What My Grandson Hid Under the Mattress

“Why didn’t you tell me in April?”

He laughed, one short breath, no humor in it.

“You know why.”

“Say it anyway.”

“Because I’m forty-one years old.” He was looking at the dollar bills. “Because I know what it costs to take something from that house. I paid on four thousand dollars for six years, Mom. I paid it at Thanksgiving and Christmas and Easter. I paid it in front of my friends. I’d have paid it at my own wedding if he’d thought of a joke in time.”

“I know.”

“Do you? Because I don’t remember you saying a word.”

There it was. Nineteen years, and there it was on a porch step in Indiana.

I had practiced an answer between Van Wert and the state line. I did not use it. I said the plain thing.

“I didn’t say a word. You remember it right.”

He looked at me then.

“I sat at the other end of that table and let your father make you small in front of company, and then I served pie. I told myself it was teasing. It wasn’t teasing. It was a string, and he kept hold of it, and I watched him do it. I have been wanting to say that to you for nineteen years, and I was too proud, and then I was too late for it to count with him alive. I’m sorry, Todd. I’m sorry I wasn’t any help to you.”

He turned his face toward the street. A muscle was jumping in his cheek.

“I didn’t come to give you anything,” I said. “I want you to hear that. I didn’t bring a checkbook. I brought two chickens and I’m not even sure they’re still frozen.”

“Then why are you here?”

“To ask you for something.”

That turned him back around.

“I fell off the stepladder in March. Changing the bulb in the pantry. I laid on that kitchen floor for twenty minutes before I could get up, and I looked at the underside of the table your father built, and I thought, well, Jeff will see the mail stacking up in a few days.” I kept my voice level. It was not easy. “I didn’t tell you. I didn’t tell anybody. I didn’t want to be a worry. I didn’t want to be a thing somebody had to handle. So you can see where you got it.”

“Mom.”

“I can’t get the storm windows up by myself anymore. The barn roof is going on the north side. I rent the fields to Jeff because I can’t work them. I’ve got four bedrooms and I eat my supper standing at the sink because I can’t stand to set one plate at that table.” I had to stop for a second. “This summer I set three. Every night for ten weeks. And then this morning I washed three bowls and went upstairs and it was the quietest that house has been since the funeral.”

He was not saying anything.

“I’m not offering you charity. I’m telling you I need help and I’m asking my son. There’s a difference, and if your father were sitting here I’d say it to him too.”

The screen door opened behind us. It was Missy. She had Lucy’s hairbrush in her hand, like she had forgotten she was holding it, and behind her in the dark of the hall I could see the shape of a boy and a backpack.

“Todd,” she said.