The Bus Driver Who Bought Her House

Pam looked at me over her glasses. “You’ve done this math already.”

“I did it at two in the morning,” I said.

She nodded slowly. “On eighty thousand one hundred borrowed, thirty years,” she said, tapping at the calculator, “your payment with taxes and insurance would run about seven hundred and thirty a month.”

I had been paying Dale seven hundred and fifty.

I sat there in that little office with the butterscotch candy and the picture of the feedlot, and for the first time since the porch, I had to look down at my lap for a minute.

Pam didn’t say anything. She just slid the candy jar an inch toward me.

She gave me a list. She said she would start the pre-approval that afternoon, and that if I could get a signed purchase agreement with Dale by Thursday, she’d order the appraisal Friday.

“One more thing,” she said, as I stood up. “Your retirement. You’re sure?”

I wasn’t sure about anything. “It’s the house my kids grew up in,” I said. “I don’t know how to say it better than that.”

“You don’t have to,” Pam said.

On the way out to my car I passed the pot of mums by the door. Somebody had watered them that morning. There was still water beading on the leaves.

I called Dale from the parking lot.

He answered on the fourth ring. I could hear a television in the background, and somebody calling out a bingo number.

“I’m at the farm credit,” I said. “They’re going to work with me. I need a purchase agreement signed by Thursday, and a letter saying I’ve paid you on time for eighteen years.”

There was a pause. The bingo caller said B nine.

“Lori,” Dale said, and his voice had gone careful. “Don’t go spending money chasing this.”

“I’m not asking you to believe I can do it,” I said. “I’m asking you to sign the paper.”

Another pause. Then, “I’ll be at the title office Thursday at ten.”

He hung up. I sat in the car a minute. I didn’t know then where the bingo was coming from. I found out later.

That night I called my children.

Tyler is my oldest, twenty five. He works at the co-op elevator in Hollis and lives in a little apartment over the hardware store. He came over that night still in his work boots and sat at the kitchen table where he’d done his homework for twelve years.

Morgan is twenty two and in nursing school in Lincoln. I put her on speaker. Jess is nineteen, still at home, working mornings at the café and taking classes at the community college in Fremont.

I told them all of it. I told them what Dale said, because I decided they were old enough to know it.

Tyler didn’t say anything for a while. He turned his coffee cup around and around. Then he said, “I’ve got four thousand in savings.”

“No,” I said.

“Mom.”

“No,” I said. “That’s your truck money. That’s your someday. I’m not starting your life in a hole so I can keep mine.”

He looked at me the way his grandpa used to look at a stubborn cow, patient and not fooled. “Then I’m going to help some other way,” he said, “and you’re not going to argue about that one.”

On the phone, Morgan said, “Send me every form. I’m good at forms. I’ll read them on my lunch break.”