The Bill My Daughter-in-Law Handed Me
The week after that the locker in Pratt called to say my beef was ready. I drove in with the coolers and stood at the counter while the boy stacked white packages, and when he asked, “Same as always, Mrs. Harlan? Half and half?” I said, “No. All of it to the farm this year.”
I took what I could use. The rest I drove straight to the Methodist church, because the food pantry there runs on canned beans from one end of the year to the other. Pastor’s wife Kim came out to help carry, and when she saw what was in the coolers she put her hand on her chest.
“Peggy, this is two hundred pounds of meat.”
“It’s about a hundred and ninety,” I said. “The steaks are on the bottom.”
“What do we owe you?”
I laughed. It was the first real laugh I had had in a month, and it came out a little cracked.
“Not one thing,” I said. “Not one thing, Kim.”
Courtney called the Tuesday before Thanksgiving. An actual call, so I knew.
I was at the sink. I dried my hands and sat down at the table before I answered, because I have learned not to take a hard call standing up.
“Peggy. Hi. Do you have a minute?”
“I have all day, honey.”
“Okay. So.” I could hear her car. She makes her calls on the drive. “I’m trying to understand what’s going on. You haven’t been here in five weeks. You missed the fourteenth and the twenty-eighth. I had to hire a sitter both Saturdays, and that girl charges twenty dollars an hour now. I paid her a hundred and sixty dollars last weekend.”
“That’s a lot,” I said.
“It is a lot. And then Brian’s farm money didn’t come on the first. I assumed it was late, but it’s the twenty-fourth. That goes straight to the house payment, Peggy. I have it in the budget. I had to move money out of Addie’s activities to cover it.”
“I see.”
“And he says you didn’t send beef this year. I went to buy a roast on Sunday. Have you seen what a roast costs?”
“I haven’t bought one in a while,” I said.
There was a silence. She was waiting for me to explain myself. I let her wait a little. Not to be cruel. I wanted to be sure my voice would come out the way I meant it.
“Courtney,” I said. “I’m not upset with you. I want you to hear that first.”
“Okay.”
“But I couldn’t afford your rates. Two thousand dollars for a week is more than I have, honey. I paid it because you asked me to and because I’d already slept in the bed. But I can’t do that twice a month. I can’t do it twice a year. So I’ve stayed home.”
“That was for a full week. A weekend would obviously be less.”
“What would a weekend be?”
She did not answer that. I think it was the first time she had heard how it sounded out loud.
“And as for the rest,” I said, “I assumed it worked the same going the other way. You showed me how your house runs. I figured my rates would be too high for you too, so I didn’t offer.”
“Your rates.” Her voice went thin. “So this is a punishment. You’re billing me back.”
“No, ma’am. I will never send you a bill. Not as long as I live. I wouldn’t know how to write one.”
“Then what do you call this?”