The Little Blue Book at the Bank

What I said to him

I stood there in my robe, and I looked at that young man, and I thought about all the sharp things I had rehearsed in the dark that summer.

I did not say any of them. I did not need to. He had already said them all to himself, worse than I ever could.

“Brandon,” I said, “I don’t want your money.”

He looked up, surprised.

“I mean it,” I said. “I never wanted it. I wanted you sober, and I wanted my grandson, and I wanted my daughter to stop crying at two in the morning. Two of those three, you gave me.”

“Then what do I do?” he said. “Tell me what to do and I’ll do it.”

I thought about it. I thought about that little blue book, sitting on their kitchen table, and the pencil line inside the cover.

“Don’t pay me,” I said. “Pay him. Every month, the way you said you would. Five hundred dollars, into Wyatt’s account. Sixty-eight more times. And you do it with him there, so he can see it.”

Brandon stared at me. Then he looked at his father. Duane did not say a word. He just nodded once, the way Dale used to nod when something was settled.

“Saturday,” Brandon said. “At noon. The bank’s open till noon on Saturdays, isn’t it?”

“Karen stays late for me,” I said.

He nodded. He turned around and walked back down my walk. Duane stayed a moment longer at the bottom of my steps.

“He’s a good boy, Marlene,” he said. “He’s got some of me in him. That’s the trouble.”

“He’s got some of you in him,” I said. “That’s why he’s going to be fine.”

Duane smiled, a little, and touched the brim of his cap, and went back to his old white Ford.

Friday

Jessa called me Friday night. It was the first time her name had come up on my phone since April. I almost dropped it.

“Mom,” she said. Her voice was thick. “Can you be at the bank tomorrow at noon?”

“I’ll be there,” I said.

“Wyatt wants to show you something,” she said. “He’s been carrying that little book around in his pocket for two months. He sleeps with it under his pillow.”

I could not say anything for a minute.

“I’m going to stay home,” Jessa said. “This one isn’t mine. It’s Brandon’s. But Mom, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I should have called you. I should have asked.”

“You can come for supper Sunday,” I said. “We’ll talk then. I’ll make the pot roast.”

“Okay,” she said, and I heard her start to cry. “Okay.”

The bank

In the morning, I put on my purple fleece, because it was the warmest thing I owned, ran a comb through my short white hair, and hung my reading glasses on Wyatt’s beaded chain around my neck.

I parked down the block and walked. It was a bright, cold Saturday in November, the trees along Main Street stripped bare, the kind where the light comes straight down Main Street at noon and makes every window shine.

The bank lobby is the same as it has been since I was a girl. Same old wooden teller counter, worn pale on the edge where seventy years of elbows have leaned. Same clock over the door that always runs two minutes fast.

Wyatt was already inside.

He was standing by the counter in a plain blue T-shirt. His hair was buzzed short for the fall, so short I could see the little scar over his ear from when he fell off my porch swing at four.

He turned around and saw me.

I do not know how a seven-year-old can cross a bank lobby that fast. He hit me so hard my reading glasses swung out on their chain and bounced off my chest. I held on to him. I held on to him and put my face against that buzzed head and breathed him in.

“Grandma,” he said into my fleece. “Grandma, I have a bank.”

“I know you do,” I said. “I know you do, honey.”

He pulled away and grabbed my hand and dragged me to the counter. He stood at the counter edge, chin barely over the wood, and handed the little blue passbook up to Karen.

Karen was wearing her oatmeal cardigan, the one she wears every Saturday because the lobby is always cold. She looked at me over his head. Her eyes were shining.

“Good morning, Mr. Wyatt,” she said. “Would you like me to bring your book up to date?”

“Yes, please,” he said, very serious.

She stamped it. She wrote in it in her neat bank handwriting. Then she slid the passbook back across the counter to him, slowly, the way you would hand someone something important.