Sixteen Years of Fridays at the Bank
Darren Kopp waited until Brooke had her seatbelt buckled before he took the paper out of his pocket. I remember that, because it meant he had thought about it.
It was the third Sunday in May, six o’clock, the handoff. My driveway on the east edge of Red Oak, the lilacs along the fence just past their best, the light going gold over the bean field across the road.
Angie was still inside my kitchen hunting for Brooke’s retainer case. It always ended up on my windowsill above the sink, and every other Sunday somebody had to go back in for it.
Darren unfolded the sheet against the hood of his pickup and smoothed it flat with the side of his hand. It was typed. He had drawn the lines under the totals with a ruler.
“I want you to look at this before you say anything,” he said. “Just look at it, Matt. That’s all I’m asking.”
So I looked. Two columns. The left one said daycare, with the name of the center out by the hospital. The right one said formula, diapers, wipes, the pediatrician copays, the second car seat, and one last line: savings for the twins.
At the bottom, circled twice in blue pen, was a number. Six hundred and forty dollars.
“That’s what you owe us,” Darren said. “Every month. On top of the support. Some of it covers the bills and some of it gets put away for the twins. I did the math three different ways and it keeps coming out there.”
I read it again. I have been a diesel mechanic for eighteen years. I read numbers off a laptop all day, and I know what it looks like when somebody works backward from the answer they wanted.
“On top of the support,” I said.
“Look, your every-other-week thing doesn’t count. Not really. They live with us. You borrow them. You get the fun weeks and we get the bills.”
Angie’s Equinox was parked behind his truck with the back window down. Brooke was thirteen and had ears like a barn cat. I watched her stop moving in the back seat.
“Darren,” I said quietly. “Brooke’s right there.”
He glanced at the car and lowered his voice, but he did not stop. “I’m not saying it to be mean. I’m saying it because somebody has to. We’ve got two babies now, Matt. Two babies in diapers and two teenagers eating us out of the house.”
“Half the time,” I said. “They eat me out of the house the other half.”
“You know what I mean.”
I did know what he meant. That was the trouble with Darren. He was not a liar. He was a tired man with a calculator, and he had decided that I was the cheapest place to make the numbers work.