The Loft Above the Shop
“My stepdad charged me rent,” he said. “I told you that. What I didn’t tell you is he used to count it in front of me at the kitchen table. Every month. Out loud. And then he’d say, ‘That’s what you cost.'”
Brody’s face changed. So did mine.
“I told myself for thirty years that it made me tough,” Kurt said.
“Your mom asked me the other night if I’d ever once felt like that house was mine. Growing up. And I couldn’t answer her.” He turned his hat around in his hands. “I’m sorry, Brody. You didn’t cost anything. You never did.”
Nobody said anything for a minute. The heater ticked overhead. Then Brody stuck out his hand, like I taught him to, and Kurt shook it.
“Thanks,” Brody said. “You coming to the game Tuesday? It’s the first one.”
Kurt looked surprised. “If that’s all right,” he said.
“It’s all right,” Brody said.
Kurt looked at me over Brody’s shoulder, and I nodded once. He nodded back. Then he put his hat on and went out to his truck, and I saw him sit there for a minute before he started it, just like my dad had.
The first home game was the second Tuesday in December. The gym smelled like popcorn and floor wax, and half the town was there, like always.
My dad sat in the third row with his white hair combed and his good suspenders on. Kelly sat next to him with a bag of popcorn she kept passing down the row. I sat on Dad’s other side.
Jen came in during warmups and looked at the bleachers for a second. Then she climbed up and sat in the row behind us. Kurt came in five minutes later and sat next to her. He leaned forward and shook my dad’s hand, and then mine.
Brody did not start. He came off the bench in the second quarter and missed his first shot, and I heard Kurt groan right along with me. Then he hit a three from the corner, and the whole row stood up together.
I am not going to tell you it was perfect after that. Jen and I still talk best in person. Kurt still says “my house” sometimes, and Jen still corrects him. But nobody has ever charged our son a dollar to sleep since.
After Christmas, Brody went back to splitting his weeks. Week on at his mom’s, week on in the loft. Jen and I worked it out at the Cenex in eleven minutes.
It has been a while now. Brody is a senior. He is still working ten hours a week at the grocery store, and he has saved a little over two thousand dollars, his own money, for a car he still says he wants.
Some nights, when he is staying out at my place, I go up the stairs to say goodnight, and he is lying on the bed with Kelly’s quilt kicked off, reading something for school with his big feet hanging off the end of the mattress.
I keep telling him we need a longer bed. He keeps telling me it is fine.
Above him, every night, his name is on the beam. Dad comes out once a month or so and stands at the bottom of the stairs for a minute, just looking up. He does not say anything. He does not have to.
The brass key is still the only one to that door. Brody keeps it on his truck ring.