The Open Laptop

“Grandma!” Amy shouts as she runs towards me.

She’s my 6 year old great granddaughter. It’s Saturday morning, and she and her mother are here for a visit.

Amy reaches to me and gives me a big hug. Then she nestles into the sofa beside me hugging her stuffed teddy bear and says, “Tell me the lake story again. Please, Grandma. Please.”

I’m 92 and I live in Duncanville, TX. My partner Bill passed away two years ago and now I live alone in a nursing home. These weekly Saturday morning visits with Amy and Dorothy are the highlight of my week.

“So you want to hear the lake story again?” I ask, pleased. “Where do you want me to start?”

“Start with when you meet Grandpa Bill,” Amy says.

“OK,” I say.

“It was back in 2016 when I was living in my big house in DeSoto,” I start. “Two of my best friends and I would go folk dancing up in Carrollton every Sunday. One Sunday we arrived a little late, and I noticed a new guy had joined the circle. He wasn’t tall, dark, or handsome or anything like that. But there was something interesting about him.

He knew the steps to some of the dances but was struggling on some of the others. So I entered the circle and took his hand to give him some instructions. ‘Four steps right. Now grapevine right. Four steps left. Now grapevine left.’ I told him. He smiled but didn’t say anything. That dance ended and we separated. We weren’t beside each other again in the circle for the rest of the afternoon.”

I look down at Amy. She’s listening intently.

“As my two friends and I were getting ready to leave,” I continue, “he walked over and said, ‘Thanks for the help on that dance. I needed it.’

‘You’re welcome,’ I said.

But he didn’t walk away. Then he said, ‘I’m sorry, but I have to know. Are you married?’

‘No,’ I blurted out, not looking at him. ‘Divorced. Thirty years ago.’

‘I’m really sorry, and really happy at the same time to hear that,’ he said. ‘What’s your name?’ he asked.

‘It’s Abigail,’ I said, finally looking up at him.. ‘People call me Abby.’

‘My name is Bill,’ he said with a smile. ‘I’d like to get to know you better, Abby. Can we talk?’

‘I can’t talk now,’ I said. ‘I have to leave with my friends. Call me.’ And I write my number on a napkin and hand it to him. I left him standing there alone with that napkin in his hand. I didn’t expect him to call. But he did.”

Amy giggles.

“He called the next day and we talked for about 15 minutes. I learned that he’s 82 years old, was married for 57 years, had two children, both boys, and is now widowed. His wife died of Alzheimer’s. I could hear the sadness and the trial of her death in his voice. I’m touched.

As the conversation winds down, he asks, ‘How about dinner tonight. I know a place that’s got the best filet mignon you’ve ever tasted.’

‘OK,’ I slowly say after a slight pause. ‘What time?’

‘Pick you up at 5?’ he asks.

‘OK,’ I say. And I gave him my address.”

I look down at Amy again. She’s smiling, as is her mother. ‘”She loves this story,” Amy’s mother says. “And so do I. Keep going.”

“He took me to a Texas Roadhouse,” I continue. “It’s so crowded and noisy that I wonder how we’ll ever get to eat. But we walked right up to the hostess and he said ‘waitlist.’

The hostess looks at something, smiles, and we’re seated right away.

‘How did you do that?’ I asked.

‘There’s a waitlist on line,’ he said. ‘I put us on it. It tells me when we should arrive. That’s why I drove so slowly. I had to get us here at a specific time.’”

Amy giggles again.

“It was a great dinner,” I continue. “The food was as good as he said it would be. And the service was impeccable. When we got back to my place we made a date for the coming Thursday. He asked if it would be OK if we went over to his place after the meal to watch a movie. I told him that would be OK.

His place was a two bedroom apartment in Grand Prairie. He had sold the house he had lived in with his wife because it was way too big and brought back painful memories. As we drove up to his apartment, I wondered what the apartment of an 82 year old widower would be like. Was he neat? Was he a slob? Would it smell?

It was neat and tidy and odorless, tastefully furnished but not overdone or cluttered. Through the door to one of his bedrooms I could see a king-sized bed. It was made. The other bedroom had been made into a home theater with a huge flat screen TV and surround sound. And there was a DVD player and a selection of movies. A two person sofa was appropriately positioned to capture the surround sound. Since I liked thrillers we watched one of the Bond movies.

When the movie was over and I was getting ready to leave, I noticed an open laptop on a desk in the living area. On the screen I could see one of the prettiest lake scenes I had ever seen. The water was bluer than I thought possible. Across the near side of the lake were homes with boat docks. A low mountain rose above the trees on the far side of the lake. ‘Where did you get that picture?’ I asked, pointing to the laptop. ‘It’s beautiful.’

‘Thank you,’ he says. ‘That’s the view from the deck of my lake house. I took that picture.’

‘Yeah, Riiiiiight,’ I thought. ‘Sure you did.’ But I said out loud. ‘It’s a great picture.’

‘Thanks,’ he said. And he drove me home.

