The Twenty Dollars My Sister Gave Mom

Then she walked back to the gate and checked her watch again.

At twenty minutes to four, Jim came and stood beside me at the table. He did not look at me. He looked at the alley.

“I’m going to walk down to the church lot,” he said under his breath.

“Is anybody there?”

“I don’t know, Tee. That’s why I’m walking down.”

“Jim.” My voice came out thin. “What if it’s just the eleven?”

He was quiet for a second. Then he said, “Then eleven people who love your mother are going to walk up that alley, and that’s eleven more than came in the Escalade.”

He squeezed my hand once, hard, and went out the gate. He had to turn sideways to get past Stacy’s bumper.

I watched him go down the gravel, past the back of the old ice house, and around the corner toward Calvary.

Then there was nothing to watch.

At ten till four Stacy said, “Kayla, start getting your things together.”

“We just got here,” Kayla said.

“We’ve been here almost two hours.”

“Grandma’s telling me about the flood.”

“Grandma can tell you on the phone.”

“She doesn’t call me on the phone,” Kayla said. “You call her on the phone. On speaker. In the car.”

It was not said rudely. It was said the way a child states a fact she has only just noticed. Stacy’s mouth went flat.

“Five minutes,” Stacy said.

At five till four I walked to the fence and looked down the alley.

Gravel. Weeds. Heat coming up off the white rock in waves.

Nobody.

My mouth had gone dry. I thought about the coffee can. I thought about a hundred and twelve envelopes and my own handwriting on every one, and how foolish that might look by suppertime.

Behind me I heard Mom say, “Teresa, honey, come sit down. Whatever it is, it’s fine. I’ve had a lovely day.”

That almost undid me. She was already forgiving me for a present that had not failed yet.

“It’s three fifty-eight,” Stacy announced, to no one. She had her keys in her hand. The Escalade chirped and its lights blinked.

“Two minutes,” I said, without turning around.

“Teresa.”

“Two minutes, Stacy. You’ve given her two hours. Give her two more minutes.”

I heard her breathe out. I heard the keys jingle.

The bell at First Christian, over on the next street, started in on four o’clock.

And around the corner of the ice house came Jim.

He was walking backward. He had both arms up, the way he does when he is guiding a truck into the elevator, and he was grinning like I had not seen him grin since February.

Behind him came Brenda.

I knew her from the nursing home, where her mother-in-law was on my hall. She was in her sixties, a big, soft-spoken woman in a church dress. She was carrying something in both hands, out in front of her, like an offering plate.

Behind Brenda came a man in a seed cap, holding an envelope.

Behind him came a young father with a quilt folded over his arm and a little girl riding on his shoulders.

And behind them the alley was full.

I do not know how else to say it. It was full, fence to fence, back past the ice house and around the corner where I could not see the end. Old people on canes. Women carrying dishes. Teenagers pushing a wheelchair over the gravel, with a very old lady in it holding a potted violet in her lap. Children running ahead and being called back.