She started asking me to stay for dinner. Her cooking was terrible, but she acted offended if I noticed.
Slowly, without either of us saying it, things changed.
Once she made meatloaf so dry I drank three glasses of water trying to get it down.
“This is awful,” I told her.
She pointed her fork at me. “Then die hungry.”
We watched game shows together in the evenings sometimes. She yelled at contestants like they could hear her.
She told me about her life, and I started telling her things I didn’t usually tell anybody: about foster homes, learning not to get attached, and never really planning past the next rent payment because it felt dangerous to count on anything more.
She yelled at contestants like they could hear her.
One night, she muted the TV and looked at me hard.
“You only ever think about surviving the next month, James. Don’t you have dreams?”
I shrugged. “I think I’d like to keep going at the diner. Maybe earn a promotion.”
“Well, I guess that’s something,” she replied.
That winter, she gave me a pair of green knitted socks so ugly I didn’t know whether to be thankful or offended.
“I made these for you,” she said, shoving them at my chest. “So your feet don’t freeze.”
“Don’t you have dreams?”
At the diner, Joe noticed me bolting out after shifts and started giving me grief.
“You got yourself a girlfriend now?” he asked one afternoon.
“I’m helping Mrs. Rhode.”
He nearly dropped a coffee pot laughing. “That tough old bird? Helping her with what?”
I told him the whole arrangement.
