I sweep the kitchen and put the dishes that Louise did not take back into the cupboard. A car horn honks outside. BEEP! BEEP! It is David. He is alone. Elaine is not with him.
“You are last, David.” I say this as he walks through the door. David stops in front of me and looks around.
“God, this takes me back.” He walks slowly from room to room, touching the walls, rubbing a doorframe. “Where’s Gramp’s boat model? Did you know I helped with that? I did the masts and cut the sails.”
When he sees my face, he says, “John took it, didn’t he? What about the watercolors? Who took the china?”
“We could not find Homer,” I tell him, “but John took the signed prints and the model. He didn’t know what it was, but said it might be worth a lot of money. It was not just a boat model. It was a schooner,” I say.
David shakes his head. “Jesus!” he says, and turns away. “I should have gotten here sooner. What’s left? Nothing but a bunch of crap!” He kicks a box. I jump. The box tips over and papers fly out. David squats on his heels, picks them up one by one, and looks at them.
“Hell,” he says, and sits hard on the floor. “Oh hell,” he says again, and lifts page after page. I sit down next to him and watch.
“One lousy point! Did you know that?” He looks at me. “No, of course you don’t.”
“What?” I ask.
“The bar exam,” he says. “I missed it by one point. I failed it twice. That’s why I went back to school. That’s why I got my MBA. One point.” He shakes his head. “Mom and John never let me forget it. Neither does Elaine. We were in law school together. Did you know that? Graduated the same year. Elaine passed on her first try. She’s brilliant. Really brilliant.”
He does not look like he thinks she is brilliant. He sounds sad.
“Of course, they all had to let Gram and Gramp know. They never let me forget it for an instant. Not for a goddamned minute.” He sounds like Gram.
David crumples the papers into a giant ball and gets to his feet. I follow him to the kitchen and he stuffs them into the trash. He walks into the living room, to Gram’s bedroom, and back again. I follow behind.
He opens drawers and cupboards.
“Isn’t there anything left? Who took the jewelry? Elaine wondered about the necklaces and rings,” he says.
“Louise took the jewelry, but the coin collection is still here,” I tell him. I just remembered this. Neither John nor Louise asked about it.
“Well, that’s something,” he says. “At least that’s something. Cash. That might satisfy her.” He smiles slowly. “Did you know I sorted all Gramp’s pennies and dimes when I was little? I used to bring Gramp all my change from my lunch money at school. He’d look through it and pick out the ones he wanted.”
I listen to David talk. I am not afraid of him, but I still hear Gram say,
Careful.
“David is weak,” Gram used to say. “More like his father than John is. He’s a weak, weak man. Exactly like your father. That’s why they married the same kind of woman. The kind that wears the pants and spends the money.”
I have never seen Elaine or Louise wear pants, but I do not see them very often so I do not know what they wear when I am not around. “He looks strong to me,” I would say, but Gram would chew her lip and frown.
“Just remember, Perry, he’s weak. The weak are more dangerous in the end. You remember that.”
I help divide the coin collection into three brown paper sacks and carry them out to his BMW. David gives me a hard hug around the shoulders and leaves whistling.
I think it is funny his car has BM for a name. BM means taking a poop, but I did not tell him this. It would not be nice. Gram always laughed.
“Crap, Perry. BM’s another name for crap.” She would hit her knee and howl. “His car’s a crapper!”
Thinking about what Gram used to say makes me laugh, and then cry again.
I feel a little better, and call Holsted’s to leave a message for Keith. He does not have a phone on his boat. I will need more help to empty the house before it is sold. There is a lot of stuff to clear out and pack. Gram’s housedresses and aprons. Her underwear. Her shoes. I set one dress aside to keep. The yellow one with green stripes. It smells like Gram. I love that dress. She always wore it to bingo.
Keith is my friend and gives me a hand when it is time to move.
“Why are you selling the house?” Keith asks this for the eighth or twelfth time. I have lost count. He does not understand my family. He tells me this over and over.
