Grandpa smelled like cut grass and this heavy smell that a young Peggy Dellamore would have guessed was a tree of some sort. She would have been wrong.
Grandpa built the little house in Yankee Springs “by himself” Peggy’s Mom always insisted.
Building a house by yourself was pretty magical to Peggy, but Grandpa had been extra magical because the roof of the porch wasn’t attached to one of the pillars.
The wood and shingles and gutters on the east side just floated there, like magic, and that wrapped Grandpa’s magic in a jewelry box with the shiniest ribbon Peggy could think of when she was seven.
Peggy was trying to decide on a high school-the public one, Roosevelt, with all her friends, or the Catholic one near Detroit where her Aunt Sandy lived.
Mom, as long as Peggy could remember, thought Aunt Sandy and Catholic school were her magical ticket to a good college.
As the decision got closer, Mom started developing a greater appreciation for Peggy’s friends, even Max Eller, whose older brother Troy cooked meth in a trailer behind Marv’s Movie Palace drive-in.
Mom suddenly seemed to have her foot on the gas for Peggy to stay in town and go to Roosevelt with her friends, and Mom being tolerant, even kind to Max Eller was exceeding the speed limit.
“Are you mad at Aunt Sandy, Mom?”
Peggy blurted it one morning, out of nowhere, and her Mom’s shocked reaction was legit.
“Hell no, Sandy is my rock.”
She couldn’t fake the reaction, and Peggy knew it, so that reason for her Mom’s behavior had been eliminated.
“You’re acting like you want me to stay here and go to school. I thought you might be mad at–”
Peggy’s mom turned off the burner on the stove.
Didn’t touch the eggs, plate them, flip them, nothing. Just turned the heat off and sat down at the table.
“Sandy might move back to Barry County.”
Peggy said “Oh” and almost followed it with “good” until she realized that if Sandy moved back home, there was no way she was going to Catholic school near Detroit.
Peggy’s mom started pulling at the corner of the blue knit placemats Mrs.Tompkins made for them.
At first, it just looked like something to do with her hands, but Peggy saw that her mom was fully unraveling the knitting.
“We’re getting your Uncle Andy out of the nursing home.”
“Oh,” Peggy said and didn’t say anything else because it seemed like good news but her mom didn’t sound like it was good.
There was a long silence.
Peggy felt like her mom was about to say something, but that something never came out, so Peggy said:
“Mom, Grandpa said the nursing home was the only place that Uncle Andy could live.”
Her Mom hung her head.“ Your Grandpa’s an…”
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