The Recording That Silenced My Brother
I remember the last time Cletis came through Cobb Corner before the funeral, that same year, driving a car that was nicer than anything either of us had ever owned and staying less than two hours. He sat in the corner booth across from Grandma Goldia, glanced around at the water stain spreading across the ceiling tile near the register that I had not yet found the money to fix, and said, in a voice that never once rose above conversational, that it was a shame she’d let the place get so run down when a little investment could probably triple what it was worth to the right buyer. He did not ask how her heart was doing. He did not ask how I was doing, propping up both her and a business on a construction wage and a prayer. He finished his coffee, left no tip, the two of us both noticed and neither of us mentioned, and was back on the highway before the lunch rush started. That was Cletis’s particular gift, I came to understand. He never raised his voice at either of us. He simply arrived, priced everything we loved in a tone flat enough to sound reasonable, and left before anyone could call it what it was.
It was her idea, not mine, to have the lawyer draw up the deed. I did not ask her for the Skillet. I would have kept running that kitchen for her for another twenty years and never once raised the subject, because to me it was never about the building, it was about her. But Goldia Pettigrew had run a business for forty-three years and she thought like a businesswoman until the day she died, and she told me plainly that she intended to see the diner settled on the person who had actually kept it alive, while she was still here to say so herself and defend the decision if anybody questioned it.
She did more than sign a deed. She insisted on it, actually, sitting at that same corner booth with her attorney, a notary, and Idella, the waitress who had worked the counter at the Skillet for twenty-six years and had known our family longer than I had been alive. Goldia had the notary set up a small camera on a tripod that Idella’s grandson had brought over, and she looked directly into it and said her piece before she ever picked up a pen.