The Thank You Cards That Told the Truth
Cody came out in his pajamas with the brace on over his T-shirt, sat down across from me, and read one.
“Why are we saying sorry in a thank-you?”
“Because both are true.”
“Can I do the envelopes?”
So he did the envelopes. He licked every one of them, a hundred and forty, over four nights, and grinned at me with glue on his lip. Somewhere in the second night he started signing his own name under ours, and by the third night he was adding things. Thank you for the bars. Thank you for coming, Coach. To the Hendersons, who are eighty-some and had put five dollars in the can in an envelope with their name on it: Thank you for the five dollars, it was a lot.
The notebook was in the order people had come through the door. Line ninety-three was in my sister’s handwriting. Dale, Rhonda, and both the kids’ names, with a little heart.
I had said every family. If I skipped hers, the cards became something I was aiming around her. If I sent it, it was only what it was, the same true thing everybody else was getting. So I wrote it out.
I had gotten up for a glass of water when Cody signed that one. When I came back, he had written under our names: Thank you Aunt Rhonda for making my supper. I love you. Cody.
He did not know. I had seen to that. To him she was the aunt who had made him a supper.
I stood at the counter with that card in my hand and thought about tearing it up and writing a clean one.
Then I thought: he means it. That part is real too. And I sealed it myself.
I called my sister twice that week. Both times it rang through to her voice, cheerful, telling me to leave a message. I left one. “It’s Beth. Friday is the day. I would so much rather tear these up.”
On Friday afternoon I called Children’s. The woman in billing was very kind. No payment had come in.
Monday was Memorial Day. On Tuesday morning Travis carried the shoebox of cards into the post office on his way to the shop, because he wanted to be the one to do it.
Wednesday, nothing.
Thursday the phone rang eleven times. I let it. I had said what I had to say in ink, and I was afraid that if I started explaining it out loud I would start adding to it.
I did pick up for Mom.
“Bethany,” she said. Nobody else calls me that. “I got a card from you today that I have read three times.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Is it what I think it is?”
“I did not name anybody, Mom. I am not going to.”
There was a long quiet on the line. I could hear her kitchen clock.
“No,” my mother said. “You wouldn’t have to.” And then, in a smaller voice than I had ever heard out of her: “I raised you both in the same house.”
“I know you did.”
“I am going to go lie down for a while.”
That was the worst part of the whole week. Worse than the deck.
Friday evening we were finishing supper when a car door shut in the driveway, and then another, and then several.
Travis leaned back in his chair and looked out the window over the sink.
“It’s Mr. Fenske,” he said. “And Pastor Jim. And about six pickups behind them.”