Over the next several days that picture haunted me. Had he lied to me? Did he say that he had a lake house and that he had taken that picture just to impress me? To make himself seem more important? I realized it was a key moment in our developing relationship. I had to know.

The next time we watched a movie together at his place I saw that the laptop was open again. The picture was still there, ‘So that’s a picture you took from the deck of your lake house?’ I asked. ‘It’s so beautiful I’d like to go there. How about you and I spend a week there. Where is it?’

‘Have you as a guest at my lake house?’ he asked, excited. ‘What a great idea. It’s in Hot Springs Village, Arkansas, just west of Little Rock. Hot Springs Village is the largest gated community in America. The lake is Lake Balboa, the largest of the Village’s nine lakes. When would you like to go?”

“Well, I didn’t expect that,” I tell Amy. “I expected him to say that the picture really wasn’t from his house. That it was from some magazine. But he didn’t.

So we made plans to go to his lake house for a week. It was just over 300 miles to the ‘Village’ as he called it, so we would leave about noon and get there about 5. We would drop off the luggage at the house and then go to a restaurant called Mulligan’s. It was on one of the nine golf courses in the ‘Village’. And so we drove off. Still not a hint from him about his story about the house on the lake.

The trip took five hours just like we planned. I had checked out the ‘Village’ on the internet to see how much of what he had told me was true. Yes, the ‘Village’ was the largest gated community in America. Yes, it did have nine golf courses. And nine lakes. Yes, there is a restaurant called Mulligan’s. And Yes, Lake Balboa is the largest lake. So good so far. But did he really have a house on that lake? I doubted it.

Soon we drove off a main road and into one of the four entrances to the ‘Village.’ We drove up to and stopped at a gate. Beside the car on the driver’s side was a wooden post with a black board on it. He reached into his back pocket, pulled out his wallet, and waved it at the black board. The gate opened and we drove through. Still not a peep about his house.

I look down at Amy. She has a broad smile on her face. She’s heard this story several times before and knew what was coming. She saw me looking at her and asks, ‘Then you saw the lake, right?’

“Yes,” I said. “Then I saw the lake. We were driving along and suddenly the road was along the top of a dam. Off to the left was a huge lake. It had houses along the shore, and some of the houses had boat docks on the lake. Just like the picture.

For the first time I began to think that maybe the house on the lake wasn’t a fiction. But then I thought, nah. The picture might be real, but he probably took it from some park on the lake. Or maybe from some vista point. Taking it from his own deck was still too much to believe.

We drove a few miles more and then he turned into a side street. There were houses on both sides of this street now; it was clearly a residential section. As we went deeper into the neighborhood I suddenly saw a lake through the trees. A new reality was slowly dawning on me. But I still couldn’t believe it.

Then we came to a driveway and turned in.”

Amy was almost laughing now.

“As we turned into the driveway,” I continued, “he reached for a garage door opener that was hooked on the sun visor above his head. He pressed the button on it and the garage door opened. Still not a word about his story.

He parked the car in the garage and closed the garage door. We entered the house through a door in the garage to his laundry area. Ahead I could see the kitchen and an eating area with windows looking out on his back yard. But the shades on the windows were drawn. Still no lake.

We then turned left into a large great room with a cathedral ceiling. ‘Wow’, I thought. ‘Didn’t expect this given the way the house looked as we drove up.’ Ahead of me was a stone see-through fireplace with lovely wooden book shelves rising on both sides of the fireplace. To my right was a long set of drapes hiding a window.”

Amy has started to laugh now.

“He pulled back the drapes and my jaw dropped at least a foot. There was the lake. It was as big and blue as it was in the picture. Across the near side of the lake were houses, some with boat docks. To the left the scene expanded into a much larger section of the lake. Above the trees on the far side of the lake stood a low mountain. It was the scene I had seen on his laptop. He really had taken that picture from his deck.

‘It’s real!’ I exclaimed before I realized what I had done.

He looked at me strangely. ‘What do you mean, ‘It’s real.’ He said, clearly hurt. ‘Of course it’s real. Did you think I had made it up?’

‘I’m so sorry,’ I said, tears forming in my eyes. ‘It was all too good to be true.’

‘Look at me,’ he said.

I did.

‘I don’t play games,’ he said. ‘With me, what you see is what you get. Nothing more, nothing less.’

Laughing and crying at the same time, I said, ‘I’m so happy, What I see is what I want.’ And I gave him the longest kiss I have ever given anyone.

Amy was smiling and still hugging her stuffed teddy bear as I finish. But it was Dorothy who spoke. “That was quite a risk you took, inviting yourself to his house,” she says.

“You’re right,” I say. “It was a risk. But I had to take it. It was a key moment in our relationship. I was starting to have feelings for him. I had to know what kind of man he really was.”

“What if he didn’t have the lake house?” Dorothy asks.

“It didn’t matter,” I say. “Either way I would have known what kind of man he was. His actually having the lovely lake house was just gravy. The real positive was knowing that he hadn’t lied.”