Stiltsville: A Novel - By Susanna Daniel Page 0,127
convincing.” He pulled a checkbook from his back pocket. “Do you have a pen?” he said. And this was the most humiliating part—not the weakness of my protest, not the relief that must have been obvious on my face, but the act of getting up and crossing the room to fish a pen out of the junk drawer, and walking back to him and handing it over. He gave me the check and I folded it without looking.
“I don’t think I know how to thank you. I wish we’d—” I stopped. “I wish we didn’t have to accept this.”
“This is what you do for your children. You’ll do it for Margo.”
We left unsaid the fact that, given the present situation, I would probably not be able to do it for Margo. I hugged him before we left the kitchen. “Thank you very much,” I said.
“Dennis is my son,” he said, as if this were all the explanation required. He added, “And you are my daughter. If you need more, you tell me.”
That evening, Marse and Dennis sat in the living room with magazines, and I told them I had forgotten to fill one of Dennis’s prescriptions, and needed to run out. I went to the bank and used the drive-through machine to deposit Grady’s check. I didn’t look at it until I filled out the deposit envelope: it was for $20,000. I cried out when I saw it. I covered my mouth with my hand as relief pulsed through me. Even after we paid for the tenting—the estimate we’d gotten from Paul’s friend was $1,500—this would last for months. If we were frugal, it might last a year. From time to time, even now, I think about Grady’s words—This is not something one prepares for—and about how we might have better anticipated this wrinkle in our lives. We had not saved enough, I suppose. We’d planned for retirement, of course, but not for emergencies. We’d figured we had the house for collateral if we needed it—but this eventuality, Dennis’s early demise, made our retirement funds seem insignificant. Selling the house or even taking a loan seemed suddenly impossible. Looking back, I think that I should have started drawing against our retirement accounts. There would have been penalties, of course, and the money would have needed to last much longer than we’d planned; but after all, it would have had to be only enough for one.
Looking back, too, I realized that this money from Grady and Gloria was probably not difficult for them to give—not only because, unlike my mother, they had it to give, but also because they were advancing in age and thinking about what they would leave behind, and realizing there would be one less person to whom to leave it. This had not been in their plans, either. Dennis’s illness was sabotage, for all of us.
It was not until September that I saw again what I’d seen at the start of the summer, between Lola and Stuart. I was in the backyard watering the gardenias, and Lola and Dennis and Stuart were in the pool, not really exercising but just goofing around. Then Dennis pulled himself out and I helped him inside to take a bath, and when I came out again to roll up the hose, I saw Stuart dive under to pull Lola down by her legs. When they came up again, she had her arm around his shoulders and they were laughing, and though they pulled apart immediately, without even having seen me, I knew something more than harmless flirtation was under way. Whether the relationship had advanced behind closed doors, I didn’t know, but I had the feeling it had not yet. If it had, I thought, wouldn’t they avoid being together at the house? Wouldn’t they look even more guilty?
“Stuart,” I called. “Lola’s going home.” Stuart didn’t look surprised. I dare you, I thought, to ask me why. He shrugged and swam to the steps. Lola followed, but didn’t meet my eye.
That evening, Gloria and Grady came for dinner, and afterward, Gloria and I cleaned up while Dennis and Grady went into the living room to set up a game of poker. Gloria washed and dried the dishes while I cleared the table. “The boy rushed out of here earlier,” she said.
“Hmm,” I said.
“He was red as a beet. Problems?”
“No problems.”
She turned off the water and faced me. “Is it the girl?”