So she fed us. For ten years I maintained every piece of equipment in Pauline's Counter, and later in the second location on Detroit, for food and a handshake. Once a month we ate there for free. Margot grew up on that milk crate in the kitchen, eating potato-and-cheese pierogi off the cutting board, refusing the sauerkraut ones. She called Pauline "Aunt Polly." She doesn't remember. She was four, five, six. Children don't remember the people who love them before they're old enough to know it.
In the spring of 2008, Gloria was diagnosed with ovarian cancer. By the time they found it, it was already everywhere.
I won't tell that part. Not here. I'll only say that the dental office where she'd worked nineteen years had the kind of insurance that looks fine until you need it, and by October there was a second mortgage on the bungalow and a credit card bill I still can't think about without my chest getting tight. And that every single day for seven months, Pauline Ostrowski sent dinner to our house. Every day. Sometimes Rudy drove it over. Sometimes she brought it herself and sat with Gloria while I took Margot to school. She never said a word about money. She just kept showing up with soup.
That same spring, Pauline had signed a lease on the old Lakeside Ice cold storage building on the east bank, with two investors and a bank loan. She was going to call it Wren & Salt. She asked me to design the refrigeration. I did it at night, at the kitchen table, while Gloria slept on the couch because the bed hurt her back.
One evening in September, Pauline came over with a manila folder. She sat down at that kitchen table across from me and Gloria and opened it, and inside was a partnership agreement, drawn up by her lawyer, assigning me two percent of Wren & Salt, LLC. Non-voting. No obligations. Paid out annually from profits, if there ever were any.
"Absolutely not," I said.
"I already signed it," Pauline said. "My lawyer already filed it. You don't have a lawyer, Wes, so you don't get a vote."
"I can't take this."
"It's not for you," said Gloria.
We both looked at her. She was in her bathrobe, and she'd lost her hair by then, and she was wearing one of the soft cotton caps that Pauline's mother had crocheted for her. She was so thin. But her voice was steady.
"It's not for you," she said again, to me. "It's for Margot. Take it, and put it away for her school. All of it. Every penny."
I said I would.
"And Wes," she said, "don't tell her where it came from."
"Why not?"
Gloria reached across the table and took my hand. Her fingers were cold. They were always cold, that last year. "Because I don't want her ever feeling like she owes anybody for who she gets to be," she said. "Not Pauline. Not you. Not anybody. Tell her it was from me. From my insurance. Let her think her mom took care of it." She smiled. "It'll be true enough. I'm the one making you take it."