1974
“Not that name,” Corin said.
Hessa had been a mother for eleven hours. She was twenty, tired, and still surprised by the force of her daughter’s grip around one finger.
“Tansy,” she said again. “I like it.”
Corin laid a yellow blanket on the hospital chair. Across one corner she had sewn MARA in red thread.
“My mother’s name.”
“I know whose name it is.”
“She died in March. You said you would think about it.”
“I did think.”
The baby opened her mouth and searched along Hessa’s wrist. Corin reached to help, then stopped when Hessa shifted the child herself.
Hessa had expected her mother to arrive with useful things: clean clothes, a comb, news from home. The blanket was useful, too. That made it harder to push aside.
“Why is it so important?” she asked.
Corin sat down. “Everyone called her Mrs. Dall. Even your father. I hardly hear Mara now.”
The visiting room held three chairs and a vase without flowers. A woman laughed in the hall. Corin rubbed the corner of the blanket between her fingers.
“When I was little, there wasn’t room for everyone at the table. Your grandmother always moved her own chair. She’d put me beside her, half on her knee. I remember how she’d cut my bread while I held it.”
Hessa had known the woman who kept the sugar in a high cupboard. She had not known the young mother cutting bread.
“Mara can be her middle name,” she said.
Corin looked at the baby. “People don’t call out middle names.”
“No.”
“Then it won’t be the same.”
“It wouldn’t be the same if I called her Mara.”
Corin gathered the blanket. Hessa thought she was taking it away for good.
“I’ll change the letters,” her mother said. “That red thread pulls out badly. You might still see the marks.”
“I don’t mind the marks.”
Corin stood, disappointed enough to make every movement careful.
“Has she fed?”
“She’s trying.”
Her mother moved the empty vase from the small table and put Hessa’s water within reach.
“There you are, Tansy,” Hessa murmured to the child.
Corin did not correct her.
2000
Tansy set her newborn son on the bed between them. Hessa had brought a bag full of food, most of it things Tansy had liked at school.
“Tansy would suit a boy,” Hessa said. “There’s no rule against it.”
Tansy looked up from the baby’s sock. “We’re calling him Renn.”
“Your own name is unusual. You always said you liked it.”
“I do.”
“You could keep it in the family.”
“It is in the family. I’m here.”
Hessa opened the food bag and closed it again.
In three weeks, Tansy would move to the coast. Her partner’s new work was there, and she had found work, too. It was a long journey from Hessa’s house. During pregnancy, they had discussed train times so often that Tansy could hear them before her mother spoke.
“You won’t be coming back every weekend,” Hessa said.
“No. Not with a baby.”
“I know.”
Renn gave a small cough. Tansy lifted him, waiting to see whether it would become a cry. Hessa reached for the sock left on the bed, turned it right side out, and held it.
“You could come for a week,” Tansy said. “After we’ve unpacked. We have a spare room.”
“A week isn’t living nearby.”
“I wasn’t offering it as the same thing.”
“There are my plants. And the house.”
“We can talk about a visit later.”
Hessa nodded, but not in agreement. She had hoped for a name she could say every day, a small way of keeping her daughter close.
She put the sock beside the other one.
“Renn,” she said, trying it.
Tansy nodded.
Hessa took out a container of stewed pears. “You’ll need to refrigerate these.”
“Thank you.”
They ate the pears while Renn slept. Hessa did not promise to come, and Tansy did not change the date of the move.
2026
On the morning her first grandchild was born, Tansy missed swimming. She went three mornings a week, taking the slow lane and pretending it was a choice made for everyone else’s benefit.
Today she washed her hair at home. She would go to the pool tomorrow. Today she would meet the baby.
Renn was twenty-six now. At the door, he held a clean cup in one hand and a dirty one in the other.
“I keep forgetting which is which,” he said.
“Put them down.”
His partner, Otti, sat on the sofa with their daughter. A folded towel lay across Otti’s shoulder. Nobody had turned on the television. Tansy could hear the clock and a truck outside.
“She’s Ilea,” Renn said.
Tansy had carried another name in the back of her mind for months. She had never sewn it on anything. She had told herself that made her different from her own mother.
“I had rather hoped for Tansy,” she said.
Renn sat on the arm of the sofa. “We chose Ilea together.”
“Of course.”
Otti shifted the baby. “Would you like to hold her?”
Tansy sat, made room in her arms, and felt the child’s warm weight. She looked for Renn in the little face. Then she looked at the face itself.
Ilea moved one hand from her cheek and rested it against Tansy’s wrist.
“She’s lovely,” Tansy said.
They talked about the night, about which clothes had been packed and forgotten. Renn drank from the clean cup. Otti closed her eyes while Tansy held the baby.
After a little while, Otti opened them.
“We need to sleep,” she said. “Both of us. Could we finish the visit now?”
Tansy had come with an afternoon free. There were containers in her bag, and she had imagined putting away washing while the young parents rested. She nearly offered all that as a reason to stay.
Then she saw Renn watching Otti, waiting for the answer that should not have needed defending.
“Yes,” Tansy said.
She gave Ilea back, left the food on the kitchen counter, and took her bag. Renn thanked her. He did not ask her to come again before she reached the door.
Outside, she stood for a moment beside her car. She was glad about the baby and disappointed about the visit. She had no useful way to make those feelings become one feeling.
The next morning, her swimming friend met her beside the lanes.
“Well?” her friend asked. “What do they call her?”
“Ilea,” Tansy said.
“That’s pretty.”
“Yes.”
The fast lane was crowded. Tansy lowered herself into the slow one. The water reached her shoulders; she pushed away from the side.
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