The Check With Three Names On It

Mrs. Thornton came out of the kitchen with a plate. She walked straight up to the two of them.

“Douglas,” she said. “Alan.”

“Mrs. Thornton,” they said, like boys.

“That was a fine thing to have your names on.” She held out the plate. They were Mom’s lemon bars. The recipe is taped inside the cabinet over the sink, in Mom’s handwriting. “I expect your mother would want you to live up to it.”

That was all. She said it kindly. She went back to her kitchen.

Doug held a lemon bar on a napkin and did not eat it.

And then Aunt Lois, who is a little deaf and speaks accordingly, leaned over from her folding chair and patted Doug on the arm.

“I was so glad to hear that read out,” she said. “I’ve been worrying over whether my twelve hundred got there in time to help with the lunch. I suppose that was it.”

I felt the floor go out from under me.

“Your what, Aunt Lois?” I said.

“My twelve hundred, honey. Doug called me the week of the funeral and said the family was running short on the costs, and I said, well, Ilene was my sister. I took it out of my savings at the bank.” She smiled up at him. “I didn’t want any fuss made. But it’s nice to know it went to the kitchen.”

Aunt Lois lives on a Social Security check of about $1,100 a month. She keeps her thermostat at 64. She had been wearing that navy coat to funerals since I was in high school.

I had been willing to let my own money go. This was different, and I knew it the second she said it, the way you know a child is hurt from the sound of the cry.

I asked Bev to sit with her. Then I looked at my brothers and I said, “Outside, please.”

It was cold in the parking lot. Jeff followed us out and stood a little way off by our pickup with his hands in his coat pockets. He did not come closer. He just stayed where I could see him.

Doug started before I could.

“What in the world did you do that for?” His voice was low and shaking. “You sent a check with my name on it? Without a word to me? Do you know what that was like in there?”

“I paid for Mom’s lunch,” I said. “I was told the family owed for it.”

“That is not the point and you know it.”

“What is the point, Doug?”

He did not have that answer ready. For once in his life he did not.

“You could have called me,” he said finally.

“I could have. You’d have explained it to me.”

His voice came up then. Not a shout, but loud enough to carry across the lot to the church steps. “You want to talk about money? You had her checkbook for two years, Renee. Her Social Security went into that account every month and you signed every check that came out of it. Nobody ever asked you for an accounting. So don’t stand there and act like…”

“Doug,” Jeff said.

He had not moved from the truck. He did not raise his voice. He has a way of saying a man’s name that he mostly uses on dogs and new drivers.

“Not here,” Jeff said. “And not at her.”

Doug stopped.

What he had said about the checkbook went into me like a nail. But I did not want to win an argument. I wanted one thing, and I kept my eyes on it.