The Power They Cut In The Freeze

My mother had not said a word since she sat down. Now she opened her purse, a black vinyl purse with a clasp I had known all my life, and she took out a folded piece of paper and laid it flat on the table and smoothed it with the side of her hand. It was a long white envelope, slit across the top, and in it a single sheet printed in three colors of ink.

“That came on the twelfth,” she said. “Final notice. It’s why I called Tuesday.”

Norma put on her glasses. She picked up the envelope and turned it over, and then she took the sheet out and read it, top to bottom, with her lips moving a little. At the foot of the page, small, was a line I could read upside down from where I sat.

Enclosure.

“Dennis,” Norma said. “What’s the enclosure?”

He looked at it. I watched his face do arithmetic.

“That’s the cold weather rule sheet,” he said. “The state requires it. Between October and April, any disconnect notice has to go out with a page that tells the member she can set up a payment plan and keep her heat on. It’s printed and stuffed by the billing house, in batches.”

“Rosemary,” Norma said. “Was there anything in this envelope besides this?”

“No,” my mother said. “I looked. I thought maybe I’d thrown it out.”

“There’s a box on the disconnect sheet.” Norma held out her hand, and Dennis, without being asked twice, slid the Wednesday sheet down the table. She read the heading. “‘Cold weather notice sent.’ There’s a check in the box. There’s a check in every box. Who checked them?”

“The system does,” Dennis said. “When the batch goes out. It doesn’t confirm what’s in the envelope.”

“So the sheet says she was told, and she wasn’t.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Not just Rosemary, I’d guess.” Norma put her finger on the first name. “Read me the names, Dennis. I’ll tell you who they are. You tell me what you know.”

He read. It took a minute. Norma stopped him at the third name and said, “That’s Walt Heggen, he’s seventy-eight and he’s got a heart,” and at the fifth, “Pat and Ron Lindgren, they’re both on oxygen at night,” and at the seventh she took off her glasses.

“Alma Quist,” she said. “Elm Street. She’s ninety-one. I took her a hotdish Tuesday and she was keeping warm with the oven door open.”

Dennis counted on his legal pad. He did it slowly, and he wrote tally marks, and when he was done he turned the pad around so the table could see it. Nine names. Six of them over seventy.

“Six,” he said.

“Alma goes before me,” my mother said.

Everybody looked at her.

“I mean it. She’s ninety-one and she’s on Elm Street with the oven open. I have a daughter and a heater and a cane to get me to the church. Alma has a stove.” She folded her hands on the envelope. “Send somebody to Alma first.”

“Rosemary,” Bob said, and then stopped, because there was nothing in what she had asked for that he could argue with.

“I’ll move it,” Elmer said. He had been quiet so long that it surprised the room. “I move that the board direct the manager to reconnect all nine accounts on the Wednesday sheet this afternoon, starting with the oldest, waive every reconnect fee, and credit the Sperry account the $140 and the collection charge, the error being the cooperative’s own.”

“Second,” said Norma.

“All in favor.”

“Aye,” said Norma. “Aye,” said Elmer. “Aye,” said Bob.

“Carries,” Bob said. “Write it down, Norma. Now the rest. No disconnects between October and April when the forecast low is under twenty degrees. Not until a person from this co-op has been to the door and sat down with the member. And two signatures on any disconnect sheet, the manager’s and one of ours, November through March.”

“Here’s the other thing,” Bob said. “The cold weather sheet. We’re out of step with the state, and I’d rather we call them than have them call us. Dennis, you pull every disconnect notice since October, and we find out who else didn’t get that page.”

“Yes sir.”

“And I’m putting a letter in your file. I’m saying it to you here so you don’t read it Monday. It says you signed a sheet you didn’t read and left a woman in the cold for a day after you knew. It stays there.”

“Yes sir.”

Dennis stood up and pulled his phone from his pocket. At the door he turned.

“Mrs. Sperry. I’ll have a crew at Mrs. Quist’s inside the hour. Yours is next.”

“Thank you, Dennis.”

He nodded, and went out.