Suburban Renewal Read Free Page B

wall. This was the same routine that my grandfather and my uncles had followed. Clean clothes, freshly starched and pressed, hung on the hook on the back of the door. I mixed my shaving cream in the same chipped cup mygrandfather had used and brushed my teeth with his preferred Colgate tooth powder. The passage of time and changes in consumer choices had somehow passed Gram by. Either that or she saw no reason to change a system that had obviously worked. In a few minutes, I was clean and presentable. I stepped back outside and dropped the sweaty, greasy coveralls in the barrel of Gram’s special oil-field cleaning solution that had to be kept out in the open, it’s main component being highly flammable drip gasoline.
    In the kitchen Gram and Corrie were getting dinner on the table. I knew that Corrie’s family never ate before 7:00 p.m. But Gram always fed a working man as soon as he came home from the field.
    I watched for a moment, unobserved. Corrie was helpful, soft-spoken, subdued. She’d only been at college for six weeks. In some ways it felt like yesterday, and in others, that she had been gone forever.
    â€œThere’s our boy,” Gram said as she caught sight of me. “Come on in and take your place at the table. Corrie, you sit down as well. I’ll only be a minute until this corn bread comes out of the oven.”
    Corrie sat at my right. I smiled at her. She smiled back, but it was only a shadow of the happy expression I was accustomed to.
    When Gram was seated we joined hands around the table as I said grace. Corrie’s hand was so small in my own and it was cold. I couldn’t resist giving it an encouraging squeeze. If this was the end for us, I knew I would be sick, miserable. There was no reason that she should be sick and miserable, too.
    â€œThy will be done,” I told God. But I was fervently hoping that He would see things my way.
    The meal seemed to last forever. Gram kept up asteady stream of talk, including a long-winded, oft-told tale of Aunt Kate sewing flour-sack drawers with the advertising along the back so that the butts read SHAWNEE’S BEST. It was one of Gram’s typical old-timey stories of her and her sisters growing up in Territory Days. I’d heard it a million times, I guess. But Corrie hadn’t heard it and it made her laugh. It was a wonderful sound. So I told a story or two myself. By the time Gram served up the applesauce cake the tone had changed to being almost festive.
    â€œWhy don’t you two sit out on the porch while I clean up this little tat of dishes,” Gram said.
    Corrie argued for a minute, but Gram shooed her away and reluctantly we found ourselves alone on the porch swing. Twilight was coming on and the overhead cloud cover made it seem even darker. I didn’t switch on the porch light, but the house light seeped through the front window, giving just enough illumination for me to see Corrie’s face.
    She looked so sweet and pretty. Smart and sweet and pretty, Corrie had it all. It was no wonder that her parents wanted more for her than me. And no surprise that once she’d been out into the world, she’d discovered there were plenty of guys more suited to her.
    I knew I would never do as well. I’d find some good-natured gal and we’d buy a mobile home on a fifteen-year lease and raise three or four kids. But I would always remember Corrie. I would always remember the girl who thought better of me than I did myself.
    I pulled her close and kissed her. I wanted to taste for one last time the lips that by any reasonable accounting should never have been mine. As I moved back, I smoothed away a few strands of blondish-brown hair that strayed across her cheek.
    â€œDon’t be nervous or anxious or afraid,” I told her. “Just tell me whatever it is you have to tell me.”
    A worried frown still creased her brow, but she raised her chin bravely.
    â€œSam, I’m