Part 1. The Paper on the Table
My daughter wanted $800 a month and four free days of babysitting a week for a damp basement room, and I smiled, said thank you, and quietly rented a little house for $550 instead. That is the short version. The long version began on a Saturday afternoon, right after lunch, at Michelle’s kitchen table, when her husband, Todd, pushed a sheet of notebook paper across the oilcloth toward me without saying a word.
One figure sat in the middle of the page. $800, with two circles drawn around it, the second pressed so hard the pen had nearly gone through. “That covers your room, the utilities, and part of the groceries,” Michelle said, folding a dish towel into smaller and smaller squares. “And you’d watch the kids four days a week, Mom. That way you’re contributing something.” Contributing something. I am sixty-seven years old. I raised that girl on what her father earned as a hired hand, and I kept the books at the lumberyard for twenty-two years, and nobody ever suggested I wasn’t contributing.
