The Lavender Dress Went to the Party

Patty at the grocery

Two days after the bank, I ran into my sister-in-law Patty in the cereal aisle at the grocery store, the one on Main with the squeaky carts.

Patty is a good woman. She works the front desk at the clinic, she remembers everyone’s birthday, and she has put up with my brother for thirty-four years, which is its own kind of sainthood. She was holding two boxes of Cheerios and a list.

“Janet! You got the invitation, didn’t you? For Saturday the sixth?”

I had. It was a nice card, cream colored, with gold lettering. Dennis Holm Turns 60. Dinner and dancing at the country club. Please join us.

“I did,” I said. “I’ll be there.”

“Oh, good. I am so nervous. The club wanted the whole deposit up front, almost nine thousand dollars, can you believe that? Prime rib for a hundred and twenty, the open bar, a band from Aberdeen.”

She laughed. “I told Dennis it was too much. He said he’d had a good spring at the dealership and he was only turning sixty once.”

I held onto the shopping cart. “Almost nine thousand,” I said.

“I know. I know. But he hasn’t let himself have anything in years.” She put the Cheerios in her cart. “Is your mom coming? Dennis said it would be too late and too loud for her heart. He’s going to bring her a piece of cake on Sunday.”

“I’ll ask her,” I said. I drove home and sat in my driveway with the engine off for twenty minutes. The grasshoppers were already loud in the ditch. I kept thinking about that slip of paper in my purse, and about the word convenience.

What I wanted to do

I wanted to drive straight to Holm Implement and walk into my brother’s office and put that deposit slip on his desk.

I knew exactly what I would say. I had been saying it in my head for two days. I would not yell. I never yell. I spent thirty-one years behind a post office counter, and you learn to say the hard thing in a level voice to a man who is angry about a package.

But it was not my money. That is the thing I kept coming back to, sitting in the driveway. It was not my account and it was not my funeral. My mother was alive and sharp and she had a right to know what had been done with her own savings.

If I went to Dennis first, I would be deciding for her. I would be one more of her children handling her like she was already gone. So on Thursday I drove to Third Avenue and told her everything.