Chapter 1
PART 1 — THE PHONE CALL THAT TURNED MY HOME INTO THEIR PLAN
My daughter-in-law called while I was at my cardiologist and said she and my son had spoken to a realtor about listing my house, but when she asked what I meant by your house, I couldn’t stop smiling because she had no idea the house was already protected.
The morning my daughter-in-law called to tell me she had already spoken to a realtor about my house, I was sitting in the waiting room of my cardiologist’s office, trying to fill out a form with fingers that would not cooperate.
It was one of those suburban medical buildings that all seem to have been designed by the same tired committee. Beige walls. Gray carpet. A ficus tree in the corner that may or may not have been real. A stack of magazines on the side table, all of them at least six months old, all of them promising better sleep, better skin, better joints, better everything.
The television mounted high in the corner was turned to a morning show, but the volume was low enough that every word came out like a whisper from another room. A woman in bright pink was talking about spring recipes. A man beside
her smiled too widely over a bowl of something green.
My reading glasses had fogged up because I had rushed in from the damp March air, and the pen they had given me at the front desk kept slipping against the glossy paper of the intake form. My left hand was not trembling exactly, but it was not steady either. That was why I was there. That, and the small tightness in my chest that had returned on Tuesday while I was shelving large-print mysteries at the library.
Name. Date of birth. Emergency contact. Current medications.
I had written “Loretta Whitman” at the top of the form in letters that looked less like my handwriting than I wanted them to. Then my phone buzzed in my purse.
At first, I did not recognize the number.
A 312 area code.
Chicago.
My son had moved there eight months earlier with his
wife, Gwen. Leonard liked Chicago. He liked the noise, the restaurants, the feeling that everything important was happening within reach of a train line. He had always had that kind of longing, even as a boy. He would stand in our driveway in Oregon and look at airplanes crossing the evening sky as if each one were carrying a private invitation he had not yet opened.
I almost did not answer.
The nurse would call my name any minute. The form was only half finished. The room smelled faintly of hand sanitizer and burned coffee. I was tired before the day had even begun.
But I answered because mothers answer.
“Hello?”
“Hi, Loretta.”
Not Mom.
Never Mom.
Not from Gwen.
Always Loretta.
She said it the way she might say the name of a dry cleaner, a dental hygienist, or a woman from the homeowners’ association who needed to be
handled politely.
“Hi, Gwen,” I said.
Her voice came through bright and smooth, with that clean corporate cheer she used when she wanted to make unpleasant things sound like well-organized opportunities.
“I wanted to let you know that Leonard and I have been talking,” she said, “and we’ve made some decisions about your situation.”
My situation.
I remember that phrase with unusual clarity because I had to set the pen down on the plastic chair beside me. I placed it carefully, as if the movement mattered, as if a pen falling to the floor might embarrass me more than the call already had.
Across from me, an elderly man in a navy windbreaker was doing a word search puzzle. He had a stainless-steel thermos of coffee balanced beside his shoe. He seemed very content, circling words with slow confidence.
I breathed in the way my doctor had told me to breathe. Slowly through the nose. Hold. Slowly out.
“What decisions?” I asked.
“Well,” Gwen said, “you’re alone down there.”
Down there.
As if I were not in my own home, my own town, my own life, but some inconvenient location on a map.
“The house is too big for one person, honestly. And Leonard feels, we both feel, that it makes more sense financially for you to be somewhere smaller. An apartment maybe, or one of those senior communities.”
I looked at the intake form on my lap.
Have you experienced dizziness?
I thought that was an interesting question.
“There’s a lovely one near us, actually,” Gwen continued, “in Schaumburg. We already looked at it online.”
We.
Already.
Online.
The word “lovely” did not help.
“And the house?” I asked.
The pause that followed was very small, but it contained a whole room full of things nobody had asked my permission to move.
“We spoke to a realtor just to get a number,” she said. “You’d be surprised what it would sell for in this market.”
I looked at the elderly man with the word search. He had found something diagonal and was smiling to himself. I remember envying him, which sounds silly now, but it is true. He had a puzzle with answers hidden inside it. I had a phone pressed to my ear and a daughter-in-law calmly telling me that she and my son had begun planning the sale of my home.
“I see,” I said.
Gwen heard those two words and mistook them for softness.
“Leonard thinks it would give you some financial security,” she said. “The proceeds could go into an account, and we could help manage—”
“Is my son there?”
This time the pause was longer.
There was a rustling sound, a muffled word, the faint scrape of the phone changing hands.
Then Leonard’s voice came through, distant and reluctant.
“Hey, Mom.”
Hey.
Casual. Thin. Like we were discussing whether he should pick up milk.
“Leonard,” I said carefully, “did you ask a realtor to look at my house?”
“We just wanted to know the value,” he said. “It’s not a big deal.”
“It’s my house, sweetheart.”
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