Sixteen Years of Fridays at the Bank

Angie

My mother cut the cake. Brooke sat with both passbooks open in front of her, reading the lines out loud to her brother, the dates and the amounts, like scripture.

Angie came over to the table while I was getting plates. She stood next to me and watched the kids for a minute.

“You never told me,” she said quietly.

“It wasn’t for telling.”

“Every Friday. For sixteen years.” She shook her head slowly. “I used to see you leave the shop at noon on Fridays and think you were going to lunch with the guys.”

“Sometimes I was. After.”

She laughed under her breath, and then she was not laughing. She put her hand on my arm, just for a second, the first time she had touched me on purpose in years.

“Thank you, Matt,” she said. “For them. And for not saying anything to him.”

“He’s got two babies who don’t sleep,” I said. “I remember what that’s like. I remember one.”

She looked over at Darren, still at the edge of the yard by the fence, alone now, his hands in his pockets. “He did the math three different ways,” she said. “He never once put you in it right.”

“That’s because I never gave him the numbers.”

“No,” Angie said. “You gave them to her.”

Carson and the truck

Darren left early, a little after five. He came over and thanked my mother for the cake, which I respected. He told Carson happy birthday and shook his hand.

Then he started across the yard toward the driveway alone. Angie was going to stay and ride home with the kids later, since it was my week and her folks were going her way.

Carson set down his plate and got up from the picnic table. Nobody told him to. I watched him catch up with Darren at the corner of the garage and fall in beside him.

They walked down the driveway together to Darren’s truck. I could not hear them. I did not try to. I stayed at the table with my hands around a glass of my mother’s iced tea and let them have it.

They stood by the driver’s door a long time. Darren talked with his eyes on the ground. Carson talked with his hands in his back pockets, which is the way I talk when something matters.

Then Darren put his hand out, and Carson shook it. Darren held on a second longer than a handshake usually goes.

When Darren pulled out of the driveway, I heard the front brakes on his truck grinding, metal on metal, the way they do when the pads are gone. I had heard it in May, too, and said nothing.

Carson came back up the yard and sat down next to me at the table. He picked at the frosting on his paper plate.