The Rule of Threes by Marcy Campbell (android e book reader txt) 📕

side of Grandma’s face as she blankly stared out the windshield, but after a few minutes she closed her eyes and fell asleep, and my mom turned on the radio, very softly, to a news station that I completely ignored.

We ate lunch at Grandma’s house, just some canned vegetable soup Mom found in the pantry and toast with lots of butter. Then Grandma wanted to take a nap, so she went upstairs to her room. We didn’t leave right away. Instead, we did a load of Grandma’s laundry and checked the fridge for expired food.

I twisted the cap off a gallon of milk and sniffed. “Yuck! This is bad, Mom.” She poured it down the sink, and I left the room while she ran the disposal for a long while to clear out the stench.

I set myself up at the coffee table in the living room, pulling out the box of crayons and the paper Grandma still kept in the drawer. I could hear Mom in the kitchen talking to the health aide on the phone, asking if she could come earlier to “discuss some things.” When I heard Mom start crying, I ran to the doorway, but her back was to me, and she seemed to have choked back the tears. She was talking details now, very businesslike, just like she was on the phone with a client.

I sat back at the table with the crayons. I hardly drew anymore, but as I made a picture of a lake, I found myself really enjoying the way the crayon moved across the paper, the waxy smell. It wasn’t a lake like the one at the assisted living facility with the angry swans. This one was huge and had smiling turtles on logs and lots of little yellow birds flying against a blue sky, where birds were supposed to be flying. Blues and yellows, calming and happy. I hung it on the fridge so Grandma could see it later.

“Sit up here with me,” Mom said when we got back into the car for the trip home.

“I thought that wasn’t safe, sitting in the front,” I said, “until I got a little bigger.”

“I’m living dangerously,” Mom said with a wink.

“Really?”

She nodded, patted the seat. “You’re almost big enough anyway, and I could use the company.”

She pointed to the radio. “You can pick the station.”

Seriously? The front seat and my choice of music? I looked over at her, and she was smiling, but her eyes looked shiny again.

“It’s okay,” I said. “I like your music.” Some of it was actually pretty good.

“Thanks, sweetie.”

From the front seat, I took in that big old road like I never had before. I got comfy while Mom sang along softly to some song about buying a ticket to the world, whatever that means. When the song was over and the DJ came on, I said, “Grandma doesn’t want to leave her home.”

“I know,” Mom said.

“Does she have to?”

“Yes,” she said sadly.

“Oh,” I said. It didn’t seem like something that should be up to us.

We drove along in silence for a few minutes. Everything was different up here in the front, bigger. But Grandma’s world was getting smaller. I couldn’t really imagine leaving my house. It was the only one I’d ever lived in. I’d had friends over the years who had moved to other towns or to bigger houses in our town. I couldn’t imagine being someplace else.

Then I thought about Tony, wondered what his old place was like. Were the walls white or different colors? What kinds of pictures did they have hanging up? Dad had mentioned that Tony and his mom lived in an apartment, so although our house wasn’t anything fancy, I figured it was probably better than what he’d had before, though “better” was kind of a hard word to define.

He certainly hadn’t brought much of his stuff along, but maybe he didn’t have much stuff to begin with. All I ever saw was his duffel bag full of clothes and his backpack. And of course, his basketball.

“What will you do with Grandma’s house? Will you sell it?” I asked Mom.

I could easily imagine Mom sprucing up all the outdated rooms, making it look modern again. Of course Grandma loved to decorate, and she’d redone the house so that it was once very stylish, but she hadn’t changed a thing in more than ten years, and even though that didn’t seem like a super long time, trends changed a lot faster than that.

An idea came into my head so quick, I almost patted my hair to check for the light bulb. I could help fix it up! The house had “good bones,” as Grandma liked to say about things that might be old but were still sturdy and wonderful. There was a little den that could be so cute if we painted the paneling. . . .

But then, I thought sadly, but then, it wouldn’t be Grandma’s anymore, would it? The “after” picture might be pretty, but it wouldn’t be her.

“No, I wouldn’t sell it,” Mom said. “Not right away at least.” “I’d like Grandma to be able to think she could go back to it someday, if the house was still there and still hers. That will keep her spirits up.”

“Will she go back someday?” I asked.

“No,” Mom whispered.

She was quiet the rest of the way home, not even humming along to the radio. There was a woman singing a song about a guy cheating on her. Was it that common? People lying to each other? Until recently, I’d had no idea.

I closed my eyes for a while, thinking about Jasmine at the facility. The birds love it here, she had said when she caught me with my face pressed up against the aviary’s glass. The food looks delicious, Mom had said to Grandma when we’d walked past one of the employees carrying a tray with some kind of meat covered in watery gravy. The assisted living facility is “only temporary.”

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