The Envelope I Carried Every Friday
“Leota Mowbray’s,” I said.
She closed her eyes.
“It was the Thursday you came home from circle,” I said. “You said you wished we could. I said you were right. I lay in bed that night and couldn’t stand it. The next Wednesday I saw her in the church lot, in her Buick, with her head on the wheel and no sound coming out of her. That Friday I went to the bank.”
“A whole year.”
“Fifty-one Fridays. Tomorrow’s the last.”
“And the thirty-two hours.”
“They cut us to thirty-eight. I made up the rest at the kitchen table. I made it up to your face.”
She didn’t flinch. She nodded slowly, as though I had confirmed a number she had already worked out for herself.
“And the Oregon trip.”
I had to look at the floor. “I knew what day it was, Norene. In June. I listened to you say next year, and I let you.”
My wife squared the slips into one stack and set them on the bench. Then she put both hands over her face. Her shoulders went, and in forty-two years I had never seen her cry without making a sound.
I got down on the cold concrete and put my hand on her back. She did not push me away, but she did not lean in either.
“I’m angry,” she said, into her hands. “I want you to know that. You looked at me and lied, and I ironed your shirts.”
“I know.”
“I’m going to be angry for a while.”
“I know it.”
“Why?” She lowered her hands. Her face was a mess. “Why would you not just tell me? You know I’d have said yes.”
“That’s why.”
She stared at me.
“You’d have said yes and gone straight to the can,” I said. “You said no that night because you were scared for us, and I saw what it cost you. I wasn’t going to hand you a second chance to pick between the can and Leota. I thought I could just carry it.” I made myself keep going. “And think about the sacks, Norene. Somebody left them and never let us see. That’s the only way we could have taken it. If it had been a casserole and a look at church on Sunday, we’d have starved first. You’d have wanted to hug Leota. She’d have seen it on your face. And she would have had to sit across from you every Thursday and owe you.”
Norene didn’t answer for a long time. A truck went by on the road. The garage smelled of cold concrete and motor oil.
“I said we couldn’t,” she said finally, in a small voice. “And I went to bed and lay there and thought, that’s a lie. We could. We just didn’t want to give up Oregon.” She wiped her nose with the heel of her hand. “I prayed that night, God, send her somebody. And I never once thought you were the answer to it. I thought you were asleep next to me.”
“I wasn’t asleep.”
“No.” She almost smiled. “You were getting up to go to the bank.”
She took off her glasses and held them in her lap.
“You let me off the hook,” she said. “You took the thing I was ashamed I couldn’t do, and you did it, and you let me stay ashamed another year instead of making me say it out loud. That’s a hard thing to forgive a man for.”
“I know.”
“Let me finish.” She breathed in. “I can forgive it. It’s going to take longer than tonight. But I understand it, Rudy. I understand it better than you think, and that is what’s so aggravating.”
She stood up. Her new knee popped. She put a hand on my shoulder to steady herself, and then she did not take it away.
“Come in the house,” she said. “Wash up.”
I turned off the garage light and followed her through the door. I heard a kitchen chair scrape across the linoleum.
When I came in, she was standing on it. She reached up to the top of the refrigerator with both hands and took down the Folgers can.