Good thing his hair doesn’t have magical mood ring properties, otherwise it would have turned jet-black to signal stressed and anxious. He can’t worry his grandparents about the mortgage until he can question his parents and launch a plan of action.
On the small TV screen across from the bed, a new show on the Food Network starts. It’s one of those travel shows where an über glamorous person jet-sets all over the world trying different foods.
“I’m Larsa Vanderbell, andthisisEurope Your Way. Today I’m in Florence. Would you believe me if I told you that the best sandwich in the entire city came from a walk-up window? Sounds fake, but let’s find out what that means. Come along!” A tall, conventionally beautiful woman wearing slender heels on cobblestone streets struts ahead of the camera, then eats a focaccia, tomato and fresh mozzarella sandwich that looks handmade by angels.
Charlie lifts the lids on two steaming microwave dinners. The soggy meatloaf and flaccid carrots underline how mouthwatering the food on the screen is. Everything they eat either comes cold in a bag from the store or hot in a bag from the drive-through. Such is the way in their neck of the woods. And in their tax bracket.
“Goodie, meatloaf. My favorite,” says Grandpa, tucking the paper napkin into the top of his worn white T-shirt so hedoesn’t dribble. Charlie mirrors this for Grandma. The gout in her fingers flares often, so it’s easier for him to feed her than risk the inevitable spills. At first, she refused. After several soiled blankets, she grew amenable to Charlie’s hands-on assistance.
Charlie cuts up the frozen meal for her as the show plays out across the room. Larsa’smmsanduhhsare broken up by prerecorded voiceover of her detailing the history of the family-owned eatery. Grandma and Grandpa’s eyes never leave the TV. They have the slightly detached glaze Charlie has only ever seen on kids scrolling through their phones. If only his family could afford professional elder care. Someone to safely get them up and out into the fresh air.
All they’ll have is fresh air once the roof is ripped off right over their heads.
Charlie imagines a bank giant clomping across Slatington, picking their house up in his greasy palm, and crushing it inside his meaty fist.
“Have you ever been to Europe?” Charlie asks, deploying small talk to stave off the unpleasantness roiling in his stomach.
The absolute best part about living with and caring for his grandparents is that he has the chance to ask them all the important questions many grandchildren don’t get to before they go.
Grandpa shakes his head. “Oh no. My parents immigrated from Wales and never crossed the ocean again. Money was tight. By the time I came along, the slate industry was dwindling away. My brothers always joked I was an accident of the bad economy. A jaunt on the continent was out of the question,” he says.
Charlie’s great-grandparents came over and got swept into the slate belt in Pennsylvania. The men worked the quarries, mining for blue-gray slate with flint striations. It was hard, manual labor that tormented their bodies, but it paid, and eventhough they lived in tenement buildings, they were together. They made do. Their eternal mantra.
Grandpa went into the same shrinking line of work once he came of age, but by then opportunities were scarce and conditions seemed worse. The train lines hauling slate disappeared and alternate materials being mined undercut the main export of the area.
Still they worked on. Sweating beneath the beating Pennsylvania sun. Returning home to meals of cabbage stew cooked by frugal wives who taught or typed or sewed to add a bit to the household income and keep the children healthy. It was not glamorous or comfortable, but it was the only way they knew.
Charlie yearns to give his family a better, more leisurely life, like the one Larsa on the TV lives.
“If you could go now, where would you go?” Charlie asks.
“With what money?” Grandpa says with a laugh, which sours Charlie’s attitude more.
“It’s a hypothetical, Grandpa,” Charlie says, stuffing down his impatience.
Grandma chews on a carrot, presumably in thought. “Italy,” she says after a swallow. “I love this program. This Larsa is fabulous. She seems to love Italy the most. All that art and history. Not to mention those fountains!”
“I’m not sure I could get around in a city like that,” says Grandpa, slapping at the crutch beside the bed. Beside that is his wheelchair. Those uneven streets and old buildings without ramps or elevators would prove difficult for him.
The slate industry not only took most of the Moore men’s youths, but it took Grandpa’s right foot. Fifteen years ago, a loading machine malfunctioned. A large piece of slate was dangling over the bed of a truck when a chain came loose, crushing Grandpa’s foot beneath it. The whole thing had to beamputated, putting him out of commission in the only line of work he’d ever known.
“You heard the boy, it’s a hypothetical,” Grandma says with a wistful sigh. Wistful mostly because there was a time, right after Grandpa lost his foot, where the burden of finances went from slate slab to featherlight thanks to the lawsuit payout.
How then were they close to losing their home on Cemetery Street?
Charlie does not want to think about Uncle Buck, his dad’s only brother, and the great disappearing act he pulled.
Instead, Charlie sets his mind on how to fix this, for all of them.
THREE
CHARLIE
The large linden tree out front of the house on Cemetery Street is the one thriving thing on this plot of land. It is a welcome burst of green in the last flecks of what little daylight they have between sporadic summer showers that turn the lawn to mud.
Charlie shortcuts through the still-damp, too-tall grass, making a note to break out the mower over the coming weekend.
The family car pulls up to the curb. Dad rolls down the window. A day’s worth of graying stubble dots his gaunt, pale cheeks. He does warehouse work for a beer company. “Sorry we’re running late, kiddo,” he says.
