The Coupon Book I Mailed My Daughter in Law

I’m not ashamed to tell you I stood in that calf yard and cried.

Sunday at church, Pastor Dale preached on the steward who was faithful in little things. I sat there and thought about how I’d been faithful in fourteen little things, fourteen coupons, and look where it got me.

Then I thought about it some more, on the drive home and that whole afternoon. I thought about a book of coupons that had my handwriting in it. Fourteen dates. Fourteen check numbers.

I had promised Nolan I would not tell Madison. I had not promised to keep paying forever. And I had never promised to hide the book.

The payment was due on the first of November. I didn’t drive into town that day. I didn’t write the check. I went about my day. I milked at five in the morning and five at night, the same as every day of my married life.

Their bank, like most of the small ones, gives you a fifteen-day grace period before the late fee hits. I knew that because I’d read the fine print on the back of the coupon book a dozen times over the last fourteen months, waiting in line for Janet.

The late fee was four percent of the payment. Fifty-six dollars.

Nolan didn’t call that first week. I don’t think he even knew the date had come and gone. In his head, the house payment was something that happened by itself, the way the sun comes up. That is what I’d let it become.

On the sixteenth of November, the day after the grace period ran out, I got a big manila envelope out of Rick’s desk.

I sat at the kitchen table and opened the coupon book one last time. There was my handwriting inside the cover. Fourteen lines. Each one had a date, a check number and the words, “Paid, Janet.” I’d started writing her name at the end of every line so I’d remember who to thank at Christmas.

I thought about writing Madison a note. I got out a piece of paper and wrote “Madison,” and then sat there with the pen for a long time.

Everything I wanted to write was either mean or was telling. I wasn’t going to be mean, and I’d promised not to tell. So I folded the paper with just her name on it and threw it in the stove.

I put the coupon book in the envelope, with the rest of the year’s coupons still attached, and I wrote her name and the address of that split-level in town in my best hand.

“Madison Ostrander.” Not Nolan. Not the both of them. Just her.

Rick came in from the barn while I was licking the flap. He looked at the envelope, and he looked at me.

“That it?” he said.

“That’s it.”

“You want me to drive it in?”

“No. I’ll do it.”

I drove the twelve miles into town and mailed it at the post office counter instead of in the box at the end of our lane, because I didn’t trust myself not to go out and take it back out of our mailbox before the carrier came.

Doris at the counter weighed it and said it would be a dollar and something, and asked how the cows were milking. I said they were milking fine. She said it would get there in a day or two, and it did.