Photographs and certificates covered the living room walls. There was their wedding in 1980, James in a cream-colored suit and Eleanor holding lilies that had started to wilt in the July humidity. There was a photograph of James receiving an urban planning award, looking more uncomfortable in a tuxedo than he had ever looked in a hard hat. Eleanor's diploma hung beside an old newspaper clipping about the children's hospital wing she helped establish. Above the mantel stood a photograph of their son, Thomas, on the day he was sworn into the judiciary.
She polished the glass on that frame more often than it needed polishing. Thomas used to tease her about it whenever he visited. "Mom, if you rub any harder, you'll erase the robe right off me."
"Then they'll have to give you another one," she would tell him. "You can afford it."
He had been forty-two when he moved to the Pennsylvania Superior Court, a career that made strangers admire him and made his parents worry about whether he remembered to eat lunch. James insisted that Thomas had always been stubborn. Eleanor insisted he had learned the habit from his father. They both knew their son worked too much, called more often than he visited, and had no idea how frequently they protected him from their smaller worries.
They had sold their suburban house after James retired. It had been a good house with a large yard, but the stairs became tiresome and the neighborhood grew quiet in the wrong way. Riverside Avenue offered a church within walking distance, a pharmacy on the corner, and neighbors who knew when someone was sick. On Sundays, Eleanor baked cookies for the children in the building. James tied ribbon around the paper bags and pretended his wife's handwriting on the labels was part of a small commercial enterprise.
Their building had twelve apartments and the elaborate crown molding of a time when developers competed to make even rented rooms feel dignified. The facade was reddish brown stone, the staircase was oak, and the entrance had an old brass plate bearing a family name that no longer meant anything to the people inside. Mr. Patterson on the ground floor sometimes forgot his keys. Mrs. Carter in the apartment below kept a shelf of extra batteries for anyone who needed them. Until recently, the Rodriguez children had raced up the stairs so quickly that their mother called after them in Spanish to slow down.