The Left Pocket of Mom’s Sunday Coat

Darla could not answer him. She held it out to me. I did not take it.

“It says ‘For Glen,’ Dad.”

He put his cap on, which you do not do in church, and took it right off again. He did not seem to know he had done either one.

I have thought a great deal since about what my mother meant by it. I did not know then that she wrote something on the back every week. I did not know yet what had happened in that kitchen on Wednesday before I got there with the chili. I only knew that I had walked into the vestibule that morning meaning to teach a woman something, quietly and politely, with my hands folded, and that my mother had reached up out of a coat pocket and taught all three of us at once.

Because I was not being kind when I told Darla the coat looked lovely. I should say that plain. I said a kind sentence with an unkind heart, and I knew the envelope would do the rest. It did. It just did not stop with her.

Darla had started on the buttons. Her fingers were not working right.

“I’m taking it off,” she said. “I’m taking it off this minute. I should never have put my arm in the sleeve. I knew it when I did.”

“Darla.”

“It smelled like somebody. I knew that and I got in the truck anyway.”

“Darla. Leave it on.”

She stopped.

“It’s nineteen degrees and that furnace won’t catch up till the Gospel,” I said. “You’ll sit in there and shake. Leave it on for Mass.”

She looked at me as if I had spoken another language.

“There’s a card in that pocket too,” I said. “Folded. That one I’d like, please.”

She reached in again, slowly, the way you would reach into a nest. She brought out Grandma Agnes’s holy card and laid it in my palm without unfolding it. It was warm from her.

“And this?” She meant the envelope. She was holding it by the edges, like something that might mark.

“It goes in the basket. It’s Mom’s offering.”

“Then you take it. Please. It ought to be you.”

I looked at that envelope for a long moment. I wanted it. I will be honest, I wanted to carry it up the aisle myself and I wanted everyone to see me do it.

“It was in your pocket this morning,” I said. “You can say no.”

Darla swallowed. She was 68 years old and she had dressed carefully for this, I could see that now. The lipstick. The good earrings. She had been a widow three years. She had come to my father’s parish for the first time on his arm, hoping people would be decent to her, and here she stood.

“No,” she said. “I’ll carry it. I’ve worn her coat. It’s the least I can carry.”

She put the envelope back in the left pocket. She did it gently, and she kept her hand in there on top of it.

Mr. Tuma opened the inner door for us. He did not say a word. He handed Darla a bulletin and he handed me one, and when my father came past, Mr. Tuma put a hand flat on his shoulder for a second, the way men do instead of talking.