I didn’t trust him.
I want to be honest about that. I watched him for months.
I checked Mom’s bank statements. I called her bank. I asked her if he’d ever asked for money.
“Never,” she said. “Not once. I’ve offered. He won’t take it.”
“What do you mean, you’ve offered?”
“I tried to give him twenty dollars,” Mom said. “In November. For fixing the steps. He wouldn’t take it. He said he just wanted something to do with his hands.”
She looked at me.
“I tried to give him a coat,” she said. “Your father’s old wool peacoat. It’s been in the closet for fourteen years. It’s freezing out there, Susan. He sleeps outside.”
“Did he take it?”
“He took it,” Mom said. “But he made me promise it was a loan. He said he’d give it back in the spring.”
She looked out the window.
“He gave it back in April,” she said. “Dry-cleaned.”
Then, on her eightieth birthday, he appeared with twelve dollars’ worth of yellow roses.
It was March nineteenth. A Saturday.
We were having a party. At the house on Chestnut Street. Just family. Me and Tom. Claire, home from Philadelphia. My brother, Glenn, and his wife, Patricia, and their two sons from Lititz.
Mom wanted Ethan to come.
Glenn didn’t.
“A homeless guy, Mom? At your birthday party?”
“He’s my friend, Glenn.”
“He’s a stranger. You met him in a parking lot.”
“I met your father at a church picnic,” Mom said. “That’s not much better.”
Glenn rolled his eyes.
Ethan didn’t come to the party. He said it was for family.
But at four o’clock, in the middle of cake, the doorbell rang.
I answered it.
Ethan was standing on the porch. On the steps he’d fixed. In his gray hoodie. Freshly washed. His hair was combed. He’d shaved.
He was holding a bouquet of yellow roses.
Twelve of them. Wrapped in cellophane. With a little white ribbon. From the grocery store. Still had the price tag on the plastic.
$11.99.
“I’m sorry to interrupt,” he said. “I just wanted to give her these. I won’t stay.”
Mom came to the door behind me.
She saw him. She saw the roses.
She put her hand over her mouth.
“Yellow,” she whispered. “Edwin always got me yellow.”
“I know,” Ethan said. “You told me. In November. You said he got you yellow roses every birthday for forty-six years. You said nobody’s gotten you flowers since he died.”
He held them out.
“Happy birthday, Mrs. Kemper,” he said.
Mom cried.
Right there in the doorway. Holding the roses against her chest. With cake on her fingers.
She hugged him. Ethan stood very still. Like he didn’t know what to do with his arms. Then, slowly, he hugged her back.
“Come in,” Mom said. “Please. Have some cake.”
“I don’t want to intrude.”
“Ethan,” Mom said. Her teacher voice. The voice that made fifteen-year-olds apologize. “Come in and have some cake.”
He came in.
He sat at the end of the table. He ate one slice of cake. He said almost nothing.
Glenn stared at him the whole time.
I later learned he’d spent his last money on them.
I found out by accident. Two weeks later. I drove past the old bookstore on Queen Street. I saw Ethan in the alcove by the back door. Sitting on a piece of cardboard. Counting change in his palm.
I pulled over. I don’t know why.
I walked up.
He looked up. He saw me. He closed his hand.
“Susan,” he said. “Is your mom okay?”
“She’s fine,” I said. “I was just driving by.”
I looked at his closed hand.
“Ethan,” I said. “Those roses. On her birthday. How much money did you have?”
He didn’t answer.
“How much?”
He looked at the ground.
“Twelve dollars,” he said. “And forty cents.”
“That’s all you had?”
He shrugged.
“I had a job for a while,” he said. “At a car wash on Lincoln Highway. They let me go in February. That was the last of my pay.”