"I'm just saying that the house is more than you need to be handling now, Mother."
"I like this house, John. I'm not going to just cut and run because I'm alone now."
"I've seen the toll it's taken on you." Joyce's son, determined to get the unpleasant topic out in the open now that his dad had been gone for four months, set his jaw, prepared to dig in.
"That was because all of the care your dad required those last two years," John's wife, Susan, chimed in. "Mother Creasy looks absolutely luminous now, don't you think? And the house. It's never been in better shape. Look out into the garden. It looks terrific. I'd say your mother was doing just fine here."
John glared at his wife across the patio table on the terrace. They had had this discussion before they'd driven over here. Susan hadn't supported him then, but she certainly hadn't indicated that she would undercut him here. His mother was pushing seventy. She'd been frail and depressed by her husband's long illness, and they'd all feared she wouldn't be able to cope even until her husband had passed. She had, but now she was alone, she was old, and the house was too much for her. John was quite willing to take the house over when his mother went into a retirement community. In fact he was anxious to do so; it was just what Susan and he needed, in the right neighborhood, and, he had to admit that Susan was right; it looked in top shape right now.
Joyce set her gaze past her son and daughter-in-law, politely acting like she didn't see the daggers being tossed back and forth. Her focus went to the young, black college student, Travis, she'd hired two months before her husband had died out of desperation as a general handyman and to bring the garden back from the brink of jungle and to do some of the minor repairs on the house itself. Travis had finished mowing what little yard there was in Joyce's naturalized garden and now was pruning the bushes that were best cut back as they were preparing to go dormant in the fall.
Travis had been a godsend—in so many ways.
"I think I can manage quite well here as long as Travis is willing to provide his services," she said, cutting in over the muttering between John and Susan. "He's been a godsend. He's highly capable, and it gives me a good feeling to provide a disadvantaged but deserving young man like that a job while he's struggling through college."
"Well, I wish he'd wear more than that when he works here," John muttered. "I don't know why the young women in this neighborhood wag their tongues at someone from over in his section of town when they pass your yard. Whenever we're here there's some young woman walking slow past here and mooning over him."
It's probably because he has a body to die for, Joyce thought. But she didn't say it.
"More cake or iced tea?" was what she said instead, smiling sweetly.
* * * *
