Beneath the Blue Beehive

The kitchen linoleum has a crack running from the base of the refrigerator to the leg of the table, and I have scrubbed that crack for twenty-two years. I know its exact width. I know how the light hits it in the morning, how it looks like a river on a map when the sun comes through the window over the sink. I know that no matter how hard I press the sponge, the dark line stays.

I was on my knees with the bucket when I heard the front door open. Not slam. Not rattle. Just open, soft, the way a person opens a door when they're trying not to wake anyone.

"Hello?" I called out. My hands were wet. I wiped them on my apron and stood up too fast and the blood rushed from my head.

No answer. But footsteps. Slow ones. The kind that drag a little on the left side.

I knew that walk before I saw the face.

Abuelo came around the corner into the kitchen and stood there in his brown coat with the elbow patches worn through, and he was holding a paper bag in one hand and his hat in the other. His hair was white and thin and stuck up in the back like he'd been sleeping on a bus. He looked at me like I was the one who'd appeared out of nowhere.

"Marge," he said.

"Abuelo." My voice came out strange. Flat. "You're supposed to be in Shelbyville."

"I left."

"You left."

"This morning. I took the bus." He set the paper bag on the counter. It made a sound like glass. "I didn't know where else to go."

Twenty-two years I've been in this house. I've cleaned that crack in the linoleum through two pregnancies and one miscarriage and the year Homer lost his job at the plant and the year he got it back. I've scrubbed it while the kids screamed and while they slept and while the house was so quiet I could hear the refrigerator hum like it was thinking. And in all that time, Abuelo has visited exactly four times. Once for Lisa's christening. Once when Homer had his heart scare. Once for Thanksgiving in 1994, when he fell asleep at the table before dessert. And once, three years ago, when he came to tell us Mona had died and left before the coffee got cold.

Now here he was. In my kitchen. With a paper bag.

"Sit down," I said. "I'll make you something."

"I'm not hungry."

"Sit down anyway."

He sat. He put his hat on the table, which I have asked him not to do before, but I didn't say anything. His hands were shaking. Not a lot. Just enough that I noticed when he reached for the salt shaker and then didn't use it.

I filled the kettle. The stove clicked three times before it lit.

"How did you get here from the bus station?"

"Walked."

"That's four miles."

"I know how far it is."

I got a mug down from the cabinet. The one with the chip on the rim that Homer refuses to throw away because it's his lucky mug, even though he's never had a lucky day in his life that I can prove. I gave it to Abuelo anyway.

He wrapped both hands around it like it was the only warm thing in the world.

"Does Homer know you're here?" I asked.

"No."

"Are you going to tell him?"

"I don't know."

The kettle started to rattle. I turned the burner off and poured the water and watched the steam rise between us. There was a smudge on the window over the sink, a handprint from Bart, probably, from last week when he was trying to climb out to the roof to get a frisbee. I hadn't cleaned it yet. I kept meaning to.

"Why did you leave Shelbyville?" I asked.

He didn't answer right away. He stared into the mug like there was something written in the water. Outside, a car went by and the sound faded and the house got quiet again.

"Your mother-in-law," he said finally. "She's gone."

I set the kettle down. "Gone where?"

"Gone." He looked up at me and his eyes were wet but his face wasn't doing anything. Not crying. Not close to crying. Just wet. "Two weeks ago. I found her in the garden. She was pulling weeds."

I sat down across from him. I didn't ask if he meant dead. I knew what he meant. I'd seen that look before, on my own father's face, the year my mother went into the hospital and didn't come out.

"I'm sorry," I said.

"She was pulling weeds, Marge. She had her gloves on. She always wore those gloves, the yellow ones with the flowers. I told her they were too pretty for yard work. She said that was the point."

He laughed. It was a terrible sound. Like a door creaking.

"The funeral was Saturday," he said. "I didn't call. I didn't want to bother anybody."

"Abuelo, that's not a bother. That's family."

"Is it?" He looked at me then, really looked, and I felt something cold go through my chest. "Because I've been sitting in that house for two weeks, and nobody called me. Not Homer. Not Patty or Selma. Not even the church ladies, and they call about everything."

I opened my mouth to say something. To defend Homer, maybe. To explain that he's not good at calling, that he forgets things, that he's been busy at the plant, that he means well. But the words didn't come. Because I knew they weren't true. Homer hadn't called his father in months. Maybe longer. I couldn't remember the last time.

"I'm sorry," I said again. It sounded small.

Abuelo nodded. He took a sip of his tea and made a face and set it down.

"There's no sugar," he said.

"I didn't put any in."

"I noticed."

We sat there. The refrigerator hummed. The crack in the linoleum ran from the fridge to the table leg, and I looked at it and thought about all the times I'd scrubbed it, all the mornings I'd gotten down on my knees with the bucket while everyone else was asleep, trying to make something clean that was never going to be clean.

"Can I stay here?" Abuelo asked. "Just for a few days. Until I figure out what to do."

"Of course."

"I don't want to be in that house."

"I know."

"It's too quiet."

"I know."

He reached across the table and put his hand on mine. His skin was dry and thin and I could feel every bone. He didn't say thank you. He didn't say anything. He just held on.

And I sat there in my kitchen with my father-in-law's hand on mine, and I thought about the paper bag on the counter and what was in it, and I thought about Homer, who was at work and didn't know his father was here, and I thought about the fact that I hadn't called Abuelo either. Not once. Not in three years. Not since Mona's funeral, when he'd left before the coffee got cold.

The front door opened again. This time it slammed.

"Hey, Marge! I'm home!"

Homer's voice filled the house like water filling a bathtub. I heard him kick off his shoes. I heard him drop his lunchbox on the floor, which I have asked him not to do a hundred times.

Abuelo pulled his hand back. He straightened in his chair. He put his hat back on his head.

"Don't," I said. "You don't have to."

But he did anyway. He sat up straight and folded his hands and put on a face I'd seen before, the face he wore at Mona's funeral, the face of a man who has decided to be fine.

Homer came into the kitchen and stopped.

"Dad?"

"Hello, son."

Homer looked at me. I looked at the floor. The crack ran from the refrigerator to the table leg, and I couldn't scrub it away, and I couldn't scrub this away either. Whatever was coming. Whatever had already come.

" What's he doing here?" Homer asked.

And I didn't have an answer.