The Pencil Marks on My Pantry Door
Then he turned to the realtor. He was very polite about it.
“Ms. Dunning,” he said. “I’ve only got one question.”
“Of course.”
“Does the lady who owns this house want to sell it?”
Nobody spoke. You could hear Harriet’s clothesline pulley squeak in the wind.
Ms. Dunning opened her mouth and shut it. She looked at Kim.
“She can’t…” Kim started. “You don’t understand. She isn’t able to…”
“Ma’am,” Josh said to my daughter, gently. “I wasn’t asking you. I’m sorry. I’d like to hear it from her.”
And then he waited. They all waited. Abby had hold of his arm.
I got my feet square. I looked at my daughter, not at him.
“No,” I said. “I do not want to sell my house.”
It came out clean. Every word.
Josh nodded as if I had told him the time.
“Then we’re not making an offer,” he said to Ms. Dunning. “Not at two-fourteen. Not at any number. I’d thank you to take our names off whatever list they’re on.”
“We couldn’t live in it,” Abby said. “It’s a beautiful house. We couldn’t sleep in it.”
Kim made a sound like she had been struck. She sat down, right there, on the old metal glider, with her purse in her lap.
Before they went, Abby came and put her arms around me. She was careful of the left side.
“Don’t let anybody paint that door,” she said in my ear.
“I won’t.”
Josh shook my hand. My right one. He held it a second.
“Mrs. Weber, those back steps,” he said. “Three steps, about seven inches each. How are you getting up and down those?”
“Slow.”
Then they went out through the house, and I heard the front door shut, softly, the way people shut a door in a house they respect.
Ms. Dunning was the one who surprised me. Instead she came back into the kitchen, pulled out a chair, and sat down at my table as if her knees had made the decision.
“I would like to say something to both of you,” she said. “And then I will do whatever Mrs. Weber tells me to do.”
Kim had come in and was standing by the icebox with her arms wrapped around herself.
“I have sold houses in this county for twenty-two years,” Ms. Dunning said. “I have listed a good many for families with a parent in a nursing home. It is a sad thing and I try to do it kindly. That paper in my folder lets your daughter sign for you, Mrs. Weber. I checked it. I was within the rules.”
She put both hands flat on the table.
“But I never met you. I had a letter that said might, written the first week, and I never asked for a newer one. I was told you would not be able to follow a conversation. Lincoln is forty miles. I could have driven up and sat with you for ten minutes, and I took it all on paper instead, because it was easier.” She looked up at me. “You have just walked two buyers through this house better than I could have. I am ashamed of myself. I am withdrawing the listing today. I would not keep it if you paid me double.”
“I didn’t lie to you,” Kim said. Her voice was shaking. “I didn’t lie to her, Mom. That is what the doctor said. I wrote it down.”