Death Benefits (3 page)

“I'll think about it, Marta,” she says. “He won't like it.”

Marta must say some Australian equivalent of
tough
shit
, because Mom starts yelling, “Why don't you send Mandy, Marta? You said yourself she needs a change of scene—a challenge. Why do Royce and I have to deal with this? God knows, you've got the money. And the time. Why don't you hang up the tennis racquet for a season? Marta? Marta?” She holds the phone away from her face and stares at it as if it's a dead rat. “She hung up on me! Can you believe it? Sixty years old and she hung up on me?”

I shrug. I don't have any siblings, not even half ones. I have no idea why siblings fight. I'm about to head downstairs, when she says, “You know what Marta thinks?”

I shake my head. It can't be good. “What?”

“She thinks you should look after him.”

Now it's my turn to be gobsmacked. I knew that word would come in handy one day. “Why me?” I squeak. “He hates me.”

“Don't be ridiculous, Rolly. He doesn't hate you. He doesn't know you. You're not sick anymore, you're not in school, you're not doing anything, you don't have a job and I need the help. Maybe Marta's right. Maybe it would be good for you. I don't know.”

“Good for me,” I echo. “In what way?”

“Money, self-respect, something to put on your resume? Pick one. Would you prefer that we move in with him? Or have him move in here with us? Either way we'd be at his beck and call all day, every day. And you'll still have to get a part-time job. I hear McDonald's is always hiring. Or you can go over to his house for a few hours five days a week. Your choice. And it wouldn't be forever—just until school starts in the fall. By then I'll have had a chance to work something else out.”

“How many hours a day?”

“Six, to start.”

“How much money?”

“What I was paying the others—fifteen an hour.”

“Cash?”

She sighs. “Yes. Cash.”

“Who's paying?”

“He is.” She doesn't elaborate. I've never thought about it before, but I guess he's loaded.

I do the math: $90 a day, 5 days a week. $450 a week, tax free. $1800 a month for 4 months. $7200. No way I'd make that flipping burgers or pumping gas. By the end of the summer, I'll have more than enough to buy a car and drive back to Nova Scotia. I'd fly, but I'm phobic. Bad experience in a small plane when I was ten.

“Until September then. Cash every Friday.”

Mom nods.

“I'll take it under advisement,” I say.

She nods again. “You do that,” she says. “You've got an hour.” She goes into the living room, sits at the piano and starts to play. Something slow and sad—Satie, I think, or Debussy. I always get those two mixed up. I know better than to interrupt her. She tells people she can't afford therapy, which is why she plays the piano and works in the garden. She sent me for therapy right after we got here, because she thought I might be depressed. I went a few times, just to get her off my case, and then I got mono and couldn't go anymore. She hasn't suggested it again. It's pretty expensive, and I'm not suicidal or anything. Just, as the therapist said, suffering from emotional dislocation. Otherwise known as homesickness. But now, as the liquid notes saturate the walls of the house, I envy her. What would it feel like to retreat into sound or scent, to feel soothed by a Chopin nocturne or calmed by a stand of hollyhocks? The closest I get is when we have waffles and bacon with maple syrup.

Having my grandfather here would ruin everything. No question. When you're in the same room as him, it feels as if he is breathing all the air. He likes the curtains closed and the heat cranked up. He can't listen to music without criticizing the performers. He doesn't eat what he calls “foreign” food, even though he's spent so much time in exotic places. He must have been a treat to travel with. So I weigh it out in my mind. Him in my space all the time, or me in his six hours a day. Minimum wage, a dorky uniform and smiling at people I ordinarily wouldn't talk to versus one cranky old guy, one happy mom and cash. Quite a lot of cash. Enough to get me back home.

I wait until Mom stops playing before I go into the living room. She is sitting, shoulders hunched, looking at her hands on the keys. Her fingernails are crusted with dirt and there are small cuts on her wrists and the backs of her hands. Not the hands of a musician, Arthur said to her a while ago.

“Mom?” She looks up when I speak. “You got yourself a deal.”

