That Summer by Jennifer Weiner (read more books .txt) 📕

Diana located a pair of rubber gloves and pulled them on. “If you bag up the trash, I’ll work on the dishes.” Most of the dishes in the sink were covered in layers of spaghetti sauce or lo mein noodles. The bowls contained the dried-up detritus of milk and cold cereal. That, plus takeout pizza, seemed to have comprised the bulk of Vernon Shoemaker’s diet in the wake of his wife’s death. Daisy couldn’t see any evidence of fruits or vegetables—not an apple core or a banana peel, or a hint of anything that had ever been green.

She had turned the water on as hot as it would go, added detergent, found a sponge, and started scrubbing as she made a mental list of everything they’d need to do before she felt comfortable enough to start cooking. The floors would need to be swept and mopped, the stovetop and counters sprayed with something disinfecting and scrubbed clean, and the refrigerator… God, she didn’t even want to think about the refrigerator.

“So you’ve been eating mostly prepared foods and takeout?”

“You ever go to Wegmans?” Vernon asked. She’d expected him to stand there and watch while she did the work, but, to his credit, he seemed to be doing a decent job of collecting and bagging up the trash. “They’ve got all kinds of ready-to-go stuff. For the working mothers, I guess.” He paused to unfurl another trash bag. “In my day, a mother stayed home with her kids.”

“Times have changed,” Daisy offered.

“Not for the better,” Vernon said darkly. “Okay, chief, what’s next?”

She instructed him to find a broom and a dustpan, while she loaded the dishwasher and ran it on its “sterilize” setting. Vernon started sweeping while she looked for some kind of cleanser to spray on the counters.

“Sometimes, I eat out,” Vernon said abruptly.

“Oh?”

“Yep. In Atlantic City, or at Foxwoods, I get coupons for the restaurants. I go to the diner.” He swept for a few minutes, then said, “Margie—my wife—she’d always want to go to the fancy places. The noodle place and the tappers place and what have you.”

“Tappers?”

“You know, the Spanish stuff. Little snacks.”

“Oh. Tapas.”

“Like I said. She’d wanted that, or the fancy Chinese place. I never understood paying twenty bucks for a plate of noodles with some kind of mystery meat, but it made her happy.” He tied a garbage bag shut. “Lots of Asians at the casinos, you know.”

“Mmm.” Daisy wasn’t touching that one. She wondered if Vernon Shoemaker knew that she was Jewish. “Did your wife gamble?”

“Margie? Oh, no.” Vernon went silent. Daisy finished wiping the counter closest to the stove. She held her breath and pulled open the refrigerator door, revealing the hellscape she’d expected.

“Can I have a trash bag, please?”

Vernon handed her a bag, peering over her shoulder as she started to toss half-empty packages of lunch meat. “Hey! Hey, that’s still good!”

Daisy showed him the package. “It expired three months ago.”

Vernon scoffed. “That’s a scam. All those expiration dates. It’s just companies wanting to get you to buy more food. Someone sent me an article about it.”

Daisy unwrapped a block of cheese, revealing a layer of green mold. She showed it to Vernon, who shrugged. “I bet you could just scrape that off.”

“You could,” she said, and dropped the cheese into the trash. “You won’t.”

“Fine, fine,” Vernon grumbled, as Daisy threw out Chinese-food containers and a desiccated lemon and poured a pint of curdled half-and-half down the drain.

“So what did your wife do in the casinos, if she didn’t gamble?”

“Oh, she’d shop. Watch people.”

“Did she like to cook?”

The question seemed to leave Vernon nonplussed. He moved the broom back and forth over a patch of floor he’d already swept, looking puzzled. “I don’t know,” he finally said. “She did it—you know, your steaks and your chops and what have you. Meatloaf. She made a fine meatloaf.” He paused, still sweeping. “I don’t know if she liked it. She didn’t complain.”

“Well, I love to cook,” said Daisy. “I think it’s fun. And can be an expression of creativity. Like art.”

“Art,” Vernon said, his upper lip curling. “Art that ends up in the crapper the next morning. Pardon my French.”

“Preparing a meal,” Daisy continued doggedly, “is a way of showing people that you love them. You’re showing them you care. You’re offering them sustenance.”

“Money is sustenance. Food is just food,” Vernon said.

“And, for a single person, cooking a nice meal, setting the table, and taking time to eat can be a way of taking care of yourself.”

Vernon scowled. “I don’t need taking care of.” The way his lips twisted made Daisy wonder if his sons had proposed some kind of long-term-care arrangement after his wife had died.

“Hal and Jeremy, they wanted to put me in one of those places,” Vernon said. Bingo, thought Daisy. “ ‘Assisted living,’ they call it. You start out in a house or an apartment, and six months later you’re in an old folks’ home. Well, I don’t need any assistance. I can look after myself.” He gave her a baleful look. “That’s why I said it was okay for you to come. I don’t want Hal thinking I can’t feed myself.” Another glare. “I’ve been getting along fine.”

Daisy thought of the rotted Chinese food and the chunky milk and kept her mouth shut.

“What’s wrong with takeout?” Vernon demanded.

“It’s not the healthiest option.”

He pursed his lips, like he was tasting something unpleasant. “At my age, I should worry about health?”

“And,” said Daisy, “it’s not the most economical. I’ve read,” she said, lying glibly, “that a single person who eats out three or four nights a week can save up to five hundred dollars a month by cooking those meals at home.”

That caught Vernon’s attention, just the way she’d hoped it would. “Really?”

She put her hand on her heart. “Swear to God.”

He sucked his dentures, then sighed. “All right,” he said. “Lead on, Macduff. At least it’ll get Hal off my back.”

Together, they scrubbed the kitchen spotless.