PART 2: The Bird Feeder on the Counter
“I’m sorry,” June said. “I’m sorry, Walt.”
That was the whole apology. Three words and my name.
I had my hand on the screen door.
Denise was studying her coffee cup like it owed her money.
Tyler stood by the counter with his arms hanging, sixteen and too tall for the room.
“All right,” I said. And I went out to the truck.
*
The afternoon was long and hot.
We took the bedroom set apart. Mattress on its side against the wall, box spring strapped to the rails.
Tyler and I did the lifting. He’s stronger than he knows and he doesn’t know it.
Amy carried the lamps out one at a time and set them in the grass in a row.
June stayed in the kitchen wrapping plates in newspaper.
Every so often I’d hear a dish clink and then nothing for a while.
Around four, Denise hugged June at the front door.
“You call me,” she said. “Any time. Day or night.”
“I will.”
She waved at me from the walk. I waved back.
Her rental car pulled out and the street went quiet again.
Amy went for sandwiches.
Tyler found me in the garage.
*
I was sitting on an upside-down bucket with my hands on my knees.
Tyler sat down on the step.
“Grandpa. Did I do something wrong?”
“No.”
“You’ve been quiet.”
“I’m always quiet.”
“Not like this.”
I looked at him. He’s got his mother’s chin and his grandmother’s eyes and no idea what to do with either.
“You didn’t do anything wrong,” I said.
He picked at the paint on the doorframe.
“She said she did it all herself,” he said. “And she didn’t. You did. I watched you.”
“Your grandma did plenty.”
“But you did the hard part.”
“Yeah.”
“Then why’d she say it?”
I thought about it long enough that Tyler started to fidget.
“Because of her mother,” I said.
“What about her?”
“Near the end, Hazel stopped knowing who June was.”
Tyler looked up.
“She knew me,” I said. “She knew you. She knew the mailman. But she’d look at her own daughter and there’d be nothing there.”
“That’s awful.”
“It was.”
I rubbed my knee. The right one’s been bad since about 2011.
“Every morning I’d carry her down the hall and set her in that chair by the window,” I said. “And every morning she’d say the same thing.”
“What?”
“‘Where’s Walt?'”
Tyler didn’t say anything.
“I’d say, I’m right here, Hazel. And she’d pat my hand and go back to the birds.”
“Every morning?”
“Every morning for about two years.”
“Did Grandma know?”
“Grandma brought her lunch every day at noon,” I said. “She’d come in and Hazel would look right past her. Every single time.”
“Where’s Walt.”
“Where’s Walt,” I said. “And June would stand in that doorway holding a tray.”
Tyler stared at the concrete.
“That’s why she said it,” I said. “Not because it’s true. Because it isn’t, and she knows it isn’t, and she’s been carrying that around since before you could ride a bike.”
“Then why didn’t she say something? To you?”
“Because it makes her feel small.”
“That’s dumb.”
“Maybe.”
He thought about that for a minute.
“You never told her you knew,” he said.
“No.”
“Why not?”
I looked around the garage. Fifty-one years of junk in there. Coffee cans of screws. A rake with a broken handle I keep meaning to fix.
“Because she’d have told me when she could,” I said. “You can’t hurry that kind of thing.”
Tyler nodded slowly, like he was filing it away somewhere.
Then he said, “I’m still glad I said it.”
“I know,” I said. “So am I.”
*
Amy brought back sandwiches and we ate them standing up in the empty living room.
Then she took Tyler home.
The house got dark. I turned on the porch light and it lit up the whole front yard the way it had for fifty-one years.
June was in the kitchen with one box left open.
I sat down across from her.
She had her hands folded on the table.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I shouldn’t have said that in front of Denise.”
“That’s not the part that hurt.”
“I know.”
We sat there.
The refrigerator was already unplugged and the kitchen hummed with nothing.
“I had a whole sentence ready,” she said. “After Tyler walked in. I was going to say something, and then I looked at that feeder and it went right out of me.”
“Say it now.”
She took a breath.
“I couldn’t stand it,” she said. “Every day. She’d hear my footsteps and she’d get that look on her face, and it wasn’t for me. I was her daughter.”
“I know.”
“You know?”
“I was in the room, June.”
Her face came apart. She put her hand over her mouth and held it there.
“I’ve been carrying it for nine years,” she said. “Every time somebody tells me what a good daughter I was. At the funeral. At church. At the grocery store.”
“Why didn’t you say anything to me?”
“Because you’d have been kind about it,” she said. “And I didn’t want kind. I wanted to be the one.”
I let that sit on the table between us.
“June,” I said. “You were the one. You were there every single day.”
“I didn’t carry her.”
“No. I did that.”
She laughed once, wet, and wiped her eyes with her wrist.
“Fifty-four years,” she said. “And I still can’t stand to lose anything to you.”
“That’s not what happened.”
“I know.”
She reached across the table. I gave her my hand.
“I’m sorry I said I did it alone,” she said. “I wasn’t alone. You were up before I was every single morning, and you carried her like she didn’t weigh anything, and she didn’t, and you never once said a word about it.”
“All right,” I said.
“All right?”
“All right,” I said. “But I want one thing.”
“Name it.”
“When we’re in the apartment,” I said, “you tell Tyler. Not me. You.”
She nodded.
“I will.”
*
It took nine days.
The apartment is two rooms and a balcony on the third floor.
Small. The bathroom door doesn’t quite close.
Tyler came over on a Saturday to help hang curtains.
He and June sat at the kitchen table with a bowl of grapes between them.
I was out on the balcony with the drill, but the window was open.
I heard it.
“I said something untrue about your grandpa last weekend,” June said. “And you were right to say something.”
“I wasn’t trying to be mean, Grandma.”
“I know. You were being honest. That’s a different thing.”
“I felt bad after.”
“You shouldn’t.”
A pause.
“Is he mad?”
“No,” June said. “He’s not mad. He’s been carrying it a long time. Same as me.”
*
The balcony has a hook in the ceiling. Old and rusted, from whoever lived here before.
I hung the feeder on it.
Then I opened the coffee can of sunflower seeds and filled it up.
June came out and stood beside me with her arms crossed.
“Not much of a view,” she said.
“There’s a maple down there.”
She looked at the maple for a while.
Then she went inside and came back with one of the kitchen chairs. She set it by the window and sat down.
I put the coffee can back on the counter by the sink.
Half full.