Our town is small enough that people still notice things. They notice who is mowing their own lawn and who hires someone. They notice which porch lights burn all night and which houses are plunged into darkness at ten o’clock. They notice who still climbs a ladder to clean his gutters when he probably shouldn’t, who leaves his Christmas lights until February, and which grandchildren come often, and which others don’t. The hardware store closes early on Wednesdays. The church bells still ring on Sundays, even though they’re not as loud as they used to be, or maybe it’s my ear dropping. On summer evenings, screen doors can be heard slamming all along the block, like punctuation marks. If the weather is clear,the air smells slightly of cut grass, road diesel and what someone is frying for dinner.
Mom and I live in the same little shingle house where I spent my teenage years, where my dad came home covered in dust from the factory, where my prom bodice withered in a jam jar on the counter, where my children played with clothespins in the laundry basket, and where Mom once canned enough green beans in a single August to feed what seemed like half the county.
When people learn that I live with my mother at eighty, they often imagine something sad or humiliating. They imagine a woman who never really took off and drifted into addiction. They imagine solitude wearing comfortable shoes. They come up with a failed plan. The truth is less dramatic and more human than that.
I was married for fifty-three years to an honest man, Walter. Walter smelled of aftershave, sawdust and winter air. He wasn’t flashy. He didn’t say extravagant things. He heated the car for me on very cold mornings without anyone asking him. He always turned on the porch light before nightfall. He was dirtying the back steps before I knew there was going to be ice. He would take out my cup of coffee in the evening if he knew I had a morning meeting at church. He had a laugh that came from his chest and rose slowly, as if the amusement had to overcome a sort of modesty before showing itself. My mother was married for sixty-one years to my father, Joseph, who believed that every problem in the world could be solved either by tightening a bolt,or by talking less. My father was not a sentimental man. He was a stable man. He came home tired, ate what was on the table, fixed what was broken, and believed that being there every day mattered more than talking about his feelings. In his generation, perhaps that was the case.w
Dad left first. He died in his bed after a short illness, one hand placed on the blanket as if he had only placed it a moment earlier. Mom was sitting with her back straight next to him, a washcloth on her knees because her hands needed to be busy. She had always been like that. When fear entered the room, she got to work. Wash something. Fold something. Peel potatoes. Sew a hem. Store a drawer. Walter died six years later of a stroke that took him away so quickly that we were all shocked. One morning he was in the garage moaning at a mower blade. In the evening, he was in a hospital bed with machines that did most of his breathing.There are deaths that come slowly enough that everyone has time to gather their coats and words. And then there are dead people like Walter’s, which open beneath your feet while you still decide what you’re going to defrost for dinner.
