Forty One Years to the Penny

“Second. That note about me.” I saw him start to speak and went on. “I’m not asking you to erase it. I don’t believe in erasing. In thirty years I never used a bottle of white-out. If I made an error, I drew one line through it so you could still read it, and I wrote the correct figure above it and put the date. I’d like you to do the same. Leave the note. Under it, put today’s date, and write down what you saw this morning.”

He had taken a pen out of his shirt pocket. He was writing on the back of a deposit slip.

“What would you like it to say?”

“Customer presented forty-one years of personal records. Two months chosen at random by bank staff. Both balanced to the penny against bank statements. And then your name.”

“And Jan’s,” said Jan.

“And Jan’s.”

He wrote it. He read it back to me, and he had dropped a word, so I had him write it over. He did not seem to mind.

“And third?”

“Third is the main one. I’d like it put in that same file, where the next person will see it, that no change is to be made to my card or my account unless Rita Becker is standing at one of these windows asking for it herself. Not a relative. Not a form. Me, in my shoes.”

“We can do that. I’m going to do better than that.” He put his pen away. “As of today, nobody at this branch puts a limit on a customer’s card without a call to that customer first. I should not have needed you to teach me that.”

“Well,” I said. “Now it’s written down.”

He hesitated. “Mrs. Becker, there’s one more thing I’m bound to mention. Your daughter is still a joint owner. If you want her name removed, I can get you the paperwork this morning.”

The lobby was listening to that, too. I knew it. I knew what half of them were hoping I would say.

“No,” I said. “She’s my daughter. You leave her name right where it is.”

Kendra fixed the card while I stood there. It took her about a minute. A minute to do it and a minute to undo it, and four days in between of me not knowing.

I put the March register back in its place, between the winter of 1996 and the summer of 1997, and I put the lid on the box.

“Kendra,” I said. “Happy birthday, twenty-nine years late. You were born in a good month. We came out fine.”

Her eyes filled right up. She laughed and wiped them with the heel of her hand.

Walt carried the box out to my car. I let him.

I called Pam from the kitchen at noon. I did not tell her anything. I said, “I’m putting a roast in. You and Darren come to supper at six.” She said they would. She sounded like she had been waiting for the phone to ring since Monday, and maybe she had.

They came at six on the dot. Darren had changed out of his work shirt. He has his own heating and air business, two vans and a hired man, and he is good at it.

He is not a bad man. I want that understood. When Lowell was dying, Darren came over every Saturday and mowed, and never mentioned it.

We ate first. I was raised that you do not take up a hard thing on an empty stomach. Darren had seconds. Pam pushed hers around.