We Bought Aunt June\u2019s House So Dad Would Never Be Homeless. Then He Moved His Girlfriend and Her Grown Sons In for Free.<\/p>\n
We Bought Aunt June\u2019s House So Dad Would Never Be Homeless. Then He Moved His Girlfriend and Her Grown Sons In for Free.<\/p>\n
\u201cTammy and her boys are moving in Saturday,\u201d Dad said.<\/p>\n
He said it the way a man tells you the weather. His fork was still in his green beans. He didn\u2019t even look up.<\/p>\n
We were sitting at Aunt June\u2019s kitchen table, the yellow one with the chrome legs, on a Tuesday night in October. I\u2019d stopped by after my last service call of the day to look at the pilot light on the water heater. I still had my work jacket on, and my hands still smelled like copper and flux.<\/p>\n
I set my coffee cup down very carefully. I didn\u2019t trust what my hand might do with it.<\/p>\n
\u201cMoving in where?\u201d I said.<\/p>\n
\u201cHere.\u201d He pointed his fork at the ceiling, at the walls, at the whole little house. \u201cTammy, Kyle and Travis. Saturday morning. She\u2019s renting a truck. I figured you\u2019d want to know before you came by and found strangers in the hall.\u201d<\/p>\n
Tammy Reese was Dad\u2019s girlfriend of eight months. I\u2019d met her twice. She was 58, worked the deli counter at the grocery store in town, and laughed loud at things that weren\u2019t all that funny. Her boys were 31 and 28. I had nothing against her.<\/p>\n
\u201cDad,\u201d I said, \u201cthere are two bedrooms in this house.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cKyle can have the front room once I clear it out. Travis can take the couch till he gets on his feet. Tammy\u2019s with me.\u201d He shrugged. \u201cPeople have lived in smaller.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd who\u2019s paying the gas bill when there are four grown people running that furnace all winter?\u201d<\/p>\n
He didn\u2019t even lift his eyes from his plate.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou always have,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
I sat there with that.<\/p>\n
It was true. That was the worst part. It was completely true, and he said it like it was something about me instead of something about him.<\/p>\n
\u201cDad,\u201d I said slowly. \u201cMom and I bought this house.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI know who bought it.\u201d Now he looked up. His eyes were hard. \u201cYou and your mother bought it so you could feel good about yourselves. I\u2019ve lived here six years, Shane. It\u2019s my house. Don\u2019t make it my problem now that I finally got somebody.\u201d<\/p>\n
He got up. He scraped his plate into the trash. He ran water over it in the sink.<\/p>\n
That was the end of the conversation as far as he was concerned. It had always been that way with Dad. He said the thing, and then he walked off from it and left you standing in the middle of it.<\/p>\n
I went down the basement stairs and looked at the pilot light. It was fine. It had always been fine.<\/p>\n
I drove home with both hands on the wheel and the radio off, and the whole way I kept hearing it.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s my house.<\/p>\n
There were two names on the deed to that house. I\u2019d watched them both get signed at a title company six years earlier. Neither one of them was his.<\/p>\n
Six years ago, my father lost his apartment over the hardware store on Main Street.<\/p>\n
The building sold to a man from Louisville who wanted to redo the upstairs into something fancy. The new rent was almost double. Dad couldn\u2019t pay it.<\/p>\n
He was 60 then. He\u2019d retired early from the foundry two counties over after thirty-one years, because his back finally gave out from lifting core boxes and the plant was offering a buyout. The buyout wasn\u2019t much. His pension was less. Six hundred and eighty dollars a month, plus what Social Security would give him later.<\/p>\n
He didn\u2019t tell me he\u2019d lost the apartment.<\/p>\n
I found out from a man at the parts counter at the supply house. He leaned over the counter while he was ringing up my capacitors and said, kind of careful, like he was stepping around a hole, \u201cShane, I\u2019ve seen your dad\u2019s truck parked behind the VFW three mornings in a row. Everything all right?\u201d<\/p>\n
It wasn\u2019t.<\/p>\n
He was sleeping on a buddy\u2019s couch, it turned out. And the buddy\u2019s wife wanted him gone. My father was 60 years old with two duffel bags and a Silverado with 240,000 miles on it, and he hadn\u2019t said one word to his only son.<\/p>\n
I drove out to that buddy\u2019s house after work. Dad was sitting on the front steps smoking a cigarette he\u2019d quit twelve years earlier.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhy didn\u2019t you call me?\u201d I asked him.<\/p>\n
He flicked the ash. \u201cBecause you\u2019d have done something about it.\u201d<\/p>\n
That was Dad. He\u2019d rather sleep in a truck than let somebody see him need something.<\/p>\n
That same spring, Aunt June died.<\/p>\n
June was Dad\u2019s aunt, his mother\u2019s sister. She was 91. She went in her sleep in the little white house on Persimmon Street where she\u2019d lived since 1958, with her African violets lined up on the windowsill and her porch swing painted fresh white.<\/p>\n
June never had children of her own. She married late, to a widower with one grown son named Ron. When she passed, the house went to Ron. Ron lived in Ohio and didn\u2019t want a house in southern Indiana.<\/p>\n
He listed it at $72,000.<\/p>\n
It needed a roof. The furnace was a 1987 model that I wouldn\u2019t have let a customer run for one more winter. The house sat on the market for a month without a single offer.<\/p>\n
So I called Ron.<\/p>\n
I told him who I was. I told him my father needed somewhere to land, and that I couldn\u2019t pay $72,000.<\/p>\n
He was quiet for a minute. Then he said something I didn\u2019t expect.<\/p>\n
\u201cJune talked about you every Christmas,\u201d he said. \u201cHer little helper. The green bean boy.\u201d<\/p>\n
