s it has since I came to live with the Browns, the brass lamp hangs at an odd angle above the kitchen table, spreading just enough light over them to show the light wrinkles in their faces. They look young, I think, younger than what they are. Then my eyes adjust and I can see the black lines etching their faces. I can’t remember how old they are. I can’t remember and I know I should. They must be pushing 70.

“Thought you was going to get a 100 watt, Willy,” Erma says. “Can’t see my hand in front of my face,” she says.

Willy tilts the paper toward the weak light, rattles it and grunts.

I don’t know why I come back. It’s always like this, Erma sitting on one side of the kitchen table, Willy on the other with me in the middle, all drinking coffee or tea and all saying not much. True, they raised me, my parents, by impulse. Adoption was the only way they could have kids. They chose me, me out of all of the faces of all the kids from the Washington State orphanage in Spokane in 1972.

I regret it sometimes. Sometimes I figure they wish they’d gone onto the next kid, maybe a girl. I was 12 and wanted to go. I thought I wanted another mom, maybe the whole family. They took me home and I don’t know what about me made up their minds.

I lived with them for ten years and I don’t know how old they are. Was it always like this? Maybe they wanted grand kids before now. I’m in no rush. That’s for sure. I don’t know if I want kids. I don’t know if I want to marry.

“You workin’?” Willy asks.

“In between jobs,” I say and he grunts again.

“Andy’s going back to school, Willy. Isn’t that great,” she says.

The paper rattles. “S’pose so,” he says.

“Going to be a chiropractor — a doctor. Ain’t you, Andy?”

“Chiropractor’s no doctor, not a real one anyways,” Willy says. “Jim Bailey near ruined my back,” he says. “How you goin’ to pay for all this schooling? We can’t afford it. Just get a job, if you ask me, … and don’t ask us for no money. … They’re hiring at the docks, I hear. Talk to Jim Farbor. He — ”

“I don’t want to fish for a living. I’ll get a job and I’ll go to school. I’m getting financial aid. But I need your financials. For government forms.”

Willy folds the paper, quarters it and sets it on the table next to a glass of sweet tea. Sweat has coated the glass and it slides from Willy’s hand, bounces off the table and strikes the floor, shattering and spreading its contents beneath the table and splattering his feet. He growls and stands upright. “Damn it, Erma. Are you going to just sit there on your ass?” he says without looking at her. He brushes at the dark drops soaking into the front of his pants.

“I’ll get a towel,” I say. But Erma has shuffled across the floor and is digging through a cabinet drawer next to the sink. I fetch a paper sack from between the refrigerator and stove and pick up the big pieces of glass.

“Now, I got to change,” Willy says, and leaves the room.

We finish the job as Willy comes in wearing khakis, tan slippers, a green pull-over Izod, which, no doubt, Erma picked up at a garage sale. He sits back in the same chair — his chair — and unfolds the paper.

I hesitate, “Willy?” He doesn’t reply. Erma joins in, “Willy! Andy’s talkin’ to you.”

Willy keeps his face pressed close to the paper and we wait. He turns the page, shakes the paper, tilts his head back and gazes at the newspaper beneath the thin split in his bifocals. His head raises and lowers as he follows each column.

The ticking of the grandfather clock from the hallway and the wind pressing the window above the sink mark the time. I study a puzzle of dark clouds on the horizon gathering then muting the sun.

Willy folds the paper and tosses it onto the table. “Get me some more tea,” he says. He glances at Erma through watery eyes, then away. “G’damn mold,” he says, but he refuses to take the allergy pills the doctor gave him.

While Erma busies herself at the Frigidaire, I ask him again, as I slide forward to the edge of the chair. “I need your financials. You know? Tax returns. I can’t fill out the forms without them.” I hear a tone of pleading in my voice and am a child.

Willy squints at me squeezing a few tears from his right eye down his cheek. He uses his palm to swipe them away. “Why? My money’s my business. ‘Sides, you’re the one goin’ back to school. Tell ‘em what you get paid. I can’t pay for it. I told you that. Tell ‘em what you make,” he says. “That’ll get you some government money.”

Erma brings another glass of tea. “Be careful,” she says. Willy grunts.

She says, “Willy, you know he needs the tax papers for the forms. You’re just bein’ ornery.”

“How long you going to do avoid goin’ to work?” Willy says. “What was it you was going to school for? Long time ago.” Willy says.

“That was my GED,” I say. “I had to get it first so — ”

“Wouldn’t a got into that mess with that girl, you could a finished high school.” Willy says.

I think, I’m still with Sheila. The baby died in childbirth so why’s it matter now? But I don’t say that. “You going to give me the papers, Willy?” I say.

“Sure he is. Aren’t you, Willy?”

Willy presses his hand on the table, rises to his feet, shuffles into the living room, the slippers scuffling across the hard vinyl floor then falling silent on the carpet as he passes the grandfather clock. He follows the hallway to his bedroom at the end of the house. They hear the door click shut behind him.

Erma busies herself getting up dishes and hunches over the sink. When she finishes washing and drying the dishes she sits in the same chair. The sky has pulled a gray quilt of clouds over the house and the dim light seems dimmer. The clock ticks.