Nine Days in My Mother in Law’s Sewing Room
“I took the money.” She put the keys down on the table and folded her hands over them. “I knew my name was on that card. I’d forgotten for years, and then one night I remembered, and I thought, I’ll just borrow it. Just for a few days. My tax refund was supposed to come by Friday. I was going to put it right back.”
“And it didn’t come.”
“It didn’t come.” She looked at me then, straight on, for the first time in six days. “And when you came in my kitchen that night, I was so ashamed I couldn’t stand it. So I was hateful instead. That’s the truth. It was easier to be hateful than to say I was sorry and tell you why.”
The water in the pan was starting to steam.
I took the bottle out and tested it on my wrist and gave it to June, who latched on like she hadn’t been fed in a week.
“Linda,” I said, “it’s still not right.”
“I know it’s not.”
“The rent is late. Nate’s working Saturdays to cover what we’re short. Mr. Weber knocked off our late fee because he felt sorry for us. Hailey asked me last week why we were eating macaroni again.”
She closed her eyes. “I know.”
I could have said a lot more. I had six days of things I could have said, stacked up behind my teeth.
I looked at that little brass tractor on the table and I didn’t say any of them.
“You should go to bed,” I said instead. “You’ve got the kids in the morning if I’m late from work. And Owen is going to wake you up singing.”
She nodded. She picked up the keys and stood up slowly, the way women her age stand up from a hard chair at two in the morning.
At the hallway she stopped and looked back at me holding June.
“You were right to come here,” she said. “I’ve hated every minute of it. But you were right.”
I didn’t tell Nate what she’d said that night. It wasn’t mine to tell. I figured if Linda wanted her son to know, she’d tell him herself.
I just told him she was up late, and I thought she was working something out.
The next two days were quiet. On Friday after school Linda took the kids out to fill the bird feeders in the backyard.
She taught Owen the names of the birds at her feeder: the cardinals, the juncos, the one fat blue jay that bullied everybody.
On the eighth day, a Saturday, I looked out the kitchen window and saw a young man I recognized as Gene Kessler’s grandson walking around Ron’s white Chevy in the carport.
He opened the hood, checked the tires, and crawled underneath it on a piece of cardboard.
Linda stood in the carport with her arms crossed tight over her pink cardigan, watching him. She didn’t move.
When he slid out from under the truck and stood up and wiped his hands on his jeans and said something to her, she just nodded.
I didn’t go out. I made grilled cheese and tomato soup and kept the kids at the table so they wouldn’t run out there and ask questions.
On the ninth day, Sunday, she came home from church and sat down at the kitchen table and counted out thirty-five hundred dollars in cash that Gene Kessler’s grandson had brought by after the late service.
I saw it from the stove. She counted it twice.