He took $64,000. I think he could have gotten more if he\u2019d waited. I think he didn\u2019t want to wait. And I think he wanted June\u2019s house to go to somebody she knew.<\/p>\n
Problem was, I didn\u2019t have $64,000.<\/p>\n
I was 33 years old. I was a heating and air tech for Rick Hollis Heating and Air. I had a mortgage of my own and a wife who was still paying on her nursing school loans.<\/p>\n
I could get half.<\/p>\n
I went to the credit union and took out a home equity loan for $32,000 against our own house. Seven-year term. $468 a month.<\/p>\n
Amy signed for it at our kitchen table without making me explain it twice. She just looked at the papers, looked at me, and picked up the pen.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s your dad,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd June was June.\u201d<\/p>\n
I paid that loan off in five years of Saturday side jobs. Furnace tune-ups for widows. Ductwork in basements. A whole summer of window units for a church camp. Five years of Saturdays.<\/p>\n
The other half came from my mother.<\/p>\n
People always ask about that part when they hear the story. Why would a woman who\u2019d been divorced from a man for fourteen years put $32,000 of her own money into a house so he\u2019d have a place to sleep?<\/p>\n
There are a few answers. All of them are true.<\/p>\n
The first one is Aunt June.<\/p>\n
When I was little, Mom was waiting tables at the diner and Dad was on day shift at the foundry. It was June who watched me every summer. June had that porch swing, painted white, and she\u2019d sit me on it with a dishpan full of green beans between us and teach me how to snap them.<\/p>\n
She called me her helper. She paid me a quarter a pan.<\/p>\n
When my parents fought, which was most of my childhood, it was June\u2019s house I got sent to. When they finally split, the year I turned 19, June was the one who drove over to Mom\u2019s apartment with a casserole and sat with her at the kitchen table until it got dark.<\/p>\n
\u201cJune was more family to me than anybody in the whole Kolb line,\u201d Mom told me once. Then she patted my hand. \u201cPresent company excepted.\u201d<\/p>\n
The second answer is that my mother is a practical woman.<\/p>\n
She\u2019d worked twenty-seven years in a school cafeteria. She had $41,000 in savings from three decades of clipping coupons and working banquets on the weekends. And she did the math.<\/p>\n
She\u2019d retire someday. Her rent kept going up. A paid-for house on a quiet street, a house she\u2019d loved since before I was born, was the best place she could think of to put money she would someday need.<\/p>\n
\u201cYour daddy can stay there until he\u2019s on his feet,\u201d she told me. \u201cAnd when I retire, I\u2019ll want it. We\u2019ll cross that bridge when we get there.\u201d<\/p>\n
The third answer is the one she\u2019d never say out loud.<\/p>\n
She didn\u2019t want the father of her son sleeping in a truck behind the VFW.<\/p>\n
She wasn\u2019t in love with him. She hadn\u2019t been in love with him for a very long time. But she wasn\u2019t cruel. My mother has never been cruel to anybody in her life.<\/p>\n
We closed on it in May at Hoosier Title Company, in a little conference room with a bowl of peppermints on the table.<\/p>\n
The closing agent was a woman named Carol with reading glasses on a beaded chain. She slid the warranty deed across the table and showed us where to sign.<\/p>\n
\u201cGrantees,\u201d she said, tapping the page. \u201cShane Kolb and Linda Kolb. Tenants in common, equal shares. That right?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s right,\u201d Mom said.<\/p>\n
Carol had it recorded at the county the following Tuesday. They mailed us each a copy. Mine went into the gray fireproof box in our bedroom closet with our marriage license and the kids\u2019 birth certificates.<\/p>\n
Dad\u2019s name wasn\u2019t on the deed. There was never a lease. There was never any rent. Not one dollar, ever.<\/p>\n
He moved in the first week of June. He said thank you once, in the driveway, without looking at either one of us.<\/p>\n
Then he went inside and shut the door.<\/p>\n
I want to be fair to my father. He\u2019s my father, and he\u2019s not a bad man. He\u2019s a man who\u2019s been disappointed by almost everything in his life, and who learned early to be the first one to walk away.<\/p>\n
He kept the yard mowed. He kept the gutters clean. He fixed the drip in June\u2019s bathroom sink with a washer from his own coffee can of washers. He repainted the porch swing every single spring. He didn\u2019t tear the place up.<\/p>\n
But he didn\u2019t pay for it, either.<\/p>\n
Mom paid half the property taxes, about $350 a year. I paid the other half, plus the homeowner\u2019s insurance, $940 a year with Indiana Farm Mutual.<\/p>\n
And most months, right around the twentieth, my phone would ring.<\/p>\n
\u201cRunning a little short this month, bud.\u201d<\/p>\n
It was never a lot. Eighty dollars. A hundred and ten in January. A hundred and forty that February we had the ice storm.<\/p>\n
I paid it because he was my father. And because it was easier to pay it than to listen to him not ask for it.<\/p>\n
Six years of that is a lot of Januarys.<\/p>\n
Mom never once went to the house in those six years. Not one time. When Dad moved in, she said it was his to live in until it was hers, and she wasn\u2019t going to be the ex-wife standing in his kitchen.<\/p>\n
But she\u2019d ask me about it. Whether the lilac by the back step had bloomed. Whether he\u2019d kept the porch swing painted. Whether the front bedroom still got the morning light.<\/p>\n
I always said yes. Because it did.<\/p>\n
That front bedroom has two windows on the east side. In the morning, the sun comes through June\u2019s old lace curtains and lands on the floor in little flowers.<\/p>\n
Mom would close her eyes when I told her that. Like she could see it.<\/p>\n
Amy was at our kitchen table with her reading glasses pushed up on her head, doing the bills, when I got home that Tuesday night.<\/p>\n
