Mom’s Eight Thousand Dollar Hot Tub

It became her idea

I figured that would be the end of it. One Saturday, one point made, everybody embarrassed, and we would all go back to pretending.

Instead, on Friday night my phone rang at seven o’clock sharp. “Eight o’clock, Sherri,” Mom said. “Don’t be late. And bring that striped towel, it’s the biggest one you’ve got.”

After that first morning, it was never my idea again. It was hers.

She told the ladies at her Thursday circle at the Methodist church that she had a standing appointment on Saturday mornings now.

When they asked what kind of appointment, she said, “Hydrotherapy,” and let them think what they wanted.

She started wearing the navy swimsuit under her clothes on Saturday mornings.

She’d come out to my car already dressed for it, the flowered cap in her lap, and her face would look ten years younger than it had all summer.

Saturday two, Saturday three

The second Saturday, it was cold enough that I could see my breath.

The steam came off the water so thick I could barely see Mom’s flowered cap in the middle of it, bobbing like a little garden floating in a cloud.

Tiffany came to the sliding door again. This time she did not slide it open. She just stood behind the glass in that white robe with her arms crossed, and she watched.

Mom waved. Tiffany didn’t wave back. Mom didn’t seem to mind one bit. She leaned her head back on the edge of the tub and hummed “In the Garden” under her breath.

That was the Saturday the neighbors found out. Don and Judy Harper live on the lot to the north, and their back deck sits up high enough to see over the privacy fence. Judy came out with a coffee cup and nearly dropped it.

“Bev Mattson!” Judy called over the fence. “Is that you in there?”

“It’s me,” Mom called back, waving. “Good morning, Judy. Isn’t this something? I bought it, you know. Eight thousand dollars.”

I wanted to sink into the concrete. Mom said it without a speck of meanness in her voice, the same way she would tell you what she paid for a sack of flour.

But Judy Harper heard it, and Judy Harper is on the prayer chain.

By the third Saturday, half the street knew. Don Harper waved over the fence with his coffee.

The retired couple across the alley came out to their back step to watch. A man walking his beagle stopped at the gate and said, “Morning, Mrs. Mattson.”

That third Saturday, Tiffany did not come to the door at all. The door stayed shut the whole time.

I felt a little sorry for her, and then I remembered Mom’s handwriting in the memo line, and I felt a little less sorry.