- PART 2 — THE ROOM I NEVER AGREED TO
“Don’t let her see the room until she says yes.”
That was the first line in Marlee’s little pink notebook.
The second was worse.
“If she asks to see it anyway, send Augie up with her. She won’t say no in front of him.”
I watched my son read that line over his wife’s shoulder. He kept his eyes on the page a second too long.
“You knew what was in there,” I said.
Hugh lifted his head. “I told her not to write that down.”
Marlee shut the notebook.
A little breeze came down the street and rattled the plastic sleeve in her other hand. Through it I could see the heading she’d typed in big black letters. MAMA’S HOUSE RULES.
“Do you hear yourself, Hugh?” I asked.
He opened his mouth. Then he looked back at the truck.
That was when I saw Augie in the back seat. He’d lowered the window just far enough to get his fingers over the edge. He had his red backpack on his lap.
“I packed my library book, Grandma,” he called. “The one about the boy who lives in a tree.”
“I remember that one,” I said.
“Can I see your new room before we go?”
Behind him, one of the little girls leaned across the seat to get a look at me. I’d spent half of Friday thinking about what I’d say when Marlee stood on my porch. It had never occurred to me she’d bring all three children to hear it.
“Give us a minute, sweetheart,” I said. “I’ll come over and say hello.”
I waited for Augie to pull his fingers inside. Then I turned back to his parents.
“Did you tell him to follow me up those stairs?” Marlee held the notebook against her stomach. “I told him to show you where the light switch was.”
“There wasn’t a light switch up there he could reach.”
Her eyes went down to the porch boards.
I’d wondered all week why Augie had come up behind me when I knew he hated those stairs. He’d taken them on his hands and knees. I could still hear the toes of his little sneakers catching on the metal strips.
“What did you tell him would happen if I liked it?”
“Nothing,” Marlee said.
From the truck, clear as church bells, Augie said, “She said we could all stay home.”
Nobody on that porch moved.
I went down to the truck. Augie had both arms around his backpack now. I could see a corner of the library book sticking out.
“Your daddy and your mama decide where you go after school,” I told him. “And I decide where I live. You can come see me at my new place when I get the boxes out of the way.”
He looked up at the duplex. “Where’s your new place?” “Over Mr. Crenshaw’s hardware store.”
“By the jar of peppermints?”
“Right over it.”
He thought that over. Then he pulled the book out and passed it through the window.
“You can take it today,” he said. “I know the ending already.”
I tucked it under my arm. He went back to picking a loose thread on his backpack, and I walked up my porch steps again.
Hugh had taken off his ball cap. He used to do that as a boy when he’d broken something he couldn’t fix by himself.
“When were you going to tell us about the apartment?” he asked.
“I should’ve told you Thursday when Marlee called about the trailer. I let that go too long.”
His shoulders dropped a fraction. I think he took it for an opening.
“Okay,” he said. “So we all could’ve handled this better.”
“You had a chance to handle it better when your wife told me I’d have to pull my weight.” His shoulders went right back up.
“I thought you’d want the kids around,” he said. “Ever since Dad died, every time I call you, you’re sitting here by yourself.”
“Sometimes I am.”
“And you’re always saying they grow too fast.”
“They do.”
“I just figured it would be good for everybody.”
I reached over and took the plastic sleeve from Marlee. She gave it up without a tug.
There was a rule about laundry on Sundays, one about no overnight guests, and a line explaining that if I wanted to use their kitchen, I’d have to arrange it in advance. On the back was a weekly schedule. The children’s names were printed in blue. Mine was printed in black from six thirty in the morning until five in the afternoon.
Thursday said six.
There was a footnote under Friday.
“Appointments to be scheduled outside childcare hours,” I read.
Marlee reached for the sleeve. I held on to it.
“Whose appointments?”
“It’s just a template,” she said.
“Then why does it have my name on it?”
From halfway down the block came the cough of a diesel engine. Mr. Crenshaw had told me to wave my cardigan if I needed him. I still had it buttoned up. He must have looked up from his crossword and decided I’d been on that porch long enough. He came around the corner in the flatbed with my late husband’s rocking chair strapped in beside my mattress. I’d put an old pillowcase over the rockers to keep them from rubbing against the bed frame. In the morning light, that pillowcase looked so white I could see it from the porch.
