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SIX

Carson

In the bleak midwinter, frosty wind made moan / Earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone

The ceiling of my old room hasn't changed in twenty years. I know every water stain on it. I've been looking at them for two hours. Sleep isn't coming back, so I get up.

The kitchen light hums when I flip it. Hildie's checkbook is in the drawer beside the stove, where it's always been. Her older entries are small and square. The newer ones wander across the lines.

Rudy. Pay to the order of. The date, one month out. I write the amount, sign it, tear it clean along the perforation. January. I move the pen down a line and change the date and do February. My hand knows the amount without checking.

The envelope lives in the drawer under the phone book. Rudy knows to look there. I fold the checks in and put them back in the drawer.

Then I get the pad.

I walk the house the way I always do before I leave. Hildie's closet door sticks in the wet months and swells until it won't open. I write it down. The second bathroom drips, still, a slow tap into the sink I can hear from the hall. Down. The crank on the jalousie window in the Florida room spins loose and grabs nothing. Down.

I flip back to check I didn't already have the toilet flapper on here somewhere.

Four pages back is last year's list. Same pad. Same pen, probably, but Hildie was still living here then.

Closet door. Bathroom drip. Window crank. Three of the four are word for word.

I sit with the pad open on my knee. Since May, I've been paying Rudy to cut a lawn nobody uses and keep up a house nobody lives in. I'm still not sure why we haven't pulled the plug and sold it. Sabal Point eats up her Social Security check every month. The house is paid off, but taxes, insurance, Rudy, and everything else still come due.

"Look who's up early," Hildie says as she comes down the hall.

I wait for whatever name she's going to give me.

"Good morning. Did you sleep well?"

I think about falling asleep on the floor with Mackie last night. At least I got about three hours of sleep with her before she insisted she had to go back to her mom's.

"I did. It's nice being back here with you. I'm going to miss you when you leave me again. Are you sure you can't move back here with me?"

She knows exactly who I am this morning. I don't want to waste it.

"I wish I could, Hildie. I have to get back to get ready for the calving that starts in about a month. I wish I could ranch here, you know I do. Any interest in moving West?"

"Oh, heavens no. This is my home." She looks around the kitchen. "It's better when you're in it, though.”

I pick up the pad and straighten the edge against the table even though it's already straight.

"You going to play bridge with us this morning? I keep telling the ladies how sharp you are with the cards."

"I'd like that. We can head that way whenever you're ready."

"Sorry we didn't go easy on you, Sonny," she says, and lays down the last trick. These women in here are lethal card players. I thought Hildie was a shark before. Being here has only sharpened those teeth.

The other two women at the table throw their cards into the center. Nobody is pulling any punches around here.

"I didn't want you to. I need a good slap down every once in a while."

She squints at the guitar player setting up in the corner. "Oh, Lord. Here he comes to murder Elvis."

I gather the cards and organize them to put back in the box. She gets up to talk to a man in a plaid blazer, so I make my way to speak to one of the nurses before I leave.

At the front desk, I catch Manny before lunch, hat in my hands. He pauses so we can discuss where things are with Hildie. He doesn't tell me anything I didn't already know, but it still hurts to hear about her decline.