The Note Burning on Our Gravel Road

The weeks after

She called twice in February.

The first time, it was a Sunday night, and she talked about the weather and the boys’ haircuts for ten minutes before she said, “Have you thought about what I asked?”

“I’m thinking,” I said.

“Well,” she said. “Don’t think too long. That kind of money has a way of disappearing.”

The second time, she did not bother with the weather. “Gene doesn’t know I’m calling,” she said. “I just want to know where we stand.”

“I’m still thinking, Bonnie,” I said. And I was. I was thinking harder than I had ever thought about anything.

The insurance company had paid the claim at the end of February. It took them five weeks from the day I mailed the death certificate. The money sat in savings at the bank, and I could not sleep for knowing it was there.

I sat down with a legal pad and did what I do for a living. I made it into columns.

The house: one hundred forty-two thousand. The funeral had come out of our checking and a little savings, so that was done.

The kids would draw survivor benefits from Social Security on Matt’s work record until they were eighteen, which would cover groceries and shoes.

What I did not have was a husband’s paycheck. What I did have was a mortgage payment of eleven hundred and forty dollars a month, and a part-time job, and three kids who were not going to stop growing.

I wrote it out every way there was. Keep the money and keep paying the house. Invest it and hope. Give Bonnie her sixty and figure the rest out later.

Every way I wrote it, I came back to the same thing Matt used to say when he came up behind me at the table. Are we rich yet? Tell me when.

The bank

On the second Monday in March, I put on the good black slacks I had worn to the funeral and drove the kids to school and Jake to my sister Kim’s, and then I drove to the bank.

The loan officer was a woman named Amy who had been two years behind Matt in school.

She had come to the visitation and stood in line for forty minutes in the cold. She hugged me before I sat down.

“I want to pay it off,” I said. “All of it.”

Amy looked at me for a second. Then she nodded and pulled up the loan on her screen and printed a payoff statement, good through the end of the week, with the daily interest figured in.

It came to one hundred forty-two thousand, three hundred and eleven dollars and some cents. I had the bank move the money from the savings account right there at her desk.

“The release of mortgage gets recorded with the county,” Amy said. “That takes a few weeks. We’ll send you a copy. And you’ll get the original note back, stamped paid. You’ll want to keep that somewhere safe.”

“Can I ask you something?” I said. “Do people still burn them?”

Amy smiled for the first time. “My grandpa did,” she said. “Nineteen seventy-eight. My mom still has the picture of him holding the match.”

“Matt’s grandpa did too,” I said. “Gene’s dad. There’s a picture in Bonnie’s hallway.”

“Well then,” Amy said. “Make a copy of the note when you get it. Keep the original in your fireproof box. Burn the copy. That’s what the smart ones do.”

I walked out of the bank into the March wind with nothing in my hands but a receipt, and I sat in the car and cried so hard I had to wipe the steering wheel with my sleeve.