A Photograph and a Five Dollar Ring

Becky

Her name was Becky Dietz. She was seventy-six, a widow from a farm outside Lenox, thirty miles west, and she drove to Rummage Day in Cedar Falls Junction every year because there was a woman on Walnut Street who always sold good buttons.

“I collect buttons,” she said, almost apologizing. “My Irvin used to say I could sew a quilt out of a drawer full of nothing. I bought that can for the buttons. There were nine mother-of-pearl ones from an old coat, and I didn’t look at anything else.” She patted her tote. “I didn’t open the jewelry until I got here. I was sorting at this table with the Auxiliary girls, and I turned a little gold band over in my palm, and I saw it was engraved.”

She said the letters. “L to D, 6-14-74.”

“I asked if anyone knew an L and a D who were married in 1974,” she said, “and Bessie said, ‘Dee and Lew Chandler,’ and then she said, ‘Oh no, Dee’s funeral was this morning.’ I started to drive to the church. I got as far as the parking lot of the Methodist. I could see through the windows. All those people in dark clothes. I thought, I can’t walk into a funeral lunch with a bag of buttons and say, excuse me, I have a ring. I sat there. I drove out to the highway and turned around, and I did it again. I’m seventy-six years old and I have never in my life been so frightened of a casserole.” She laughed a little, wetly. “I came back to ask the girls how to get word to you without upsetting anyone.”

She opened the tote. She took out a clean white handkerchief, folded in a square, and she held it in her lap and unfolded one corner at a time. In the center sat my mother’s ring.

It was very small. It was brighter than I remembered. It was warm from her hands.

“She wasn’t wearing it when she died,” I heard myself say. “She told me not to bury her in it. She said it was mine.”

“Then I’d say it’s right where it’s supposed to be,” Becky said, and she put it in my palm and closed my fingers around it.

I reached for my purse. She put her hand flat over mine.

“I paid five dollars for a can of buttons,” she said. “That is all I paid for. I won’t take a nickel for the rest.”

Cliff Amsler had taken off his John Deere cap and was holding it against his chest. Nobody else said anything. Abby stood just inside the door, still holding her helmet by the strap.

“Abby saw your car on Walnut Street,” I told Becky. “She would have ridden all the way to Lenox for you.”

Becky looked at her. “Then I’ll send your mother a button for her table,” she said. “A good one.”