The Realtor Who Put Down Her Camera

The apron

Kim came into the kitchen then. She came all the way in and set the camera down on my table, right beside my coffee mug, gently, the way you put a baby down.

Then she pulled out the chair at the end of the table, between Garrett and me, and she sat.

She opened the leather folder she had tucked under her arm, and she took out a few stapled pages. I could see Garrett’s signature at the bottom of the last one, and his name typed underneath it with the words “Attorney in Fact.”

“Mrs. Ruble,” she said. “Can I tell you something?”

“You can tell me anything, honey.”

“I still have the apron,” she said.

I did not understand her at first. Then I did, and I had to set my coffee mug down because my hands were not steady.

The summer Kim was ten, the club project was a half apron with a pocket. Simple. The kind of thing you give a beginner. Kim’s was yellow gingham, and she sewed the pocket on upside down.

She cried. Big tears, right there in the church basement. Her mother had been in the hospital that spring, and I think the pocket was just the last thing.

I sat down next to her and took out my seam ripper and said, “Honey, there is nothing in this world you sew that can’t be picked out and done again.” And we picked it out together, stitch by stitch.

She took the apron to the county fair. It got a red ribbon. Not a blue. But she held that red ribbon like it was the moon.

“I wear it every Thanksgiving,” Kim said. Her eyes were wet. “My girls think it’s the ugliest apron in Indiana. The pocket’s still a little crooked. I tell them that’s the best part.”

I could not say anything. I reached across the table and put my hand on top of hers.

“You told me anything could be picked out and done again,” she said. “I’ve thought about that a lot. Through my own divorce. Through a lot of things.”

What Kim did

She looked down at the listing agreement on the table. Then she looked at Garrett.

“Garrett,” she said, “you hired me. I have a duty to you. I know that. But I’ve been a realtor for sixteen years, and I’ve never once listed a house out from under a woman sitting in it.”

“It’s legal,” he said, but there was no fight in it.

“It’s legal,” she agreed. “On paper. My broker would say I’m within my rights. But I’ve been trying to take a picture of this kitchen for twenty minutes, and every single one has your mother in it. And you know what? She belongs in every one.”

She picked up the agreement. She held it in both hands across the top, the way you hold a sheet of pattern paper before you cut it.

Then she tore it in half, right down the middle, there at Ray’s oak table, and laid the two halves down in front of my son.

The sound of it was the loudest thing I have ever heard in that kitchen, and I raised a boy in it.

“I’ll call the office this afternoon and have it withdrawn,” Kim said. “Nothing went live. Nobody’s seen a single picture. If you two decide someday, together, to sell this house, I’ll come back. With her sitting right there at the table, signing her own name.”

Garrett did not say a word. He stared at the two halves of paper. Then he put his big hand flat on top of them, like he was holding them down in a wind.

“I’m sorry, Mom,” he said. “I’m so sorry.”