She took one look at my face and pushed the checkbook aside.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat did he do?\u201d<\/p>\n
I told her. All of it. Tammy. The boys. The truck on Saturday. She listened all the way through without interrupting, which is one of the reasons I married her.<\/p>\n
When I got to the part where he said we bought the house so we could feel good about ourselves, she took her glasses off and set them on the table.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo call him back,\u201d she said. \u201cTell him no. It\u2019s your house.\u201d<\/p>\n
But I\u2019d been telling my father no my whole life, and he\u2019d never once heard it as anything but maybe.<\/p>\n
He\u2019d say \u201cfine\u201d and hang up. And then on Saturday morning, that truck would come anyway. And once Tammy\u2019s boys had their beds set up and their mail coming to that address, I\u2019d be the son who put his own father\u2019s girlfriend and her kids out on the curb in November.<\/p>\n
I\u2019d never get them out without becoming a man I didn\u2019t want to be.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe doesn\u2019t hear no,\u201d I said. \u201cHe hears a starting price.\u201d<\/p>\n
I got up and went into our bedroom. I pulled the gray fireproof box down off the closet shelf and brought it back to the table. I dug through it until I found the envelope from the county recorder\u2019s office.<\/p>\n
I unfolded the deed and laid it flat between us.<\/p>\n
Warranty Deed. Recorded May 14th. Grantees: Shane Kolb and Linda Kolb, as tenants in common.<\/p>\n
Amy put her finger on Mom\u2019s name.<\/p>\n
Then I went to the drawer by the phone where I keep my receipts. I\u2019d always kept them. I don\u2019t know why. Habit, I guess. Every time I paid Dad\u2019s gas bill, I\u2019d written the amount on a sticky note and dropped it in that drawer.<\/p>\n
I dumped them out on the table. Little yellow squares. Six years of them.<\/p>\n
Amy picked up a calculator. She added them up while I sat there not saying anything.<\/p>\n
\u201cFive thousand six hundred and twenty dollars,\u201d she said quietly. \u201cJust the gas. Not counting the insurance or your half of the taxes.\u201d<\/p>\n
We sat there and looked at that number.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe told me it\u2019s his house,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n
Amy thought about that. She put her glasses back on and looked at me over the top of them, the way she looks at a patient who\u2019s just told her he feels fine.<\/p>\n
\u201cThen call your mother,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
I called Mom at nine o\u2019clock, which is late for her.<\/p>\n
She answered on the second ring with the television going in the background. Some show about people buying houses on tropical islands.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat\u2019s wrong?\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Mothers don\u2019t say hello after eight-thirty.<\/p>\n
I told her everything. Tammy. The boys. Saturday. And I told her about the gas bills, which I\u2019d never once told her in six years.<\/p>\n
She was quiet for a long time.<\/p>\n
\u201cWell,\u201d she said finally. \u201cIsn\u2019t that something.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cMom,\u201d I said. \u201cWhat\u2019s going on with your lease?\u201d<\/p>\n
That was the thing I\u2019d been carrying around in my head the whole drive home.<\/p>\n
Mom\u2019s lease at the Meadowbrook Apartments was up on October 31st. Ten days away. A new management company out of Indianapolis had bought the complex in the summer, and in August they\u2019d sent every tenant a letter on fancy letterhead.<\/p>\n
Her rent was going up $175 a month. From $790 to $965.<\/p>\n
On a school cook\u2019s income, with her retiring at Christmas break, that was not a small thing. She\u2019d be living on her pension from the school corporation and an early Social Security check. She\u2019d been fretting about it for two months and pretending to me that she wasn\u2019t.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was going to talk to you and your daddy after Thanksgiving,\u201d she said. \u201cI was going to sign on for six more months and then see.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYou don\u2019t have to sign anything,\u201d I said. \u201cYou own half a house.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cShane.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYou were always going to retire there, Mom. That was the plan. That was the whole plan from the very beginning. You said it at the closing. I was sitting right there.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI am not going over there to fight your daddy,\u201d she said. \u201cI am 64 years old, and I have not been in a room with that man for longer than a funeral in twenty years. I\u2019m not starting with a fight.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019re not fighting,\u201d I said. \u201cYou\u2019re moving home.\u201d<\/p>\n
She didn\u2019t say anything for so long I thought the call had dropped. I could hear the island show in the background. Somebody was very excited about a kitchen with an ocean view.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe front bedroom gets the morning sun,\u201d she said, very quietly.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt does.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cJune\u2019s violets would like that.\u201d<\/p>\n
I didn\u2019t know what she meant. I didn\u2019t ask. I just said I\u2019d take Friday off and borrow a trailer and be at her apartment by seven.<\/p>\n
After we hung up, I sat at the kitchen table for a long time with the deed still lying open in front of me.<\/p>\n
I called Rick at six Friday morning and told him I needed the day.<\/p>\n
Rick has owned Hollis Heating and Air for thirty years. He doesn\u2019t ask questions he doesn\u2019t need answered. He just said he\u2019d move the Hendersons\u2019 heat pump to Monday.<\/p>\n
\u201cGive your mother my best,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Amy\u2019s brother Jeff brought his flatbed trailer and his own dolly. The three of us were at Mom\u2019s apartment by seven.<\/p>\n