Hugh saw the chair and stepped out into the driveway.
“You moved her stuff already?”
Mr. Crenshaw eased his truck to the curb. “Loaded it. Haven’t moved it yet.”
“My mother’s moving in with me.”
Mr. Crenshaw put the flatbed in park and looked at me through the open window.
“Still taking the rocker downtown, Tressie?”
“Yes, sir.”
“All right. I’ll pull forward so your boy can get his trailer out.”
Hugh stood there with his cap folded in one hand. He’d hitched that trailer at seven in the morning, by the look of the dew still sitting in the corners. I could picture him backing up to it in the driveway, Marlee bringing him his travel mug, both of them believing they knew where I’d be sleeping that night.
That picture almost made me feel sorry enough to soften what I said next.
“Who did you tell I’d start Monday?” Marlee twisted the notebook so tight the wire binding bent.
“Just work,” she said.
I let the quiet sit.
“And the after-school program,” she added.
“You gave up their places?”
She shook her head once, then stopped. “I told them Friday was the girls’ last day. I called Augie’s sitter, too.”
I looked at Hugh. “Before I’d said yes.”
“They wanted a month’s notice,” he said. “We’d already paid through Friday.”
There it was. The piece I’d been missing since I saw my name printed down the back of that sheet. While I was lying awake deciding what to do, they’d been taking things off their calendar and putting them on mine.
“What are we supposed to do Monday?” Marlee asked.
She sounded genuinely scared. It was the first time all morning she’d sounded like somebody asking me a question.
“Call the program,” I said. “Ask if they can still take the girls.”
“And if they can’t?”
I started to say I could come by early. The words got as far as my teeth. I’d done that a hundred times with Hugh growing up. I’d come off a night shift and drive the forgotten gym shoes to school. I’d put my coffee back in the microwave and go look for the dog he’d let out. Some of those mornings I’d been glad to do it. That made the habit harder to break.
“Then you and Hugh will have to decide who takes the day off,” I said.
Marlee pressed her lips together. Her eyes were bright. I remembered driving her home from the hospital when Augie was born. At every red light she’d leaned over his car seat to make sure he was breathing. She’d let me hold him that first afternoon so she could sleep. I’d sat perfectly still for nearly three hours because she needed every minute.
I could remember all that and still get in the flatbed.
I handed her the house rules.
“Can you tell me one thing?” she asked.
I stopped at the bottom step.
“What would it have taken for you to say yes?”
“If you’d asked me to keep the kids on a Wednesday, I might have said yes to a Wednesday.”
She looked at the schedule through the plastic. There were a lot of Wednesdays printed on that page if you thought about how long they’d meant for me to stay.
Hugh opened the driver’s door of his truck. He stood there a moment with his back to me.
“I was going to help you carry your dresser up,” he said.
“I know.”
He climbed in. Marlee walked around to the passenger side. As the trailer backed into the street, Augie held up his hand flat against the glass. I held mine up too. I waited until he couldn’t see me anymore before I let my arm drop.
Mr. Crenshaw leaned across and opened the passenger door of the flatbed.
“How many steps?” I asked him as I climbed in.
“Fourteen.”
“I thought it was thirteen when we went up.”
“Everybody misses the little one at the top.”
“Put some bright tape on that one for me, would you?”
“I got yellow or red.”
“Yellow,” I said. “I’ve had enough red for one morning.”
He put the truck in gear. We drove past the empty place where my husband used to park. I’d been holding my breath since nine o’clock, and for some reason it was there, looking at that patch of dead grass, that I finally let it out.
By noon, I had a kettle on my own stove.
By one, I’d unpacked two mugs, a frying pan, and my husband’s Army picture. I set the picture on the wide windowsill, then moved it to the table. I wanted to be able to see his face when I sat down.
The apartment smelled like pine boards and whatever Mr. Crenshaw used to clean his paint counter. Through the floor came the faint little bell over the shop door. I could hear it from the bedroom if I stood still.
I put Augie’s book on the arm of the rocker so I’d remember to read it before he came to visit. Then I made myself an egg and ate it hot.
That was all I’d wanted from the afternoon.
At two fifteen my sister called.
“Did you show her the notebook?”
“I gave it back.”
