The Realtor Who Put Down Her Camera

She tried from the back door. I was in it. She tried from beside the stove. I was in it, and the walker was in it, with my purse still hanging off the handle like a flag.

She crouched down low by the pantry, I suppose hoping the table would hide me. It did not. I am not a large woman, but I sit up straight. Thirty-one years of driving a bus will do that.

“Mom,” Garrett said. “You’re being ridiculous.”

“I am being a woman drinking coffee in her kitchen,” I said, “which is what I was doing in this kitchen before either of you were born.”

That was true for both of them, and neither one argued with me.

She went into the living room. I could not follow her there quickly, and Garrett knew it, and I saw a little bit of relief come over his face.

But I had raised that boy. I knew he would not let her photograph the living room without walking in there to make sure she got the fireplace, which Ray laid himself, stone by stone.

And I knew that from where I was sitting, I could see straight through the doorway to the fireplace.

The click came. Then Kim’s voice, small. “Garrett, she’s in this one too.”

“What do you mean she’s in it?”

“Through the doorway. Pink. You can see her. She’s looking right at the camera.”

I was. I had turned my chair a quarter turn to face the living room, and I was looking right at that camera, calm as a Sunday.

The bedroom

Garrett came back into the kitchen. His face was red at the neck, the way his father’s used to get. He did not raise his voice. He never has, not at me.

“Mom,” he said quietly. “Please. Kim has three more houses today. I’m asking you.”

“And I’m asking you,” I said, “when you were going to tell me.”

He pulled out the chair across from me and sat in it, heavily, like a man who had been carrying something a long time.

“After it sold,” he said. “I was going to tell you after it sold. When I had the apartment lined up. When it was done and you couldn’t…”

He stopped.

“Couldn’t what,” I said.

“Couldn’t talk me out of it,” he said. “You always talk me out of things, Mom. You’ve been talking me out of things since I was six years old.”

I looked at my son. He was forty years old and he had his father’s goatee, brown, going a little gray at the chin. He had dark circles under his eyes I had not noticed before. Or had not let myself notice.

“Garrett,” I said. “What’s going on with you?”

He did not answer. Kim was standing in the doorway with the camera hanging from her neck now, not raised. She had gone very still, the way children do when the grown-ups start talking about money.

“I’ll wait outside,” she said.

“You’ll stay right there,” I said. Not unkindly. “You’re in this now, honey. You might as well hear it.”

She stayed.