The Camper in the Side Yard

The Sheets

I left work at three that afternoon. Dr. Wendt told me to go and did not ask why.

I drove home in a cold rain. The maples on our street had gone yellow, and the leaves were plastered flat to the sidewalk.

I went straight to our bedroom and stripped the bed. I put on the good blue flannel sheets my sister gave us for Christmas, and the heavy quilt.

I cleared off my nightstand. I set out a water glass, a box of tissues, and the little lamp from the living room, so she would not have to reach.

I emptied two dresser drawers for her. I moved the throw rug out of the bathroom doorway so the walker would not catch on it.

I borrowed a raised toilet seat from my neighbor Deb. Her husband had his knee done the winter before.

Then I took the white laundry basket and filled it with a folded blanket and a week of my own clothes. Jeans, work slacks, two fleeces, socks. I put my gray patterned pillow from our bed on top of it and set it by the back door.

Maddie came home from school first. She is fifteen and does not miss anything. She looked at my bare nightstand, and the basket, and the pillow sitting on top of it.

“Mom,” she said slowly. “Are you leaving?”

“No, honey,” I said. “Grandma Phyllis is coming to stay while her hip heals. She’s going to sleep in our room, and I’m going to sleep in the camper.”

She stared at me for a long second. Then she laughed, a real laugh. “You’re going to sleep in the camper? In October?”

“It has a furnace,” I said.

The Camper

It is a 1994 Jayco, twenty-one feet, white with faded brown and blue stripes down the side. We bought it used for $3,200 when the kids were little and took it to state parks every summer for eight years.

Cooper learned to swim at Mirror Lake. Maddie lost her first tooth on a corn dog at the Dells.

It had been sitting on a concrete pad in the side yard, beside the garage and the walk to the back door, for three summers. We kept saying we would sell it. We kept not selling it.

It has a propane furnace that works if you smack the side panel twice. It has a double bed across the back, a dinette that folds down into another bed, and a two-burner stove.

I went out in the rain and plugged it into the garage outlet with the heavy cord. I opened the propane, lit the furnace, and wiped down the counters.

I made up the back bed with our old camping sheets, the ones with faded pine trees on them. Then I sat down on the edge of it and listened to the rain on the metal roof.

It smelled like dust and old canvas and every summer we ever had. I cried for about five minutes. Then I washed my face in the little sink and went in the house to start supper.