The Name on Our Mailbox

The ride home

So I clapped at the banquet. I clapped because I did not want my husband’s worst year told to 300 people over cherry pie. Saying I ran that farm meant somebody asking why. Saying why meant saying where Gary had been, and that was his to say, not mine.

But I want to be honest about this part too. When he said Steve’s name, something in me went very quiet and very cold. It was not anger. Anger is hot. This was more like a window being shut in a room I had been sitting in my whole married life.

We drove home on the gravel without saying one word. The truck heater ticked. Gary had set the big cardboard check on the dash, and every time we hit a washboard it slid a little toward my side, and every time he reached over and pushed it back.

In the kitchen, he hung up his coat and stood with one hand on the back of a chair.

“Deb,” he said.

“Goodnight, Gary,” I said, and went up to bed.

He sat downstairs a long time. I heard the kitchen chair creak, and then the coffee maker, and then at a little after eleven I heard him on the phone, his voice low. Ron, I figured. Good. That is what Ron was for.

I did not sleep much. I lay in our bed and looked at the ceiling and thought about every form in my house that had only one name on it.

The next morning

At six I came down and made the coffee and sat at the kitchen table with the seed order from the co-op. It was due by the end of the month for the early-pay discount. I had already filled out most of it the week before. Every line in my handwriting.

At the top, where it said grower name, it said Gary Rasmussen. It had said Gary Rasmussen for 26 years.

I took the white-out out of the junk drawer and covered it. I let it dry. Then I wrote, in my best church-bulletin printing, Deb and Gary Rasmussen.

Gary came through the kitchen at six-thirty with his keys. He saw me at the table and stopped.

“Meeting,” he said.

“I know.”

He looked at the seed order. I watched him read it upside down. He did not say anything. He nodded, once, and went out, and I heard the truck go down the lane.

At eight I called Janet Holm at our Farm Credit office. Janet has handled our operating loan since Tyler was in diapers. On that note I am the spouse who signs. I have always been the spouse who signs.

“Janet,” I said. “What does it take to put me on the operating note as a borrower? Not just signing. On it.”

There was a little pause. I could hear her pen.

“Well,” Janet said. “You’d both come in. We’d redo the application with both of you as applicants, both of you on the financial statement. It’s paperwork, Deb. It’s not a big thing.” Another pause. “I’ve wondered why you weren’t on it before.”

“So have I,” I said.

“Come in Tuesday. Bring your license. Bring Gary.”

“I’ll bring Gary,” I said.

Gary got home a little after eight-thirty and went upstairs to shower. I heard the pipes knock. I put on my barn coat and my good gloves and went out to the machine shed.