Todd didn't immediately hand me the pad.<\/p>\n
He kept it near the edge of the table.<\/p>\n
I could tell that he had more to say.<\/p>\n
And I wasn't going to interrupt him.<\/p>\n
Nine days earlier, I had struggled to find my own words.<\/p>\n
Now I wanted to hear every one of his.<\/p>\n
He looked at me.<\/p>\n
"When I figured out that monthly amount, I was only thinking about the house."<\/p>\n
I looked at him.<\/p>\n
"The costs?"<\/p>\n
"Yes."<\/p>\n
He nodded.<\/p>\n
"The expenses we already pay, and what I thought would change with you living there."<\/p>\n
I remembered how neatly everything had been presented.<\/p>\n
That was the trouble with figures written on paper.<\/p>\n
They looked certain.<\/p>\n
They gave the impression that every question had already been answered.<\/p>\n
Eight hundred dollars was eight hundred dollars.<\/p>\n
There was no confusion about the number itself.<\/p>\n
It was what the number meant that I couldn't settle.<\/p>\n
I had never believed that living in someone else's home should cost nothing.<\/p>\n
I understood electricity.<\/p>\n
Water.<\/p>\n
Groceries.<\/p>\n
A mortgage didn't disappear because the person helping with it was family.<\/p>\n
Those things were real.<\/p>\n
I had no reason to pretend otherwise.<\/p>\n
But I was real, too.<\/p>\n
My retirement money was real.<\/p>\n
My need for privacy was real.<\/p>\n
And my wish to decide what I did with my days hadn't vanished just because my daughter had offered me a basement room.<\/p>\n
Todd continued.<\/p>\n
"I thought that if I made the costs clear, no one could say the arrangement was unfair."<\/p>\n
I looked toward Michelle.<\/p>\n
She kept her eyes on the floor.<\/p>\n
I wondered what she had thought when Todd first worked out those figures.<\/p>\n
I wondered whether she had questioned them.<\/p>\n
Or whether she had simply trusted that he knew what he was doing.<\/p>\n
I didn't ask.<\/p>\n
The questions were in my mind, but the answers weren't.<\/p>\n
And I had already spent too much time trying to guess what other people were thinking.<\/p>\n
Todd touched the corner of the pad.<\/p>\n
"I was treating everything like something that could be divided up."<\/p>\n
I understood what he meant.<\/p>\n
A share of the bills.<\/p>\n
A share of the house.<\/p>\n
A share of the responsibility for the children.<\/p>\n
I suppose there was a kind of order in that.<\/p>\n
There was even something reassuring about the idea of everyone contributing.<\/p>\n
But there was a difference between contributing freely and being told what your contribution would be.<\/p>\n
I hadn't understood how important that difference was until it was taken away from me.<\/p>\n
I thought of Dale.<\/p>\n
Not of anything he had said about this situation.<\/p>\n
He hadn't been there to see it.<\/p>\n
I thought of his funeral.<\/p>\n
And how quickly the word independence could begin to feel complicated when the person who had shared your life was gone.<\/p>\n
Michelle had looked worn down after his funeral.<\/p>\n
I remembered that.<\/p>\n
It was why her appearance at my front door troubled me so much.<\/p>\n
She looked tired now.<\/p>\n
The same kind of tired.<\/p>\n
I wanted to ask what had happened over the last nine days.<\/p>\n
But Todd was still talking.<\/p>\n
"And then there was the babysitting."<\/p>\n
I straightened a little.<\/p>\n
He noticed.<\/p>\n
"I know," he said quietly.<\/p>\n
That was an unusual thing to hear from him.<\/p>\n
Because I hadn't said anything.<\/p>\n
I hadn't reminded him about the schedule.<\/p>\n
He had brought it up himself.<\/p>\n
I waited.<\/p>\n
"I told myself that four days with the children would make the whole thing work."<\/p>\n
His voice became quieter.<\/p>\n
"I thought of it as another part of the agreement."<\/p>\n
I looked down at my hands.<\/p>\n
Four days.<\/p>\n
I had repeated those words in my head so often that they had begun to sound like a calendar I didn't remember agreeing to.<\/p>\n
I loved my grandchildren.<\/p>\n
I wished that had been enough to explain why the request hurt.<\/p>\n
It wasn't.<\/p>\n
I didn't want to become someone who counted every minute spent with them.<\/p>\n
I didn't want to make them feel as though their grandmother needed a reason to visit.<\/p>\n
I certainly didn't want them to think I resented being around them.<\/p>\n
That wasn't the feeling.<\/p>\n
The feeling was that I would no longer be choosing.<\/p>\n
And that frightened me more than I liked to admit.<\/p>\n
A visit was one thing.<\/p>\n
Being available on a fixed schedule was another.<\/p>\n
Four days every week wasn't a small favor tucked into an afternoon.<\/p>\n
It was a large piece of a person's life.<\/p>\n
I could love those children with everything I had and still want to decide when I cared for them.<\/p>\n
For nine days, I had felt guilty even thinking that.<\/p>\n
Looking back, I wished I had given myself permission to think it sooner.<\/p>\n