“How’d Hugh take it?”
“About as well as you thought.”
She was quiet long enough that I heard the television on her end. Somebody was giving the weather.
“Well,” she said at last, “do you need clean sheets? I’ve got a set in the hall closet.”
“Bring them tomorrow if you want. I got room for company.”
Saying that out loud felt better than I expected.
After we hung up, I carried the trash down to the alley. On the way back, Mr. Crenshaw called me over to the register.
“A man phoned looking for you. Said his name was Leonard Pike.”
I knew the name. He was the man who bought my duplex. He’d stood in my kitchen in spring with a measuring tape clipped to his belt and told me he’d be taking the place down. He’d wiped his shoes twice on the mat before he came in. Funny what a person remembers.
“What’d he want?”
“Didn’t say. Asked whether you’d moved in with Hugh. I told him he’d have to ask you himself.”
I took the number upstairs.
I thought Leonard might be calling about the keys. I still had mine in the little dish by my purse. My plan was to sweep the duplex Monday and drop them off on the way home.
“Mrs. Bell,” he said when I called. “Thank you for getting back to me. I stopped by this afternoon and saw the furniture was gone. Is your new place working out all right?”
“So far. I’ll bring the keys Monday.”
“Whenever you like. I just needed to ask you something. Did Hugh give you the envelope I left with him?”
I looked over at the open box marked KITCHEN. It still had one of my husband’s old envelopes taped to the side. We used to save every one that came in the mail and turn it over to write a list.
“What envelope?”
“About the little house on Willow.”
I knew the house. It sat three doors down from the library, with a blue front door and a yard just wide enough for a clothesline. My husband and I used to walk past it on our way to breakfast. He liked to say we’d grow tomatoes on that porch if we ever got our hands on it.
“What about the house on Willow?”
“I offered it to you when I found out you’d rented the duplex for twenty-two years. Same rent you’d been paying. Ground floor. I could’ve given you the keys last month.”
I sat down.
“Who did you offer it to?”
“You. I left the paperwork with Hugh. He said he’d take it right over.”
Outside, somebody was trying to parallel park in front of the shop. They went forward, stopped, and went back. I watched them straighten their wheels before I said another word.
“I never got any paperwork, Leonard.”
“All right,” he said slowly. “Then I need you to look at something for me.”
My phone buzzed while he was still on the line. He’d sent a photograph. It took me two tries to open it because my thumb had gone cold.
The photo showed a short letter, typed on white paper. It thanked Leonard for the offer of the Willow Street house. It said my family and I had discussed my options and decided I’d be better off living with my son. It ended by asking Leonard to give the house to somebody else.
At the bottom was my name.
For forty years I’d signed charts at the foot of hospital beds. After enough twelve-hour shifts, the first two letters of my name had turned into one stroke. Whoever signed that letter had taken their time with every letter. There was even a tidy little dot over the i in Tressie.
“Leonard,” I said, “I didn’t sign that.”
The shop bell rang downstairs. A moment later I heard somebody take the stairs two at a time.
There was a knock. Then my son’s voice.
“Mama? It’s me. Please open the door.”
I put the phone back to my ear.
“Who brought you that letter?” I asked Leonard.
“Marlee did,” he said. “And Hugh called me that same evening.”
On the other side of the door, Hugh knocked again, softer this time.
“What did my son say?”
“He wanted to know how soon I could give the house away. He said he needed it settled before you found out it was empty.”
I could see Hugh’s shadow in the strip of light under my door. I moved toward it, one hand on the back of my husband’s rocker.
“Mama,” he said. “Marlee thinks I came here to get you to take the kids on Monday.”
I set the phone on the table without hanging up.
“Why did you come, Hugh?”
For a second all I could hear was the bell downstairs.
“Because there was money in that envelope,” he said. “And I need to tell you what I did with it.” -
CLICK HERE CONTINUE TO READ PART 3 — THE MONEY IN THE ENVELOPE
For $700 a month, my son and his wife offered me the room over their garage. “And you’ll watch the kids every weekday, Mama, to pull your weight.” I thanked them sweetly and said I’d pray on it. On moving day they pulled in with a trailer and a printed list of house rules. I was waiting on my porch with a little notepad. My son’s wife unfolded it, saw her own handwriting, and the first line said…
