The House My Son Wanted Signed Over

Six Weeks

Brad and Stephanie moved in two years ago that November.

I had my left hip replaced in October, up in Warsaw, which is about the best place on earth to get a hip, since half the county works at making them.

They came for six weeks. That was the word Brad used on the phone. “Six weeks, Mom, just till you’re steady. Steph’s lease is up anyway.”

I should have listened to the second sentence harder than the first.

I will say this plainly, because it is true, and I do not want anybody thinking I raised a monster. For the first month, my son was good to me. He drove me to therapy. He put a rail in the tub. He made me scrambled eggs, badly, and stood there until I ate them.

It was his father’s house he was walking around in, and for a few weeks he walked around in it like his father’s boy.

Then the six weeks ended and nobody mentioned it.

It went a little at a time. That is how it goes. Nobody takes your house in a day. They take it one drawer at a time, and they are helpful about every drawer.

First it was the stairs. “You shouldn’t be on those stairs, Marilyn,” Stephanie said, and she was right for about a month. So they made up the den for me, the little room off the kitchen where Walt used to do the taxes. A twin bed, my dresser, a lamp.

By Christmas they were sleeping in my bedroom. Walt’s and mine. Stephanie said the mattress in the guest room hurt her back. I went up one afternoon when they were out, holding the rail with both hands, and my mother’s quilt was folded into a trash bag in the closet, and there was a gray comforter on my bed that I had never seen before.

I stood there a while. Then I went back down, one step at a time, and I did not say anything.

That was my mistake, and I own it. I thought not saying anything was the same as keeping the peace.

Then it was the kitchen. Stephanie boxed up my everyday dishes, the blue ones with the wheat on them, and carried them to the basement, and set out square white plates. She put labels on the refrigerator shelves with a little machine. One of the labels said Marilyn. It was the bottom shelf, the half behind the crisper drawer.