Todd moved his hand away from the pad.<\/p>\n
"I should have asked you what you wanted."<\/p>\n
I raised my eyes.<\/p>\n
He continued before I could answer.<\/p>\n
"I should have asked if you even wanted that kind of schedule."<\/p>\n
Michelle let out a small breath.<\/p>\n
I heard it from near the door.<\/p>\n
It made me want to turn toward her.<\/p>\n
But I was afraid that if I saw her crying again, I would forget what I needed to say.<\/p>\n
That had always been difficult for me.<\/p>\n
My daughter's pain could make my own concerns seem unimportant.<\/p>\n
I knew it wasn't fair.<\/p>\n
I knew a mother couldn't solve every problem by ignoring her own needs.<\/p>\n
But knowing something and acting on it weren't the same.<\/p>\n
Todd glanced at the chair.<\/p>\n
He still didn't sit.<\/p>\n
"I didn't give you much room to tell us what you thought."<\/p>\n
I wanted to say that I had been right there.<\/p>\n
That I could have opened my mouth.<\/p>\n
That I wasn't helpless.<\/p>\n
Because that was true.<\/p>\n
I had choices.<\/p>\n
I had a voice.<\/p>\n
But I also knew what happened when someone you loved presented a plan that appeared to depend on your agreement.<\/p>\n
You began thinking about the consequences of refusing before you thought about whether the plan was right for you.<\/p>\n
You worried about hurting them.<\/p>\n
You worried about looking ungrateful.<\/p>\n
You worried that saying no would be remembered long after the reasons for saying it had been forgotten.<\/p>\n
That was what I had done.<\/p>\n
I had thought about Michelle.<\/p>\n
I had thought about Todd.<\/p>\n
I had thought about the grandchildren.<\/p>\n
Then, somewhere near the end of that list, I had tried to think about myself.<\/p>\n
And I hadn't liked how selfish that felt.<\/p>\n
Todd's voice brought me back.<\/p>\n
"I made it sound like you should accept the terms because we'd already worked them out."<\/p>\n
I looked at him for a moment.<\/p>\n
There it was.<\/p>\n
The part I had been unable to explain.<\/p>\n
Not the amount by itself.<\/p>\n
Not the basement alone.<\/p>\n
Not even the babysitting.<\/p>\n
It was that the decision seemed to have been made before I was invited into it.<\/p>\n
And I had been expected to feel grateful for the finished arrangement.<\/p>\n
I remembered Todd looking at the salt shaker during our earlier conversation.<\/p>\n
I had wondered then whether he felt uncomfortable.<\/p>\n
I had wondered whether he knew how hard it was for me to hear all of those conditions at once.<\/p>\n
But he had kept talking about what was fair.<\/p>\n
And I had kept listening.<\/p>\n
Now he looked directly at me.<\/p>\n
"I see why that was wrong."<\/p>\n
I wanted to believe him.<\/p>\n
I really did.<\/p>\n
But an apology could be easy to say after enough time had passed.<\/p>\n
Understanding was harder.<\/p>\n
I needed to know whether he understood the part of the arrangement that couldn't be written as an expense.<\/p>\n
The part that involved me.<\/p>\n
My days.<\/p>\n
My choices.<\/p>\n
The small amount of control I wanted to keep over my own life.<\/p>\n
I looked at the legal pad again.<\/p>\n
Todd noticed.<\/p>\n
"That's why I wrote this."<\/p>\n
I reached toward it, then stopped.<\/p>\n
I wasn't afraid of paper.<\/p>\n
I was afraid of discovering that he'd simply rearranged the same numbers.<\/p>\n
That he had found a different way to explain why eight hundred dollars and four days were reasonable.<\/p>\n
I wasn't ready for another discussion in which my life became a calculation.<\/p>\n
Todd seemed to understand my hesitation.<\/p>\n
He moved the pad closer.<\/p>\n
"No," he said softly, as though answering the worry I hadn't voiced. "This isn't another offer."<\/p>\n
I looked up.<\/p>\n
He held my gaze.<\/p>\n
"It's what I missed the first time."<\/p>\n
I sat back.<\/p>\n
That was when I decided I would read it.<\/p>\n
Not because I had forgiven him.<\/p>\n
Because I needed to know whether he had finally understood what the original arrangement would have cost me.<\/p>\n
Todd didn't immediately hand me the pad. He kept it near the edge of the table. I could tell that he had more to say. And I wasn't going to … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":36960,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-36962","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-insightdrama"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36962","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=36962"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36962\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36982,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36962\/revisions\/36982"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/36960"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=36962"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=36962"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=36962"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}