“Always good advice,” he tells me.

After dinner, he offers to clear the table and wash the dishes, but Granma shoos him out of the kitchen. “You, too,” she says to Mom. “You both have jobs in the morning. I don’t do anything all day but sit on my tail end.”

“Maybe you’d like to go for a walk, Jenny?” Mr. Tomski asks, and Mom says, “Maybe a short one.”

She gets her coat. “Do you want to come, too, Ben?” she asks.

“Can I watch TV if I don’t?” and she laughs.

“I’d rather you came,” she says, but she’s not laughing now—she’s looking at me hard.

“I’d rather watch TV.”

“All right, Tom,” she says, smiling again. “Just once around the block.”

They walk out the door and Granma starts clearing the table, while I turn the television on. Then I feel bad and get up to help in the kitchen.

“Thank you,” she says. “You’re a good kid.”

I carry the plates to the counter and put away stuff like ketchup and butter in the fridge. Granma has pulled on a couple of yellow rubber gloves. The sink is filling with hot water.

“Why don’t you have a dishwasher, Granma?”

“When we bought this house, the kitchen didn’t have one. And I never felt the need.”

“Everybody has a dishwasher.”

“I like to do things myself. When your mother was younger, I looked after her, but I didn’t have a job. And for a long time after your grandfather died, I was on my own. I don’t make a lot of mess. Plus, I like doing the dishes. It’s a good time to talk.”

But saying it puts an end to the conversation for a while. Eventually she says, “What do you think of Mr. Tomski?”

I don’t answer at first—I’m wiping the table clean.

“He’s a good teacher,” I say eventually. “Everybody thinks it’s easy to distract him because all you have to do is ask him about his ranch. But even when he’s talking about that he’s trying to teach us something. He listens, too. Some teachers just talk and never listen, but he’s not like that. He treats all the kids the same.”

“That’s not really what I was asking about,” Granma says, but then Mom comes back. Mr. Tomski just leans in the door—he calls out, “Good night, Mrs. Koehner. Thank you again,” and then the door closes and it’s just the three of us again.

Later, after I get ready for bed, Mom lets me watch a little TV—Granma tells her that I helped out with the dishes. They stay in the kitchen, Mom makes a pot of decaf coffee. A basketball game is on, but it’s the commercials, so I turn down the sound, loud enough so it’s like a background noise but I can hear them talking in the kitchen, too.

“You have to be careful with Tom,” Granma is saying. “You know that, right?”

“Don’t worry about me. I’m fine. It’s just nice to have a little attention, that’s all.”