The Bus That Was Never Full
But I looked at my hands, folded on that woman’s kitchen table. I looked at the yellow line on the bank statement. And I thought about Wyatt standing in the hall saying, It’s all right.
“I work six days a week, Rhonda,” I said. “I don’t come to the meetings because I’m carrying plates. That isn’t the same as not minding.”
She flinched as if I had struck her.
“I’m so sorry,” Rhonda whispered.
“I know you are.” I did know it. She was not a monster. She was a frightened woman who had borrowed money she meant to return, and then told one small lie to cover the borrowing, and then another, until the only person small enough to fit the lie was a ten-year-old boy.
Marcy Stahl spoke from the end of the table.
“Rhonda, what do you want to do?”
Rhonda looked around the table at five women she had known her whole life. She wiped her face and sat up.
“I want to tell him I was wrong,” she said. “To his face.”
“That’s his to decide,” I said. “I’ll ask him.”
“There’s one more thing,” Sandy said, in her accountant’s voice. “You’ll write your resignation to Mr. Ritter and to me, and I will read it into the minutes at the October meeting. Marcy takes the gavel until the spring election.”
Rhonda nodded. She nodded the way you nod at a dentist.
“Every check from now on takes two names,” Sandy said. “Any child’s seat on any trip gets decided by two mothers, not one. And you pay back the $2,180, however long it takes.”
“Two hundred eighteen dollars a month,” Rhonda said. “Ten months. I did the math in June. I’ve had the number in my head all summer.”
“Then ten months it is.”
“And Wyatt’s fee?” Becky Lund said. “There’s nothing in the fund, but we can put it in ourselves tonight. Thirteen dollars apiece. Nobody ever has to…”
“No,” I said.
Every head turned.
“I have his money. It’s in my purse. I’ve had it there since Tuesday.”
“Heather, you shouldn’t have to.”
“I’m not saying I should.” I opened my purse and took out the envelope with his name on the front. It had gone soft at the corners from three days of being carried. “I’m saying he’s been counting toward this since August, and he’s going to pay his own way onto that bus. I counted it twice, and so did he.”
Rhonda looked at the envelope for a long moment.
Then she held out her hand, and I put it in it.
“I’ll write you a receipt,” she said, in a very small voice.
“I’d appreciate that.”
I asked Wyatt when I got home. He was in bed with the light off and his face to the wall, but he was not asleep.
“She wants to tell you she was wrong,” I said. “You don’t have to hear it. You can go on the bus and never talk to her.”
He thought about that for a while.
“Is she going to do it in front of everybody?”
“I’ll tell her no.”
“Then okay,” he said. “At the bus. But quick.”
Friday, October tenth. The bus left at 6:45.