She had coffee made. She\u2019d been up since four. And she\u2019d labeled every single box in black marker in her careful school-cook printing.<\/p>\n
Kitchen, everyday. Kitchen, good dishes. Bathroom. Winter clothes. Church.<\/p>\n
And one small box, sitting on the counter all by itself, that said only one word.<\/p>\n
June.<\/p>\n
By eleven, the trailer was full. On the way out, Mom stopped at the leasing office and handed the young woman at the desk her keys and a typed letter.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s my notice,\u201d she said. \u201cI\u2019ll be out by the thirty-first. You can keep my $500 deposit or mail it to me. Either way, I\u2019m going home.\u201d<\/p>\n
The young woman blinked at her. \u201cYes, ma\u2019am.\u201d<\/p>\n
By noon we were on Persimmon Street.<\/p>\n
Dad wasn\u2019t home. His truck was gone. He spent most days at Tammy\u2019s sister\u2019s place now, out on the county road past the grain elevator.<\/p>\n
I had a key. I\u2019d always had a key. I\u2019d never once used it without knocking first.<\/p>\n
I knocked anyway. Nobody came. I unlocked the door.<\/p>\n
Mom stood on the porch for a long minute before she came in.<\/p>\n
She put her hand on the white porch swing, the one June used to sit me on with a pan of green beans, and she gave it a little push. She watched it go back and forth.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe kept it painted,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cEvery spring.\u201d<\/p>\n
She went inside.<\/p>\n
The front bedroom had been Dad\u2019s junk room for six years. Boxes of old foundry paperwork. A broken treadmill. A recliner with the stuffing coming out of one arm. And about forty empty coffee cans he was saving for no reason anybody on earth could name.<\/p>\n
Jeff and I hauled it all out to the garage.<\/p>\n
By three o\u2019clock, it was a room again.<\/p>\n
Mom\u2019s quilt on the bed. Her dresser between the two windows. Her recliner in the corner. Her Bible on the nightstand next to her reading glasses. Her housecoat on the hook on the back of the door.<\/p>\n
The box marked June was still in the truck. Mom hadn\u2019t let anybody carry it. When I asked where she wanted it, she said to just leave it in the cab for now.<\/p>\n
So I did.<\/p>\n
Jeff went home around three-thirty. Amy came over with a pitcher of sweet tea and sat on the back step.<\/p>\n
And at four o\u2019clock, I heard Dad\u2019s Silverado pull into the driveway.<\/p>\n
Dad came in through the front door and stopped dead.<\/p>\n
I watched him take it all in. Jeff\u2019s tire tracks pressed into the yard. The empty spot in the front room where his treadmill used to be. The woman\u2019s coat hanging on the hook by the door.<\/p>\n
Then he looked down the short hallway. At the front bedroom door, standing open.<\/p>\n
At my mother, standing in it.<\/p>\n
\u201cHello, Dennis,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
He didn\u2019t say anything for a long time.<\/p>\n
He looked old, standing there. I hadn\u2019t noticed it happening, but it had happened. His shoulders had come forward. His hair had gone white all the way through. His big foundry hands were hanging at his sides like he didn\u2019t know what to do with them.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat is this?\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
He was asking me. Not her.<\/p>\n
\u201cMom\u2019s lease is up on the thirty-first,\u201d I said. \u201cShe retires at Christmas. She paid half of this house. She\u2019s moving into the room she paid for.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYou can\u2019t do that.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cDad, the deed has two names on it. Neither one of them is yours. You don\u2019t have a lease. You\u2019ve never paid a dollar of rent. Mom and I get to say who lives here.\u201d<\/p>\n
I said it quietly. I\u2019d decided in the truck that morning that I wouldn\u2019t raise my voice no matter what he said. And I didn\u2019t.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhere am I supposed to put Tammy\u2019s boys?\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat was always the question, Dad. You just never asked it out loud.\u201d<\/p>\n
He turned and looked at Mom.<\/p>\n
She still had a coat hanger in her hand. She didn\u2019t look away from him. But she didn\u2019t look hard at him either. She looked at him the way you\u2019d look at a dog that had gotten out and come home all muddy.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019re welcome to stay, Dennis,\u201d she said. \u201cNobody\u2019s putting you out. You\u2019ll have the back bedroom like you\u2019ve always had. I\u2019ll have this one. We\u2019ll work out the kitchen.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cLinda, Tammy is coming at eight o\u2019clock in the morning.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThen you\u2019ve got tonight to call her,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n
He stood there a minute longer.<\/p>\n
Then he walked through the kitchen, right past me, without a word. Out the back door. He sat down on the back step next to Amy.<\/p>\n
She moved her tea glass so he\u2019d have room.<\/p>\n
I watched through the kitchen window. He sat out there until it got dark. He didn\u2019t take his phone out of his pocket one single time.<\/p>\n
Around eight, I went out and sat down on the step next to him.<\/p>\n
It was cold. The lilac by the step had dropped most of its leaves. Somebody down the street was burning a leaf pile, and the smoke hung low over the yards.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou going to call her?\u201d I asked.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t know what to say to her.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cTell her the truth.\u201d<\/p>\n
He laughed. It wasn\u2019t a happy laugh.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhich part? That I don\u2019t own the house I told her I own? That my ex-wife bought me a place to live because I couldn\u2019t buy one myself? That my son pays my gas bill?\u201d<\/p>\n
