The Envelope I Carried Every Friday

The year they took the overtime

It had been getting thin at the plant for a while. Not dangerous. Thin.

We lost a big trailer customer down in Oklahoma, and by January the overtime was gone. For thirty years I had worked forty-eight hours most weeks, with Saturday mornings in the shop when the orders were heavy. Now I worked thirty-eight. The Saturdays went quiet. My take-home dropped from about $870 a week to about $700.

Our Medicare supplement went up. Norene’s second knee needed replacing, and the copay was real money. The propane man filled the tank at a price that made me sit down on the step.

None of it was a disaster. We were tight, not broke. I did the books at the kitchen table every Sunday night, the way I always had, with the green ledger Norene’s father gave us as a wedding present and a pencil with a good eraser.

Norene never looked in that ledger. “That’s your department,” she said once, forty years ago, “and the cafeteria is mine.” She meant it, and she kept her word. That is the part I have had to live with since.

What Norene brought home from circle

It was a Thursday in late October. I remember because I had a pot roast in the oven and I was feeling pleased with myself about it.

Norene came in from quilting circle at the church and set her purse on the kitchen chair instead of hanging it on the hook, which she never does. She stood there with her coat still on.

“Somebody at church is about to lose her house,” she said.

I turned the burner down. “Who?”

“I’m not going to say. She told it to the circle in confidence. She isn’t a woman who asks for things.” She pulled out the chair and sat on top of her own purse without noticing. “Her husband was sick two years and the bills ate everything. They borrowed against the house to keep up and then he passed, and she’s been behind ever since. The bank is willing to work with her. They’ll let her catch up over a year, but she has to put an extra $190 a week on top of the regular payment, every single week, no misses.”

“One hundred ninety a week,” I said.

“She’s on Social Security, Rudy. She can’t find it. Her daughter wants her to sell and move out to Phoenix by Thanksgiving, and she says she won’t, she’ll sleep in the car first, because her husband is out in the churchyard and she would have to leave him.”

The roast ticked in the oven.

Norene looked at her hands. “I wish we could,” she said.

I didn’t say anything.

“We can’t, Rudy. Not this year. Not with your hours the way they are, and the knee, and Oregon coming up.” She said it fast, like a woman rushing a prayer she wasn’t sure she should say. “I’m not saying I don’t want to. I’m saying we can’t.”

“You’re right,” I said. “We can’t.”

I said it twice. I want that on the record. I said it twice, I ate my pot roast, and I watched television with her until the news was over and she patted my knee and went to bed.

I did not sleep.