I paced the floor like an expectant father. “What if nobody comes?” I said to Mickie. I knew Barb and Betty were pleased with Frank, but if we didn’t have customers, we didn’t have a store.
“They’ll come,” Mickie said. “Have faith.”
“Oh, God, don’t say that. You sound like my mother.”
“Not faith in God,” she said. Mickie professed to be agnostic. “Faith in your father—his customers loved him.”
And it showed.
When we opened the door at ten, his most loyal customers were waiting. Some brought food to supplement our spread and for me to take home for my mother’s freezer. Every one of them shook my hand and told me how sorry they were to hear about my father. Most important, they told me they weren’t moving their files. They were staying put.
Betty and Barb poured mimosas, and Mickie and Ernie circulated the hors d’oeuvres while Frank and I greeted each guest. Frank was better than I’d expected, personable and professional. In between filling prescriptions and answering questions, he worked the crowd like a politician stumping for votes. I don’t know if it was a testament to my father, or our efforts, but just about every client on my father’s Rolodex came that day.
Afterward, as Mickie, Ernie, and I cleaned up, Mickie said, “You did it, Hill. You saved your father’s store.”
But I knew better. “This was just the first step. The most important day is Monday.”
“What happens Monday?” Ernie asked.
“Monday, I go to work.”
“What are you talking about?” Ernie said.
“My mother can’t afford the care facility, but she also won’t admit it. The insurance doesn’t cover all the expenses, and their savings won’t last more than a year. I hired myself to run the store. Betty said she’d train me to order merchandise and pay vendor bills.”
“What about Stanford?”
“I’m going to defer for a year, until my mother gets back on her feet.”
Ernie turned away, upset.
“She’ll never go for that, not in a million years,” Mickie said.
“She won’t know,” I said.
“How will she not know? Hello, you live in the same house.”
But we didn’t, not anymore. My mother stayed with my father until closing and, as a result, rarely arrived home until well after nine. By that time, she was too tired to do anything except kiss me atop the head and go upstairs to bed.
25
Every morning that summer, I awoke at six and went to the store to ready it to open. I stayed until it closed, ran the deliveries, then went to visit my father for an hour before covering whatever sporting event I could pick up from the Times to make extra cash. As the fall approached, I began to see Ernie and Mickie less and less as they prepared to leave for college. The night before their departures, I planned what I sacrilegiously referred to as our last supper.
I cooked a meal fit for three kings—barbecued steaks, mashed potatoes, green peas, and a squash soup. I even baked and frosted a cake, decorating it with candles and frosting and writing, “Good Luck, Mickie and Ernie.”
“You keep this up and I might marry you,” Ernie said as I put the spread on the table.
“Get in line,” Mickie said.
As the three of us dug in, Ernie asked, “Have you told her yet?”
“No.”
“You’re going to have to soon.”
“Maybe not,” I said. “I hardly ever see her anymore, and when we’re home, I might as well be invisible. Maybe she won’t figure out that I never left.”