The Little House Next Door

The lake

In December the realtor called again. Another lot on Minnewaska, smaller, no dock, but on the sunrise side.

Curt talked to her on the phone for a few minutes. I heard him say thank you.

He came back into the kitchen.

“Was that about a lot?” I asked.

“Yeah,” he said.

“Are you going to look at it?”

He poured himself a cup of coffee and looked out the window at Helen’s house, at the light in her kitchen and the shape of her moving around in there, probably wiping a counter that was already clean.

“Not now,” he said. “The lake’s not going anywhere. It’ll be there.”

“You’ve waited thirty years,” I said. “I don’t want you to wait forever because of what I did.”

He turned around and leaned against the counter and looked at me.

“You didn’t do anything to me,” he said. “You did right by my mother. I didn’t. That’s the whole story.”

He took a sip of his coffee. “The lake can wait. That’s fine. I mean it. That’s fine.”

Helen’s money is still Helen’s. There is a little left in her account after the house and the work and Kim’s afternoons, and it gets spent on her, on her groceries and her prescriptions and her hair appointment every other Friday.

I write it in the ledger in the green folder. Curt reads it sometimes. He never says a word about it except once, when he saw the line for her hair, and said, “Good. She likes to look nice.”

Someday the bad days will come more than the good ones. Dr. Haugen is right about that. Someday the little white house will not be enough and we will have to talk about the county home again, all three of us, at her kitchen table, with the geranium on the windowsill.

But it will be a talk with her, not about her. And Curt will be there. He promised me that, and he promised her too.

The green light

The monitor is still on my nightstand. I could move it. Helen does fine most nights, and Kim says I fuss too much.

But I like it there. I like falling asleep with that little green light on.

Some nights the sound kicks on and I hear Helen humming in the dark, or talking to Elmer, or telling the cows to come on, come on, boss.

Some nights she sings the Swedish hymn, thin and off key, rocking her pillow.

And some nights, if it has been a bad day, I wake up and Curt is not beside me. I look at the monitor and I can see him on the little screen, sitting in the chair by her bed in his sweatpants, holding her hand.

Last night was one of those. I woke at one and reached for him and he was gone, and the green light was on. I turned the dial up just a little.

Helen was singing. And under her voice, low and rough and a little off key himself, my husband was singing with her, in Swedish, every word.

I lay there in the dark and watched the little green light and listened to the two of them, mother and son, fifty feet away, and I did not turn it off.