“I sure don’t understand your family,” he says, and shakes his head. “That wife of your brother’s. What’s her name? Elaine? She’s a bitch on wheels!”
I looked at Elaine’s feet the last time I saw her and I did not see any roller skates. I think he has her mixed up with someone else.
Keith is picking his nose. I wish he would not do that, but I do not tell him to stop. If a person wants to pick their nose, I guess they should be able to.
“They say it’s for the best. It will be more secure for me. Better for my future.” I have to remember all the different words David, John, and Elaine used.
“Better for them maybe.” Keith is what Gram used to call cynical. Cynical means you are honest in a nasty way.
Keith has a 1982 Toyota truck that has rust spots and is painted with gray primer. He calls his truck Yo because the To and Ta are rubbed off the tailgate. Yo carries five loads to the dump. Yo is good for hauling crap. Gram and I had a lot of crap.
“A hell of a crap hauler!” he says, and slaps Yo’s dashboard with his hand. When he does that, the knob to the heater falls off.
“Get that, Per!” Keith yells. I have to bend down quick and grab it so it does not fall through the hole in the floor. The hole is fun to look through because I can see how fast Yo goes without looking at the speedometer.
It took Keith and me two weeks to finish because we could only work on the house after getting off work at Holsted’s. We had to hurry, because John said the house would close soon. That did not mean the doors would shut, it meant I would have to move out.
“You’ll have to find somewhere else to live.” John told me this.
He got mad when I called him to let him know we needed more time.
“Come on, Perry. How much time does it take to get rid of all that garbage?” John yelled. “Christ! Just use a backhoe!” and he laughed over the phone. I did not know what was funny about a backhoe.
“What’s a backhoe?” I asked Keith. “Is that like a tractor?”
He got pissed.
“The shits!” he said. “The moneygrubbers!” he snorted.
Keith asked why he wasn’t invited to Gram’s funeral.
“John said it was just for the family,” I said. “Gary wasn’t invited either.” I feel bad about that.
“Your family is a bunch of
fucks.
You hear me, Per?”
I start to cry again.
“Don’t worry, Per. You’ll get through this. Everybody does,” he says, and pats my back. “Life goes on, Per. It surely does go on.”
Keith and I pile old crossword puzzle books in boxes for the dump. I take one to keep. Gram’s handwriting is like a spider’s web, all wavy and thin. I like to look at it and think of her doing the crosswords.
“Why’d you let them take all the valuable things?” Keith is my friend. Friends are people who get mad when they think someone does something unfair to you. He does not understand.
“I got all the things I wanted,” I tell him. “I got the really good stuff. The melamine dishes decorated with anchors and flags that Gram and Gramp used to have on their boat, the free silverware from when we bought groceries at QFC.”
I also have my clothes, four shoeboxes of Gram’s papers and pictures, and two large boxes of stuff marked SAVE.
He just shakes his head.
I can keep all the dictionaries and crossword puzzle books I want. I find three thesauruses. I do not know what a thesaurus is. I have to look it up in the dictionary.
“The-saur-us,” I say, and look inside.
“Sounds like a frigging dinosaur.” Keith does not act like he cares about words.
“It means treasure. A book of words,” I say. “Gram always said words are the key to life. She would want me to keep these.” Treasure
.
I like that.
I am responsible for Gram’s house until it is sold. I mow the lawn and wash the windows until they shine. I vacuum the living room carpet, scrub the kitchen floor tiles, and hose off the driveway. Keith helps me.
Being responsible means that you work for a thing that you love. I loved Gram’s house. Gram and I had Christmas stockings, Easter baskets, and Thanksgiving dinners there. It was perfect for the two of us. I had my own bedroom and Gram had hers. The rest of the house was filled with crap. Even Gram said that. But it was okay because the only person who came over after Gramp died was Keith. We did not need anyone else. It was a wonderful house.
John said we would not get much money for it. We did escrow. I think it has something to do with birds. Gram would say it was for the birds. That is what she would say.
John told me there would be a lot of paperwork, but I had to go to work at Holsted’s. It was not my day off.
