about it.
Card three: The upstairs toilet runs. Jiggle the handle, then check the flapper. If the flapper is gone call Dean at the hardware store, not the plumber. The plumber will charge you two hundred dollars for a four-dollar part.
Card four: You used to like the way the light came through the kitchen in the morning. If you don't remember liking it, that's fine. It's still good light.
This one made Meg cry, though she wasn't sure Doris noticed. Doris was reading it with that arm's-length squint, nodding slowly, as if she were being reminded of something she'd only half forgotten.
"Good light," Doris said. "She's right about that."
She. As though the person who wrote the cards were someone else.
Meg started watching for the envelopes. She knew the approximate schedule now — three to four weeks apart — and found herself checking the mailbox twice a day in the window when one might arrive. She told herself this was practical. The cards contained useful information. But what she was really waiting for, she realized, was evidence that her mother had foreseen this. Had sat at the table with all her faculties still intact and thought: what will she need to know?
It was the closest thing to a conversation Meg could have with the person her mother had been.
Card five: Don't sell the house. I know it's too big. I don't care. The house is where I learned to be alone after your father died, and that turned out to be important. If I have to learn it again, I want to learn it in the same rooms.
Meg put this one on the refrigerator with a magnet.
The sixth card was late. Five weeks, then six. Meg checked the mailbox. She called the post office. She drove to the sorting facility on Route 9 and spoke to a man who was patient with her but could not help.
Doris didn't ask about the cards. Whether she'd forgotten them or simply didn't think to ask, Meg couldn't tell. The distinction had become less meaningful over the months. Doris still watched the street. She still ate the meals Meg made, though she'd started pushing food around the plate in a way that made Meg's chest tight.
On the seventh week, Meg found the envelope in the mailbox and sat in the car to open it. Her hands were shaking and she had to laugh at herself for that — shaking, over a card from her own mother, written months ago, about plumbing or property tax.
You're doing fine, Meg. I know this because I know you. You're there, and that's the hard part. The rest is just details.
Meg sat in the car for a long time.
She never found out who mailed them. After Doris died — not for months, not until the following spring, a quiet death in her chair by the window during a rainstorm — Meg went through the house and found the box of envelopes in the bottom drawer of the hall desk. There were twelve slots, neatly labeled January through December, and the remaining six were empty. The cards had been written but given away. Whoever had them was still mailing them, one by one, on an imperfect schedule, to a woman who was no longer there to receive them.
The seventh card arrived in June.
The garden hose has a leak near the spigot. Wrap it with electrical tape. It'll hold another season.
Meg wrapped the hose. It held.