The Envelope He Took Back Off the Mantel

“Dad,” Paul said quietly.

“Let me get it out, son. I was up all night getting it lined up.”

He reached inside his jacket and came out with two envelopes. They were not Christmas envelopes. They were the long plain kind you pay bills in, and on the front of each one, in an old man’s blocky pencil printing, was a name.

Emma. Ben.

“These aren’t from your grandmother,” he said. “I’ll not pretend they are. She doesn’t know I’ve come. These are from me. I was at the bank drive-through when they opened the window this morning, and it’s out of my own account that I keep for fishing tackle and such. There’s a hundred in each, the same as the rest of them got.”

He held them out. Neither child moved.

Roy’s chin shook once. He got down on one knee on my kitchen mat. It took him some doing, and he had to put a hand on the door frame, but he did it, so that he was looking at them level.

“I didn’t go to any courthouse and sign any paper,” he said. “Your dad did that, and it was the best day’s work he ever did. But I’m saying it now, out loud, in front of your mother and your father, since I should have said it yesterday in front of everybody. You are my grandchildren. Emma. Ben. There’s seven of you, not five. And I am sorry that I sat there.”

Ben went first. He walked across the linoleum in his sock feet and put his arms around his grandfather’s neck, and Roy shut his eyes.

Emma took longer. She stood there with her arms crossed over her nightgown, ten years old and nobody’s fool.

“Grandpa,” she said. “Why didn’t you say something?”

“Because I was a coward, honey,” Roy said. “There isn’t a better word for it. I’m trying to quit.”

That did it. She went to him.

I had to turn around and look at the coffee maker for a while.

When he got back on his feet, with Paul’s hand under his elbow, Paul reached up on top of the refrigerator and brought down the white envelope.

“Dad. Take this home. I’m not going to see you two short in February.”

Roy looked at it. He did not take his hands off his cap.

“No,” he said.

“Dad.”

“No, son. Not this year. I’ve let you carry that six years and never once thanked you for it properly, and that’s another thing I was up thinking about.” He put the cap on. “Your mother and I will find the first half ourselves. There’s a little in savings, and we can go without some things. That’s what yesterday costs. She needs to pay it, and I need to pay it, and you need to let us.”

He had his hand on the doorknob when Emma said, “Wait,” and ran down the hall. She came back with Tyler’s envelope.

“Will you give this back to Tyler? He ran out in his socks and gave us his. But we’ve got our own now.” She thought about it. “Tell him thank you. Tell him he’s the best one.”

Roy took Tyler’s envelope and held it a second. He had not known. I could see him working out what an eleven-year-old boy had done in the snow while he himself was sitting in a recliner.