My Kids Took My House Keys at Christmas. The Locksmith They Called Was My Granddaughter.

Part 3: The Sunday Calls

Marcus did not answer.

I answered for him.

“Mine,” I said. “Just mine. Since 2009.”

Jennifer said, “That’s not possible.”

“It’s very possible,” I said. “Ray put it in my name when he got sick. He wanted me to be safe. He told me at the time and I signed the papers at the kitchen table and then I forgot about it, because for fourteen years nobody has needed me to remember.”

“But,” Jennifer said, and stopped.

“But you assumed,” I said, “that because Ray had handled the paperwork all those years, the paperwork was still in his name and would pass to the kids. You assumed I didn’t know what I owned.”

She didn’t say anything.

Marcus put the printout down very carefully.

“Mom,” he said. “Why didn’t you tell us.”

“Because,” I said, “you didn’t ask. You told.”

There was a long moment.

Kate started crying. Not loud. Just tears down her face while she looked at her hands.

Hazel got up from the table and went to the counter and started, of all things, making a fresh pot of coffee. She moved through my kitchen like she’d been in it a hundred times, and I realized: on the phone, I had described it to her. The dish towel drawer. The place I kept the filters. She had listened.

“Look,” Hazel said, her back to us, measuring grounds. “I’m not going to change the locks. Obviously. But I also drove six hours round trip, so we’re going to sit here and talk, and Grandma’s going to say what she wants, and everyone’s going to listen. Okay?”

Nobody argued.

She poured five cups. She put one in front of each of us. She sat down.

I looked at my son, who had not looked me in the face in ten minutes, and at my daughter, who was crying, and at my daughter-in-law, who was doing math behind her eyes, and at my granddaughter, who was steady.

I said, “I am not moving to Sycamore Grove.”

Marcus nodded, slow.

“I am not selling this house in February. I am not selling it in the spring, either. I might sell it someday. When I decide. Not when you decide.”

“Okay,” he said.

“The stove thing was once. In October. I turned it on to boil water for tea, I went to answer the door for a package, I came back in three minutes and turned it off. Ellen saw it through the window and panicked. It happened one time. Not two.”

“Okay.”

“I skinned my knee in October. I did not fall. I have not fallen. I go to yoga on Thursdays at the community center. There are women there who are eighty-one and eighty-four. I am the youngest one in the room.”

Jennifer made a small sound.

“I forgot Kate’s birthday because I was in Vail with a man named Doug, whom none of you have met, because I have not decided yet whether he is worth introducing. He might be. He might not. It’s not your business either way.”

Kate looked up.

“Doug,” she said.

“Doug.”

“How long.”

“Since March.”

She laughed, one small wet laugh, and put her face in her hands.

Marcus said, “Mom. I. I thought I was helping.”

“I know you did.”

“Jennifer’s mom, last year, we waited too long, and by the time we, and it was so hard, and I just.”

He couldn’t finish.

I reached across the table and I put my hand on my son’s hand and I felt how much bigger it was than mine, and how it was still, somewhere in the bones, the hand of the boy who had held onto my finger crossing the street on Elmwood Avenue in 1978.

“I know, Marcus. I know why you did it. That doesn’t mean you got to do it.”

He nodded. His eyes were wet.

“I don’t know if I can forgive Jennifer for the folder today,” I said, and Jennifer flinched. “I’ll think about it. I’m not saying I won’t. I’m saying I need some time.”

“Diane,” Jennifer said, “I.”

“I need some time, Jennifer.”

She closed her mouth.

I turned to Kate.

“You,” I said, “flew in from Denver knowing this was going to happen and sat at my table last night and ate my ham.”

“Mom.”

“You didn’t warn me.”

“I didn’t know how to.”

“You call your daughter. That’s how you would have.”

She started crying harder. Hazel got up and stood behind her mother’s chair and put both hands on Kate’s shoulders, and I thought, look at that. Look at that girl.

“I should have,” Kate said. “Mom, I should have. I’ve been. I’ve been letting Marcus decide things because it’s easier from Denver and I hate that about myself and I have hated it for a year.”

“Then stop it.”

“Yeah.”

“Come home more than twice a year.”

“Yeah.”

“Call me on Sundays too. Not instead of Hazel. In addition.”

“Yeah, Mom.”

We sat there. The coffee was still hot. Nobody drank it.

After a while Hazel said, “Okay. I have to go. I have another job at three in Ashland.”

Marcus looked up. “You drove six hours for this.”

“I drove six hours for Grandma,” Hazel said. “The job in Ashland is on the way back. I stacked them.”

He laughed. It came out cracked but it was a laugh.

“You really are a locksmith.”

“I really am.”

“Since when.”

“Since about a year and a half ago. I did an apprenticeship. I like it. I’m good at it. Grandma knows because I told her in May.”

He looked at me. Not hurt this time. Just quiet.

“You knew all of it,” he said.

“I knew most of it.”

Hazel packed up her toolbox. She hugged me at the door, and she smelled like WD-40 and vanilla, which is a combination I did not know I had been missing until I had it back.

“Sunday at four,” she said into my ear.

“Sunday at four.”

She hugged Kate, longer, and she nodded at Marcus, and she made a face at Jennifer that was not friendly and not unfriendly and left everything to be figured out later.

Then she was gone, and it was just the four of us in the kitchen, and the day was only half over.

Marcus stayed at the table for a long time after Jennifer went upstairs.

“Mom,” he said finally. “Can I ask you something.”

“Yes.”

“Did Dad, when he put the house in your name. Did he say anything about us. About me and Kate.”

I thought about it.

Ray had said a lot of things at that kitchen table in 2009. He had been thin already. His hands had shaken signing.

“He said,” I told Marcus, “that he trusted me to know when it was time. That he didn’t want anyone deciding for me, and he didn’t want me deciding out of guilt. He said, Diane, when you’re ready you’ll know, and if you’re never ready that’s also fine.”

Marcus looked at his coffee.

“He knew,” he said.

“He knew you’d try.”

“I hate that he knew that about me.”

“He didn’t hate it. He just knew. There’s a difference.”

He nodded.

He was quiet for a while.

Then he said, “The stove really was just once?”

“Just once.”

“Ellen’s kind of a.”

“Yes, she is.”

He almost smiled.

He said, “I’m going to go for a walk.”

“Okay, honey.”

He got up. At the door of the kitchen he stopped and he turned around and he said, “I’m sorry, Mom. I’m really sorry.”

“I know you are.”

“Is that enough.”

“It’s the start. Come back for dinner. We’ll see about the middle.”

He put his coat on and went out into the cold, and I sat at my kitchen table in my house that was mine, and I finished my coffee, which was still, thank God, too strong.

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