The Hardware Store They Forged Away

The folder from the designer purse

So. Back to the Wednesday, in the store, after closing.

Pam and my mother walked the aisles of Halvorsen Hardware like they were already appraising it. Pam ran a finger along the shelf of paint cans and looked at the dust on it like it offended her. My mother stood in the middle of the floor with her arms crossed and her chin up, the pose she takes at every funeral and wedding, the one that says she is the most important person in the room.

“What’s this about?” I asked, though I knew.

Pam turned around with a folder in her hand. A leather folder, the kind you buy to look like you belong in an office. She set it on the counter, on the very counter where Grandpa Walt used to sit and hand me change to give the customers, and she opened it with two fingers like she was dealing cards.

“We have some news, Nora,” she said. “The store’s been signed over to me. The building, the business, all of it. You’re going to need to be out of the apartment by Friday.”

I looked at the papers she had fanned out on the counter. There was something that called itself a loan agreement, and something that called itself a quitclaim deed, and both of them had signatures on them, and one of them had a notary stamp pressed into the corner.

“How exactly,” I said, and I heard how calm my own voice was, and it surprised even me, “do you think you managed that?”

“It wasn’t hard,” Pam said, and she smiled that smile again. “It turns out Grandpa had debts. Old debts. He borrowed against the building years ago and never paid it back. Since you weren’t handling the estate properly, and let’s be honest, Nora, you never could handle money, the debt came due and the property had to be transferred to settle it. I settled it. So now it’s mine. Legal and binding.” She tapped the notary stamp with one finger. “See? Notarized.”

“There were no debts,” I said.

“According to who?” my mother snapped, stepping forward. “You? You work in a hardware store, Nora. You mix paint. We had real professionals look at this. Pam has a lawyer. A good one, from the city.” She looked around at the shelves, the bins, the worn wood floor, and her lip curled. “Honestly it’s for the best. Pam knows how to make something of a place like this. You’ve just been sitting on it. Some people don’t deserve nice things.”

There it was. The exact sentence from my childhood, the one my mother had been saying to me my whole life. Some people don’t deserve nice things, Nora.

And then my father, who I had not even noticed come in, spoke up from the doorway.

“She’s right, Nora,” Gary said, in the tone of a man commenting on the weather. “Pam’s got a family to think about. You’re on your own, you’ll land somewhere. This just makes more sense for everybody.”

I looked at the three of them. My mother with her chin up. Pam with her folder. My father in the doorway agreeing with the last person who spoke. The greed on them was so plain it was almost innocent, like children who have not yet learned that other people can see them.

And I felt the strangest thing come over me. Not panic. Not the sick lurch you would expect. A calm settled over me, cold and clean and steady, like the first hard frost after a long muddy fall.

Because I had been getting ready for this Wednesday for two years. My grandmother had seen it coming from her kitchen table, and I had believed her enough to prepare, and now it was here, and I was ready.

I smiled.

“You really think,” I said, “that I’d let that happen, after everything I know about this family?”

For just a second, Pam’s smile flickered.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” she said.

“It means,” I said, “that you should double-check your paperwork. Very carefully. Before Friday.”