The Lease for the Room Over the Garage

Last summer they found a split-level in Tea, one of those new subdivisions where the trees are still tied to stakes. Four bedrooms. A fenced yard. And over the two-car garage, a bonus room with its own outside stairs, a dormer window, and a half bath.

The price was $389,000. Jake had his commission checks and Brooke had a little saved from her job at the dental office, but they were short on the down payment by a lot.

So one Sunday after church, they sat at my kitchen table in Canton, and I made coffee, and Jake laid it out.

“Mom, what if you sold this place,” he said. “You could have the room over the garage. Your own stairs, your own bathroom. You wouldn’t be alone out here, and you’d be right there with the kids.”

Brooke nodded. “We’d love the help,” she said. “The daycare in Tea is so expensive for two.”

I thought about it for a week. I walked through every room in that house and touched every doorframe. Then I called a realtor.

The house sold in nine days for $168,000. After I paid off what was left on the mortgage and the realtor took her share, I cleared just over $61,000.

I gave Jake $48,000 of it. I had the bank make a cashier’s check, and I handed it to him in the parking lot after the closing.

People have asked me since why I didn’t have him sign something. A note, a paper, anything. The honest answer is it never crossed my mind. He was my son. I diapered him. I sat up with him when he had croup. You do not make your son sign for help. The rest I kept in savings for the day I’d need it.

I moved into the room over the garage on the first of October.

Six months

But I did my part. I picked the twins up from daycare every Tuesday and Thursday, so Brooke could work later those days. I made supper four nights a week. I did the twins’ laundry with mine. I bought groceries more weeks than not and never asked for a penny back.

When Jake was on the road, and in his job he is on the road a lot, I was the one up at two in the morning with a feverish three-year-old on each hip.

Jake sells seed corn and soybeans to farmers across a territory that runs from Tea out past Mitchell. In the fall he’s out for harvest meetings, and in the spring, from about the middle of March, he is gone dawn to dark and some nights in a motel in Chamberlain. Farmers want their seed when they want it.

So Brooke and I were in that house together a great deal. And I’ll be honest, there was a stiffness between us I couldn’t name.

If I loaded the dishwasher, she’d reload it after I went up. If I put the twins’ cups in the cupboard by the sink, they’d be moved to the cupboard by the fridge the next morning. Once I made a pan of bars for her book club and she thanked me and then served the ones she bought at Hy-Vee.

I told myself she was young and tired and had two three-year-olds. All of that was true.

I also noticed I never did unpack the last four boxes. They sat stacked under the dormer window the whole six months, taped shut. I told myself I’d get to them. I think some part of me never felt sure enough to.