The Notebook on Evelyn’s Nightstand
He walked up and set the mum on the table and stood next to me. He is not a talker. In thirty years I have heard him speak in front of a room twice, and one of those was our wedding.
“I’m not going to let my sisters carry this by themselves,” he said. “Janet. Paula. I was gone too. I was gone five days a week for every one of those six years. I was her son and I live six blocks off, and I wasn’t there either, most nights. I sent a paycheck home and I let my wife do the rest of it, and I called that fair.”
He put his hand on the back of my neck, the way he does.
“So nobody in this family gets to look down on anybody. But I will say this, and then I’m done. You asked her for the key. To Mom’s house. You asked her.”
He did not say it mean. He said it the way you would tell a man his trailer lights were out.
Janet sat there with the notebook in her lap. I have known her twenty-nine years and I had never once seen her not know what to do with her hands.
Paula got up first. She came around the table with mascara all down her face, and she did not hug me, because we were never hugging people, she and I. She took hold of my wrist with both her hands, hard, like I was a railing.
“Thank you,” she said. Out loud. Half the hall heard it. “Lori, thank you. I didn’t know. That’s no excuse. I should have known. I thought Janet was. I thought.” She stopped. “Thank you for the peas. For writing down the peas.”
“She told that story a lot,” I said. “It was one of her favorites.”
“I’d forgot it,” Paula said, and that undid her again.
Pastor Hal put a hand on her shoulder. He is a kind old man and he knew better than to preach.
“Evelyn kept this church’s books for eleven years,” he said, to the room more than to us. “She used to tell me a thing isn’t real till it’s written down. I’d say she was looked after by somebody who agreed with her.” And then, quieter, to Janet, “There’s no rush on any of this, Janet. You take that home and you read it slow.”
Janet nodded. She still had not said one word to me.
She stood up. She picked the house key up off the table and looked at the red nail polish on it. Then she put it in her pocketbook, and she tucked the notebook under her arm, and she walked out to her car.
I let her go. I was not owed anything on the spot. Some people can cry in a fellowship hall and some people have to drive to Ankeny first.
Three weeks went by.
Paula called me twice, which was twice more than in the six years before. The second time she asked what kind of pudding it was, the butterscotch, because she had got to that page. I told her the brand. She said she was going to buy some and she did not know why.
I did not hear from Janet.
Then, on a Saturday morning in November, my phone rang while I was scraping the windshield.
“It’s Janet,” she said. “I’m at Mom’s. I’ve been here since seven. Could you come over? You don’t have to. I’d understand.”
I drove the six blocks.