“I mean, I thought you should want more.” She looked toward the repaired roof. “I didn’t understand how much work it was to get this.”
“Neither did I when I was your age.”
She picked up the fallen clippings. We worked for a while, and she asked which stems to leave. I showed her. It was a useful question, one I could answer without handing over anything I needed.
In June, they invited me to dinner at their apartment. Terrence cooked chicken in a pan too small for it and set off the smoke alarm. Lennox opened a window and laughed, a startled real laugh I had not heard in years. We ate at a secondhand table with one leg braced by folded cardboard.
Afterward my son walked me to my car. He had a container of leftovers in his hands.
“You don’t have to take these,” he said. “I just made too much.”
“I’ll take them.”
He handed over the container and stepped back, leaving me room to open my own door. At home, I put it in the refrigerator beside tomorrow’s lunch. Then I turned on the lamp by my reading chair, sat down in the room I had kept, and opened my book.
