“…to a lawyer in Perrysburg named Edwin Cray, who handles guardianship petitions,” the receptionist said, and I stood in my own kitchen with Walt gold Hamilton watch in my coat pocket and the telephone against my ear. Guardianship. They had not merely wanted my money. They had wanted me declared unable to manage it. The receptionist at the doctor office, a young woman named Tasha, said she had realized something was wrong only after she hung up, and she had called me back, and she was so sorry. I told her she had done exactly right. Then I sat down at the table and put my forehead in my hands.
I am eighty years old. I have outlived a husband, and raised four children, and worked thirty years at the county library. I do not frighten easily. But for a quarter of an hour, I sat there in the early morning light and felt as if my own house had been tilted. Jessica had told the doctor that I wandered at night and forgot to turn off the stove. I had done neither. She had said it with such sweetness that the doctor had made a note. A note, in a file, that could be shown to a judge.
I made myself get up. I made a pot of coffee, and I took out the old address book Walt had kept in the drawer by the telephone. My other children were scattered: Maureen in Dayton, Paul in Columbus, little Susan in Chicago. I had not worried them with Brian trouble. I called Maureen first. She answered on the second ring, and I said, “Honey, I need you to come to Toledo today, and I need you to bring your brother,” and she heard something in my voice, and she did not ask a single question.
A baby monitor left plugged in, a pawn ticket with a son name, and a gold Hamilton watch handed down at Christmas.
By four o clock that afternoon, my kitchen held four of my children, a plate of sandwiches nobody ate, and a very quiet Brian. I had placed Walt watch in the middle of the table, its gold case catching the lamp. Beside it I laid the pawn ticket with Brian name and driver license number. I asked Paul to read the doctor notes aloud. I asked Susan to read the fax cover sheet. Then I asked Brian, gently, to tell us all what he knew, and he said nothing for what felt like an hour, and then he put his head in his hands and wept.
He had pawned the watch in a panic, he said. Jessica had told him that his mother would never miss it, and that he needed four hundred dollars for the electric bill. He did not know what she was planning. She had said only that she wanted to help me, that I was getting forgetful, and that they should be ready. When he realized the truth, listening through the wall that night to her telephone call, he had been too afraid to say anything. “She is my wife,” he said. “And I let her. And it was Dad watch.”
Maureen got up and put her arms around him, the way she had when he was little. Paul, who is stern, folded his arms and stared out the window. Susan, my youngest, took my hand and did not let go. I told them what I wanted. Not revenge. I wanted a lawyer of my own, a good one, and a doctor who knew me. I wanted my accounts in a trust, named for all four of them, with Maureen as the successor. And I wanted Jessica out of the house before the week was over.
Jessica returned at six, in her camel coat, with a bag of groceries. She stopped in the kitchen doorway when she saw the family around the table. She tried a smile. It lasted about as long as a match. I did not shout. I told her that I had heard her telephone call, that I had the pawn ticket, and that my children had already spoken with a lawyer. I told her that she was welcome to pack that evening, and that Brian would drive her to her sister in Sylvania. She looked at him. He looked at the floor. She understood.
She left within the hour, with two suitcases and a face like stone. Brian stayed. He went with me the next morning to Dr. Okonkwo, a new physician, who spent an hour with me and wrote, in plain language, that I was entirely competent in mind and judgment. The paper was notarized and filed with the lawyer. That same week, Brian began an evening job at a hardware store on Monroe Street, and Maureen drove up every weekend for two months to help him sort out his debts. They did it together, over coffee, at my kitchen table.
In December, we had Christmas dinner, all four children, the grandchildren, a ham. At the end of the meal, I stood up and tapped my glass. I took Walt watch out of my cardigan pocket. It had been cleaned by a jeweler on Secor Road. I had been wondering for weeks who should have it. I looked around the table, at the faces I had known since they were infants, and I walked down to the far end, where my oldest grandson Walter, fifteen, was sitting in his first necktie.
I put the watch in his hand. He turned it over. He read the engraving on the back: W.K. 40 years, Toledo Edison. He looked up at me, and his eyes were enormous. “Is this really mine, Grandma?” he asked. I said that it was his, to wind every Sunday, as his grandfather had. Brian, at the other end of the table, was watching with his hand over his mouth. After a long moment he nodded at his son, once, and I saw the whole table go soft with candlelight and tears.