Dad rhapsodizes about his long-ago boyhood adventures in the Netherlands for the rest of breakfast. There’s something sad about his memories, maybe because that high school trip was the one and only time he’s ever left Washington State. And probably the only time he ever will.
When he gets up to go to the bathroom, I dig four dollars out of my wallet and tuck it underneath the plates. Dad isn’t a big tipper and ever since I started working at a restaurant, I’m hyperaware of tipping well.
I’m waiting at the door when he returns. It looks like it’s going to rain and I’m debating whether I should ask him to drive me to Gran’s. As far as I know, he hasn’t been back to the house since Aunt Celia kicked him out last month, but maybe it’s time he went. He can’t avoid the situation—or his sister—forever.
“Um … do you think you could drop me off at Gran’s? I told Celia I’d help her get the house ready.”
She’s putting it on the market next week. He really should be the one helping her clean it out, not me, but I can tell from the pinched look on his face when I mention her name that that isn’t going to happen. My dad and his sister have never seen eye to eye and Gran’s illness has only made things worse.
“Sure,” he says.
I follow him across the street to his busted-looking Honda. He still hasn’t gotten the muffler fixed and it’s almost dragging on the ground. When I climb into the passenger seat, I notice he’s used duct tape to repair a rip in the leather seat.
“What’s Celia planning to do with everything?” Dad asks, starting the car. He took all of the furniture from his bedroom when he left last month, but there’s probably a lot of other stuff that he could use. Or that he might want for sentimental reasons. I also know that there’s no way Celia will let him have anything. She already thinks he’s taken too much.
“I think she’s storing some of it.” And selling the rest. The place Gran’s in is expensive and Celia doesn’t hide the fact that the extra money is necessary for Gran’s care.
Dad’s fingers tighten on the steering wheel. I know he’s worried his sister will cut him out completely, but even I have to admit it’s better for her to hold the reins when it comes to Gran’s finances. My dad means well—he always means well—but his gambling problem makes it hard to trust him sometimes. Especially with money.
The small moving van Celia rented is blocking the driveway. I wasn’t really holding out much hope that Dad would come in and help us, so I’m not surprised when he doesn’t shut off the car when he pulls over to the curb.
This is the house he grew up in and I know he doesn’t agree with selling it, but there doesn’t seem to be another choice. Not according to Celia anyway. She lives a very together life in San Francisco with her partner, Kathy, and their four rescue dogs, and Dad certainly can’t afford to buy the place. There really is no other option.
“Just make sure she doesn’t get rid of everything, okay?” he says.
I nod, even though I’m not sure what, in all of Gran’s stuff, he’d like to keep. What exactly he thinks is worth saving.
*
“What about this?” I hold up a chipped porcelain cherub. It’s actually pretty creepy, a disembodied head with wings growing out of it. I have no idea why Gran has this. Why she has half this stuff.
Celia glances up from a file box marked TAX RETURNS. She wrinkles her nose and points to the growing mountain of junk in the corner. So far, pretty much everything I’ve shown her has landed in the junk pile.
Not that I blame her. I don’t want most of this stuff, either. But still, it feels weird, dividing up Gran’s things like this. I mean, she’s still alive.
She couldn’t take much with her to the home—just a few personal effects. Celia plans to store all Gran’s furniture, including the old, creaky brass bed I’m sitting on, until we figure out what to do with it. I think she’s hoping I’ll take the bed one day when I move out on my own.
I gently toss the cherub on top of an ugly, pilled green afghan then remove the lid off the shoe box I found wedged underneath Gran’s bed. The box is stuffed full of awkward-stage photos of my dad and Celia, in bell-bottoms and turtlenecks. I pull out one of Dad with a Fu Manchu mustache. Or what would be a Fu Manchu if he had more than a few strands of facial hair.
I snicker. “Now this I’m keeping.” I flip the photo over so Celia can see it.
She smiles and shakes her head. “He thought a mustache would make him look older. Help him get girls.”
Her smile fades. I know it’s hard for her to understand how my dad ended up broke, jobless, and living with his mother. But I know exactly how he ended up there. And it’s not his fault. Not completely anyway.
I stick the photo back in the shoe box and place the box with the other things I’m keeping. All things that most remind me of my gran: her faded double wedding ring quilt, her silver watch. A delicate blue teacup.
After a while, Celia stands up and pushes her knuckles into her back to work out the kinks. She runs the tip of her finger over the top of Gran’s dresser. “I didn’t know things were this bad,” she says, showing me her dust-coated finger. “Your gran always kept this place spotless. You could have eaten off the floors.”
I know Celia doesn’t blame me for not telling her that Gran was getting worse, but I still feel sick with guilt. I can’t bring myself to tell her that I didn’t know. The truth is, I haven’t seen Gran much over the past year. Not enough to notice things were this bad.
I get off the bed and open her closet. Gran always dressed up—she’s never owned a pair of jeans—and her closet is full of Easter-colored suits and dresses. Patent leather shoes, handbags. Scarves. Not the elastic-waist pants and shoes with rubber soles she’s trapped in now. The sight of her fancy clothes overwhelms me. I want to burrow into her closet and close the door. Maybe never come out.
“Why don’t we take a break?” Celia says, brushing her dusty hands on her jeans. My chest feels tight as I follow her down the hallway and into the kitchen.
I spent a lot of time in this house as a kid. Entire days during the summer, since my parents both worked. Gran and I would bake gingersnaps and watch the Hallmark movies she’d taped on her ancient VCR. But the best times were when she’d tell me stories about growing up in London. Where she went to school, how she met my grandfather.
The last full summer I spent with her was when I was eleven. And it was no longer just the two of us. Gran was watching Wesley, too.
Celia takes two cans of ginger ale out of the fridge. She hands one of them to me and we sit at the glass-topped kitchen table, the one bound for the Salvation Army.
“Have you ever been to England?” I ask her.
She nods. “Once. Right after college.”
“I’m going in the fall. With concert band.”
“I didn’t know you were in concert band,” she says. “What do you play?”
“The clarinet.”
She makes a face. “Really?”
“It’s better than the tuba,” I say.
“So when are you going?”