The Envelope He Took Back Off the Mantel
It is nine miles from Maple Avenue to our house, down through town and out Route 60 along the river. We crossed the Y-Bridge with the lights on it. Nobody said anything until we were past the last traffic light, and then Ben did.
“Dad?”
“Yeah, bud.”
“Did me and Emma do something?”
There is a gravel pull-off by the river where the fishermen park in summer. Paul pulled into it, shut off the wipers, and took off his seat belt so he could turn all the way around.
“Look at me, both of you.”
They looked at him.
“You did not do one thing. Not one. You were polite and you were patient and I was proud of you. What happened in there was a grown-up being wrong. Do you hear me?”
Ben nodded. Emma did not. Emma was looking at the tag on her present.
“She said we came with Mom,” Emma said.
“I heard what she said.”
“It’s true, though. We did.”
Paul got there before I could.
“Emma Jean. You did not come with anybody. I want you to get that straight. Nobody handed you to me in a package deal.” His voice was rough. “I went and got you. I drove to the courthouse in a necktie, and you know how I feel about a necktie. I stood up in front of a judge and I asked for you by name. Both of you. Your full names. She asked me if I was sure, and I told her it was the surest I had ever been of anything.”
“Ben banged the gavel,” Emma said, very small.
“Ben banged it nine times. I thought she was going to have him arrested.”
Ben laughed. It came out wet.
“You are not my wife’s kids,” Paul said. “You are my kids. That is not a favor I am doing anybody. That’s just who you are. And any house where that isn’t so is a house we don’t have to sit in.”
Emma started to cry then, finally, the way she should have been allowed to an hour before. Paul could not reach her from the front seat, so he got out of the car. He got out in the snow, opened her door, crouched down on the gravel in his good jeans, and held on to her. Ben unbuckled and climbed across the seat and got in on it too.
I sat in the front with my hand over my mouth and watched my family in the dome light.
After a while he kissed both their heads and shut the door. Then he got in and drove us home.
We had pie. I had a pumpkin one in the freezer for New Year’s, and we ate it at eight o’clock at night in our pajamas with the whole can of whipped cream.
Ben wanted to know if Tyler’s feet were all right. Emma set her present on her dresser, still wrapped, and Tyler’s envelope beside it, and asked me to leave the hall light on.
When I came back to the kitchen, Paul was sitting at the table with the check in front of him. He had taken it out of the envelope. Twelve hundred dollars and no cents, made out to Roy and Barbara.
“I’m not sorry,” he said, before I had even sat down.
“I didn’t say you should be.”
“I’m sorry about one thing.” He turned the check a quarter turn on the table with one finger. “I’m sorry it took me until today. I knew about the stockings. I knew about the pictures on the refrigerator. I told myself it was just Mom being Mom, and she’d come around, and it wasn’t worth a fight.” He looked up at me. “You’ve been eating that for five years so I wouldn’t have to. Haven’t you?”