I didn\u2019t say anything. There wasn\u2019t anything to say. It was all true.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou want to know why,\u201d he said after a while.<\/p>\n
\u201cI figured you\u2019d tell me.\u201d<\/p>\n
He rubbed his hands together slowly. He has big hands. Foundry hands. The knuckles thick and swollen from thirty-one years of handling hot iron. He was quiet so long I thought he\u2019d changed his mind about talking.<\/p>\n
\u201cTammy\u2019s boys got evicted in September,\u201d he said finally. \u201cThe landlord sold their duplex out from under them. Thirty days\u2019 notice. They\u2019ve been sleeping on her sister\u2019s living room floor in Bedford with a dog and a cat and everything they own in a storage unit. Tammy\u2019s been crying in her car on her lunch break.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI didn\u2019t know that.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNobody does. She\u2019s proud.\u201d He looked out at the dark yard. \u201cAnd I thought, I\u2019ve got this house. I\u2019ve got two bedrooms and a couch. For once in my whole life, I could be the man who takes care of somebody.\u201d<\/p>\n
His voice did something I\u2019d never heard it do before. It cracked right down the middle.<\/p>\n
\u201cYour mother took care of me,\u201d he said. \u201cJune took care of me. You\u2019ve been taking care of me for six years. And every time I call you about that gas bill, I want to put my fist through a wall.\u201d<\/p>\n
He stopped. Breathed.<\/p>\n
\u201cI just wanted one person in this world to look at me like I was the one holding the roof up.\u201d<\/p>\n
I looked at my father. He was 66 years old, and he was crying on a back step in the dark. And he was trying very hard not to let me see it.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou could have asked us,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019d have heard no.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cMaybe. Maybe not. You never asked, Dad. You just told. You\u2019ve always just told.\u201d<\/p>\n
He nodded. He didn\u2019t argue.<\/p>\n
That was the most surprising thing he did all week.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m not putting you out,\u201d I said. \u201cNobody is. Mom meant every word. But I can\u2019t let you move three more people into her house without asking her. It\u2019s not right. And you know it\u2019s not right, or you would have asked.\u201d<\/p>\n
He nodded again. Slowly.<\/p>\n
\u201cCall Tammy,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n
And I went inside.<\/p>\n
I found out later that he never called her.<\/p>\n
He sat out on that back step until almost eleven. He took his phone out twice. Both times, he put it back in his pocket. He told me later he kept thinking that if he just waited until morning, he\u2019d know what to say.<\/p>\n
He never figured it out. I don\u2019t think there was a way to say it.<\/p>\n
I went home and slept about four hours. At seven the next morning, I came back with the last of Mom\u2019s things from the apartment. Her coffeemaker. Her good knives. Her box of recipe cards. Her kitchen radio.<\/p>\n
It was a cold October morning, the first real cold one of the year. The big maple in the front yard had let go of half its leaves overnight, and the grass was buried in red and gold.<\/p>\n
Mom was already out on the porch swing.<\/p>\n
She had on her lavender cardigan, the one she wears to every ball game and every funeral and every Wednesday night church supper. She had a mug of coffee in both hands. She was just swinging a little, pushing off with one foot.<\/p>\n
\u201cMorning, bud,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou sleep?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cLike a baby. That front room is the quietest room I\u2019ve ever slept in.\u201d She smiled. \u201cYour daddy still snores like a chainsaw through two walls. I\u2019d forgotten that.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIs he up?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cBeen up since five. He\u2019s in the kitchen. He\u2019s made the coffee three times.\u201d<\/p>\n
I went back to the truck for the last box. It was the heavy one. The good dishes. The Blue Willow set that had belonged to Mom\u2019s mother. I had my navy work jacket zipped all the way up because the wind was coming hard off the field across the road.<\/p>\n
I was halfway up the porch steps with that box when I heard the truck.<\/p>\n
It came down Persimmon Street slow, the way a big rental truck comes when the driver isn\u2019t used to it. A long orange moving truck with the ramp folded up underneath. It turned into the driveway and stopped at the edge of the gravel, short of the porch.<\/p>\n
A woman with dyed red hair was behind the wheel.<\/p>\n
It was Tammy.<\/p>\n
She put it in park. Her window was already down. She didn\u2019t turn the engine off. She didn\u2019t get out.<\/p>\n
She looked at the porch. She looked at me, standing on the steps with a cardboard box in my arms.<\/p>\n
And then she looked at my mother. In her lavender cardigan. On the porch swing. Holding her coffee.<\/p>\n
My mother looked right back at her.<\/p>\n
For a long minute, nobody moved.<\/p>\n
The engine idled. A few leaves blew across the driveway and under the truck. Somewhere down the street, a dog was barking at something.<\/p>\n
Then Mom lifted her coffee mug. Just a little. Not a toast. Not a joke. Just the way you\u2019d lift a hand to a neighbor you didn\u2019t know very well.<\/p>\n
Inside the house, I heard Dad\u2019s boots cross the kitchen floor.<\/p>\n
The screen door banged behind me. Dad came out onto the porch in his barn coat and stood at the top of the steps. He didn\u2019t come down.<\/p>\n
\u201cDennis,\u201d Tammy said.<\/p>\n
Her voice was very calm. That\u2019s what got me. I\u2019d heard her laugh loud at things that weren\u2019t funny, but I\u2019d never heard her this calm.<\/p>\n