“We can handle it for you. Sign here.” He gave me a paper. It gave him my Power to the house so he could write my name thirty-two times. That is what he said. Escrow is when you have to write your name thirty-two times. He told me this.
Keith takes me back to Gram’s house for the last time. I hear Yo’s engine run. RATTLE. RATTLE. John hands me an envelope with a five-hundred-dollar check inside marked HOUSE SALE. I will put two hundred and fifty dollars in my checking account and two hundred and fifty in my savings account. Spend half and save half, Gram always said. I would rather have had Gram and our house than five hundred dollars. It does not seem like much money for a house.
“That’s it!” John smiles over my head. Elaine stands behind him, next to David, and Louise stands on the other side. I hand David the key to Gram’s house. Elaine grabs it out of his hand and John grabs it out of hers.
They make me sweat and my armpits smell. Gram always said she knew when they were up to something.
“They have that look!” she would say.
“What look?” I always asked.
“Don’t be smart,” Gram would say. Her lips would stretch tight and her brown eyes would squint.
They have that look,
I hear her say inside my ear.
They have that look now.
10
I have no place to live so Gary let me move into the apartment right above Holsted’s where Otis the security guard used to stay. He stole money out of the cash register and was arrested.
“Serves him right, Per! He’s in jail now! Monroe Penitentiary, with wife beaters, baby killers, and perverts!” Keith said.
“This will work fine, Perry. You need a place to live and I need someone to live over the store at night,” Gary said.
To get to my apartment I have to climb up a long outside stairway right above Holsted’s main entry. My front door opens into a large space. Half is the kitchen and half is the living room. The kitchen side has a stove, refrigerator, and counter.
“The sink leaks so you have to keep a bucket underneath,” Gary warns. I have four cupboards. I put my cans and cereal in the top ones and keep dishes in the bottom ones. The living room is neat because it has a big picture window that has a view of the parking lot and marina. I can look down and see who comes into Holsted’s. That is so cool. I have to keep a towel on the sill because rain leaks around the edges.
A long wall across from the door fits Gram’s couch perfectly. My table and chairs sit next to the window. I put Gram’s double bed in the bedroom and scoot it against the wall. Gram’s old white night-stand is on one side with my clock radio on top. The radio part does not work and the alarm sometimes does not ring, but the clock keeps good time. It flashes and is digital. That means it has numbers instead of hands.
There is a short hall off the living room with a washer and dryer at the end, a bathroom on one side, and my bedroom door on the other. I have a toilet, sink, and shower, but no tub. That is okay. I do not like bathtubs because that is where they put murdered people on TV.
Keith helped me move into my apartment, but he would not help me clean.
“I have to draw the line somewhere, Per! I’ve never cleaned a kitchen in my life and don’t intend to start now.” Keith helped me carry all of my furniture up the long stairway to my apartment. He only said the F-word twice and the S-word once when he pinched his finger between the doorframe and the sofa.
“This will be really convenient having you so close, Perry,” Gary said. Convenient means that other people do not have to work so hard.
Keith’s twenty-seven-foot Catalina sailboat
Diamond Girl
is moored in the first slip on C dock. I can see his boat from my window and when he sees me he waves. I like to visit Keith, but he sleeps a lot and I do not want to bother him. I would like to live on a twenty-seven -foot Catalina. That would be cool.
The first time I met Keith was the first time I saw
Diamond Girl.
I cannot think of one without the other. I saw them coming into the harbor and I watched as Keith steered her to the slip. He did not do a good job and almost crashed
Diamond Girl
’s bow into the dock. That’s okay. People make mistakes when they drive boats.
“Grab my line, will you?” I heard Keith before I saw him and before I knew he was Keith. He did not need to tell me what to do. I was already holding
Diamond Girl
off the dock with my foot. Keith threw out a fender and I wrapped his bowline on a cleat.
“She’s beautiful,” I said. “Catalinas are great boats.” And I helped him secure his aft line.
Most people look at me hard when they first hear me talk. Keith is not most people.