I am sixty-seven years old. My Social Security check, the one I draw now as Dale’s widow, comes to $1,640 a month. I kept the books at the lumber yard for twenty-two years, so I did not need a pencil for this. Eight hundred from sixteen forty left me eight hundred and forty dollars. For my car insurance. My Medicare supplement. My gas. My pills. My tithe. And Christmas for two grandchildren.
And for that, I would be the hired girl in my own daughter’s house, four days out of seven.
I want to be fair to her, because I’ve had time now to be fair. She didn’t say it mean. That was almost the worst part. She said it the way you’d read somebody the terms on a used car. Pleasant and a little rushed. Like she’d practiced it in the bathroom mirror and wanted to get through it before she lost her nerve.
“Can I see it again?” I asked. “The basement.”
“Sure, Mom. Of course.”
We went down. Todd stayed at the table.
They had done what they could with it. I’ll say that. There was a remnant of tan carpet laid over the concrete. A double bed with a frame. A lamp from Michelle’s old bedroom at home. A dehumidifier was running in the corner with a hose that went down to the floor drain.
The one window was up by the ceiling, about the size of a cake pan. All you could see out of it was the bottom of the neighbor’s fence.
It smelled like wet cardboard and laundry soap.
“Todd’s going to put up a wall here,” Michelle said, pointing. “So you’d have your own room. Your own space. And the bathroom’s just up the stairs.”
“Up the stairs,” I said.
“It’s only thirteen steps.”
I counted them myself going back up. She was right. Thirteen.