The Lease for the Room Over the Garage

Why

Arlene was Brooke’s grandmother on her dad’s side. When Brooke was eight, Arlene’s husband died, and Arlene sold the farm outside Dell Rapids and moved in with Brooke’s parents. Just for a while, everybody said.

She stayed twelve years.

“She ran the house,” Brooke said. “She ran everything. What we ate, when we ate it, what my mom wore to church. She rearranged the kitchen the first week and my mom never got it back. My mom used to sit in the car in the driveway after work. Just sit there with the engine off. I used to watch her from my bedroom window.”

“Your dad didn’t say anything?”

“My dad worked nights at the meatpacking plant. And it was his mother.” She shook her head. “He didn’t see it. Or he didn’t want to.”

She looked at the water glass. “When you moved in, I was so grateful. I was. The money, the help, the twins love you. But then you’d load the dishwasher, and you’d put the cups by the sink, and you’d make supper four nights a week, and I’d come home and the house smelled like your cooking and not mine.”

“Brooke, I was only trying to help.”

“I know you were. That’s what made it so awful. I kept waiting for you to turn into her, and you never did, and I kept waiting anyway.” Her voice broke. “I thought if I put it on paper, it couldn’t happen. Like a wall. I printed it off a website at work. I thought I was being smart.”

I sat back in Gary’s chair.

All those mornings with the cups moved from one cupboard to the other. The bars for book club. I’d thought she didn’t like me. She’d been afraid of me. Or not of me. Of a woman who’d been dead eight years, who I never met.

“Jake didn’t want to,” she said. “I want you to know that. He said it was wrong. I told him if he didn’t back me on this, then I’d know whose house it really was. So he looked at the floor.”

“I saw him,” I said.

“It’s not his fault.”

“Some of it is,” I said, and I said it gently. “He’s a grown man and he’s my son, and he knew better. But I don’t think it’s all his.”

She nodded. Her mascara had run all the way down.

“Does your mom know about the lease?” I asked.

Brooke went very still. “No.”

“Are you going to tell her?”

She didn’t answer for a long time. Out the window, the bank sign changed from 61 degrees to 5:58.

“She’s going to ask,” Brooke said finally. “She always asks about you. She’ll ask why Grandma Deb isn’t at the house.”

“Then I guess you’ll tell her,” I said.