Forty One Years to the Penny

He took it. I will give him that. He did not argue, and he did not get up.

“I should have asked you,” he said.

“Yes.”

“I’m sorry, Rita. I am.” His voice was not quite steady. “I’ll go down there Monday and tell Stahl myself.”

“It’s already put right. But yes. I’d like you to go in and say it to him, at the same desk. He ought to hear it from the man he listened to.”

“I will.”

“Then that’s the end of it between you and me.”

He nodded. Then he did a thing I did not expect. He got up and ran the dishwater and started on the roaster, and he stayed at the sink with his back to us, and I understood he was giving me my daughter.

Pam had not said a word.

“Mom,” she started. “He had the form all filled out. He put it in front of me. Mr. Stahl was sitting right there. I read it, and I thought, this is wrong, we should ask her. And then I thought about Judy. And I thought about you standing in that church basement looking in your purse the third time. And I signed it.” She pressed both hands against her eyes. “I didn’t sleep Monday. I knew when you called today.”

“I know you did.”

“I don’t know why I couldn’t just say no to him.”

“Because you were scared, and he was sure. Sure usually wins.” I moved my chair around next to hers. “Now I want you to listen to me, Pammy, because this is the part I asked you over here for.”

I took the lid off the box.

“They wanted to take your name off my account this morning. I told them to leave it.”

She stared at me.

“I didn’t put your name on there by accident. I put it there because a day is coming when I will get confused. I’m not a fool. I’m seventy-four. It may be ten years off, it may be fifteen, the Lord may spare me it altogether, but I’ve buried enough friends to know how it can go. And when that day comes, I don’t want it to be a man from the bank. I want it to be you.”

“Mom.”

“So here is how you’ll know.” I pulled out the register from my purse and opened it to September and put it in her hands. “First of every month. Blue ink, two lines, a check mark. When you come over, you can look. I’ll leave it on the table. I’m giving you leave, right now, to look any time you want and never ask.”

She was holding it like it might break.

“The month the column doesn’t come out, and I can’t find why, you’ll see it. I won’t be able to hide it from you. I wouldn’t know how. And on that day, you sit down in that chair and you say, Mom, let me. And I’ll hand you the pen myself.” I closed her fingers on the booklet. “But I hand it to you. You don’t take it out of my purse while I’m in the other room. That’s all the difference there is, and it’s every bit of the difference.”

She put her head down on my shoulder, forty-seven years old, and cried the way she did at nine.

I let her. Then I reached into the box and walked my fingers back to the green ones.

“Kendra at the bank picked March of 1997 this morning. Out of the whole box. Look what was in it.”