The upstairs of our house has three bedrooms and a little bathroom with an old clawfoot tub.
We closed it all off in 2006, to save on heat.
After the new furnace went in, we opened it back up, but only for our daughter Hannah’s room. She’s fifteen now. The other two bedrooms stayed shut. Doors closed, heat vents shut.
They’d become what upstairs rooms in a farmhouse always become. Boxes of Christmas decorations. Dale’s old 4-H ribbons from the county fair. Hannah’s crib. A treadmill nobody ever once used.
Two bedrooms and a bathroom. Hannah’s room right in between them.
It would be tight.
It would be loud.
It would be a roof.
I finally fell asleep about four. The alarm went off at five-thirty.
The next morning, I called Jeff from my route.
I was parked at the Casey’s gas station in Hospers, eating a breakfast pizza out of the box on my steering wheel. Which is how a rural mail carrier eats lunch. I’d already done a hundred and twelve mailboxes.
He picked up on the fourth ring.
“Hey, sis.”
He sounded tired. He always sounded tired that winter. Like somebody had let the air out of him.
“What are you doing Saturday?” I said.
“Working till noon. Why?”
“Because Dale and I are cleaning out the upstairs,” I said. “And I want you and the kids moved into it by supper.”
There was a long quiet on the line.
I could hear the co-op elevator running behind him. The hum of the leg. A grain truck backing up, beeping.
“Tammy,” he said finally. “I can’t do that to you.”
“You’re not doing anything to me. I’m doing it.”
“I’ve got three kids, Tam. Cole still gets up in the night. Brody eats like a horse.”
“I’ve got a deep freeze full of pork,” I said. “Dale raises hogs, Jeff. Brody can eat.”
He laughed. But it came out wrong. Like it hurt him somewhere.
“Does Dale know?”
“It was half his idea,” I said.
That was a stretch. But it was Dale’s hand on my knee that told me I could do it. So I figured that counted.
“Just until you’re back on your feet,” I said. “However long that takes. No timeline.”
Another long quiet.
“Okay,” my brother said. Very quietly. “Okay. Thank you, Tam.”
He didn’t say anything about the house. He didn’t say one word about Mom and Dad.
I thought that was strange at the time.
I’d understand why on Sunday.
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