Three

M
om drops me off at Grandpa's house the next morning on her way to one of her gardening jobs. I haven't been up this early in months. Mom's in a good mood, so she lets me drive the truck, which is great until I stall at the Stop sign halfway up the hill to Grandpa's place. As I struggle with the gears and the clutch and the brake, we start to roll backward down the hill.

All she says is, “Relax, Rolly. Take your time.”

I got my learners' license as soon as I turned sixteen, but Mom's usually too busy to take me out, and we can't afford driving lessons. I've never had to deal with a hill and a Stop sign before. It sucks.

I grind the gears and my teeth, and eventually we start going forward again. When we get to Grandpa's, Mom reaches over and puts her hand on my arm as I set the brake.

“Do you want me to come in?” she asks.

I shake my head. “Nah. It's cool. He knows I'm coming, right?”

She nods.

“I'll figure it out. See you at two.”

As I walk down the path to the front door, she calls out, “Bye, Rolly,” before she drives off with a brief toot of the horn. I wave without turning around and walk up to the front door, clutching the key she's given me. I've never been here by myself. Should I ring the doorbell before I use the key? Or should I just walk in and risk giving him a heart attack? Before I can make up my mind, the door opens and there he is. Arthur Jenkins, celebrated cellist, legendary ladies' man, abysmal parent, shitty grandparent.

“Oh, it's you,” he snarls. “Where's your mother?”

“Work,” I reply. I try to slip by him into the house, but he's blocking the doorway with his walker. Something smells really bad—sour and burnt. “Uh, can I come in?”

“Why?”

Is the dementia this bad already? “I'm here to, uh, help you,” I say.

“I don't need any help,” he mutters. He turns around very slowly and walks away from me, leaving the door open. I stand on the doorstep, watching his progress, wondering if I should bail now and face my mom's wrath later. Fifteen an hour, I think, four hundred and fifty a week, eighteen hundred a month. It will be my mantra for the next four months. I step inside just as he says, “Can you make a decent cup of coffee?”

“Coffee? Yeah, I guess so. Unless you mean, like, a no-foam low-fat nutmeg cappuccino or something.”

“I like a
café au lait
in the morning. Half coffee, half hot milk. Strong coffee. Think you can do that?”

“Yup.”

“Not exactly loquacious, are you, boy?” he says. “Kind of taciturn. Although you probably don't know what I'm talking about.” He snickers.

“No, I'm not loquacious. I prefer to think of myself as laconic,” I say. “Taciturn seems a bit negative. And I think talking is overrated.” Take the hint, old man, I want to say. Just shut up. It'll be better for both of us.

He snorts and shuffles into the living room where he maneuvers himself into a huge black leather office chair behind a glass-topped L-shaped desk. The desk and chair sit on an enormous red patterned rug. The effect is of Arthur sitting on an island with a population of one. It's the kind of desk that a
CEO
of some major corporation might have, and the whole arrangement faces a wall that features a gigantic wall-mounted plasma
TV
, tuned to CNN. In any other house, this might be an understandable arrangement, but if you opened the drapes, you would be looking at a hundred and eighty degrees of ocean, sky and mountains. There's even a small island with a lighthouse, and usually there's a sailboat or two, some fish boats, maybe a freighter going by. On clear days you can see right across to the Olympic Mountains. Mom says we'll go over there someday, soak in some hot springs she read about. The whole front of the house is floor-to-ceiling windows, but all the curtains are closed, and he sits with his back to the windows. The first time I was here, I opened the drapes and went out onto the wooden deck that runs from one end of the house to the other. Arthur freaked. I thought he was going to have a coronary. He's like a vampire—can't stand sunlight.

Next to the living room is the dining room, which is painted a sort of murky peach. The only furniture, if you can call it that, is a dusty grand piano with the lid down and the keys covered. Beyond that is the kitchen, which looks as if it hasn't been touched since the house was built. The breakfast nook comes complete with a yellow arborite table and matching chairs. Very retro. Down the hall from the living room is the master bedroom, which is paneled in dark wood. I've only been in there once when Mom sent me to gather up Arthur's dirty laundry. It was like being in a bear's winter den. Smelly, warm, claustrophobic. The outside of the house is white and curvy with a couple of porthole windows at the front. It's genuine Art Deco. Unique, very valuable and totally wasted on my grandfather, Mom says. Apparently he bought it sight unseen. His main requirement was privacy. The house is near the end of a dead-end street at the top of a hill. It sits on a huge rocky lot ringed with oak trees. You can't even see his neighbors' houses.

