The Box Only Marge Could Open

Greg laid the envelope on my kitchen table the way a man lays down a winning hand.

It was from Dr. Patel’s office. I knew the green return address before I knew anything else. The flap had been torn open with a thumb, not a letter opener, and the statement inside had been folded back the wrong way.

“Six hundred and twelve dollars,” my son-in-law said. “For one tooth.”

I had a dish towel in my hand. I remember that, because I folded it in thirds and set it on the counter before I answered him. Forty years of keeping books for the farmers’ co-op taught me never to speak with something in my hands.

“It was a crown, Greg.”

“At your age, Marge, I’d have had them pull it.”

He did not say it meanly. That is the part I have turned over the most. He said it the way you would tell somebody their tire looked low. He was standing in my kitchen in his work jacket from the implement dealer, with the parts counter still on him, cardboard and grease, and he was looking at me like I was a column that did not add up.

“How did you come to have my dentist bill?” I asked.

“I had your mail sent over to our place.” He pulled out a chair and did not sit in it. “Just for a while. Somebody ought to keep an eye on your bills.”

I am sixty-eight years old. I balanced the books of a grain cooperative with eleven hundred members from 1976 until the day they gave me a clock and a sheet cake. I once stayed until ten at night to find forty-one cents.

And my daughter’s husband had sent my mail to his house.

“When?” I said.

“Last week. When you were up at your sister’s.”

I had been in Sioux City for three days, helping my sister Jean after her knee surgery. Greg had offered to bring in my mail and my newspaper while I was gone. I had thanked him for that too. I had brought him back a rhubarb pie from the Amish stand outside Onawa.

“I see,” I said.

“It’s not a criticism.” He finally sat. “Lisa and I talked about it. You’re out here by yourself. Things come in the mail. People your age get taken, Marge. Every day.”

“Does Lisa know you opened it?”

He looked at the envelope. “She knows I’m helping.”

That was a different answer than the one I had asked for, and we both heard it.

March in western Iowa is not spring, whatever the calendar says. The furnace kicked on, and the wind was coming across the bean stubble.

I could have said a good many things. I had them all lined up, neat as a trial balance.

I picked up the statement instead and smoothed it flat. Crown, porcelain fused to metal, tooth number nineteen. Total fee, one thousand two hundred twelve dollars. Payment received, six hundred. Balance due, six hundred twelve. I had paid the six hundred the day Dr. Patel ground the tooth down, by check, and I had already written the balance in my book as owing.

“Thank you, Greg,” I said.

He blinked.

“For bringing this by.”

“Well.” He stood up, relieved, I think. “That’s all I’m trying to do. I’ll bring the rest over as it comes. And next time, before you agree to something like that, maybe run it by one of us first.”

“Tell Lisa hello.”

“I will.”