Chapter 44: Like His Father Before Him
Vera told me about the dinner the next day, over the phone, in a flat voice that sounded older than she was.
I cooked, she said. Pot roast. His favorite since he was twelve.
I filled the table because I needed something to do with my hands.
He came in with his suitcase still by the door, the way he lives now, always half-packed for a better offer.
Grant came in angry, she said. He threw his keys into the bowl hard enough to chip it. A piece of ceramic landed beside the pot roast. He left it there.
We talked about nothing for twenty minutes.
The weather. His case, which was always fine. My lease, which he called your latest stunt.
Then I asked him, straight across the mashed potatoes, why he had never told anyone about the boutique.
And Grant, God help him, did not deny it.
You want to talk about secrets? he said.
You borrowed two hundred thousand dollars from my wife's father and hid it under my marriage like a bomb.
I protected you. I sat on that for years.
You should be thanking me.
Thanking him, Vera said to me. He claimed credit for never telling you.
I told him the note was real now. That you had it. That the money was owed.
He stood up so fast his chair went over, she said.
He said, This is your mess. I have a fraud review, a divorce, no severance, and a mother who cannot keep her mouth shut.
And I said the one thing I had never once said to my son.
I said, You sound exactly like your father.
His fork struck the plate. He stared at her.
You have to understand. Grant built his whole self on not being that man.
His father did the same thing to me, she said.
Spent my savings on his schemes. Let me sign papers I did not understand.
And when it all collapsed, he pointed at me in front of the lawyers.
She signed. She managed the money. It was her idea.
Then he left with a woman from his office.
I raised his son alone, and every single day I told that boy, you will be better than him.
I paid his tuition with double shifts. I clapped at his graduation until my hands hurt.
I built him a pedestal out of my own spine.
She laughed once, then covered her mouth.
I raised him to be exactly him, she said. Same pointing finger. Same clean exit.
What did Grant say? I asked.
Nothing, she said.
He picked up his chair and set it right, very carefully, and that scared me more than the shouting.
Then he said, If you have told her any of this, I am done with you.
I told him I already had, she said.
He stood with a shirt in one hand and calculated what she was worth to him.
Then he went to his room and started throwing things into a bag. Drawers struck their frames while he packed.
I watched him from the doorway, she said, and something in me finished.
Something that had been running for forty years, on empty, for his father and then for him, finally finished.
I took his suitcases down from the closet, she said. Both of them.
I packed them myself, neatly, the way I packed his lunches when he was small.
He shouted through the door the whole time.
He said I was choosing you over him. He said I would die alone in that apartment.
And I said, Maybe, she told me. But it will be my apartment, and it will be my choice.
Then I put his suitcases in the hallway.