The Bedroom I Asked For

“The payment was seven hundred and eighty dollars a month,” she said. “On my Social Security and Dale’s little pension, I could make it. For a while. Then the furnace went two winters ago, and the pension stopped when the company was sold, and I started skipping a month here and there.”

“Why didn’t you tell Ronnie?”

“Because he’s my son,” she said. “And because you two have a child in college and a truck payment, and I am the mother. I am supposed to be the one who helps. Not the other way.”

Then she got up and went to the drawer by the telephone and came back with an envelope.

She set it down in front of me. It was from a law firm in Atlanta that handles foreclosures for the mortgage company.

I read it. In Georgia, they don’t take you to court to foreclose.

They put a notice in the county paper for four weeks and sell the house on the courthouse steps on the first Tuesday of the month. Her house was scheduled for the first Tuesday in November.

“I got that the end of September,” she said. “I called Ronnie that night. I was crying so hard he thought I’d fallen. And three weeks later he came and sat right where you’re sitting and told me it was taken care of. Overtime and a bonus.”

I put the letter down. My coffee had gone cold and I drank it anyway.

“He was ashamed,” Faye said. “That’s my guess, and I know him. His daddy’s bills, his mama about to lose the house he grew up in, and him not able to fix it. And you’re the one who saved, Angie. You always were. He couldn’t stand to come to you with his hat in his hand.”

“So he took it instead,” I said.

“So he took it instead,” she said. “And lied to both of us. I’m not making excuses for him. I’m telling you why.”

We sat there a long time. Earl’s porch light was on across the road and I could see it through her kitchen window over the sink.

My phone buzzed on the table. It was Ronnie, the third time. Faye looked at it, and then she held her hand out, and I gave it to her.

“Ronald,” she said into it. She only calls him that when he is in trouble. “Angie’s here. She’s staying here. No, you’re not coming over. You’re going to stay in your own house and think about what you’ve done. You’ll come Sunday for dinner and not one day before.”

She listened. I could hear his voice going, small and fast.

“I know you did it for me,” she said. “That’s what makes it so bad. Goodnight, son.” And she hung up and handed my phone back across the table like it was a dish towel.

I slept in the good bedroom under the wedding ring quilt that night. I didn’t think I would sleep at all, and I slept nine hours straight.

Faye had to knock on the door at six to tell me the coffee was on and I’d be late to the mill.

She had made me a sausage biscuit wrapped in foil and put it in a paper sack with my name on it, like I was in third grade.

I ate it in the parking lot at work before my shift and cried a little, and I couldn’t have told you why.