The Porch Money at Wednesday Supper

The first Saturday

Darren took the whole week of the first work day off. It cost him a load and a good bit of money, and he did not complain once.

On Friday night he got home, ate his supper, and walked around the house with a flashlight looking at the roof. Darren grew up on a farm. He has put metal on machine sheds and shingles on a garage, and he knows which end of a nail gun is which.

“He’ll want to start tear-off on the north side,” he said. “Get the worst of it done while it’s cool.”

At six the next morning, it was still dark. I came downstairs to make coffee and saw headlights in the driveway.

It was Brent. He was sitting in his truck with the dome light on, reading over a piece of graph paper. In the bed of the truck were two cases of donuts from the bakery in Mora and a big thermos.

I went out in my slippers.

“You’re early,” I said.

“I couldn’t sleep.”

He got out. He stood there in the dark looking at my house, at the curled shingles and the blue tarp Darren had nailed over the chimney back in August.

“Heather,” he said. “I’m sorry. I said it at the church, but I was a mess. I want to say it right. I’m sorry for your mom’s room. I’m sorry for every rain.”

I looked at him for a long minute.

“Thank you,” I said. “Come in and have coffee before the others get here.”

By seven there were fourteen men in my yard.

There was a retired dairy farmer named Gordon who was eighty-one and had no business on a roof, so Brent put him in charge of the dumpster and the magnet sweep for nails. There were two brothers who did drywall. There was a young electrician, a high school shop teacher, and three men I only knew from the coffee hour.

Darren went up on the roof with Brent, and I watched the two of them stand at the peak and talk for a minute. I could not hear what they said. Brent put his hand out. Darren looked at it, then shook it.

Later I asked Darren what Brent had said.

“He said, ‘I’m sorry for what I did to your family.'”

“And what did you say?”

“I said, ‘Then show me how you want this tear-off done.'”

Two Saturdays

They tore off the whole north side by noon. The decking under Mom’s room was soft as cake, just like Brent said it would be, and they replaced six sheets of it.

The women’s circle brought lunch. Sheila came with them, carrying a slow cooker of sloppy joes. She walked straight into my kitchen like she had been doing it for years, set the slow cooker on the counter, and plugged it in.

“Where’s your mother?” she said.

“Upstairs, by the window. She’s been watching all morning.”

Sheila went up with a plate. She was gone a long time. When she came down, her eyes were red, but she was smiling.

“She told me about your dad,” Sheila said.

“She doesn’t tell many people that.”

“I know,” Sheila said. “She told me so I’d know Brent isn’t the first man to do this, and he won’t be the last, and it doesn’t make him a bad husband. It makes him a scared one.”

By sundown the first Saturday, the north side was shingled. The second Saturday, a week later, they did the south side and the chimney flashing. Brent did the flashing himself, lying on his belly by the chimney for two hours with his tin snips, getting every bend right.

That night it rained. A hard, cold October rain.

I went upstairs at ten o’clock with the two ice cream pails out of pure habit. I stood in Mom’s doorway with them in my hands.

The ceiling was dry. The only sound was the rain on the new shingles, soft and even, like somebody drumming their fingers on a table.

“You can put those away now,” Mom said from the bed. “For good.”

I took them downstairs and put them in the recycling. Then I sat at the kitchen table and cried for the first time since May.