\u201cWho is that on the swing?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s Linda,\u201d Dad said.<\/p>\n
\u201cYour ex-wife.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYes.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat is she doing on your porch at eight o\u2019clock in the morning with a cup of coffee?\u201d<\/p>\n
Dad took a breath. I watched him do it. I watched him decide, right there in front of all of us, whether or not to lie.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s her porch, Tammy,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Tammy didn\u2019t move.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe owns half the house,\u201d Dad said. \u201cShane owns the other half. I don\u2019t own any of it. Not one board. I\u2019ve lived here free for six years because the two of them bought it so I\u2019d have somewhere to go. I should have told you that in March.\u201d<\/p>\n
Tammy didn\u2019t say anything.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe moved in yesterday,\u201d Dad went on. \u201cFront bedroom. Her lease was up. It was always supposed to be hers when she retired. I knew that. I just didn\u2019t let myself think about it.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYou told me this was your house,\u201d Tammy said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI know I did.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI have two grown boys sleeping on my sister\u2019s floor with a German shepherd,\u201d Tammy said. Her voice was still calm, but her hands were tight on the steering wheel. \u201cI gave notice at my place. I paid $340 for this truck. I told my sister we\u2019d be out of her hair by tonight.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI know.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mom stood up off the swing.<\/p>\n
I thought for a second she was going to say something hard. I braced myself for it. But she didn\u2019t.<\/p>\n
She walked to the porch rail and set her coffee down on it.<\/p>\n
\u201cTammy, honey,\u201d she said. \u201cI am sorry. He should have told you. That\u2019s not on you, and it\u2019s not on your boys. If you want to come in and have a cup of coffee and figure this out, the pot\u2019s on.\u201d<\/p>\n
Tammy looked at her for a long time.<\/p>\n
Then she shook her head. Slow.<\/p>\n
\u201cNo, ma\u2019am,\u201d she said. \u201cThank you. But I\u2019m not moving my boys into a house with a man\u2019s ex-wife in the front bedroom. I\u2019m 58 years old. I\u2019ve done enough stupid things already.\u201d<\/p>\n
She looked at Dad one more time.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou call me when you know what\u2019s true, Dennis,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Then she put that truck in reverse. She checked her mirrors carefully, like a woman who\u2019d been told to by the man at the rental counter. And she backed that long orange truck out of the driveway without unloading one single thing.<\/p>\n
We all watched it go down Persimmon Street.<\/p>\n
Nobody said a word until it turned the corner by the Methodist church.<\/p>\n
I stood on the steps with the box of Blue Willow dishes in my arms. I\u2019d been holding it the whole time. My arms were shaking, and I honestly didn\u2019t know if it was the weight.<\/p>\n
Dad stood at the top of the steps for a long minute.<\/p>\n
Then he walked over to the porch swing. And he sat down on it.<\/p>\n
On the other end. The end June used to sit on.<\/p>\n
He hadn\u2019t sat on that swing next to my mother in twenty years. I\u2019m not sure he\u2019d sat next to her anywhere in twenty years, except one row apart at June\u2019s funeral.<\/p>\n
Mom looked at him. Then she picked her coffee up off the rail and sat back down on her end of the swing.<\/p>\n
She had a thermos on the porch floor by her feet. I hadn\u2019t noticed it before. She unscrewed the lid, poured coffee into the cap, and handed it across to him.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou still take it black?\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI take it however it comes these days.\u201d<\/p>\n
She laughed. Just a little, through her nose.<\/p>\n
It was the first time I\u2019d heard my mother laugh at something my father said since I was in grade school.<\/p>\n
Then she reached down beside her on the swing and picked up the Saturday paper. She had it folded open to the classifieds. She slid it across the swing between them and tapped one ad with her finger.<\/p>\n
I went up the steps and looked over their shoulders.<\/p>\n
Part-time yard help, Miller Lumber. Forklift experience a plus. 24 hours a week. $14 an hour. Apply in person.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou drove a forklift thirty-one years,\u201d Mom said.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy back,\u201d Dad said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt says yard help, Dennis. Not lifting core boxes. Pulling lumber orders on a forklift for contractors. Sitting down.\u201d She took a sip of her coffee. \u201cYou\u2019ve been sitting down for six years. You can sit down for money.\u201d<\/p>\n
Dad looked at the paper. He looked at her.<\/p>\n
He didn\u2019t say anything.<\/p>\n
But he didn\u2019t hand it back, either.<\/p>\n
I carried the Blue Willow into the kitchen and unpacked it into June\u2019s old cabinets, one plate at a time. When I came back out, they were still on the swing.<\/p>\n
Not talking. Just swinging a little, the two of them, drinking their coffee and watching the leaves come down.<\/p>\n
That afternoon, I went out to my truck and got the box that said June.<\/p>\n
Mom opened it at the kitchen table.<\/p>\n
Inside, wrapped in damp newspaper and set down in an old dishpan so they wouldn\u2019t tip over, were six African violets in little clay pots. Purple ones and pink ones, and one white one with a blue edge around every petal.<\/p>\n
I knew that dishpan. It was the one we used to snap green beans in.<\/p>\n
