What Mom Left in the Cedar Box

Randy laughed, one short wet laugh, and put his hand over his eyes.

“I’m not doing this,” Tina said. “I asked a simple question about a piece of jewelry. I’m not going to sit here and be lectured by a tape.”

“You read the card, Tina,” Pastor Mike said. He said it gently. “It says nobody gets up.”

“You don’t have any say here, Mike.”

“No, I don’t. I’m a friend sitting in a chair. I’m only telling you what the card says.”

Tina set the recorder on the table. She pushed the button on the far left with one fingernail.

There was a hiss. Then a clunk, and a chair creaking, and the kitchen clock ticking, the same clock that was ticking on the wall over our heads. She had recorded it right there at that table.

Then my mother cleared her throat.

“Is it going? The little wheels are going around. All right.”

I had to hold on to the back of her chair. It had been four days since I’d heard her, and before that it had been weeks since she’d had the wind to say that many words in a row. This was her April voice. This was her bossing voice.

“Well. If you’re hearing this I’ve gone on, and I hope it was a nice service and I hope somebody made Mike keep it under twenty minutes. I hope you all ate. I am sitting at my own kitchen table and it is the ninth of April and Cindy has gone to the store for buttermilk I don’t need, so I’ve got about a quarter of an hour.

“Now. This is about my ring. I know my family, and I know that somebody was going to ask for that ring before I was good and cold. I’m not mad about it. A ring is a thing people ask about. But I want whoever asked to know what they were asking for, and I want to say it myself, because it’s my business and I kept it my business as long as I was able.”

Tina had sat back in her chair. Her arms were folded over her coat.

“The diamond is gone,” Mom said. “I sold it. Two winters ago, the last week of January.”

Randy took his hand down from his eyes.

“Don’t interrupt me, Randy.”

He had not said a word. He shut his mouth anyway.

“You all remember that cold snap. Eleven below with the wind, and ice on the lines for a week. Kyle came by here on a Wednesday for supper, bless him, he came by a good bit that winter, and he ate three pork chops and he fell asleep sitting up on my couch with his coat on. I asked him why he was so wore out. He didn’t want to tell me. I’ve taught school for thirty-four years and I know how to wait a child out.

“He said the furnace at his house had quit on the Saturday before. He said the man came and looked at it and said it was cracked and couldn’t be patched and a new one was four thousand six hundred and fifty dollars. He said they were all three sleeping in the front room with two space heaters and the oven door open, and his mama had told him not to tell anybody, especially not his grandmother.”

I looked at Kyle. He had gone white clear down into his collar. He was looking at his mother.