Nine Grandparents and a Four Dollar Lunch
That was Friday. By Sunday evening nine of us had put $1,420 into an envelope at my kitchen table, which was $37.85 more than we needed, and I told them it would go to whatever the number turned out to be by Monday. Norman’s wife Jill baked two dozen cinnamon rolls, because that is what you do in a crisis. Jon asked if he could come along Monday in his work jacket.
“If you don’t say a word,” I said.
He pretended to zip his mouth shut.
On Monday at 7:40 in the morning the nine of us walked into the front office of Orrin Elementary in a line, with our coats still on.
Lloyd Bauman in his seed corn cap. Norman Lacey in a canvas coat with the knees still dusty. Alice Yost with her good purse. The insurance man, Stuart Yoder, in a pressed shirt. Wilma Aldridge with her knitting bag. Jill Lacey with a foil pan of cinnamon rolls. Two grandmothers from the church circle. Me. And behind us, cap in hand, my son-in-law, who kept his word and said not one thing.
Cindy Kowalski stood up at her desk. She looked at the nine of us. I think she knew.
I set the envelope on the counter.
“Cindy,” I said. “I’d like to clear every lunch account in the district that is below zero. All three buildings. Before the lunch period, and without telling anyone whose account it was. Say it was a gift from some grandparents. We don’t need a plaque.”
Cindy did not say anything. She looked at the envelope. She looked at Lloyd.
“$1,382.15?” she said.
“I believe the number’s changed some.”
She turned to her screen. Her fingers trembled on the keys. “It’s $1,391.40 this morning,” she said. “Three children went down on Friday.”
“Then we have enough.”
Cindy counted the money out loud with Stuart Yoder watching, a twenty at a time. When she finished she put her hand flat on top of the pile and held it there.
“I’ve worked in this office twenty-two years,” she said. “I have wanted to do this every single September.”
That was when the kitchen door opened.
Marcella Whitlock had come up front from the kitchen for a milk invoice. She stood in the doorway in her hairnet and apron with a clipboard against her chest, looking at nine old people and a foil pan of cinnamon rolls and a counter covered in money.
“What is all this?” she said.
Nobody answered. I had rehearsed a speech, and every word of it flew out of my head. I could see she was waiting for it. She had been waiting since Thursday. She thought we had come to have her fired.
Then Austin spoke.
I had not planned on Austin. Lynn had dropped him at the side door at 7:35 on her way home from the care home, and he must have slipped in through the hall and followed us to the office. He stood in the doorway behind Jon’s legs, in his dinosaur sweatshirt, his backpack bumping at his knees.
“Mrs. Whitlock?” he said.
“My Nana says you didn’t make the rule.”
The whole office stopped breathing.
Marcella Whitlock put her clipboard down on Cindy’s counter.
“Honey,” she said at last, in a voice I had to lean to hear. “Oh, honey.”