\u201cI took them after the funeral,\u201d Mom said. \u201cNobody else wanted them. Ron was going to throw them out with the old magazines.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019ve had them six years?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cOn my kitchen windowsill at the Meadowbrook.\u201d She shook her head. \u201cThat window faces north, Shane. Do you know how hard it is to keep a violet alive in a north window for six years? I talked to them every morning, the way June used to. I felt like a fool.\u201d<\/p>\n
She carried them one at a time into the front bedroom. She set them on the windowsill in a row, exactly the way June used to have them. The morning light had moved off the room by then, but you could see just how it would land on them tomorrow.<\/p>\n
Dad came and stood in the bedroom doorway. He didn\u2019t come in. He looked at those violets for a long time.<\/p>\n
\u201cThose are June\u2019s,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey are.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYou kept June\u2019s violets.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cSomebody had to.\u201d<\/p>\n
He put his hand on the door frame. I saw his jaw working.<\/p>\n
Then he turned around and walked out to the garage. We heard him out there for an hour, moving his old foundry boxes around. Neither one of us went out after him.<\/p>\n
I won\u2019t tell you any of it was easy.<\/p>\n
They\u2019d been married nineteen years and divorced for twenty. They had a long list of reasons why.<\/p>\n
The first week, Mom put a list on the refrigerator with a magnet shaped like a cardinal.<\/p>\n
Kitchen after 7 p.m. is hers. Bathroom before 6 a.m. is his. Front room television is hers on Wednesdays for her show. Nobody touches anybody else\u2019s coffee.<\/p>\n
Dad read it standing at the fridge with his reading glasses on the end of his nose.<\/p>\n
Then he took a pen out of the junk drawer and added one line at the bottom, in his blocky foundry handwriting.<\/p>\n
Nobody moves the swing.<\/p>\n
Mom read it the next morning. She didn\u2019t say anything.<\/p>\n
But she left it up.<\/p>\n
There was one more thing we had to settle, and I knew it had to be on paper this time. Six years of handshakes and silence had gotten us right where we were.<\/p>\n
The second week of November, I asked Mom and Dad to meet me at the office of a lawyer named Paul Brandt, over on the courthouse square. Paul had done our wills a few years back. He charged me $250 for an hour, and it was the best $250 I ever spent.<\/p>\n
We sat in three chairs in front of his desk. Dad kept his barn coat on the whole time, like he might need to leave in a hurry.<\/p>\n
Paul had drawn up a simple written agreement. Nothing fancy. Two pages.<\/p>\n
It said Dennis Kolb could live at the Persimmon Street house for as long as he wanted, as an occupant with the permission of the two owners. It said he\u2019d pay the gas and electric bills himself, starting January 1st. It said nobody else could move in without both owners agreeing in writing. And it said the owners couldn\u2019t ask him to leave without ninety days\u2019 written notice.<\/p>\n
Paul read it out loud, every word. Then he slid it across the desk.<\/p>\n
\u201cMr. Kolb,\u201d he said to Dad, \u201cthis protects you as much as it protects them. Probably more.\u201d<\/p>\n
Dad read it twice. His lips moved a little when he got to the part about ninety days.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey could put me out tomorrow without this,\u201d he said slowly. \u201cCouldn\u2019t they.\u201d<\/p>\n
Paul didn\u2019t answer that directly. He just said, \u201cYour son asked me to make sure nobody could do anything to anybody in a hurry. Including you.\u201d<\/p>\n
Dad looked at me for a long moment.<\/p>\n
Then he took the pen and signed his name.<\/p>\n
Mom signed. I signed. Paul\u2019s secretary notarized all three signatures with a heavy stamp that went chunk on the paper.<\/p>\n
Out on the sidewalk afterward, Dad stood with his hands in his coat pockets.<\/p>\n
\u201cFirst time in six years I\u2019ve had a piece of paper that says I live somewhere,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cFirst time you ever asked for one,\u201d Mom said.<\/p>\n
He almost smiled.<\/p>\n
He\u2019d gone to Miller Lumber the Monday after Tammy left and filled out an application. The yard manager was a man named Dale, who I\u2019d gone to high school with.<\/p>\n
Dale called me that night.<\/p>\n
\u201cYour dad came in today,\u201d he said. \u201cHe said to tell you he applied, so you wouldn\u2019t have to hear it from somebody else first. Is he going to be all right on a forklift?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHe drove one for thirty-one years.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s what he said. He also said his back\u2019s no good for lifting, and he\u2019d tell me straight if it got bad.\u201d Dale paused. \u201cI appreciated that. Most guys his age lie about it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Dad started the next week. Three days a week, eight hours a day, pulling orders for contractors and loading pickups with lumber and drywall.<\/p>\n
He came home with sawdust in his collar and his face red from the cold. And he looked ten years younger.<\/p>\n
The second week, Mom made him a lunch.<\/p>\n
She didn\u2019t say anything about it. She just set a brown paper bag on the counter next to his truck keys. A ham sandwich. An apple. And a thick slice of the persimmon pudding she makes every October from the tree in June\u2019s backyard.<\/p>\n
He looked at the bag. He looked at her back, standing at the sink.<\/p>\n
Then he picked it up and took it to work.<\/p>\n
I want to say something about Tammy Reese, because I don\u2019t want anybody to think she was the villain in this story.<\/p>\n
She wasn\u2019t. She was a woman who believed a man she cared about. And he hadn\u2019t told her the truth.<\/p>\n
About a week after the truck, Dad drove out to her sister\u2019s place in Bedford. He didn\u2019t tell us he was going. He told me about it later, at the lumberyard, while he was loading drywall into the back of my truck.<\/p>\n
