The Realtor Who Put Down Her Camera

That afternoon

I could have let it end there. A torn paper and a sorry. But I am a practical woman, and I had driven a bus long enough to know you do not leave a gate half shut.

The power of attorney was still good. Kim tearing up one listing did not change that. Garrett could sign another one Tuesday with another agent who never sat in my sewing club.

I did not believe he would. I want that clear. I looked at my son’s face that morning and I did not believe he would. But I had believed a lot of things in January.

So after Kim left, I called Ada. She came up the road in her old Buick in about four minutes, which tells you she had been sitting by her phone.

I sat at the table and wrote it out by hand on my good stationery. That I, Wanda Ruble, revoked the durable power of attorney I signed on January twenty-seventh, naming my son Garrett Ruble as my agent, effective immediately.

I signed it. Ada signed under it as my witness, in her big round schoolteacher hand, though she was never a schoolteacher. Then she drove me to the bank in town, and the girl at the window who does notary stamped it.

We made three copies at the library for a quarter apiece. One for my file. One for the bank. One for Garrett.

He was standing in the kitchen when we got back, washing the coffee cups. Ada handed him his copy, and he read it at the sink, and he folded it in thirds and put it in his shirt pocket.

“That’s fair,” he said. “That’s more than fair.”

Ada looked at him over her glasses for a long moment. She had known him since he was in diapers. She had taught him to fish at her pond.

“Your mother,” she said, “would have given you the shirt off her back if you’d asked. You know that, don’t you?”

“I know it now,” he said.

The terms

That night we sat at the table again, the two of us. I made grilled cheese, standing at the stove with one hand on the walker and the other on the spatula. He let me. That was something.

“Here’s what I’m thinking,” I said. “You’re going to stay. You’re going to live here.”

He looked up from his plate.

“You’re going to pay me rent,” I said. “Four hundred a month. I don’t need it. I’m going to put it in an envelope in my drawer, and when you’ve caught up on your support, I’ll give you every dollar back for a deposit on a place of your own.”

“Mom…”

“Hush. I’m not done. You’re going to get a job down here. The feed mill is hiring. I saw it on the board at church. And you’re going to call your kids every Sunday night, from this phone, in this kitchen, and I’m going to talk to them too.”

He nodded. His eyes were wet. He wiped them with the back of his wrist, quick, like a boy.

“And one more thing,” I said.

“Anything.”

“Those back steps,” I said. “Two steps, and I’ve been going up them like a mountain goat with a bad leg since February. If you’re worried about me in this house, son, then make this house safer for me. Don’t take it away from me.”

He was quiet for a long time. Then he said, “A ramp. Off the back door, down to the driveway. With a rail.”

“With a rail,” I said.