The Realtor Who Put Down Her Camera

Two hundred twenty-nine thousand dollars. For the house Ray built. For the kitchen where I had canned tomatoes every August for forty years.

I want to tell you why I did not pick up the phone right then and call a lawyer, or the sheriff, or anybody at all. I have thought about it since, and I can tell you exactly why.

He had my signature on a power of attorney, so the listing was legal on paper. I did not need a lawyer to sit at my own table.

That was what I decided, standing there. I could fight him with papers later if I had to. But right now, what I had was a chair and a kitchen and a pair of legs that would carry me six more feet.

So I walked my walker to the table. Kim stepped aside to let me by, and she said, “Careful, Mrs. Ruble,” like she was ten again and I was the one holding the pins.

I parked the walker beside my chair, the way the therapist showed me, and I lowered myself down. The good leg takes the weight. The bad leg goes along.

My coffee mug was still sitting on the table from that morning, half full and cold. I wrapped both hands around it anyway.

I was wearing my pink quilted housecoat. I had worn it to therapy over my sweatpants because it is the only thing I own that I can get on and off without bending, and I had not taken it off yet.

My hair was flat on one side from the car’s headrest. I had no lipstick on. I looked, I am sure, exactly like what I was: a sixty-six-year-old widow with a new hip, sitting in her own kitchen.

“All right,” I said to Kim. “Go ahead.”

She stared at me. “Mrs. Ruble?”

“You were taking pictures,” I said. “Go ahead and take them. I’m going to sit right here and drink my coffee.”

Every picture

Kim looked at Garrett. Garrett said, “Mom, come on. You can’t be in the pictures. Nobody wants to see somebody living in the house. Buyers want to picture themselves in it.”

“I know that,” I said. “I’ve watched those shows with Ada. They take the family photos off the refrigerator and put a bowl of green apples on the counter.”

“So let her do her job,” he said.

“I’m not stopping her,” I said. “I’m sitting at my table. I’ve sat at this table every morning for forty-one years. I don’t see why today should be any different.”

I took a sip of the cold coffee. It was terrible. I did not let it show on my face.

Kim raised the camera, slowly. She stepped back toward the hallway door to get the whole room in. I could see her adjusting, trying to find an angle where the table was not in it.

There was no such angle. Ray built that kitchen around the table. It sits square in the middle, under the light, where everybody coming in has to walk around it.