The Rent Bill In Howard’s House

Stan

I have taught for a long time. I know what a silence sounds like when a child is deciding whether to lie. This silence was different. This was the silence of a man looking at something he has stepped around for a year and finally seeing it whole.

Stan had gone white. He sat with his hands flat on the tablecloth. He did not look at Lloyd, or at the pastor, or at the boss from the co-op. He looked, for the first time all evening, at me.

“Is that true?” he said. “The propane. The taxes.”

“Stan,” Sheila said sharply. “Don’t.”

“Mom.” He did not turn his head. “Is it true?”

“It’s all on a legal pad,” I said. “In my handwriting. I left it for you on the counter, with the notice. I assume you read it.”

He swallowed. “I didn’t.”

“You didn’t.”

“Sheila read it to me. She said it was…” He stopped. His face did something awful. “She said you were exaggerating, that Dad’s pension covered most of it, that you insisted on paying because it made you feel useful. She said you liked it. That you got a kick out of having people depend on you.”

I did not look at Sheila. I did not need to.

“Stan, honey,” Sheila said, and for the first time all night her voice cracked. “I was trying to protect you. You were so stressed about money, and I thought if you knew how bad things really were…”

“The tank was empty,” Stan said. He said it slowly, as if reading it off a page. “The furnace is out. We have fourteen people sitting in their coats. Because I didn’t know it was Mom’s account.”

“Stan.”

“I didn’t know,” he said, again, and this time he was looking at his wife. “You handled the bills. You told me you’d handled the bills.”

“I did handle them!”

“With her money.”

It was quiet again. Judy, in her fur-trimmed jacket, looked at the ceiling. Then she stood, and she picked up her purse, and she said, in a voice I would never have expected from her, “Sheila, I’m going to wait in the car. I’ll be there when you’re ready to go home.”

“Mother!”

“I think you should apologize to Marlene,” Judy said. “I think you should have done it before you ever put that paper on her plate.” She walked out. The front door closed with a very quiet click.

Sheila stood alone at the head of the table in her green velvet dress, like a child caught in a lie by a whole classroom at once. Her mouth worked.

“It was a joke,” she said. “The rent. It was, we were just, it was supposed to be a, a conversation starter.”

“On the good paper,” I said.

She looked at me then, full in the face.

“With a table,” I said, “and shaded rows.”