Page 18 of Not My Problem

“Sounds good, I’ll go with you.”

We went next door after lunch, walking side by side across the lawn that separated our two houses. Jan’s house was almost identical to mine but reversed. There were a few differences, like she didn’t have a wooden deck in the back and at some point someone had converted her fireplace from wood to gas, but otherwise the layout was the same.

As soon as we entered the living room Zoe went to the fireplace, her eyes catching on the photos lined up on the mantle. When we were here the other day we’d gone in and out through the back door, so she hadn’t been in this part of the house.

“This is my mom,” Zoe said softly, picking up a photo of Jan and her husband flanking a girl who looked to be about sixteen.

Like Zoe, she was tall with long curly hair and a thin frame. Looking at the picture, it was clear that Zoe’s mom had taken after her father. Jan was more petite, with dark blonde hair and a curvier figure. I’d seen the picture before but not thought too much of it. Since Jan never mentioned having a daughter, I assumed she’d died as well. I never wanted to ask and bring up bad memories.

She set down the family photo and picked up one of Jan’s husband in his military uniform. He looked young in the picture, probably not even twenty-one.

“My grandfather was so handsome,” Zoe said, her finger tracing his face through the glass. “I wish I would have known him.”

“I never met him,” I said. “He died before I bought my house, but it sounds like he and your grandmother had a good relationship and were very much in love. She talks about him often.”

Leaving her in the living room, I walked around the house, going from room to room, looking for any broken windows, leaks, or other issues. Fortunately everything looked fine. When I came back to the living room Zoe was sitting on the couch looking sad. I sat next to her, quietly giving support but not prompting her to talk. I waited for her to be ready.

“I don’t know what could have been so bad that my mom cut off her parents,” she said. “And I’m really mad, you know? I could have, I don’t know, come here on summer vacations and visited. I’d hear my friends talking about how their grandparents sent them birthday cards or came for holidays and I was always jealous, wishing I had someone besides my mom.”

She took a shuddering breath. “My mom loved me, and I know she tried to be a good mom. I know that her addiction was an illness. But it seems like our lives were way harder than they needed to be because she’d made the choice to not be in contact. I should have been allowed to make my own choices.”

I knocked my shoulder against hers gently. “Well, you can now, at least with your grandmother. You never really know what’s going in a family. It sounds like your mom was a little wild and your grandfather put his foot down with her. But I think you also have to give your mom the benefit of the doubt that maybe something else was going on that we don’t know about that made a total separation a better choice for her.”

“You’re right,” Zoe said. “For all I know her dad was abusive or a creep or something. And I’ve been around enough to know that sometimes the other parent is clueless, either deliberately or because the abuser is so manipulative.”

“You can ask your grandmother about it when she gets back, but you need to be prepared that every story has a villain and in Jan’s, that might be your mom.”

Zoe

“I’m going to leave for work around eight tomorrow,” Gretchen told me over dinner Sunday night. “I usually get home around five thirty. Make yourself at home while I’m gone. I’ll leave you a key on the counter in case you want to go someplace.”

I wasn’t sure where I’d go, but I appreciated the thought. And the trust.

“Is there anything you want me to take care of while you’re gone?” I asked. “Some cleaning or anything?”

“Not really but thank you.”

We’d worked together to make dinner, Gretchen grilling some chicken breasts and vegetables outside on the grill while I made mashed potatoes from a box and baked up some crescent rolls. It was nice, kind of domestic. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d cooked with another person besides my mother, and even that was rare.

Not that I did a lot of cooking anyway. I mostly stuck to microwave burritos, cereal, and sandwiches. These past few days staying with Gretchen had made me realize that even though I was twenty-eight years old I was still living like a kid. Back in Chicago I’d been staying in a crappy apartment in a questionable neighborhood with two other women I’d met through an online ad. We weren’t friends or anything, especially because we all worked weird hours at our low paying service jobs. My room had a mattress on the floor and two milk crates I used as bedside tables.

Before I came to Seattle I would have said that I lived like that because I was poor. I certainly lived paycheck to paycheck. But something that Gretchen said to me made me see things differently.

“Your house is really nice,” I’d said as I helped her work on a jigsaw puzzle, something I’d never done in my life. It was surprisingly fun. “Everything matches, and it’s comfortable too.”

“When I was a kid in foster care using a trash bag as a suitcase and sleeping on whatever random lumpy mattress or sleeping bag on the floor my foster families gave me, I decided that when I was on my own I’d never live like that again,” she explained. “It was a stretch, especially when I first started working after college. My friends would scour thrift stores and pick up furniture on the side of the road when they were starting out, but not me. I invested in nice furniture and put curtains on the windows and bought sheets and towels that matched because I decided that I deserved it. Once I believed I deserved nice things, my entire outlook changed.”

As I processed her words it dawned on me that I didn’t have furniture because some part of me didn’t believe I deserved it. It was quite possibly the most life altering realization I’d ever had. I’d been thinking about it ever since.

I wasn’t sure what was going to happen, but I promised myself I’d get a decent job and do what I needed to do to live like a grown-up. I’d get new towels, matching furniture, and teach myself how to cook. I deserved nice things, and nutritional food too.

While Gretchen was at work Monday I looked through the contents of her kitchen, then typed some ingredients into this webpage I’d heard about that turned your ingredients into recipes. After deciding which one would work best, I watched a couple of YouTube videos on Gretchen’s iPad and got to work cooking.

The front door opened just after five thirty.

“I’m home,” Gretchen called.

I couldn’t help but think it would be nice to have her say that to me every day. I met her in the dining room, taking in her conservative pencil skirt and long sleeved blouse. From the neck down she looked like a politician’s wife or a middle aged high school teacher, but the row of piercings in her ear and her purple hair told a very different story. She was such a contradiction.