\u201cI told her all of it,\u201d he said. \u201cThe apartment. The couch. The VFW parking lot. June\u2019s house. Your mother\u2019s money. The gas bill. Every bit of it.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat did she say?\u201d<\/p>\n
He set a sheet of drywall down very carefully, like it was glass.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe said she wished I\u2019d told her in March, because she\u2019d have liked me anyway.\u201d<\/p>\n
He wiped his hands on his jeans.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd then she said she\u2019d still like to go to the fish fry on Fridays. If I was buying.\u201d<\/p>\n
Tammy and her boys rented a three-bedroom house on the north side of town the first of November. Dale at the lumberyard knew the landlord, and Dad put in a word, and that\u2019s what it took. $1,150 a month, split three ways. Kyle got hired on at the same lumberyard in December.<\/p>\n
Dad and Tammy go to the VFW fish fry every Friday night. She lives in her own place. He comes home by ten.<\/p>\n
Mom leaves the porch light on for him and pretends she doesn\u2019t.<\/p>\n
By Thanksgiving, my mother and father had settled into a kind of life together I wouldn\u2019t have believed if you\u2019d told me about it in October.<\/p>\n
They aren\u2019t married again. They\u2019re not going to be. Mom says she\u2019d sooner marry a snapping turtle. Dad says the turtle would get the better end of that deal.<\/p>\n
But they\u2019re something.<\/p>\n
Mom cooks. Dad does the dishes. Mom watches her island show on Wednesdays. Dad watches the Indiana game in the back bedroom with the door shut and yells at the referees through the wall.<\/p>\n
They sit on the porch swing most mornings before he goes to work. She has her coffee. He has his, black, out of the thermos. They don\u2019t talk much.<\/p>\n
They don\u2019t have to.<\/p>\n
On the morning after Thanksgiving, I came by early to look at the furnace before it got cold for real. Mom was still in her housecoat.<\/p>\n
The light was coming in through the east windows of the front bedroom, through June\u2019s lace curtains, landing on the floor in little flowers.<\/p>\n
And on the windowsill, all in a row, June\u2019s violets were blooming. Every single one of them. The purple ones. The pink ones. The white one with the blue edge.<\/p>\n
Mom said they\u2019d never bloomed like that in the north window. Not once in six years.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey know where they are,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Dad came in from the kitchen with his work boots on and his lunch bag in one hand. He stood in the bedroom doorway and looked at the violets for a minute, the same way he had that first day.<\/p>\n
\u201cJune would have liked that,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe would have,\u201d Mom said.<\/p>\n
Then he reached into the pocket of his barn coat and took out an envelope and handed it to me.<\/p>\n
It was a bank envelope from the credit union. My name was written on the front in his blocky handwriting.<\/p>\n
He didn\u2019t say anything. He just nodded once, and went out the front door, and I heard the Silverado start up and pull away.<\/p>\n
I sat down at June\u2019s yellow kitchen table and opened it.<\/p>\n
Inside were three crisp hundred-dollar bills. And a piece of Miller Lumber notepaper, folded in half.<\/p>\n
It said: First $300 toward the gas bills. More on the 15th. Dad.<\/p>\n
I sat there a long time with that note in my hand.<\/p>\n
Then I went into the kitchen drawer by the phone, where I\u2019d moved my little yellow sticky notes. Six years of them. Five thousand six hundred and twenty dollars.<\/p>\n
I took the top one off the pile. Eighty dollars, from a January three years back. And I threw it in the trash.<\/p>\n
I figured I\u2019d throw out one more every time he paid. However long it took.<\/p>\n
It took him a little over two years. He never missed the 15th. Not once.<\/p>\n
The last sticky note went in the trash on a Saturday morning in March. I was sitting on the porch swing with Mom when he handed me the envelope. When I told him that was the last one, he didn\u2019t say anything at all.<\/p>\n
He just sat down on June\u2019s end of the swing, and Mom poured him a cup of coffee from the thermos, and the three of us sat there and watched the lilac by the back step start to bud.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
We Bought Aunt June\u2019s House So Dad Would Never Be Homeless. Then He Moved His Girlfriend and Her Grown Sons In for Free. We Bought … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":17416,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,9,2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20002","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-family","category-inspiration","category-story"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailystoryus.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20002","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailystoryus.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailystoryus.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailystoryus.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailystoryus.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20002"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dailystoryus.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20002\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20003,"href":"https:\/\/dailystoryus.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20002\/revisions\/20003"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailystoryus.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/17416"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailystoryus.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20002"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailystoryus.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20002"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailystoryus.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20002"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}