The Pencil Marks on My Pantry Door

So I took my time.

“I am in my kitchen,” I said.

It was slow and it was a little thick on the K. All three of them waited for the whole of it, and I noticed that.

“I’m Colleen Dunning,” the woman said. “With the realty office downtown. Mrs. Weber, I am so sorry. I knocked. I knocked twice and rang the bell.”

“Bell’s been broke since spring.”

“Your daughter told me you were in the rehabilitation hospital in Lincoln until Friday. She said the house was empty.”

That was true when Kim said it.

“My daughter,” I said.

“Kim. Yes.” Ms. Dunning set her folder on my counter and opened it, and I could see her hands were not quite steady. “She signed the listing agreement nine days ago. She has your durable power of attorney, Mrs. Weber, and a letter from your doctor at the hospital. I have copies of both right here. I would never have taken the listing without them.”

“What letter?”

She read from it. It was dated the week of my stroke. It said that in the doctor’s opinion I might not regain the ability to manage my own affairs, or to live alone.

She turned the folder so I could see.

I knew that paper. I remembered it better than she would have guessed.

It was my third day in the hospital. I could not hold a cup. I could say Kim’s name and “water” and not much else. A woman from the business office came in with a notary stamp and stood at the foot of my bed, and Kim held the clipboard, and I made my signature with my right hand. It came out looking like something a hen had done.

I thought it was so Kim could pay my light bill and talk to the insurance.

I suppose it was, at the time.

“It is a valid document,” Ms. Dunning said quietly.

“I expect it is,” I said.

The young man cleared his throat. He had gone red clear to the ears, the way fair-haired boys do.

“Ma’am, we’ll go,” he said. “We didn’t know anything about this. We’re real sorry to be in your house.”

The girl was already backing toward the living room. She had tears standing in her eyes from plain embarrassment.

Here is where I had a choice, and I have turned it over a good many times since.

I could have put them out. Nobody on earth would have blamed me. But what had they done? They had seen a house in the paper they thought they could afford. They had taken a morning off work to come look at it. They had wiped their feet. I could see the wet marks on the mat from where I stood.

I could have gone to the telephone on the wall and called Kim at her desk in Lincoln that very minute. I thought about it. But I knew how that call would go. I would get four words out, and she would finish the sentence for me, and it would be her sentence and not mine. She has been finishing my sentences since August.

And there was nobody else. My husband Don has been gone seven years this November. My son Jeff is an electrician in Fort Collins, Colorado, five hundred miles off, and I found out later he had not been told a word of it either.