The Mortgage Receipts Beside the Gravy Boat
“The house,” Lorraine said. It came out with no air behind it. “We were behind on the house?”
“We were ninety days from a letter.”
“And you went to her.”
“I went to the only person in this family I knew would not make me feel like less of a man for asking.”
She turned her head and looked at me. I will never forget her face. It was not anger. Every bit of the anger had gone out of it, and what was left behind looked about nine years old.
“I thought,” she said, and stopped. “The mail stopped coming to the kitchen. He started taking it straight to the desk. He quit buying seed from the good company. I knew something was wrong and nobody would tell me what, and Brian never had a dollar, and I thought,” she said again, and her eyes filled, “I thought it was you. I thought it was going out the door through you.”
“I know you did,” I said.
“I have been so afraid of losing this place I could not sleep. And I looked around for who to blame it on, and you were the only one who wasn’t born here.”
That was the truest thing she ever said to me. I did not have an answer for it and I did not try to find one.
It was Aunt Dot who spoke. She is Gene’s older sister, seventy-four, and she has buried two husbands and does not waste words.
“Lorraine, I have watched you peck at that girl for four years and I held my tongue because it was your table. I should not have. You put your hand on the one person keeping you in this house.” She came and sat down in her chair. “And over bread.”
Lorraine put both hands over her mouth.
And that was when my husband’s chair went back.
He stood up too fast. His knee caught the table leg and his iced tea went over, all down the cloth, and he did not even look at it.
“Mom.”
His voice cracked on it like a boy’s.
“Mom, I knew.”
Lorraine stared at him.
“I’ve known for two years. I found the statement. Katie told me all of it. Dad asked me to keep it and I did, and I have been ashamed every Sunday since. I sat right here every Sunday and listened to you talk about her like she was the help, and I knew who was paying the note on this house, and I ate my dinner.”
He was shaking. He had his hand on the back of my chair and I could feel it through the wood.
“I just told my wife you were teaching her. You hit her, and that’s what I said.” He wiped his face with the back of his wrist. “That’s the sorriest thing that’s ever come out of my mouth, and I’ll be the rest of my life making up for it.”
“Brian,” Gene said quietly.
“No, Dad. You said yours.” He turned to his mother. He had never, to my knowledge, said one firm word to her in thirty-five years, and it came out of him rough and badly put together. “You will not put a hand on her again. Not ever. And you won’t talk about her in front of her like she’s not in the room. If that’s how it’s going to be out here, then we won’t be out here. I mean it. I’d rather eat Sunday dinner at the truck stop.”