The Aunt Who Took the Daycare Job

That night, I found the space heater at the bottom of the basement stairs. Brandon must have carried it back down while I was giving the twins their bath.

It was plugged in and running. He hadn’t said anything about it, and I didn’t either.

I want to be fair to my brother. He grew up in the same house I did, with a dad who worked nights at the same plant and a mom who made every dollar stretch.

When money got tight, our dad went quiet and did math. Brandon went quiet and did math.

And somewhere in Brandon’s math, during those weeks after they cut his overtime, my cot had turned into rent.

He had sat at that table and decided that a bed and groceries were a fair trade for what I did. He never once wrote down what it would cost to pay somebody else to do it.

I don’t think he had ever really seen the work. He left before the kids were up and came home when they were bathed and fed.

He saw the house at its best hour, every day, and he thought that was how houses were.

Wednesday and Thursday went the way every day went. Breakfast, diapers, the twins fighting over the same plastic horse, Wes pulling himself up on the coffee table and then crying because he didn’t know how to sit back down. I tried to memorize all of it.

Thursday night, I was reading to Hunter at bedtime when he put his hand on the page and stopped me.

“Are you going away because Daddy took your heater?” he asked.

I had not told him anything. I had not told any of them. But he had been standing in the hallway that Tuesday night, it turned out, in his pajamas, listening to his dad and me in the garage.

“I’m going to work at a school for little kids,” I said. “Across town. It’s a good job, Hunter. And I’m still your Aunt Jo. That doesn’t change.”

“Is it cold there?” he asked.

“No, buddy,” I said. “It’s warm.”

He thought about that. Then he took his blue tractor blanket off his feet, folded it in half, and put it on my lap. “In case,” he said.

I put it back on his feet and told him he needed it more, and he let me, but he didn’t look happy about it.

Friday was the hardest day. Kayla took the night off from the laundry, which she almost never did, and she cooked supper for the first time in I couldn’t tell you how long.

Chicken and noodles, like our mom used to make, because I had taught her the recipe.

She didn’t say much. At the end of the meal she put her hand on my arm and said, “Thank you for the list. I called some of them.”

I asked which ones. She just shook her head and said we’d talk about it later.

Brandon wasn’t at supper. He had picked up a Saturday shift on the cleanup crew, which pays time and a half, and he went to bed at seven-thirty.

I heard the bedroom door close and I sat at the table a long time after the dishes were done.

Saturday morning, Patty’s husband Don backed his pickup into Brandon’s driveway, right up to the side door that goes down to the basement.

Don is a retired rural mail carrier, about sixty-five, a quiet man with big hands and a seed corn cap he never takes off.