“Oh, forget it,” Lovey said. “Darling, I’m moving to assisted living.”
She said it proudly, distinctly, with her head held high.
Sally’s eyes filled with tears.
“Momma,” Lauren said. “I still say you’re plenty healthy, and you don’t need to leave your home where you’re comfortable.”
The tears were running down Sally’s face now.
“Stop it right now, you two,” Mom scolded. “If she’s ready to be out of that house, then she’s ready to be out of the house.”
“Yeah,” Louise chimed in. “It’s just a house.” She turned to Lovey. “Besides, Momma, I hear that assisted living facilities are basically country clubs now.”
“Oh my gosh!” Sally exclaimed through the tears. “You aren’t getting rid of this house too, are you?”
“Honey,” Lovey said, “you’re making me feel terrible.”
“No!” Martha exclaimed, shaking her head furiously, the sun reflecting off of her shiny jet-black hair.
Lovey shook her head. “I’m not selling the beach house.”
I still hadn’t said anything. But to say that some of the best memories of my life had happened around Lovey and D-daddy’s breakfast room table wasn’t an exaggeration. Those long talks with the women of my family, popping Hershey’s Kisses into our mouths, had shaped so much of my growing. I thought of my room at Lovey’shouse, the twin bed where I’d snuggled under the duvet while she recited bedtime stories by heart. And the way her house smelled... Even though she never hung her laundry on the line to dry, her linen closet smelled like what I imagined sunshine must.
But, in the past several years, that house had changed for me. I’d walk in now and see D-daddy, confined to his chair in the dark living room, the TV dancing with movies that he loved as a young soldier, and nurses milling around bringing medicine, feeding him juice, checking his blood pressure. I wanted to pretend things were the same as always. But there was no mistaking that old age permeated.
Ben walked down the stairs, that steak still in his hand. As he reached the bottom step and smiled to say hello to us, he looked at the faces of my aunts and mom, pointed back upstairs, and said, “I don’t think I got enough of a nap.”
“Don’t be ridiculous!” Lovey said. “You’re family now, for better or worse.” She sighed. “I’m just telling the girls that I think it’s time for Dan and me to move to assisted living and sell the house.”
Ben pulled out a chair and sat down beside me like this conversation was crucial to his future. “You can’t sell the house!” Ben chimed in.
I glared at him, completely thrown by the unsolicited opinion.
“One of the best memories of my life is in that house,” he said.
Mom laughed. “What are you talking about?”
“It was the first place Ann and I told anyone we were married.”
Lovey smiled. “There are scandals and then there arescandals. When your granddaughter dumps her hedge fund manager fiancé and marries a musician she has known three days, that would fall into the category of the latter.” She glanced over at Ben, who was laughing. “No offense.”
He squeezed D-daddy’s shoulder. D-daddy looked at him blankly, and I wondered if he knew who this man was sitting beside him at the breakfast table. “Do you remember what you said?” he asked D-daddy.
“What hesaid?” Louise asked skeptically.
Lovey laughed. “Well, sort of. He said, ‘Mm.’”
Everyone around the table laughed, including D-daddy. That one-syllable grunt, maybe even more than his infectious laugh or quick wit, was the thing we all associated most with our grandfather and father. It meant he didn’t approve of what you were doing, but he loved you, so he’d deal with it anyway.
“When she walked through my door holding the hand of a man I’d never seen, when we were all planning parties for her and Holden, I’d like to say I was confused,” Lovey said. “But when you’ve been around eighty-seven years, there’s not much left to confuse you.” Lovey smiled adoringly at Ben. “But I loved you right off for how you talked to Dan and shook his hand and factored him into the equation.”
Ben put his arm around me and pulled me close. I dropped my head on his shoulder, willing the tears not to come to my eyes, wishing that things could go back to the way they had been when I was little and D-daddy was so alive.
“I’d heard so much about him,” Ben said. “I felt like I knew him already.”
That rarely emerging voice piped up from the end of the table, shakily, but D-daddy’s no doubt. “You couldn’t have heard too much about me because I hadn’t heard a damn thing about you.”
Then D-daddy laughed and we all joined him.