There's a brand-new Krups coffeemaker in the kitchen, and I discover the source of the sour smell: a saucepan of milk on the back burner has boiled over. It looks like it's been fermenting for a couple of days. I set the pan in the sink to soak and wash out the foil burner liner; then I dig around in the cupboards for a clean pan. There's milk in the fridge and coffee in a canister on the counter. There appears to be no dishwasher, which is very bad news. The mug that is sitting in the dishrack looks as if it has only ever been rinsed, never scrubbed. Good enough. When his coffee is ready, I take it to him in the living room. He takes a sip and sighs. Could be satisfaction, could be annoyance. It's impossible to tell.

“Mind if I open the drapes?” I ask. It's worth a try. I could look at that view all day.

“Yes.”

“Yes, you mind, or yes, I can open them?”

“Yes, I mind.”

“Oh.”

“Too much glare on the screen.”

“Oh,” I say again. I can see his point. He turns up the volume on the
TV
and sips his coffee. I decide that I will open the curtains an inch or so every day and see if he notices.

After a few minutes, he looks at me and asks, “What are you still doing here?”

I shrug. “Beats me. Mom and Marta seem to think you need help. You look okay to me.” I turn to go to the kitchen but stop when he lifts his coffee cup and says, “Another one of these, boy. And some ice cream.”

“Ice cream? Now? It's, like, early.”

“I'm ninety-five years old. I can have ice cream ten times a day if I want.”

I shrug and say, “You're the boss.” After I make him another
café au lait
, I scoop chocolate ice cream into a bowl, but when I get back to the living room, he is slumped sideways in his giant chair, snoring. I eat the ice cream and drink the coffee. It's a tasty combo, even at eight thirty in the morning.

While Arthur sleeps, I explore the rest of the house. There is another bedroom on the main floor, furnished with a single bed, an empty bookcase and a standing lamp. The curtains are dusty brown corduroy. Totally inviting. If you're a blind monk. Next to the bedroom is an ugly bathroom with stained pink fixtures and peeling floral wallpaper. Downstairs there is another drab bedroom, this one with an ancient television on a rickety table in front of an equally decrepit armchair. I turn on the
TV
, not really expecting it to work, but it comes on, tuned to the Weather Network. Everything's a bit green, but it's better than nothing. I sit down and feel around for a remote. No luck. All I find is a long thin wooden dowel with electrician's tape wrapped around one end. I realize the dowel just reaches from the chair to the tv. I poke at the channel change button on the
TV
, and now I'm watching someone decorate a cake that looks like a slot machine. Another jab and it's golf. Poking at the
TV
makes me laugh, so I do it again. And again. When my arm gets tired, I jab back to the Cartoon Network and settle down to watch
South Park
. I wonder if Arthur devised the primitive remote. If so, it's pretty cool. Very ingenious.

About ten minutes after I sit down, I hear bells ringing. I'm pretty sure it's not coming from the tv— although, being
South Park
, it could be—so I stick my head out the door. The sound is definitely coming from upstairs. I poke the
TV
off and head up to the living room, where I find that Grandpa has woken up in a less than fabulous mood. He is sitting in his chair, waving a brass bell shaped like a woman in a hoop skirt. When I appear, he roars, “Where's my ice cream?”

“Chill, Grandpa.” I wrestle the bell away from him and put it on the piano. “You fell asleep. I'll get your ice cream.”

“I wasn't asleep,” he says. “You left me alone. I could have fallen.”

“I was downstairs. Watching tv.”

“Who said you could do that?” he says. When I don't reply, he announces, “I need to go to the bathroom. You shouldn't have let me drink so much coffee.”

I shake my head. I'm beginning to see what Mom was talking about. He's a total jerk.

“Don't just stand there, boy. Help me up.”