What Grandpa Said
I went to see him Monday on my lunch break. The care center smelled like floor wax and coffee, and the sun was coming straight in through the big windows of the therapy room.
Grandpa was on his third lap of the hallway with a therapist named Wendy walking beside him. He had on the green flannel shirt he wore every day of his life and a pair of hospital socks with rubber treads.
“There she is,” he said. “The one who never flosses.”
“I floss, Grandpa.”
“You tell everybody else to.” He made it to the chair by the window and lowered himself into it a piece at a time, the way they had taught him, and blew out a long breath.
I didn’t know how to start, so I just started. “I saw the sign.”
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He looked out the window at the parking lot for a while. There was a pickup idling out there with a man smoking in it, and a woman pushing an old fellow in a wheelchair along the sidewalk to get a little sun.
“Mark’s not wrong about the money,” he finally said. “That place loses money nine months out of the year, Lacey. You know that. Always has. Opening week and the ice season, that’s what carries it.”
“It carried it for fifty-two years.”
“And Mark’s been paying the electric since August.” He rubbed his thumb along the arm of the chair. “He came in here and told me he’d signed it. Sat right where you’re sitting. I didn’t say a word.”
“Why not?”
“Because he’s my boy.” He said it simply. “And because he’s the one who found me. I’m not going to lie here in a bed and fight my own son over a building. I won’t do it. I could take that paper back from him, and then I’d have a son who knew I did. Your grandma wouldn’t have stood for it either.”
That was the whole thing, right there. Mark had power of attorney, and he had every right to sign that listing. Grandpa would not fight him. So there was nothing for the rest of us to argue, and nobody to call.
The only thing we could do was show what the shop still was.
I asked him where the keys were.
He looked at me for a long minute. Then the corner of his mouth went up under that white mustache, just a little.
“Nail by the bait fridge in the garage,” he said. “Behind the calendar from the feed mill. Mark’s got the other set. And you call Otis at the distributor by Wednesday, or he won’t have the orange hats.”
“Okay.”
“Four o’clock,” he said. “Not five. The Petersen boys come at a quarter after four, and they’ve come at a quarter after four since Nixon. Coffee has to be on.”
“Four o’clock,” I said.
He reached over and patted my hand twice, the way he patted the counter when a sale went through. “Don’t you fight him either, Lacey. You hear me? Just open the door.”