All Good People Here(2)
“Margot…” Her uncle said her name as if he were trying out the syllables for the first time.
“That’s my name, but usually you call me kid.” Margot kept her voice bright and even.
Luke blinked once, twice, and then finally, as if someone had gone in and swiped a hand across old cobwebs, his eyes cleared. “Kid!” He swung the door open and extended his arms wide. “My god, you’re here! What took you so long?”
Margot forced out a laugh as she rushed into his open arms, but her throat felt tight. She’d never get used to the fear that she’d finally lost him for good.
“Sorry ’bout that, kid,” he said when they let go. “I’ve been forgetting things in my old age.” He said it dismissively, as if forgetting your family was as innocuous as misplacing your keys, but there was a shadow of embarrassment darkening his eyes.
She waved a hand. “It’s fine.”
“Well, how the hell have you been? Oh, here, lemme help you with those bags.”
Margot made to protest, but Luke was already piling her bags in his arms. At only fifty, his mind may have been failing him, but he seemed strong as ever. As he turned his back, she stole a sweeping glance at his small home and her stomach dropped. It was the first time she’d been here since his wife, Rebecca, died of breast cancer the previous year. She swelled with guilt for not having come sooner. Leaning towers of newspapers were scattered around the living room floor, the coffee table was littered with dirty plates and glasses, and she could see even from where she stood at the front door that there was a layer of dust coating the built-in bookcase and old TV. The kitchen off to the right was far worse. The sink and surrounding counter overflowed with teetering piles of dishes, bowls stacked onto cups, smears of food hardened over it all. Most unsettling was the collection of pill bottles stacked by the landline phone. There had to have been more than a dozen, some empty, some toppled over. One big one was filled with an assortment of pills, round white ones mixed in with others, which were long and pale green. How much of this was because of his diagnosis and how much of it was because he was a new widower, Margot didn’t know.
“Jesus, you got a lot of stuff, kid,” Luke said, his arms laden with bags. “It’s like you think you’re moving in.”
Margot cut her eyes to him to see if this was a joke—she was moving in after all—but there was only the twinkle of teasing in his eye, not that of knowing. She laughed lightly. “You know me.” Then, when he didn’t move, she nodded toward the door at the end of the hall. “I was hoping I could stay in the office?”
A jolt of recognition as he nodded. “Sure, sure.”
Her aunt and uncle’s office had never gotten much use, as they’d both worked in South Bend, Luke as an accountant and Rebecca part-time at an art museum. In the first fifteen years of their marriage, the room had been a cheery yellow, a crib standing forever empty in the corner. Then, when Rebecca turned forty and gave up hope, she painted the walls gray. They’d bought a desk and a futon, and to Margot’s knowledge the room was only ever used by her uncle, who sometimes liked to play solitaire on the computer before bed.
The sight of the room now made Margot’s chest ache. It was clear her uncle had, in bursts of lucidity, begun to prepare the room for her visit, though most of the tasks appeared to have been abandoned midway. The futon was pulled out, a fitted sheet tucked over three corners. Two bare pillows laid on the floor next to it. She’d have to rummage around for a blanket and pillowcases.
“This is perfect. Thanks, Uncle Luke.” She hesitated. “Well, I drove straight from the office, so I’m starving. Have you eaten?”
After Margot assessed the contents of her uncle’s refrigerator—mostly condiments, mostly expired—she picked up a pizza from Wakarusa’s only pizza place and they sat down at the kitchen table with glasses of tap water and their slices on paper towels instead of plates because there were no clean dishes. Margot had learned from their phone calls over the past few months that conversations were best when she was the one talking, so she spoke between bites, all the while aching for the days not that long ago when, if they were in the same room together, she and her uncle could talk for hours.
“Thanks again for letting me stay,” Margot said, sneaking a look at Luke’s face. What she really wanted to say was: Do you know why I’m here? Do you remember your diagnosis? How are you coping with it all? But every time she brought up anything related to his illness, Luke’s voice turned hard. Margot recognized the emotion hidden beneath—her uncle was losing his mind at the devastatingly young age of fifty and he was terrified. So she talked around it. When she’d invited herself to move in, she’d told him she needed a change of pace and wanted to be closer to him, citing a made-up “new flexibility at work” as a seemingly good opportunity to do so.
“Of course,” Luke said, his eyes on his pizza. “You know you’re welcome anytime.”
“And just remember I’m happy to help out, so if you need anything…”
Luke smiled, but it was tight. “Thanks, kid.”
Margot opened her mouth to say something else, but he’d already changed the subject. “Hey, how’s Adam doing? And your mom?”
Margot stifled a sigh. They’d just jumped from one sticky topic to another, and she didn’t know how to navigate any of it. Until six months ago, she’d never hesitated to tell her uncle the truth—about his brother or anything else. But with his diagnosis, he seemed fragile, and from her research, she knew that fragility could lead to mood swings and outbursts. It had only happened a few times over the phone so far, but the thought of Luke losing himself scared her. “He’s—”