“Let’s stick to the subject,” Amanda said briskly. “Mom, Dad: we’re thinking you might want to move.”
“Move!” Red and Abby cried together.
“What with Dad’s heart, and Mom not driving anymore … we’re thinking maybe a retirement community. Wouldn’t that be the answer?”
“Retirement community, huh,” Red said. “That’s for old people. That’s where all those snooty old ladies go when their husbands die. You think we’d be happy in a place like that? You think they’d be glad to see us?”
“Of course they’d be glad, Dad. You’ve probably remodeled all their houses for them.”
“Right,” Red said. “And besides: we’re too independent, your mom and me. We’re the type who manage for ourselves.”
His children didn’t seem to find this so very admirable.
“Okay,” Jeannie said, “not a retirement community. But how about a condo? A garden apartment, maybe, out in Baltimore County.”
“Those places are made of cardboard,” Red said.
“Not all of them, Dad. Some are very well built.”
“And what would we do with the house, if we moved?”
“Well, sell it, I suppose.”
“Sell it! Who to? Nothing has sold in this city since the crash. It would stay on the market forever. You think I’m going to vacate my family home and let it go to rack and ruin?”
“Oh, Dad, we’d never let it—”
“Houses need humans,” Red said. “You all should know that. Oh, sure, humans cause wear and tear—scuffed floors and stopped-up toilets and such—but that’s nothing compared to what happens when a house is left on its own. It’s like the heart goes out of it. It sags, it slumps, it starts to lean toward the ground. I swear I can look at just the ridgepole of a house and tell if nobody’s living there. You think I’d do that to this place?”
“Well, sooner or later someone will buy it,” Jeannie said. “And meanwhile, I’ll stop in and check on it every single day. I’ll run the faucets. I’ll walk through the rooms. I’ll open all the windows.”
“That’s not the same,” Red said. “The house would know the difference.”
Abby said, “Maybe one of you kids would want to take it over! You could buy it from us for a dollar, or whatever way it’s done.”
This was met with silence. Her children were happily settled in their own homes, and Abby knew it.
“It’s served us so well,” she said wistfully. “Remember all our good times? I remember coming here when I was a girl. And then all those hours we spent on the porch when your father and I were courting. Remember, Red?”
He made an impatient, brushing-away gesture with one hand.
“I remember bringing Jeannie here from the hospital,” Abby said, “when she was three days old. I had her wrapped like a little burrito in the popcorn-stitch blanket Grandma Dalton had crocheted for Mandy, and I walked in the door saying, ‘This is your home, Jean Ann. This is where you’ll live, and you’re going to be so happy here!’ ”
Her eyes filled with tears. Her children looked down at their laps.
“Oh, well,” she said, and she gave a shaky laugh. “Listen to me, nattering on like this about something that can’t happen for years. Not while Clarence is alive.”
Red said, “Who?”
“Brenda. She means Brenda,” Amanda told him.
“It would be cruel to make Clarence move during his final days,” Abby said.
No one seemed to have the energy to continue the discussion.
Amanda talked Red into hiring a housekeeper who would also be willing to drive. Abby had never had a housekeeper, not even when she worked, but Amanda told her she would soon get used to it. “You’ll be a lady of leisure!” she said. “And any time you want to go someplace, Mrs. Girt will take you.”
“I’d only want to go someplace to get away from Mrs. Girt,” Abby said.
Amanda just laughed as if Abby had been joking, which she hadn’t.
Mrs. Girt was sixty-eight years old, a heavyset, cheerful woman who’d been laid off her job as a lunch lady and needed the extra income. She arrived at nine every morning, puttered around the house awhile, ineffectually tidying and dusting, and then set up the ironing board in the sunroom and watched TV while she ironed. There was not a whole lot of ironing required for two elderly people living on their own, but Amanda had instructed her just to keep herself occupied. Meanwhile, Abby stayed at the other end of the house, showing none of her usual interest in hearing every detail of a new acquaintance’s life story. Any time Abby made the slightest sound, Mrs. Girt would pop out of the sunroom and ask, “You okay? You need something? You want I should drive you somewheres?” Abby said it was intolerable. She complained to Red that she didn’t feel the house was her own anymore.