The Little Blue Book at the Bank

The summer without him

That summer was the longest of my life, and I have buried a husband.

The first Monday in June, I got up at six out of habit, put the coffee on, and set out the cereal bowl with the chipped rabbit on it that Wyatt always used. Then I stood there in my kitchen and realized nobody was coming.

I want to be honest. There were days I was angry. There were nights I lay awake rehearsing things I would say to Brandon, sharp things, true things. I never said one of them out loud.

The Fourth of July parade goes right down Main Street, past the bank and the hardware store and the Methodist church. I stood on the corner by the drugstore and watched the tractors go by and the Legion boys with the flags.

Across the street, on the curb in front of the bank, I saw Wyatt. He was on Brandon’s shoulders, waving a little flag, and he had a red popsicle running down his arm.

He did not see me. I stood very still so that he would not. I did not want him to have to choose between running to me and staying with his father in front of the whole town. A child should never have to pick.

Karen and the obvious question

In August, I went into the bank to deposit my pension check and Karen looked at me over her glasses and said, “Marlene, you look like you haven’t slept since May.”

I told her. I had not told anyone else, not even my sister in Omaha, but I told Karen at the teller window with nobody behind me in line.

She was quiet for a while. Then she said what anybody would say. “You have the note. He signed it. Any lawyer in this county would take that case in a heartbeat. You could garnish his wages at the co-op.”

“I know,” I said.

“So why don’t you?”

I had thought about it every night. I had even looked up a lawyer in Harlan. I had his number on a sticky note on my refrigerator for two weeks.

“Because then I win, Karen,” I said. “I win thirty-four thousand dollars and a judgment, and I never see that boy again as long as I live. You can’t take a child’s father to court and expect a chair at his birthday party.”

She nodded slowly. She had grandchildren, too.

“And it isn’t really about the money,” I said. “I’d have given him that money if he’d asked me to. I just needed him to stop treating me like I’m the thing he did wrong.”

I took the sticky note off the refrigerator that night and threw it in the trash.