I set the knife and last potato in the bowl. Wiped my hands on the old apron. And slowly stood.
I was at their level. They stood on ground, I a step higher, on my porch. «You want me to cancel everything?» I asked quietly.
«Yes. Yes, mommy.» Gene nodded eagerly.
Zoe looked at me challengingly, pressing lips. «So I give you my Social Security again.» «My apartment?» «My life?» «Mom, don’t exaggerate.»
Gene winced. «The apartment is our common. And we’d care for you.
Always.» «Like you cared for me when I was ill?» I asked, and my voice became even quieter. But in the ensuing silence it rang deafening.
They froze. I shifted gaze to Zoe. She instinctively took a tiny step back.
«I remember everything, Zoe dear,» I said, for the first time in years calling her as she liked. I remember you sitting by my bed. I remember your caring hands.
And I remember the papers you slipped me. Said it was for the IRS. For the HOA.
Pure formality. Zoe’s face became white as sheet. Her arrogance, her fury.
Her confidence, all drained from her like bad makeup in rain. Only bare, animal fear left. Gene looked from me to wife, understanding nothing.
«Mom, what about?» I looked at my son again. In his eyes fear, but also incomprehension. Maybe he really didn’t know all details.
Maybe she fooled him too. Or he preferred not to know. It no longer mattered.
He was an accomplice. «I’m talking about the credit, Gene,» I said, minting each word. «The big credit?» «You took at the bank eight months ago.
Against my apartment. Under my signature you got when I was delirious. You thought I’d never learn? Thought I’d quietly die here in this shack while the bank takes my home for your debts?» The blow hit home.
Seen by how Gene staggered, as if punched in the gut. He looked at Zoe with horror and some new, bitter understanding. She didn’t look at him.
She looked at the ground, at her expensive shoes dirtied with country mud. All their tricks, all manipulations crumbled to dust. They stood before me naked in their greed and lies.
Masks torn off. The show over. So, Gene, I finished in my quiet, even voice.
You still want me to call the lawyer? He couldn’t utter a word. Just opened and closed mouth like a fish thrown ashore. Zoe hunched shoulders.
Turning from predator to cornered animal. The pause was long, heavy. In this pause died the last drop of my maternal love for him.
Died and was buried right here, by this rotten porch. «Leave,» I said. It wasn’t an order or request. It was simple fact statement.
Like rain falls or night comes. They silently turned. Not looking at each other. Like puppets with cut strings.
Shuffled to their expensive, shiny car. Got in. The engine started not so furiously, but wearily.
The car slowly, almost uncertainly, turned and rolled away on the dusty road. I remained alone on the porch. Beside me a bowl with peeled potatoes.
My lunch. My new life. And the air around was amazingly clean.
After their departure, silence fell. But it was a different silence now. Not dead and oppressive like the first day, but calm and full of dignity.
I cooked my potatoes on the stove. They seemed the tastiest food in the world. I ate slowly, sitting at my washed table, and looked out the window I’d finally unboarded and washed.
Beyond it my overgrown garden, and in it among weeds I saw several surviving peony bushes. Their dark red tight buds about to open.
I thought that was it. That they, crushed and exposed, would leave me alone and try to clean up what they wrought. But I underestimated them again.
I forgot a cornered beast doesn’t seek repentance. It seeks to bite one last time. About a week passed.
In that time I met my only neighbor. Rather, he came to me. One morning I was hauling a water bucket from the well.
And heard behind a calm, low voice. «Let me help, neighbor. Not a woman’s job, turning the winch.»
I turned. Before me stood a tall, lean old man with gray beard and incredibly clear blue eyes. He easily with one hand finished turning the winch, grabbed the bucket, and set it on ground.
«Fred Cooper,» he introduced, extending a broad, calloused palm. «Live in that house, two plots over. Last of the Mohicans in this village.
Louise Walker.» — I answered, shaking his firm hand. So our acquaintance began.
Fred, or Uncle Fred as he asked to be called, turned out former chairman of the local farm co-op. Old school man, not talkative but wise and solid. He didn’t ask how I ended up here.
He just saw. Saw the expensive car that brought and left me. Saw me alone, without help, trying to settle in the abandoned house.
And understood without words. He started helping me. Brought some dry firewood logs, shared milk from his goat, or just came evenings to sit on the porch, talk about weather, crop prospects.
His silent presence was huge support for me. With him I didn’t feel lonely. I felt safe.
And then the last battle struck. One morning, watering my future peonies, I heard hum of cars. Not one, several.
A whole cavalcade approached my village. Three cars stopped at my house, and people began exiting. I recognized them.
My cousin Vera from Peoria with husband. Late husband’s nephew, Oliver, with wife. Some other distant relatives seen only at funerals and weddings…
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