The Morning Mom Took Back Her Checkbook
Sunday dinner
I got to Mom’s at eleven on Sunday to help. Mom had the good dishes out, the ones with the wheat pattern, and the cloth napkins instead of paper.
She set five places. Her, me, Pete, Greg and Sherry. She had made pot roast with carrots and potatoes, and her refrigerator rolls, and a pan of bars for dessert.
At twelve twenty-five a pickup pulled into the driveway that Pete had plowed out again on Saturday. It was Greg’s silver Ford. I watched from the window. He sat in the truck for a long time with the engine running.
Then the passenger door opened, and Sherry got out first. She came around and opened his door, and she said something to him I could not hear. Then he got out.
He looked older. That is the only way I can put it. My brother is a big man, a good-looking man who has always walked into rooms like he owned them. He came up Mom’s back steps like a man coming up the steps of a hospital.
Mom met him at the door. He stood on the mat with his hat in his hands and snow on his shoulders, and he could not look at her.
“Come in, Greg,” she said. “You’re letting the cold in.”
We sat down. Pete said grace, because Mom asked him to. He thanked the Lord for the food and for the family at the table, all of it. Then we passed the pot roast, and nobody said anything for a while except please and thank you.
Greg did not eat much. He moved his carrots around on the wheat-pattern plate. Sherry kept her hand on his knee under the table. I could see it from where I sat.
When the plates were mostly clean, he reached into the inside pocket of his sport coat and took out an envelope from the bank in his own town. He set it on the tablecloth in front of Mom.
“That’s a cashier’s check for nine thousand dollars,” he said. “Every cent.”
Mom looked at it. She did not pick it up.
“Where did it come from?” she asked.
He swallowed. “I sold the boat,” he said. “And the fish house. Bob Larson bought them both on Wednesday. The rest I took out of my IRA. I’ll pay the penalty on it. That’s mine to pay, not yours.”
I knew what that boat meant to him. He and Dad had bought it together the summer before Dad got sick. I looked at Pete, and Pete looked down at his plate.
“And I talked to Deb and Tom,” Greg said. “I told them the truth about the agency. Where things stand. What I did to make payroll. Deb’s going to cut back to three days. Tom’s looking. They were better about it than I deserve.”
Mom nodded slowly.
Then he finally looked up at her, and his eyes were wet.
“Mom, I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry I took it. I’m sorrier for what I said in October. I made you think something was wrong with you so I’d have a reason to be on there. I knew there was nothing wrong with you. I knew it the whole time.”